Seven years with the man I loved, and our chat thread had been reduced to two numbers: 1 and 2.

1 meant he was coming home tonight.

2 meant he was with Michelle, his childhood sweetheart, and he wouldn't be home at all.

I'd asked Winston Cobb once, who mattered more—me, or Michelle Henson.

I'd even threatened him. Abortion. Jumping off a building. Anything to force him to choose.

Every single time, he chose me without hesitation. And then, without hesitation, he turned and walked straight back to Michelle.

Today was our engagement party. The whole room glowing, everyone toasting me, telling me I'd finally gotten everything I wanted—my first love, made real at last.

And his phone wouldn't stop buzzing. I knew exactly what it meant. Michelle was at it again.

He started to stand on reflex. I laid my hand gently over his. "Today is our engagement party. You're still going to go to her?"

He stroked the back of my hand. "Be good, Ethel Winfield. Michelle isn't well. She can't manage without me."

"I promise, I'll be back before you know it. I won't ruin our party. You have my word."

He tapped the tip of my nose. "You're the only bride I'll ever have."

The next second, he slipped his hand free, turned, and walked away. No hesitation.

Exactly like every time before.

What Winston didn't know was that this time, once he left, there would be no place for him in my future. Not ever.

——

He moved fast, his back clean and resolute, and from start to finish he never once glanced back at me.

The previous eighty-seven times, every time he abandoned me like this, I came apart.

I cried, I screamed, I begged at the top of my lungs, desperate for him to stay one more second, to look at me one more time.

Eighty-seven times I clawed at him to stay, and eighty-seven times I came up with nothing.

My hysteria, my breakdowns, my pleading—to him it was all just meaningless noise.

But now, I didn't want to do this anymore.

The moment he vanished completely from sight, my phone buzzed.

A message from the law school professor.

"Ethel, congratulations on your engagement. But an overseas exchange opportunity like this doesn't come twice. Think it over once more. Don't make yourself regret it."

I stared at the screen, my eyes stinging.

Everyone said I was lucky. That after all the twists and turns, I was about to land my happy ending with my first love.

Winston was young and accomplished, the youngest university professor barely two years out of school, brilliant, golden, his whole future stretched out smooth and bright before him.

Our old college classmates all thought I'd married up, way above my station.

To keep pace with him, for one promise of forever, I'd turned down a job at a top law firm and stayed at the school as a teaching assistant instead.

People whispered behind my back that I wasn't good enough for him, and I swallowed every word of it, never said a single syllable to him about it.

In these seven years with him, I had never once lived for myself.

It was always wherever he went, I followed.

This exchange opportunity—the professor had brought it to me three times now.

Every time before, my answer had been no. Because I loved Winston. I wanted to stay by his side for the rest of my life.

But now, after watching him walk away from me eighty-eight times, after eighty-eight times of being left behind so he could run to Michelle—

It wasn't just that I wasn't good enough for him. In his heart, I had never weighed as much as Michelle Henson.

My love, my devotion, my sacrifices—none of it ever measured up against a single moment of Michelle needing him.

This time, I didn't want to choose him. This time, I wanted to choose myself.

I didn't hesitate. I told the professor yes.

I put my phone away, pressed down the hollow ache in my chest, and smiled as I explained to the relatives and friends that something had come up at Winston's school and he'd had to leave early.

Mom clutched my hand, her eyes full of worry. "Are you sure everything's okay? Is he coming back or not?"

I shook my head. Winston wasn't coming back.

The past eighty-seven times, he hadn't chosen me. This time would be no different.

After the engagement party ended, I walked my parents to their car.

The moment it pulled away, my phone lit up with a message from Winston.

In the chat box, again, there was only a single number. 2.

Of course. Every promise he'd ever made, he'd never once kept.

I thought back to all the times before.

My college graduation, the most important day of my life. I hadn't invited a single soul. My whole heart had just been waiting for him to come.

I waited in that auditorium an entire day. Afterward, he brushed it off, saying Michelle Henson had caught a cold and needed someone to look after her.

The day I received a national award. The spotlight fell on me, and the first thing I did was look toward the door. He wasn't there.

Later I found out he'd taken Michelle to watch the sunset and clean forgotten our plans.

Even the night he proposed, when he knelt on one knee, slid the ring onto my finger, and made his solemn vows.

In the end, he still left for Michelle. His reason never changed. Michelle was in a bad mood. He had to be with her.

Before, every time I saw that number 2, I'd call him over and over, send long, long messages, pour out every drop of grievance and unwillingness and rage I had.

But my messages sank like stones, and my calls went forever unanswered.

The instant Michelle started her countdown, the instant she started needing him, my love, Winston, would vanish into thin air, belonging completely to someone else.

Seven years. I'd made enough scenes. I was burned out.

This time, I didn't cry, didn't scream, didn't cling. I simply sent one calm line.

"The engagement party's over. Let's break up."

Winston didn't reply all night. There wasn't a ripple in my chest. I'd long since stopped being surprised.

In Winston's eyes, my hurt and my heartache, every emotion I had, none of it weighed as much as a string of countdown numbers in Michelle's chat box.

