The Art of Not Missing You - Chapter 6

Ethan Foster used to be Uncle Jack’s business partner. They addressed each other like brothers, which was one of the reasons he refused to make our relationship public.

Proud as he was, Ethan always felt that revealing our relationship, going from brothers to uncle and nephew-in-law, would make him look inferior to Uncle Jack. After all, they were the same age, only seven years older than me.

On top of that, since I worked at his company, he had a strict no-office-romance policy. For the past five years, he’d kept our relationship a secret. Even though we saw each other every day at work, no one had a clue.

So, when Olivia Summers showed up, I was immediately labeled as the shameless other woman.

I didn’t want to get into anything related to Ethan, so I switched gears and started acting spoiled with my mom.

Back home, the comforting smell of a home-cooked meal washed away the exhaustion of the last few days. Uncle Jack went on and on about the arranged marriage candidate he had lined up for me, praising him like he was some rare gem fallen from the heavens.

He’d done the same thing with Ethan back then, so after hearing it so often, I started seeing Ethan through rose-colored glasses. I even went to college down south just to be closer to him.

At that time, Olivia had already gone abroad. Ethan was fully focused on his career, and I was fully focused on finding reasons to ask him for help. After enough interactions, we naturally ended up together.

The fragments of those memories made me pause for a second, and before I knew it, I blurted out:

“Uncle, your taste isn’t exactly reliable!”

“Sophia, you’ve worked under Ethan for so long. He’s not bad, right? Alexander Monroe is ten times better than him! I guarantee you, Alexander is the kind of man you’ll never find, even if you searched with a lantern!”

“Most importantly, Alexander has a completely clean dating history, still single to this day.”

I couldn’t help but feel suspicious.

“If he’s such a great catch, why would he agree to an arranged marriage with me? Uncle, you didn’t tell him I’ve never been in a relationship, did you?”

“It’s not like I can’t get married, but we don’t do fraud here. I’d be too embarrassed.”

“Or… does he have some hidden condition?”

Uncle Jack and I shared a terrible sense of judgment when it came to men, but my mom finally spoke up.

“Sophia, you’ll understand once you meet him.”

I didn’t trust Uncle Jack, but my mom was reliable.

Exhausted from the trip, I took a bath and collapsed into bed, falling asleep almost immediately. I slept so deeply that I didn’t even notice the flood of missed calls on my phone, until it died, automatically shutting off.

The next morning, after I charged my phone and turned it back on, the notifications nearly crashed my screen.

All of them were from Ethan.

Thinking it might be about the company handover, I answered his call.

“Mr. Foster, all the handover documents are on my computer. You can just copy them from there, ”

Ethan cut me off sharply.

“Sophia, are you done playing games? You moved out without a word, didn’t even bother to mention your resignation, do you think scaring me is fun? If you hadn’t picked up, I was about to call the police!”

His accusations left me completely baffled.

“Mr. Foster, you already approved my resignation letter. The finance department only processed my salary after your approval. Everything followed procedure.”

My calm response made Ethan grit his teeth on the other end of the line.

“You deliberately bullied Olivia, I scolded you, and now you pull this stunt?”

“Get back here immediately, go to work, go home, like normal!”

Then he hung up.

It was the third time he had lost his temper with me since Olivia returned.

It was clear that he still thought I was the same obedient Sophia, the one who would follow his every word, no matter what, whether in public or private.

After a moment of contemplation, I tapped the red exclamation mark on WhatsApp again.

This time, the breakup message finally went through.

“Ethan, we’re over.”

In Ethan’s mind, this relationship probably didn’t even deserve the word “breakup.”

Once the message showed as delivered, I blocked him on every platform.