Derrick and I had a rhythm. For nearly three years, since I was twenty-one, our lives had been a comfortable, predictable song. Thursdays were for Netflix documentaries. Every other Sunday was for dinner at his mom’s. Summers meant camping trips with his friends. He was the guy who knew how to fix the garbage disposal when it jammed—my first green flag, or so I thought. He remembered my birthday and actually listened when I talked about my day. After my last boyfriend, who thought “emotional labor” was a type of childbirth, Derrick’s basic decency felt like unicorn behavior. The bar was on the floor, and I thought he was soaring miles above it.
That all changed on a Tuesday. I was at work, scrolling through my phone during my lunch break, when a text from my friend Amara lit up the screen. It was just a TikTok link with the caption: CALL ME NOW.
Amara is not the dramatic type. She once texted “slight issue” when her apartment was literally flooding. My heart began to pound a nervous, heavy rhythm. I clicked the link.
And there was Derrick. He was at Throwbacks, the dive bar his buddies always haunt on Mondays. I recognized the flickering neon Budweiser sign behind him. He was clearly several beers deep, his face flushed, arm slung around his friend, Xavier. Someone off-camera, his voice slurred, asked, “So, rate your girlfriend, bro!”
The look on Derrick’s face changed. It wasn’t his normal smile. It was a strange, conspiratorial smirk I’d never seen before, like he was about to let everyone in on a dirty little secret.
“Eliana?” he scoffed. “Honestly, probably the most hideous girl I’ve ever been with. Like, a four. On a good day.”
The bar erupted in a chorus of “Ohhhs!” and someone yelled, “Savage!” Derrick just laughed, soaking it in.
“But,” he continued, “she cooks really good enchiladas and never complains when I go out with the boys. So, I keep her around. Low maintenance, you know?”
Then someone asked if he was worried I’d see the video.
His response? “Nah, she doesn’t even know what TikTok is. Besides, thinking about an upgrade soon anyway. Too much baggage.”
The timestamp showed it was posted at 11:43 p.m. the previous night. While I was at home, doing a clay mask and texting him “Goodnight, sleep well.” The night before that, he’d been at my place. We made dinner. We talked about moving in together when my lease ended in August. He had kissed me goodbye and said, “Love you, babe,” like it was nothing. Twelve hours later, I was the “hideous” placeholder he was planning to dump.
The video had 17,000 views.
I sat in the breakroom, the scent of microwaved popcorn thick in the air, just staring at my phone. I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I just felt a strange, terrifying coldness spread through my chest. This is what he really thinks of me. This is who I am to him.
I texted Amara back: Coming over after work. Don’t tell anyone.
Then I muted all notifications, put my phone in my bag, and somehow, through the sheer, bizarre power of autopilot, I made it through three more client appointments without completely breaking down.
After work, I didn’t go home. I drove straight to Target, bought a cheap duffel bag, and filled it with essentials: toothbrush, deodorant, phone charger, a couple of t-shirts. The total was $47.16. The receipt is still in my wallet.
I sat in the parking lot of Amara’s apartment complex for twenty minutes, just staring at nothing, playing that video over and over in my head. I thought about all the times Derrick had told me I was beautiful. When I dressed up for his company Christmas party. When I was sick with the flu. Three weeks ago, when we were at the beach and I was so self-conscious about wearing a bikini. All lies. Or just things you say to the low-maintenance girl you keep around.
When I showed up at Amara’s door, she didn’t ask questions. She just pointed to her pull-out sofa, handed me a glass of the cheap rosé we drank in college, and said, “What’s the plan?”
That’s when I decided. I wasn’t giving him the satisfaction of a breakup conversation. No tears. No begging. No dramatic confrontation he could brag to his bros about later. I was just going to disappear.
That first week was a blur. By midnight on Tuesday, Derrick had texted seven times. Normal stuff at first: Hey, what do you want for dinner? By morning, it was: Where are you? Why aren’t you answering? By the afternoon, he’d called twelve times. Not one mention of the TikTok. Not one apology.
I stayed at Amara’s, binge-watching trash TV, a surprisingly effective therapy when your life is imploding. I cried in the shower so she wouldn’t hear. By Friday, the TikTok had mysteriously vanished from Derrick’s account. Too late. It had been screen-recorded and was making the rounds in our friend group. My phone was a constant barrage of “Are you okay?” texts.
The weekend was a haze of ignoring calls from unknown numbers—Derrick, using his friends’ phones once he realized I’d blocked him. By Monday morning, one week after I saw the video, the missed call count was at thirty-seven. His latest text, sent from his mom’s phone, just said: Please.
I needed to get my mail. I figured 8:00 a.m. was safe; Derrick usually left for work at 7:30. I was wrong.
I unlocked my door and there he was, sitting on my welcome mat—the one he’d given me that says, Home is where the Wi-Fi connects automatically. He looked up when he heard my keys. The man was a wreck. Unshaven, dark circles under his eyes, wearing the same Metallica shirt he’d had on in an Instagram story from two days ago.
