He Called My Sunrise Visual Garbage

I couldn't wait to see the look on Caleb's face when he came home.

When he finally returned, he froze in the doorway, his brow furrowed instantly.

On the white wall of the living room, I had painted a massive sunrise—the first one we had watched together from the NYU rooftop, its golden-orange light spilling across the entire surface.

"Willow, I don't care if you've lost your memory or not. You're thirty years old. Can you stop acting like you're twenty? You've ruined the aesthetic!"

He didn't even step inside before pulling out his phone. "Maria? Get some workers to repaint the living room wall white tomorrow. What? Visual garbage? Yes, paint over all of it."

The mural I had spent all night painting, he called "visual garbage." Then he slammed the door and left.

My hand trembled, knocking a paint palette off the table. It shattered on the floor. I knelt, picking up the fragments, trying to piece them back together. The jagged cracks looked like poorly stitched scars.

I stroked its broken edges and whispered, "It's okay, you know how Caleb is. Don't cry, don't cry…"

Once again, I comforted myself.

In the days that followed, I tried every trick I could think of to "run into" him.

When it rained, I stood with an umbrella outside his Wall Street office building. Predictably, he drove off in his black Bentley with Camilla. As they passed, he didn't even glance my way, and the spray from his tires soaked me to the bone.

When I heard he was going to a private club in SoHo, I got there early, even wrangling a temporary membership just to get inside.

The moment he saw me, he had security escort me out without a second word, leaving me there, utterly humiliated.

Despite it all, I brushed it off and resolved to keep trying. But Caleb never once spared me a glance.

On the sixth day, he finally came home. I had spent the entire day in the kitchen, my hands blistered from preparing an elaborate French dinner.

He rubbed his temples, then had the maid clear the entire table of food. "Willow, can you stop with these self-indulgent charades? It's exhausting."

I hadn't meant to cry, but the weariness in his voice cut me deep. His eyes, full of disgust, stared at me as if everything I had done was worthless.

Tears welled and spilled, falling in silent, heavy drops onto the floor.

Caleb fell silent, then let out a sharp laugh. "Tears are the cheapest form of manipulation. You'd think you'd have learned that by now."

Hearing them from him wasn't self-deprecating; it was a verbal assault that stripped me of all dignity.

After he left, I sat there, staring at the cleared table, at this empty house filled with nothing but loneliness.

I thought, Did I truly not understand why my thirty-year-old self wanted a divorce? Or was I simply refusing to?

That night, I sat at my desk, staring at the encrypted blog and the unsigned divorce papers.

My best friend, Maya Chen, had once called me and asked, "What's so special about Caleb Blackwood? What made you love him for a whole decade?"

I could never quite explain it.

When we first met, I could list a hundred things I admired about him. But the more I loved him, the less I could put it into words.

Isn't that how crushes work? No rhyme or reason, just pouring all your love into one person until you're battered and broken, unable to turn back.

I closed the blog again.

Maybe my thirty-year-old self was too proud, too lost, and had left the choice to the girl who was still twenty in her mind—letting her decide on our behalf.

Even if it was for the last time.

I sent Caleb a text: "Caleb, I was wrong today. I'm sorry. Will you come home tomorrow? Please."