2: 2

Tonight's dinner had shown me a whole other side of Lambert.

I pushed down my anger and asked him on purpose,

"So how do you want me to prove it?"

When I didn't blow up right away, Lambert took it as acceptance of his theory.

He visibly relaxed, even looked a little pleased.

"It's actually easy to work out."

He pulled out his phone and opened the calculator.

"I get twenty-one hundred, and I put in seven-fifty a month."

"You get nine thousand, more than four times what I make."

He punched in a quick string of numbers and turned the result toward me.

"Proportionally, you should be putting in three thousand two hundred fourteen a month."

"But we're a couple, so I won't count it that closely with you."

Lambert waved a generous hand.

"Forget the change."

"From now on you put three thousand two hundred in the account, I keep putting in seven-fifty, and that's fair."

I almost laughed from sheer anger.

So he was letting fourteen dollars slide, and I was supposed to thank him for going easy on me.

A few girls at the next table were already laughing openly.

"You can hear that abacus clicking all the way to Charleston."

"First time I've seen someone this particular about being a kept man."

"Splitting it by allowance ratio. Why not split the portion sizes too?"

Lambert glared at them, humiliated and furious.

"Aren't you girls always shouting about equal rights?"

"Now that it's your turn to spend more, suddenly it's a double standard?"

As he spoke, he slammed the tongs down on the edge of the grill.

Grease spattered onto my sleeve.

I pulled out a napkin and slowly wiped it clean.

When I stayed quiet, Lambert thought he'd won me over.

"Ada, I know you've never had it hard, so money doesn't mean much to you."

"But I'm willing to teach you."

"On this Charleston trip, a regular guesthouse would be too rough, so let's swap the hotel for a room with a river view."

"You got a thirty-six-hundred holiday gift, so the price difference on the hotel comes out of that."

"Once we're married, I'll handle the earning and you'll handle managing the money at home."

"Getting you to take it on early is for your own good too."

I raised my head and looked at him calmly.

"Lambert, do you think that because I'm not talking, I'm agreeing?"

He blinked.

"You're not?"

"Of course not."

I picked up my bag and stood.

"Take the trip by yourself."

"The money in the joint account, I'll check it carefully and send your share back the way it came."

"As for the two of us, this is where it ends."

Lambert's face went dark in an instant.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"We're done."

Like it had never crossed his mind that I'd break up over this, he shot up from his seat.

"Fine, we're done!"

"But two people ate this barbecue tonight, so you're paying the bill."

The girls at the next table rolled their eyes.

Lambert couldn't keep his face steady, so he lowered his voice.

"Ada, do you really have to make this so ugly?"

"You know I've got almost nothing left this month from all the saving I've been doing."

I glanced at the bill on the table.

Three hundred sixty in total.

I opened my payment code and paid only the ninety-two for what I'd eaten.

"The beef and drink I ordered, ninety-two."

"The rest is your couple's combo, the seafood platter, and the beer."

"Whoever ate it pays for it. Isn't that fairness, your favorite thing?"

With that, I walked out of the barbecue place without looking back.

Once I was outside, I opened the joint account right away.

There was seven thousand five hundred in it.

We'd been paying in for five straight months, three thousand seven hundred fifty each.

I transferred Lambert's share back to him and wrote clearly in the note,

【Harvest festival trip fund, settled.】

Lambert didn't accept it.

He sent a message,

【Couples fight, it's normal. Don't try to scare me with a breakup.】

I put my phone straight on silent.

3: 3

Back in the dorm, I dropped into the chair and didn't say anything for a long while.

Josie Wheeler and Celeste Floyd saw my face and hurried over to ask what was wrong.

I told them everything that had happened at the barbecue joint.

When I finished, Celeste sat quiet for a long moment before she said,

"That boyfriend of yours isn't trying to date you."

"He found out your family's got money, and now he's filing to raise his budget."

Josie was blunter.

"Good riddance."

"If he'd split a couples' account like that, then once you actually married him, he'd carve off a chunk of your family's house by the same math."

It stung, but I knew they were right.

Lambert and I had been together six months.

He was two years ahead of me, the vice president of the college student council.

When we first met, he seemed mature and steady, patient with everyone.

Plenty of girls at school liked him.

I'll admit I paid attention to looks.

Lambert had a clean-cut face and knew how to talk.

Back then he'd waited outside the library for me half a month straight, and I got soft and said yes.

While we were together, he'd often bring me a late-night snack down at the foot of my dorm.

Even when I said I didn't need it, he'd insist.

I used to think that was devotion.

Looking back now, it was more like a performance staged where everyone could watch.

I was still thinking it over when the dorm door swung open.