When he saw me, he literally crumpled. Not in a fake, dramatic way. His body physically gave out. He was on his knees, tears immediately streaming down his face, saying my name over and over.
“Eliana, please,” he sobbed. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I said those things. I was drunk, the guys were pressuring me… I never meant any of it. Please, just talk to me.”
I just stood there, keys still in hand, feeling nothing, then everything, then nothing again. “I saw what you really think of me, Derrick,” I said, my voice flat. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
I stepped around him like he was a piece of furniture, got my mail, and walked back to my car. He followed me, still crying, still begging. I got in, locked the doors, and drove back to Amara’s. He called five more times before I even made it across town.
The next nine days were a siege. After I left him in the parking lot, I drove back to Amara’s in a zombie-like state. She found me hours later, still in my coat, staring at a “Live, Laugh, Tequila” magnet on her fridge. She handed me a White Claw and said something that cut through the fog.
“Have you been ignoring red flags all along, Eliana?”
At first, I was defensive. But then she started asking specific questions. Had he ever made jokes about my appearance before? Well, there was the time he said my favorite jeans made me look “kind of wide, but in a cute way.” And when I got highlights, he asked if the salon “meant to make them that brassy.” Did he support my goals? He’d said he was proud when I was promoted, but also suggested I shouldn’t take it because of the “stress.” When I talked about going back to school, he’d change the subject to how expensive it would be.
The TikTok wasn’t some bizarre, out-of-character moment. It was just the first time I’d seen what had been there all along, without the filter of wanting to believe we were perfect.
That night, the siege escalated. The doorbell rang. It was Derrick, holding the saddest-looking grocery store flowers I’d ever seen. Amara went full mama bear, opening the door just enough to block his view and telling him I wasn’t there. I could hear his voice cracking as he begged her to let him talk to me, saying he hadn’t slept in days. After he left, we found an eight-page, front-and-back letter he’d slipped under the door. It was a masterclass in deflection—he was drunk, peer-pressured, having a bad day—but one line actually got to me: I said those horrible things because I’m insecure and afraid you’ll realize you’re too good for me. For about twenty minutes, I actually felt bad for him.
Then we went through old photos on my phone, and I had my real epiphany. In every picture of us from the past year, I’m looking at him with this big, goofy smile. And he’s looking at his phone, or off to the side, or making a stupid face. Not a single photo where he’s looking at me the way I’m looking at him. How had I never noticed that?
The next morning, my brother Miguel called. Derrick had shown up at his apartment at 7 a.m. Miguel, ever the protector, told him if he came by again, they’d be having a “different kind of conversation.”
I finally texted Derrick: I need space. Please stop contacting me, my friends, and my family. I’ll reach out when/if I’m ready. He replied immediately with five paragraphs about how he understood and would wait forever, followed by three more texts asking when forever might end. So much for respecting boundaries.
On Sunday night, the humiliation went public again. Derrick posted a four-and-a-half-minute apology video to his Instagram, tagging me. It was him, sitting in his car, red-rimmed eyes, telling the world how sorry he was, how I was the most beautiful person inside and out, how he was learning to be a better man. Even his apology was a performance, posted at peak engagement hours.
The next morning, I decided I had to go back to my own apartment. I couldn’t hide forever. As I packed, my phone pinged with a Venmo notification. Derrick had sent me $300 with the note: For the anniversary dinner we’ll never have. Our three-year anniversary would have been next week. I sent it back and blocked him on Venmo, too.
My apartment felt both strange and familiar. And then I saw them. Post-it notes. Everywhere. I miss your smile on my bathroom mirror. Remember our first date here? on my TV. I can’t sleep without you on my bedside table.
My skin instantly crawled. He still had the spare key. He had been in my apartment while I was gone. I checked all the closets, under the bed, half-convinced he might be hiding somewhere. He wasn’t, but the violation felt just as creepy. I called my landlord and arranged for the locks to be changed the next day. Then I ripped every single Post-it into tiny, satisfying pieces.
The next morning, there was a knock on my door. It was Xavier, Derrick’s friend from the video, come as his ambassador. He looked ashamed.
“He didn’t mean any of it, Eliana,” Xavier mumbled. “You know how guys talk when they’re together.”
“I don’t want to be with someone who talks like that with his friends, drunk or sober,” I said, my voice steady. “I don’t want to wonder what he says about me when I’m not around.” I thanked him for coming and closed the door.
That night, I packed up the hoodie he always left at my place and his Xbox controller. I ate spicy takeout he always complained about and used the fancy bath bomb I’d been saving. Around midnight, a text came from a new number.
It’s Derrick. Please don’t block this number. I just need to know one thing. Did those 3 years mean anything to you? Because they were everything to me.
I stared at the words for a long time. Three years of inside jokes and lazy Sunday mornings. And three years of small criticisms dressed as jokes, of walking on eggshells around his moods, of making myself smaller to make him comfortable. I didn’t reply. I just added the number to my blocked list.
