Discarded for His First Love

1: 1

At dinner, I picked up the wrong phone.

A message had just popped up on the screen, from a contact saved as "The One I Can Never Have."

*Aaron, I'm divorced and back in the country. Will you come pick me up tomorrow night?*

I froze.

A second later, Aaron came out of the kitchen with our daughter, her hands freshly washed.

He saw the phone still lit up in my hand, and he didn't even frown.

"You saw it?"

My fingers tightened around the phone.

"Aren't you going to explain?"

His tone was offhand.

"She's my first love. The one woman I've loved most in this life. She's divorced now, so—"

He paused, lifted his head, and looked at me.

"I want a divorce too."

Cold spread through my whole body.

"Then why didn't you marry her back then? Why marry me?"

He smiled.

"Because you were cheap."

……

The color drained from my face in an instant. "Aaron, what is that supposed to mean?"

His expression didn't change. "Exactly what it sounds like. Back then I was at the age where a man's supposed to settle down and build something. And you were sweet, easy to win over, and you had them knock the bride price down from a hundred and eighty-eight thousand to thirty-three thousand. Cheap. And a good fit for the broke nobody I was at the time."

Ten years of feeling. Ten years of giving.

And in the end, all it bought me was the word cheap.

I laughed, suddenly, laughed until the tears ran down my face.

I grabbed whatever was on the table and hurled it at him. "Aaron, where do you get off saying that about me? What gives you the right? I've been with you for ten years. I bore your children. And now you call me cheap?"

Ten years ago, Aaron's business had failed and left him buried in debt.

We met at a dinner with friends, added each other on our phones, and just clicked.

Then he came after me. Not fiercely, but he never let up.

He drove me to work and back every day.

He took me somewhere good to eat on the weekends.

On rainy days he tilted the whole umbrella over my side.

When he finally proposed, he was so deep in debt he couldn't put up a bride price at all.

So I forced my parents' agreed-upon hundred and eighty-eight thousand down to thirty-three thousand.

My mother was so furious she said I'd lost my mind, and she cut me off.

I didn't care in the slightest. As long as we loved each other, that was enough, I thought.

All those formalities meant nothing.

After we married,

I lived in a basement with him, ate stale, sour bread with him, picked up water bottles for the deposit with him.

Even when I gave birth to our daughter.

We had no money, so I went to a cheap little clinic, and it left me with lasting damage.

Back then, Aaron knelt at the side of the bed, his eyes red, and swore to me, "Lesley, I promise I'll give you and our daughter a good life."

I smiled and nodded. "I believe you."

The year our daughter turned two, his company suddenly took off.

First we changed the car, then the house.

After that the company just kept growing.

And he came home later and later.

Back then, I thought he was only busy with business.

Until one night he came home drunk, threw up hugging the toilet, and then out of nowhere said to me, "I can put up a bride price of a few million now, even tens of millions. I won't make you suffer with me anymore. Can you come back to my side?"

I was crouched next to him, wiping his face, and my hand stopped. "Who are you talking to?"

He didn't answer. He slumped against the edge of the tub and fell asleep.

After that, I started paying attention.

He no longer hugged me and kissed me the moment he walked in the door, like he used to.

No longer let his guard down around me the way he once had.

He started keeping his phone face-down.

Taking it into the bathroom when he showered.

I suspected he was cheating.

But I never once found a lipstick mark on him, not a trace of perfume.

Until one night I woke up and saw him sitting out on the balcony, smoking, the glow of the screen on his face.

He was looking at a woman's posts.

The name he'd saved her under was "The One I Can Never Have."

Back then, I didn't understand what it meant.

But now, I do.

The man he'd been back then had nothing, not a cent to his name, not even enough to earn the right to marry his first love.

But he wouldn't let her suffer either, so he let her go. That made her "The One I Can Never Have."

And me, the one he won with a little coaxing, the one who volunteered to lower her own bride price, I became the "cheap goods" in his mouth.

My eyes were red to the point of bleeding, my whole body shaking and unable to stop.

Our daughter, six this year, heard me screaming and burst into frightened tears. "Mommy, Daddy, don't fight."

Aaron bent down and picked her up, kissing her cheek. "Mommy and Daddy aren't fighting. We're just talking about something. You go get in bed, and the second we're done, Daddy will come read you a story, okay?"

Our daughter nodded with red eyes and trotted back to her room.

The living room went quiet. Aaron looked at me. "Virginia Pruitt, I know you're hurting. I know you feel wronged. But I don't want to lie to you. Every word I've said is true, and I hope you can understand."