The midday heat radiating off the pavement outside the 7-Eleven was suffocating, but Da didn’t seem to notice. She had stopped dead in her tracks, her face lighting up with a massive, genuine smile. Standing in front of her was a lean Thai guy straddling a modified scooter, wearing a faded Honda racing shirt.
It took Martin exactly four seconds of watching their relaxed, entirely friction-free body language to realize he was standing face-to-face with one of her ex-boyfriends.
In a European city, running into an ex while holding hands with your current husband triggers a highly predictable script: stiff posture, polite but clipped greetings, and a desperate, suffocating urge to escape. But here, on the blinding white concrete, the tension was entirely one-sided. Da chatted warmly, completely unbothered. She was treating the man who used to share her bed with the exact same casual, flowing warmth she gave the lady selling grilled pork at the end of their soi.
Martin stood in silence, sweating through his shirt, playing the role of the awkward, oversized accessory. Then, the guy paused. He looked Martin up and down—a slow, unapologetic scan—and fired off a rapid, melodic sentence in deep Isaan dialect. Da threw her head back and burst out laughing.
Martin’s paranoia instantly redlined. His ego immediately assumed he was the punchline.
Refusing to stand there like a humiliated spectator, Martin deployed the most pathetic psychological weapon he had in his arsenal. He pulled out his phone, opened Instagram, and deliberately pulled up a reel of girls in neon bikinis dancing outside a Soi 6 bar. He angled the screen just enough, making sure it was visible. He wanted her to feel the exact same spike of territorial jealousy currently burning a hole in his chest.
The ex gave a polite nod, revved his scooter, and blended into the traffic. Da turned back to Martin. She barely registered the glowing screen. Instead, she looked at his rigid jawline, her eyes softening with amusement. She stepped close, reached up, and affectionately ruffled his hair.
“Are you sulking?” she asked.
“No,” Martin snapped, aggressively shoving the phone into his pocket.
They resumed walking in silence. Martin stared straight ahead, utterly consumed by a single, terrifying thought: he was trying to calculate the sheer, apocalyptic violence that would have erupted on this exact pavement if they had just bumped into his own psychotic ex-girlfriend, Fon.
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