My roommate Delilah Donaldson walked in with her bag.

She didn't greet anyone the way she usually did. She came straight over to me.

"Ada, don't you think you went too far today?"

I looked up at her.

"What?"

"Lambert."

Delilah frowned, disapproval all over her face.

"He went with you to Charleston, and he wouldn't even spend money on a meat dish at the dining hall."

"And over a few angry words you just left him alone at the barbecue joint?"

"He's your boyfriend, at least. How could you be so cruel?"

Watching her get so righteously worked up, I suddenly found it a little funny.

"Lambert and I breaking up, what does that have to do with you?"

Her eyes darted away.

"I just can't stand watching you bully a decent guy."

She pulled out her phone and showed me the payment record.

"After you left, I'm the one who covered the rest of Lambert's bill."

"The barbecue balance was two hundred sixty-eight, the umbrella thirty-nine, the cab back to school twenty-six. Three hundred thirty-three total."

"Transfer it to me."

I stared at her for a few seconds.

"Delilah, did Lambert tell you to pay?"

"No. I saw he was out of money and offered."

"If you offered, then why are you asking me?"

She said it like it was the most reasonable thing in the world.

"Isn't it because of you?"

"If you hadn't left him there alone, would I have had to spend this money?"

"You get nine grand a month in allowance. You can't spare three hundred?"

So she even knew what my allowance was.

Lambert really got the word out fast.

I pushed her phone back at her.

"Whoever's heart aches for him, pays."

"Since you're so happy to take care of Lambert, go get a receipt from him."

Josie couldn't hold back a laugh.

"Delilah, just call the three hundred thirty-three your entry fee for the guy you've got a crush on."

Delilah's face went red all at once.

"What are you talking about?"

Celeste chimed in from the side, easy and slow.

"Nobody said who you had a crush on. Why are you so eager to admit it?"

Delilah's eyes rimmed red with fury. She spun around and rushed out of the dorm.

4: 4

Over the next few days, Lambert showed up under the dorm building every single day.

Sometimes he brought flowers, sometimes a milkshake.

Every time, he made a point of calling my name when the crowd was thickest.

He even got the underclassmen he knew from the student council to pass messages along.

Some of them said:

"Lambert already knows he was wrong. Just give him one more chance."

Others tried to talk me around:

"Couples fight over money all the time. Don't do something rash."

I turned every one of them down.

On the night of the harvest festival fair, the college set up a lantern-riddle corridor beside the sports field.

Josie, Celeste, and I had made plans to walk through it together.

The moment I reached the entrance, I saw both sides hung with paper lanterns, all of them written with my name.

【Ada, I'm sorry.】

【I'll never nitpick you over money again.】

【Watch the moon with me every year, okay?】

Plenty of students stood off to the side taking photos and egging him on.

Lambert came walking down from the far end of the lanterns in a white shirt.

In his hands was a beautifully wrapped box of holiday pastries.

"Ada."

He bowed his head in front of everyone.

"That day was my fault."

"After I got home, my mom chewed me out hard, too."

"She said it isn't easy for a girl studying away from home, that a guy should take better care of his girlfriend."

"My mom's already agreed to raise my allowance to twenty-eight hundred."

"I won't ask you to save more money anymore."

"When we go to Charleston, we won't book the waterfront room either. A regular guesthouse is fine."

"Forgive me this once, okay?"

The crowd around us burst into cheers all at once.

"Forgive him!"

"Come on, Lambert spent the whole afternoon on this!"

"All these lanterns, so romantic!"

Standing in the middle of the crowd, all I felt was suffocated.

Lambert was always like this.

He never cared whether I wanted an audience. He only cared about looking devoted enough.

If I turned him down in public, everyone would think I was the cold-blooded one.

I lowered my voice and warned him:

"Lambert, I don't like this."

"Take the lanterns down. Don't ruin the fair for everyone else."

But Lambert only smiled.

He pushed the box of pastries into my arms.

"I knew you couldn't actually bring yourself to break up with me."

"Happy harvest festival, baby."

With that, he turned and waved to the students around us, as if it were already settled that we'd made up.

I stood there holding the pastries, and the small crack the memories had opened in me sealed itself shut, clean and complete.

Back at the dorm, Delilah saw the pastries in my hands and let out a scoff.

"Talked so tough, and in the end Lambert still smoothed you right over, didn't he?"

Josie took the pastries from my hands and turned to hand them to the dorm supervisor.

"Who said taking them means forgiving him?"

"Trash somebody forces on you—you can't exactly toss it in the street and pollute the place, can you?"

Delilah's face went ugly, and she slammed her cabinet door shut.