The following weeks were a strange mix of healing and new horrors. The weirdest thing happened at Target. A woman recognized me from the TikTok and launched into an awkward apology for a mean comment she’d left, having seen Derrick’s “sincere” apology video. My humiliation had become my public identifier. And that made me angry. A pure, energizing anger.
I made a list: cut my hair, join a kickboxing class, apply for that digital marketing certificate I’d been putting off. By 11 a.m., I’d chopped off seven inches of hair. Each snip of the scissors, I mentally named after something Derrick had said to me. Your laugh is kind of loud. Snip. No guy wants a girl who eats more than him. Snip. I felt lighter.
But just as I was starting to feel in control, Derrick had a drunken meltdown on Instagram Live, slurring to the camera that he was coming over and wasn’t taking no for an answer. My brother and his girlfriend came to stay. Sure enough, at 9:47 p.m., the doorbell rang. Miguel answered, his large frame blocking the doorway. I couldn’t hear the words, but after five minutes of low, calm tones from Miguel and slurred demands from Derrick, the door closed. He was gone.
The next day, his mother texted me. I’m worried about him. He lost his job yesterday for showing up drunk. Please call me. The same old pattern. Derrick faces a consequence, and his mother swoops in to fix it. I didn’t reply.
Then, something unexpected happened. Franklin, another of Derrick’s friends from the video, posted a TikTok of his own. It was a storytime, captioned: When your friend humiliates his girlfriend on TikTok and you finally call him out for being toxic. He explained how the friend group had a pattern of encouraging Derrick’s worst impulses, not just with me, but with previous girlfriends, too. He ended with, Eliana, if you see this, I’m sorry. We all failed you. And Derrick, man, get help. This isn’t about winning her back; it’s about becoming someone who would never hurt her in the first place. He confirmed my deepest fear: this wasn’t a one-time mistake. It was who Derrick was.
The final piece of the puzzle came from Xavier. He met me at a Starbucks, my brother sitting nearby as my undercover bodyguard. He looked terrible. He pulled out his phone.
“Before I show you this,” he said, his voice low, “you need to know I didn’t find it until yesterday.”
He slid the phone across the table. It was a WhatsApp group chat. The messages were from five weeks before the TikTok.
Derrick: Need your help with something, boys. Franklin: What’s up? Derrick: Trying to figure out how to break up with E. Xavier: Woah, for real? Thought you guys were looking at places together. Derrick: Yeah, that’s the problem. She’s getting too serious. Plus, I met someone at the gym.
My face grew hot. He went on to explain that he’d been talking to a girl named Adriana for months, but he was worried about how I’d react to a breakup. He was literally asking his friends for advice on how to make me break up with him, so he could look like the good guy. Their suggestions ranged from picking fights to, finally, this one: Just be an ass on social media so she sees it and dumps you.
The last message in the thread was from Derrick: TikTok might be the move. She never checks it anyway.
It was all planned. A calculated, cowardly, cruel plan that backfired when I disappeared instead of confronting him. He’d been lying to everyone, playing the heartbroken boyfriend while still texting Adriana.
I decided to talk to him one last time. On my terms.
We met at a coffee shop. He launched into a rehearsed speech about how sorry he was. I let him talk for two minutes, then I placed my phone on the table, open to the screenshots of the group chat.
“So, who’s Adriana?” I asked.
The look on his face was like watching someone get hit with a taser. The apologies stopped. The excuses began. He was confused. He panicked. Adriana wasn’t worth losing me over. It finally clicked. He wasn’t devastated about hurting me. He was devastated about looking like the bad guy.
“I’m not here to get back together, Derrick,” I said, my voice like ice. “I’m here to tell you that I know everything. And I’m done.”
“But I love you,” he said, tears welling in his eyes—tears I now knew were 99% performative.
“If you loved me,” I replied, standing up, “you wouldn’t have spent months planning how to humiliate me so you could be with someone else.”
And then I walked out. No scene. Just done.
The story could have ended there. But it didn’t. That afternoon, I got a text from an unknown number. It was Adriana. She’d seen the public apology video and had no idea Derrick had a girlfriend. We met for coffee. We compared notes on his lies. She showed me texts where he was telling her he loved her on the same day he was leaving sobbing voicemails on my phone. By the end of our conversation, we were following each other on Instagram.
Yesterday, I got accepted into that digital marketing program. I paid the deposit with the money I’d been saving for the apartment Derrick and I were supposed to share. Last night, my friends came over for an impromptu “Goodbye, Derrick” party. We drank cheap wine and read his increasingly desperate texts aloud. It was cathartic.
This morning, I woke up and watched the sunrise from my balcony. I thought about the three years. They weren’t a waste. They were a lesson. A lesson about red flags I’ll never ignore again, about my own resilience, and about the kind of love I actually deserve. I opened Instagram and saw Derrick had tagged me in a new post. My finger hovered over the notification for a second before I realized something fundamental had changed.
I don’t care what it says. His words have no power over me anymore. I deleted the notification, took a sip of my coffee, and smiled. The trash had finally taken itself out.