I did not mention that I spent every quarter in a boardroom with attorneys reviewing a portfolio that could have bought Simon’s firm ten times over. I didn’t tell him that the glass tower where his office was located belonged to me through a family subsidiary.
I wanted to enter a love story as a human being rather than an asset class. For a long time, I believed I had succeeded in doing exactly that.
Simon and I were happy in the ways that matter, making dinner on Sundays and walking through local parks on rainy mornings. He left his architectural drawings on the table, and I left my sketchbooks by the bed.
When my grandfather died eighteen months into our relationship, Simon stood by me in the rain at the cemetery. He held the umbrella over me and stayed silent, which felt like the perfect support at the time.
That version of him was real, and I refuse to pretend the last seven years were entirely fake just because the ending was ugly. The tragedy is that I kept waiting for the good version of him to save me from the man I saw in the conference room.