The first time I saw him, I thought he was a piece of sunlight that had solidified into something perfect. His name was Leo, but in the secret, affectionate lexicon of my heart, he was Lemon Sour Candy. It was the sharp, vibrant yellow of his cashmere sweater, the way his smile was both sweet and had a tantalizing, electric bite to it. He was handsome in a way that felt like a minor event, the kind of man who made you check your reflection in your phone’s dark screen just to see if you measured up.
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We met at a gallery opening for a friend of a friend, a blur of white walls and intellectual chatter. He found me staring, baffled, at a sculpture that looked like a melted cheese grater. “It’s about the abrasion of domesticity,” he said, his voice a smooth, confident baritone. I laughed, a real, unforced sound. He knew the artist. He seemed to know everyone. He was magnetic, his energy a high-frequency hum that pulled everything into his orbit, including me.
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The first cracks in the sunlight appeared not long after, tiny hairline fractures. It was our third date, at a charming, overpriced bistro. He’d ordered for us, which I’d found charmingly old-fashioned. Then the bill came. He didn’t reach for it. He just looked at it, then at me, his perfectly sculpted brow furrowed.
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“You know,” he said, his tone conversational, almost clinical, “a place like this really puts your financial situation into perspective.”
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I blinked, my hand halfway to my purse. “I… suppose it does.”
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“I mean, what do you even do? Marketing for a non-profit, right?” He said “non-profit” the way someone might say “a suspicious mole.”
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“I do. I love it. We’re launching a campaign for—”
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“But the take-home,” he interrupted, shaking his head. His fingers, long and elegant, drummed on the tablecloth. “It must be… challenging. How do you plan for your future? For a family? For a life?” He stressed the word ‘life’ as if my current existence was merely a dress rehearsal for the main event, which would apparently require a much larger budget.
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I paid for my half, the delicious sea bass turning to a lead weight in my stomach. In the taxi home, he was quiet, staring out the window at the streaming lights of the city. “I’m just stressed,” he finally murmured, taking my hand. His palm was slightly damp. “The market is so volatile. My portfolio… you have no idea the pressure. I need a partner who isn’t a financial liability.” He said it so earnestly, as if he were sharing a profound and painful truth, that I mistook his anxiety for vulnerability. I squeezed his hand, a foolish little ember of hope igniting in my chest. He was worried about our future. That had to mean something.
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That was the beginning of the great, gaping maw of his anxiety, and I, in my desperation to be close to his sunlight, kept feeding it pieces of myself.
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Lemon Sour Candy was a symphony of stress, and I was his captive audience. He was handsome, yes, but his handsomeness became a taut mask over a ceaseless tremor of worry. It wasn’t just his money; it was mine. My salary was a constant, low-grade infection in our relationship. He’d bring it up in the oddest moments. While choosing a movie: “We could stream the new release, but it’s $6.99. Isn’t that like, an hour of your work after taxes?” While walking through the grocery store: “You’re buying pre-cut fruit? Is your time really so valueless that you can’t cut a melon yourself?”
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He lived in a pristine, minimalist apartment that smelled of lemongrass and anxiety. It was there, surrounded by his tasteful grey furniture and expensive art, that he unveiled his blueprint for the “woman of my dreams.”
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It was a Saturday morning. I was wearing an old, soft university sweatshirt and jeans, no makeup, my hair in a messy bun. I was making us coffee, feeling content, domestic. He watched me from the breakfast bar, his expression pained.
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“You know,” he began, and my spine stiffened instinctively. “My mother, she never let my father see her without her face on. Ever. Even when she was scrubbing the floors.”
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I turned, the coffee pot in my hand. “Scrubbing the floors? Leo, we have a Roomba.”
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“It’s the principle,” he said, his voice tightening. “It’s about effort. It’s about maintaining a standard. A woman should look good at all times. For herself, for her partner. It’s a sign of respect.”
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I laughed, a short, incredulous sound. “You want me to wear makeup to do the housework?”
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His eyes, a beautiful, clear hazel, widened with genuine sincerity. “Why wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you want to look your best for me? A little mascara, some blush. It’s not a big ask. It shows you care. It shows you’re trying to be the woman I dream about.”
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The “woman of my dreams.” She became a constant specter in the room. She was a high-earning, perpetually glamorous phantom who never wore sweatpants, whose hair was always blown out, who apparently vacuumed in heels and lipstick. She was his benchmark, and I was perpetually failing the test.
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My desperation was a physical thing, a cold knot in my throat. I was so terrified of losing the brilliant, handsome, intoxicating man I thought he was that I started to contort myself. I began wearing light makeup on weekends. I bought a ridiculously expensive silk robe to lounge in at his place. I stopped talking about my work, about the successful campaign that had gotten a write-up in the trade magazine, because it only made him sigh and say, “Imagine what you could do in corporate, with a real salary.”
