Five years together, and whenever I got into an argument with an outsider, my boyfriend never once took my side.

I always told myself he was just cold by nature, so I fought every battle for him.

On our trip, a seafood restaurant shorted us on the order. I had every reason to argue, and I did, without expecting Byron to lift a finger.

Instead, he said lightly, "They're just scraping by too. Screaming over a few dollars makes you look cheap."

The junior labmate traveling with us kept her head down and mumbled, "It's not exactly classy."

The two of them, playing off each other, pinned me right where I stood.

The manager, who'd been about to refund us, watched me with a smirk, his whole face saying he was enjoying the show.

I didn't cry. I grabbed my bag and went back to the hotel. Byron didn't come after me. He just kept eating with her, like nothing had happened at all.

What he didn't know was that before the trip, I'd added his junior as a friend and seen her social media feed.

That was a completely different version of him. In the video, Byron's face was flushed with rage, and he had a cornered old woman selling vegetables by the arm and wouldn't let go. "My junior was kind enough to buy up all your produce, and you sneak in a rigged scale to squeeze another ten dollars out of her? You're old enough to know better. Have you no shame?"

His junior had captioned it with a starry-eyed emoji: Byron standing up for me is honestly just too hot.

The boyfriend who could never learn to stand on the same side as me knew exactly how to stand up for his junior.

On this trip, the one who didn't belong was always me.

I booked the earliest ticket home. I was done with this trip. And done with this relationship, too.

...

It wasn't AI-generated. It wasn't a joke edit.

That was the gentle, well-mannered Byron Henson. For the sake of his junior, Bernice Bates.

Standing in the middle of a busy street, gripping a woman in her seventies or eighties, furiously calling her out for having no shame at her age.

I found it absurd. The owner of that seafood restaurant, with all his money and property, and Byron could feel sorry for the man, could say he wasn't having it easy.

But faced with a vegetable farmer who'd overcharged his junior by ten dollars, Byron had suddenly learned how to stand up for someone.

It hit me then. It didn't matter who the other party was. Who was standing beside him decided his attitude.

With me, he'd play the bystander and stay silent, and when it counted, he'd stand on the opposite side and play the nice guy.

But if it was his junior, he suddenly knew all about a united front, about standing up for her and settling her scores.

Pointless. Truly.

From the first time I heard the name Bernice, some instinct as a woman told me this girl was different.

At first Byron would complain to me. "She's hopeless. Can't even get the basic lab procedures right. I genuinely can't understand how she passed the grad exams."

But later it turned into him telling me with a smile, "Sweet, innocent little thing. She made me some milk tea by hand."

And then he deleted the pinned post on his feed of us holding hands, and switched to a couples' avatar.

He said, "I'll be coordinating with people higher up. It's not convenient."

The time he set aside for our dates started shrinking. From coming with me to the library, from going out to eat.

Into saving library seats for his junior, tutoring her, doing her research with her.

Little by little, I went from the girlfriend at the center of his life to someone on the margins.

I kept telling myself it was a normal senior-junior thing between them.

But once, my own junior bought me a milk tea to thank me for lending him my notes.

Byron's face went cold on the spot, and he said the guy had bad intentions toward me.

That was when it stunned me. So he understood all along what crossing a line looked like.

Yet this trip, the two of us had planned for so long, he forced his junior onto it.

When I showed I wasn't happy, he'd just look at me, put-upon, and say, "Can you not make everything about attraction? I'm just an older brother looking after a younger sister."

I clutched my phone, my eyes burning.

I held it in for a long time, but in the end I couldn't, and I broke down crying.

Crying until I could barely breathe, when the screen lit up.

A message from Byron.

I picked it up and opened it. Six words, nothing more: Come down to the front desk.

I ignored him and shut the screen off.

I was pouring myself a glass of water when Byron called, his voice full of urgency. "Come down to the front desk. Right now, immediately."

Thinking about everything that had happened today, I had no intention of humoring him, but I was also worried it might be a real emergency.

So I went downstairs in the hotel slippers, and the moment I reached the front desk, Byron started talking.

"Laura, what's taking you so long? The one time I actually need you, you're useless."

I didn't rush to smooth him over the way I always did. I just asked coldly, "What is it?"

He dragged me over to the front desk. "You tell her."

Then he stepped behind me and stood there like some indifferent bystander, as if none of this had anything to do with him.

Nothing like the Byron from Bernice's social media feed.

The clerk kept a polite smile on her face as she explained. "I'm so sorry. The suite got overbooked. Right now you can either check out, or downgrade from the suite to a twin room."

I listened, then gave a light nod. "Either's fine with me. Ask them."

Byron and Bernice froze. Even the clerk looked a little thrown, like she hadn't expected that reaction from me.

Byron panicked. He yanked my arm, a vein standing out on his forehead. "Is this really the time to be difficult?"

"We booked through a legit platform. What gives them the right to—"

I twisted free of his grip and looked at him, cool and detached. "Never mind. It's hard for them too."

His pale, clean-cut face went ashen in an instant, like he'd just swallowed a fly.

