It’s December. The desert air is getting thin. And I am sitting in a boardroom, smiling until my face hurts.
We just won the QA Award. We won the Highest Safety Award. The company is popping champagne (or at least, sparkling cider in plastic cups), and they want me in the video. They want me on LinkedIn, holding the plaque, looking like the proud papa of a healthy corporate baby.
“Great work, James,” they say. “We’re setting the standard for 2026.”
And I nod. I shake hands. I sign the paperwork for the Dallas Meet-and-Greet in February. I book the hotel. I pick the breakout sessions.
And the whole time, I can feel the weight of the plane tickets to Vietnam burning a hole in my back pocket.
I feel… dirty.
And not the good kind of dirty. Not the “18th Hole” dirty or the “La Jolla Lobster Heist” dirty. That was honest dirt. That was animal dirt.
This? This feels like Deep Cheating.
I’ve been a scoundrel in the dating pool. I’ve double-dipped. I’ve spun plates. I’ve dated women who were “low-hanging fruit” just to pass the time. But that’s the game. If we aren’t married, if we aren’t living together, if your profile is still up on Plenty of Fish, then we’re all just mercenaries in the same cesspool. That’s survival.
But this? This is different.
This feels like the husband who comes home to his wife of twenty years, kisses her on the forehead, asks how her day was, eats the dinner she cooked, and plans the summer vacation with her… all while he has a fully furnished apartment across town with another woman he’s already engaged to.
It’s the Betrayal of the Future.
My “wife”—this job, this team, this corporation—they think we’re building something together. They think I’m invested. They think I’m part of the family. We’re drinking beers after work, and they’re talking about Q1 goals, about the new contracts, about the audits I’m pushing through. They are leaning on me. They trust me.
And I am looking at them, nodding, laughing at their jokes, while silently calculating the exchange rate of the Dong and figuring out how to pack my life into a single Osprey bag.
It’s a specific, quiet kind of sickness.
It’s not the physical act of cheating—the banging of the village bicycle in the alleyway after a few beers. That’s impulsive. That’s just friction. That’s a mistake you can wash off in the shower.
No. This is premeditated. This is cold-blooded.
I am courting my new lover—Freedom, Vietnam, the Unknown—while sleeping in the bed of the old one. I am letting them give me awards. I am letting them put my face on their brand. I am letting them plan a future around a pillar that is already hollowed out and ready to collapse.
When I leave in January, when I drop the badge on the desk and walk out, it’s going to be a shock. It’s going to hurt them. Not financially—corporations survive everything—but personally. The team I drank beer with. The boss who thought he had a lieutenant.
I’ve seen the damage of this kind of betrayal in relationships. It leaves a scar. It makes people question their own reality. “He seemed so happy. He signed up for Dallas. He was holding the award.”
It makes them realize that they never really knew the man sitting across the table.
I’m playing the role of the Good Manager. I’m playing it perfectly. And every day I do it, every day I fake the enthusiasm for a future I have no intention of living, I feel a little bit less like a “Bad Boy” and a little bit more like a fraud.
I’m not guilty enough to stay. Christ, no. I’m leaving. That’s non-negotiable.
But I’m discovering a new feeling. A quiet, heavy, metallic taste in the back of my throat.
It’s the taste of being a liar who is actually good at it.
And I don’t like it.
February in Dallas? I won’t be there. I’ll be a ghost.
But right now, I’m just the guy buying the next round, smiling at the wake of a life that isn’t even dead yet.