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I hanged around Lemon Sour Candy, orbiting his sourness, hoping my proximity would sweeten him. But I was the one being pickled in his acid.
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The breaking point, when it came, was not a single explosion but a series of rapid, percussive detonations. It was a Tuesday evening. I’d had a long day. A donor had pulled funding, and I’d spent hours on the phone trying to mitigate the damage. I just wanted silence, a glass of wine, and the comforting, unglamorous weight of his presence. He was pacing when I arrived, his phone pressed to his ear, talking about futures, about margins, his voice a tight wire.
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He hung up and didn’t even say hello. “We need to talk about your five-year plan.”
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I slumped onto his sofa, kicking off my flats. “Leo, not tonight. I can’t.”
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“This is exactly what I’m talking about!” he cried, his voice pitching upward. “A ‘can’t’ attitude. The woman of my dreams doesn’t have ‘can’t’ in her vocabulary. She has a plan. She has goals. She has ambitions that translate into a seven-figure net worth!”
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I stared at him, too tired to even cry. “I’m ambitious about things that matter. My work matters.”
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“Your work is a hobby!” he screamed, and the sound was so sudden, so violent, that I flinched. “A noble, cute little hobby! You are wasting my time! You’re wasting both our time!”
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And then it started. The mantra. The threat that was also a plea, a weapon, and a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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“Break up.” He said it calmly, his eyes wide and glittering. “Break up if you can’t be the woman of my dreams.”
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“Leo, stop it.”
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“Break up! Break up! Break up!” Each repetition grew louder, more frantic. He wasn’t saying it to me; he was screaming it at the universe, at the pressure inside his own head. He sank to the floor, his back against his beautiful grey sofa, and put his head in his hands. His shoulders shook. Lemon Sour Candy was crying. Again.
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He cried often. They were torrential, self-pitying storms. He’d cry about the stress of his investments, cry about the fear of not achieving his life goals by thirty, cry because I’d worn the wrong shade of lipstick to a dinner with his colleagues. And I, the fool, would comfort him. I’d rub his back and tell him it would be okay, that we were okay, mistaking his manipulative meltdowns for a deep emotional connection.
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This time, though, something in me had snapped. The donor pulling funding, the long day, the sheer exhaustion of trying to be a ghost.
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“You would do this if you loved me!” he sobbed, his voice muffled by his hands. “You’d try harder! You’d be more! You’d earn more! Break up with me if you don’t love me enough to be better!”
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The words hung in the air between us, toxic and final. I looked at him, this handsome man on the floor of his perfect apartment, weeping because I existed as my imperfect self. The desperate knot in my throat loosened. The coldness thawed into a clean, clear emptiness.
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I stood up. I walked over to where my bag lay, picked it up, and slung it over my shoulder. The movement was quiet, deliberate. He looked up, his face streaked with tears, expecting my soothing touch, my placating words.
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“Okay,” I said. My voice was quiet, but it didn’t shake.
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His crying hiccupped to a stop. “What?”
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“You’ve been asking to break up since we hardly even started,” I said. “You’ve screamed it, cried it, whispered it. You’ve used it as a threat, a punishment, and a test. So, let’s stop wasting your precious time.”
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The emptiness inside me was filling now, not with desperation, but with a profound and steadying certainty. “I will never be the woman of your dreams. She doesn’t exist. She’s a phantom you’ve created to punish yourself and anyone foolish enough to get close to you. So, yes. We’re breaking up.”
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His face cycled through emotions: shock, indignation, and finally, a fresh wave of panic. This wasn’t how the script went. I was supposed to beg. I was supposed to promise to be better.
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“You don’t mean that,” he stammered, scrambling to his feet. “You’re just emotional. You’re overreacting.”
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“No,” I said, opening the door to the hallway. The air outside his apartment felt different already; lighter, cleaner. “I’m under-reacting. I should have done this the first time you told me to break up with you. Goodbye, Leo.”
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I closed the door on his stunned, handsome face. I didn’t slam it. I closed it with a soft, definitive click.
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The aftermath was not a dramatic storm of tears. It was a quiet unclenching. The first few days were strange. The silence in my own apartment was not an absence but a presence. It was peace. I walked around in my oldest, most comfortable clothes. I left my face bare. I made coffee and didn’t calculate its cost in fractions of my hourly wage.
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I heard from him once, a week later. A text message. I miss you. This is a mistake. You’re throwing away something real. You would fix this if you loved me.
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I looked at the message, at the familiar, frantic grammar of his anxiety. I saw it for what it was now: not love, not even about me. It was the sound of a man screaming into a mirror.
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I didn’t reply. I deleted the number. Lemon Sour Candy was finally out of my system. The initial sweetness had been a illusion, the sharp tang was the real essence, and the aftertaste, I realized, was nothing at all. It was just freedom. It was the quiet, unglamorous, and utterly perfect taste of my own life, finally mine again.
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and then Add to home screen.