The Returning EX (John and Sophia) novel Chapter 173

Zack bid them goodbye after eating as it was getting late. While nobody sent him off, Sophia did tell him to take care on his way back when he stood, to which he replied with a hum before greeting John more formally. He then left them alone in the house.

After taking a few more bites out of his meal, John put his chopsticks down as he observed Sophia. She was sitting crossed-legged on the chair with her sleeves rolled up while grabbing onto the seafood with her bare hands without even putting on a disposable glove, and her mouth was oily from all the food she ate.

It was a sight which John could hardly bear to watch as he was a bit of a clean freak. Can’t she be more graceful and clean when she eats? Meanwhile, Sophia was enjoying her food so much that she missed out on his expression, but she did formulate a question as she ate. “By the way, what were you talking about with Miss Bailey back then?”

There was a pause in John’s movements when he realized she was referring to when he left her alone. He then replied, “We were talking about a possible collaboration, and I told her about the details that I thought needed to be amended in the documents she handed me today.”

There were no further reactions from Sophia as soon as she noticed that he wasn’t about to mention what happened in the past. Meanwhile, John could no longer bear to watch her eat, thus stood to excuse himself. “Carry on with your meal. I’ll be upstairs.”

“Alright.” A nonchalant reply was given.

After he stepped past a few flights of stairs, he looked back at the dining table when Sophia’s phone rang to see her wiping her hands in a flurry of panic before picking up. The phone was left on the table and switched to loudspeaker as she ate on, in which a man’s voice could be heard uttering her name.

A laugh escaped her as she said, “Hey, why’d you think of calling me?”

After staring at her for a while on the spot, John walked upstairs with his hands in his pockets. Her laughter could be heard from the stairway on the second floor as she chatted away, “Tomorrow? Sure, I’ve got time. In fact, I have all the time in the world, so we can meet tomorrow.”

He remained expressionless as he retired to his room and took out his pajamas. Despite his initial plans to shower, he stopped after giving it some thought and went on to light a cigarette by the window instead. However, he didn’t actually have the desire to smoke, so he stood there until the cigarette burned out before snubbing it out on the window sill.

Then, into the shower he went. He spent more time in the shower than usual, probably due to having drunk some alcohol and the saltier than usual dinner. He put on his pajamas after that, then decided to go downstairs to get himself a bottle of water to quench his thirst, only to find that Sophia was nowhere to be found.

Upon arriving at the kitchen, he checked on the dining room to see it cleaned up, which was a relief to him. When going upstairs with a bottle of water in hand, he saw the accessories on the coffee table. They were handpicked by him and were worth quite a lot, so he was expecting Sophia to take them after putting them on, judging from how miserly she was, but she wound up not taking any of them.

Thus he retrieved them before heading upstairs to chuck the accessories into the drawer of the nightstand in his room. In the meantime, something else could be seen in the drawer, which he realized to be his divorce certificate after pausing to check.

Memories of the process itself were hazy at best perhaps due to his sullen mood. The only thing that stood out to him was that Sophia was smiling when they took the photo for the cert. It was one of sincerity that differed from the usual fake smiles that she plastered onto her face, as there were curves at the corner of her eyes that used to be absent.

He flipped the cert in his hands while sitting on his bed to check on it. Amidst his muddled thoughts was a heavy feeling weighed upon his heart, so much so that it was suffocating.