That night came rushing back to her, the discovery of all of those text messages, pictures and phone calls. There had been someone else, well there had been multiple other women. Dan had left his phone in the bathroom and as she stepped out of the shower, it had started ringing. Ayla answered it thinking it was someone from his office. The woman on the other end said her name was Tori. Tori had told her all about meeting Dan at a bar and how they had been together for three months, sending Ayla screenshots of the messages and pictures they had shared. Ayla had been stunned.

Once she had ended the call with Tori, Ayla discovered the texts with Penny, Amanda, Courtney and Tammy. They were all involved with him, trading pictures and texts messages daily. Ayla’s heart had shattered as she slid down to the floor and began to read through all of the messages and looked at all the pictures.

Picking herself up off of the bathroom floor, she made her way to the bedroom, handed Dan his phone with a smile on her face. He never noticed the tear streaks down her face or the fact that her eyes were red and bloodshot. That night while he slept, she had started making her plan to leave him. As the weeks passed, she began looking for an apartment that was close to her job, began packing things that he wouldn’t notice was missing and started gathering furniture, which she kept at her friend’s house.

Ayla started dealing with the heartbreak in the only way she knew how, she cried when he wasn’t around, she wrote in her journal and she kept a smile on her face. Every time his phone would ding with a notification or a call would come in that he declined, her heart broke a little bit more. Ayla knew that all of those notifications and declined calls were from his other women.

Ayla woke to the sound of Moose barking at the door. As she stood from the couch, the second knock sounded, sending Moose into another barking spree. Ayla answered the door, finding a delivery guy holding a coffee cup and a bag from Fooley’s.

“I didn’t order this; you must have the wrong apartment.” Ayla told the teenage delivery guy, who looked both amused and bored.

“There is a note attached. Is your name Ayla?” he asked.

“Yes, my name is Ayla, but I did not order this.” She answered, taking the cup of coffee and the bag that was thrust into her hands as the delivery guy made his way down the hall, away from her door.

Ayla closed the door, sat the coffee on the stand and opened the bag, finding a bagel, cream cheese and a note. “From one dog parent to another, enjoy your coffee and bagel. Dan, the guy from the dog park” As if Ayla didn’t know who he was, he was her one true love. The one she thought she would spend her life with, the one who tore her heart out, did a tap dance on it, and the one who handed it back like nothing had ever happened.

Ayla decided to throw the coffee and bagel in the trash until her stomach let out a growl, she didn’t like wasting food and hated wasting great coffee. As she drank her coffee, she decided that she would have to find a new place to get coffee and dinner, a new dog park to take Moose to and decided that if she ran into Dan again, she would tell him not to send her anything else. Maybe she needed to visit the spell caster and have a spell cast over her so she could forget Dan. Ayla didn’t want to forget Dan, she didn’t want to forget one moment, one memory from the time that they had been together.