He knew. I was getting even.

Getting even for that line he'd thrown at me over lunch.

So Byron said nothing. He just ran his tongue along the inside of his cheek and let out a furious little laugh, saying "fine" three times over.

Without a word, he took the new key card.

Bernice's eyes went red. "Laura, even if you're mad at Byron, you shouldn't be taking a stranger's side."

Byron said nothing. He grabbed Bernice by the wrist and swept off.

Bernice was still muttering complaints as they went, and I caught Byron's airy little remark. "Let her do whatever. She'll regret it anyway."

I hauled my luggage out of the old room and went to get into the new one, only to find the door locked from the inside.

And suddenly I understood exactly what that meant. She'll regret it.

I knocked, my voice tired and helpless. "Byron, stop it, okay? I haven't eaten all day. I'm exhausted and starving. Just let me in first."

But there was no answer from inside. Instead, one burst of laughing and horsing around after another came through the door, as if they were putting it on for me to hear.

My eyes went red in a flash. I knocked harder, but the door didn't budge.

The laughter inside only grew louder, and whatever fury had been sitting in me caught fire completely.

I pounded on the door, again and again, and inside they acted like they heard nothing.

I hit it harder and harder, and a door opened.

It was the one next door. A big man, bare-chested, pulled it open and glared at me like a thug. "Screaming your head off in the middle of the night. You calling back the dead?"

I froze, not daring to move.

The laughter inside the room paused. They'd clearly heard, and still they did nothing.

The man looked at my face and suddenly grinned. "Out working the night, little sister? How much? Big brother'll pay."

And with that, he started to pull me toward his room.

The tears came before I could stop them. I beat on the door with everything I had. "Byron, open the door, help me!"

I heard Bernice say, "Byron, don't you dare open that door for her. She's got it coming. Don't get involved."

"Mm. Not opening it. She brought this on herself."

My heart went cold, all the way through. I clung to the doorframe for dear life and screamed.

But the man behind me seemed dead set on dragging me into his room, grinning that sleazy grin. "Forget whatever Byron-whoever. Come to big brother's room, come have some fun with big brother."

In the end I couldn't hold out against his strength, and just as I was about to be pulled all the way inside, the door opened.

It was another room. A family of three stood in the doorway, jabbing a finger at the man and shouting, "What do you think you're doing, going after a young girl?"

The man wilted at once and let go of my arm. "Just a joke," he said, then ducked back into his room.

I stood there shaking, staring at the door that was still shut tight, and something in me went cold all the way through.

I touched my face and only then realized it was already streaked with tears.

My safety hadn't been worth a single word from his junior labmate: leave her alone.

Five years together, and it was a joke.

The mother of that family helped me up and gently wiped my tears away.

She shot a hard glare at the closed door. "Your friends are terrible people."

I gave a bitter smile. Right. Even a stranger couldn't stand to watch, and they could sit behind that door and listen to me scream without a shred of guilt.

I thanked them, but I didn't knock again.

The front desk had already said there were no rooms, so I curled up on a sofa in the hotel lobby and made do.

I took out my phone and started building a slideshow.

I called it The Boyfriend Who Could Never Stand On My Side, and I recorded everything he and Bernice had done.

By the time I typed the last word, the sky had gone light.

I checked the hotels nearby.

It was peak tourist season, and everything around here was booked solid.

The earliest return ticket I'd been able to get wasn't until the day after tomorrow.

I gripped my phone, my chest aching. If I could, I wouldn't spend another second around them.

When I looked up, I saw Byron and Bernice ambling over, both of them yawning.

Like he was doing me a favor, Byron tossed the key card into my lap. "Here. Go rest."

He looked at the dark circles under my eyes with a hint of mockery. "This afternoon Bernice and I are going sightseeing. If you'd behaved last night, you wouldn't have gotten locked out."

I said nothing. I just stared, hard, at the purple bruises on his neck.

Before Byron could speak, Bernice pouted. "Laura, what's with that look? Byron had a touch of heatstroke yesterday, so I helped him with a little gua sha, that's all."

Byron looked at me with open impatience. "Can you not spend all day seeing things that aren't there?"

I lowered my head and said coldly, "Fine."

"There's nothing between me and Bernice. Can you stop being so jeal—"

At my answer, Byron froze.

As if he hadn't expected me to be this calm.

His face went slightly off, and he opened his mouth. "Laura…"

I picked up my luggage and stood. "I'm tired. I'm going back to the room to rest."

Byron watched me walk away, and for no reason he could name his chest felt hollow.

Maybe he really had gone too far last night.

But then he thought about how the suite had inexplicably been downgraded to a twin room and I hadn't said one word to fight it.

And Byron decided I'd had it coming.

He gave a careless shrug. Five years together, whatever happened, I would never leave him.

He put the whole thing out of his mind and went off with Bernice to hit every sight nearby.

I didn't go with them. I stayed and rested at the hotel for two days.

Only on the day I was leaving did I set out with them to climb the mountain.

I touched the keepsake my mother had left me, resting over my heart. That was the reason I'd come at all.