In those seven years, Winston had chosen me exactly once.

That day, just to keep him with me at Disney, I'd let selfishness win and deleted the countdown message Michelle had sent.

What I got in return was a phone call that same night. Michelle had slit her wrists and been rushed to the ER.

Winston, always so steady and unshakable, panicked for the first time.

His eyes were terrifyingly red that day. He pushed the car to seventy-five, racing to the hospital like a man gone mad.

When he learned I'd deleted the message, he raised his hand and slapped me hard across the face.

That slap shattered every last bit of hope I'd been clinging to.

After that, he never let me touch his phone again.

In those seven years with Winston, the truth was he'd never once chosen me on his own.

It was over with Winston, but my life still had to go on.

I got up as usual and went to work at the school.

But I'd barely reached the front gate when I saw them through the window of the bubble tea shop by the road. Winston, his arm around Michelle, sitting by the glass.

He ordered her favorite cake and the drink she always got, smooth and practiced, telling her gently to sit tight and wait for him until his class let out.

Before he left, he reached over and playfully tapped the tip of Michelle's nose.

That tender little gesture. I'd seen it countless times. Winston had done it to me countless times too.

The old me would have charged in, dumped the whole cup of bubble tea over Michelle, made her stay away from Winston.

But this time, I didn't want to fight. I didn't want to make a scene.

I just watched for two seconds, then turned to go. But the second I turned, a hand closed around my wrist.

It was Winston. He held my hand, his tone weary.

"You see me and don't even say hello. Are you still holding a grudge over me leaving the engagement party yesterday?"

"Michelle was in a bad place yesterday. You know that. She has depression. Can't you be a little more understanding with her?"

The bitterness rose in me, inch by inch.

Winston and I had already held our engagement party three times.

The first two times, both had been canceled at the last minute, on the very day, all because Michelle said she didn't feel well.

Every time, I chose to be the bigger person. Every time, I swallowed the hurt alone.

But Winston never once asked me whether I was hurting, whether I was tired.

I forced down the sob caught in my throat, made myself stay calm. "Winston, we've already broken up."

His brows knit tight, his whole face full of disapproval. He didn't take a single word of it seriously.

"Just because I went to Michelle yesterday and left you behind?"

"You know how it is. I only ever think of Michelle as a little sister."

"She's just a kid. Are you a kid too?"

"Ethel, be a little more mature. Don't hold it against Michelle. She just leans on me too much."

He paused, his tone turning accusatory. "Besides……didn't you and Michelle become friends already?"

"You've been patient with her so many times. Why not this once, of all times?"

I really had tried to be friends with Michelle.

After all, Michelle and Winston had known each other for seventeen years. As his girlfriend, I wanted to step into every part of his life.

So I tried to accept her, to understand her, to treat her like my own little sister.

But when I watched Michelle hold her half-eaten ice cream up to Winston's mouth, and watched him take a bite without a flicker of hesitation, I held it in.

When I watched Winston, never minding the mess or the trouble, wash Michelle's blood-stained underwear with his own hands, again and again, I held that in too.

I thought my yielding, my patience, would buy me the same respect in return.

But the moment Michelle broke down crying, Winston dropped me in a foreign country without a second thought and booked a flight home ahead of me.

He gave no thought at all to how chaotic and dangerous it was abroad, to the fact that that night I had no one to turn to, that I was nearly raped.

I simply could not be friends with another woman who stole every ounce of my fiancé's attention.

Michelle and I would never be friends.

I couldn't be the bigger person, and I certainly couldn't forgive.

In the end, Winston and I parted on bad terms.

He never accepted the breakup. To him, it was just me throwing another tantrum, not being understanding enough, not being sensible enough.

I couldn't be bothered to explain, and I no longer cared in the slightest what he thought.

Seven years of swallowed grievances had piled up to this. I'd long since stopped wanting his understanding.

My exchange program was set to begin in a week. The timeline was tight, and I still had to hand things over to the new teaching assistant.

Before I could even tell our friends and families that Winston and I had broken up, an engagement invitation suddenly popped up in the college class group chat.

The names on it read Winston Cobb and Michelle Henson.

In the photo, the cheongsam Michelle wore was the very one I'd fallen for at first sight, the one Winston had said didn't suit me.

So it was never that the dress didn't suit me. It was that I didn't suit him. And our engagement shoot, it turned out, was somewhere they had been too.

The group chat exploded instantly, messages flooding in one after another.

"I just got an engagement invitation from Ethel Winfield and Winston Cobb a little while ago. I thought they were solid, about to get married any day now."

"How did it suddenly become Michelle Henson? Professor Cobb, this is so out of nowhere."

"A brilliant man and a beautiful woman. The two of them look so perfect together."

The messages slid across the screen, every word a needle. I read all of them, then said only one thing. "Winston and I have broken up."

The moment my message went out, Winston's reply came right on its heels.

"The one I've loved all along has really been Michelle. I wasted seven years of Ethel's life. I won't waste her eighth."

The instant I saw those words, the emotions I'd held back for so long broke through the dam all at once.