This was useful but--it's time we split.

The first time, it was my notebook. Not just any notebook, but the notebook. The one with the faint coffee stain on page three from that early morning burst of inspiration, the one with the dog-eared corner on chapter seven where Sarah finally tells Michael she loves him. My lifeblood, my raw, unedited soul poured onto lined paper, tucked carefully into the canvas tote I always carried.

We were at the market. The Saturday hum of Islington was a familiar comfort – the scent of fresh bread mingling with blooming hydrangeas, the cacophony of vendors hawking their wares. You were beside me, as always, your hand casually in my back pocket, a grounding presence. I’d just stepped away from the artisan cheese stall, thrilled with my discovery of a new truffle cheddar, when I realized the tote felt lighter.

Panic, cold and sharp, cut through the market warmth. "My bag," I gasped, spinning around, eyes darting through the crowd. "It's gone. My notebook, Reedsy! It was in there!"

You looked at me, then back at the cheese stall, a slight frown creasing your brow. "Are you sure? Maybe you left it on the bench?" Your voice was calm, almost dismissive, as if I’d misplaced my keys, not the entirety of my creative output for the past six months.

I wasn’t looking for blame, not then. I was looking for action. For you, all six-foot-two of solid muscle, the man who’d once chased down a pickpocket who’d snagged a tourist's wallet, to spring into motion. But you didn’t. You just stood there, hands in your pockets, watching me frantically retrace my steps, tears pricking at my eyes.

"It’s okay," you said, when I finally gave up, my voice hoarse from calling your name, "You can just rewrite it, right? It's all in your head anyway."

I stared at you. Rewrite it? You might as well have asked me to un-spill the coffee or unscramble an egg. The spark, the raw spontaneity, the very essence of that first draft, was gone. And you, my supposed protector, had offered nothing but a shrug and a platitude.

That night, I paid for your dinner. Five bucks for your extra shot in the latte, then another five for the bus fare home because you’d "forgotten your wallet." It was always five bucks. A small, insignificant sum, a fraction of what I was losing, but it felt like a tiny, repetitive bleed.

The second time, it was the digital manuscript. Two years of work, meticulously crafted, polished, ready to send to agents. I'd been so careful, backing it up, saving it to the cloud. But then the email came, the chilling notification from Reedsy. My story, chapter for chapter, plagiarized and posted on some obscure forum, attributed to a user whose name was a string of random characters.

I was shaking when I showed you the screenshot. "Look, Reedsy. They copied it. Everything. My characters, my plot twists, even the weird little quirk of the protagonist’s scar."

You were playing a game on your phone, one of those endless runners with a catchy but repetitive soundtrack. You didn't even pause the game. "Huh," you mumbled, eyes glued to the screen. "That sucks."

"That sucks?" I repeated, my voice rising. "Reedsy, this is my career! My livelihood! Someone has stolen it!"

You sighed, finally setting your phone down with a theatrical flourish. "Okay, okay, calm down. What do you want me to do? Call the internet police? It’s online, it’s out there. You can't put the genie back in the bottle."

No, I couldn't. But you could have at least pretended to care. Offered to help me find a lawyer, spent an hour researching how to report it, or just held me while I cried. Instead, you suggested we watch a movie, and asked if I had five bucks for snacks from the corner shop. I did. I always did.

The stories kept accumulating, each one a fresh cut. The short fiction piece I’d submitted to a literary magazine, only to find a truncated, bastardized version republished in a local community newsletter without my permission, right after I’d mentioned it to you over dinner. The idea for a children's book, shared in a moment of excited vulnerability, later appearing on a friend of a friend's social media, suspiciously similar to the one I’d outlined. Each time, I’d come to you, my champion, my partner, seeking solace or, failing that, at least an acknowledgement of the injustice. And each time, you’d be absorbed in your own world, indifferent, offering facile solutions or simply changing the subject.

"It’s just words, isn’t it?" you’d said after the children's book incident. "You have plenty more where that came from."

Plenty more. Yes, I did. But they were my words. My efforts, my time, my intellectual property. And the man who claimed to love me saw them as interchangeable, disposable, not worth defending.

Today, it was raining. A soft, relentless drizzle that mirrored the ache in my chest. I'd spent the morning deleting old files, purging my computer of anything too precious, too vulnerable. It felt like tearing off bandages, slowly and painfully, exposing wounds that had never quite healed. The act was a confession: I couldn't trust you to guard them. I had to guard them myself, even from the casual indifference that let the thieves slip in.

You walked in, shaking the rain from your hair, a faint smell of damp wool clinging to you. You smiled, a genuine, easy smile that used to melt me. "Hey, love. Just popping out for a coffee. Want anything?"

I looked up from the screen, my finger hovering over the 'delete' button for a folder simply labeled "Novel Draft 3." "No, thanks."

You paused at the door, rummaging in your pockets. "Damn it," you muttered. "Left my wallet at home again. You wouldn’t happen to have five bucks, would you?"

My breath hitched. Five bucks. The exact same request, the exact same sum, the same casual assumption that I would provide, just as I had countless times before. But this time, it was different. This time, the request wasn’t followed by a shared laugh, a promise to pay me back (a promise rarely kept), or even a fleeting thought of what I might need. It was just an automatic reflex, a parasitic habit.

"Actually," I said, my voice steady, surprising even myself. "I just gave you five bucks for a coffee five minutes ago."

You frowned, genuinely confused. "Did I? Oh, right. Well, I need another one. This rain… it’s chilling me to the bone."

Another five. As if the first one hadn’t existed. As if the last year and a half of small pilferings, of ignored cries for help, of watching my hard work disappear while you stood idly by, hadn’t existed. As if I were an endless well of five-dollar bills, and you, the thirsty, oblivious traveler.

I closed my laptop, slowly, deliberately. The screen went black, mirroring the void that had opened between us. "No," I said. "No, I don't."

You blinked, taken aback. "Seriously? It’s just five bucks."

"It's never just five bucks, Reedsy," I replied, standing up. The rain outside seemed to intensify, drumming a mournful rhythm against the windowpane. "It's the five bucks I give you for the coffee you drink while my work is being stolen. It's the five bucks that buys your indifference. It’s the five bucks that pays for the privilege of watching my world crumble while you stand by and do nothing."

Your mouth opened, then closed. The easy smile was gone, replaced by a flicker of irritation, then a dawning comprehension. Or maybe, just maybe, it was the realization that the well was finally, irrevocably dry.

"I can't do this anymore," I said, the words a quiet exhalation, a releasing of a breath I'd held for too long. "I'm tired of giving you five bucks for nothing."

You said nothing. You just stood there, the rain still dripping from your hair, your hand still half-extended, waiting for the money that would never come. And for the first time, in a very long time, I realized that I didn't need you to protect my stories. I needed to protect myself from you.

So, I'm slipping away to another's arms, someone who will take due care and watch over my work, keeping it off YouTube, out of the hands of Facebook bots, and holds true to fair assesments of my work by using actual judges--and not relying on a community of poorly-vetted volunteers. It saddens me to feel as if this, this thing we had together, the friends made...it was all just a dream.

I'll miss you guys, but, maybe, maybe you too will wake up.

Wake up.