My Girlfriend Cheated On Me For Six Months — So She Came Home To An Empty Apartment

Part 1

The pinging sound of an iPad notification will haunt me for the rest of my life.

I was sitting at the dining table, nursing a cold cup of coffee and trying to focus on a spreadsheet.

The apartment was quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator.

Megan had left for work hours ago.

Her iPad sat on the kitchen counter, plugged into the wall.

It chimed.

I ignored it and kept typing.

Two minutes later, it chimed again.

Then it went off three more times in rapid succession.

I pushed my chair back, the wood scraping against the floorboards.

I walked over to the counter just intending to hit the mute button.

I tapped the screen to wake it up.

A banner dropped down from the top of the display.

It was a Facebook message from a guy I had never heard of.

The preview text made the blood drain from my face.

My fingers hovered over the screen.

I didn’t want to open it.

I knew that opening it would change everything.

I pressed the notification.

The messaging app filled the screen.

I started scrolling.

My chest tightened with every line I read.

There were paragraphs of explicit conversations.

Photographs of them together in places I didn’t recognize.

She had been calling him on her lunch breaks.

She had been seeing him after work.

All those nights she claimed she was staying late at the office or out with her girlfriends.

She was with him.

This hadn’t been a one-time mistake.

This had been going on for over six months.

Six months of coming home to me, kissing me on the cheek, and asking what we were having for dinner.

Six months of sleeping in the same bed.

I set the iPad down carefully on the granite countertop.

My hands were shaking.

I walked into our bedroom and stood in the center of the room.

I looked at the framed photos on the dresser.

I looked at the life we had built together over three years.

I opened my top drawer and pushed aside a stack of shirts.

I pulled out a small velvet box.

I had bought it two weeks ago.

It held a ring that cost more than my first car.

I had spent months planning how I was going to propose to her on our upcoming anniversary.

I squeezed the box in my palm until the hinges dug into my skin.

I didn’t feel angry at first.

I just felt an overwhelming, crushing emptiness.

I slipped the box into my jacket pocket.

I grabbed my car keys from the hook by the door.

I drove straight to the jewelry store in absolute silence.

The salesman at the counter recognized me immediately.

He gave me a wide, congratulatory smile.

I placed the box on the glass display case and pushed it toward him.

I asked for a refund.

His smile vanished as he processed the transaction without a word.

I walked out of the store and pulled out my phone.

I called my manager and took the rest of the day off.

Then I called a moving company to see if they had any last-minute trucks available.

I rented a massive U-Haul and drove it back to the apartment complex.

I backed it directly up to the loading dock.

I walked upstairs and began to dismantle my life.

Starting with the bedroom, the process of dismantling my life began in earnest.

Garbage bags quickly filled with every single piece of clothing I owned.

The bathroom cabinets were swiftly stripped of my toiletries.

My half of the closet was left completely bare.

Moving into the living room, a different kind of pain set in.

Furnishing this space had been a joint effort, an entire weekend spent picking out the sectional couch and the massive flat-screen TV.

While she had handed me cash for her half, the entire purchase went on my credit card.

Those digital receipts were still sitting safely in my email archive.

Staring at the couch, a cold resolve hardened in my chest.

Dragging the first section out the front door and down the hall took all my strength.

Returning for the second section, the apartment already felt different.

Unmounting the television left the metal wall bracket looking like a bare skeleton.

Wrapped tightly in heavy moving blankets, the expensive screen made its way into the elevator.

My coffee table, rugs, and bookshelf soon followed.

If three years of loyalty meant nothing to her, keeping the nice furniture wasn’t an option.

Her new guy could certainly afford to take her out and buy a new sofa.

By the time the afternoon sun started filtering through the blinds, the apartment was unrecognizable.

It looked hollowed out.

It looked exactly like I felt.

Her cheap bedside tables and a few decorative pillows were the only things left in the living room.

I stood in the kitchen and ripped a piece of paper from a notepad.

I grabbed a pen from the drawer.

I wrote down exactly what I had seen on her iPad.

I listed the dates of her meetups with him.

I told her I knew everything and that I was completely done.

I placed the note perfectly in the center of the kitchen island.

I left my keys on the empty counter next to the note, closed the door, and waited for the inevitable explosion when she came home.