She Chose Him，I Chose the Next Flight Out

1: 1

My buddy was getting married, so I gave him a $50,000 cash gift.

Amelia Vance let out a scornful little laugh. "What's your monthly salary again? Since when do you play the big spender?"

I told her he was a friend I'd had since childhood. She clicked her tongue and said nothing more. That same night she swapped the $50,000 in the red envelope for five dollars.

The next day Quinn Mason called. "Brad Simmons, did you make a mistake? Why is there only five dollars in here?"

I gripped the phone and listened to Amelia in the living room, explaining it like it was nothing.

"Money doesn't stand for friendship. The gesture's what counts."

A week later, her childhood friend Duncan Delgado got engaged.

Drones spelled out CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR UNION across the sky, followed by a rain of roses, and below it all sat a watch worth five million dollars and a lavish banquet with the whole venue booked out.

Amelia stood beside me, gazing up at the grand spectacle, her voice gentle.

"It's nothing, really. Adds up to maybe ten million."

"My friend's getting engaged. It had to be done right."

As the streaming lights fell across the sky, she and Duncan held each other's eyes across the crowd, long and open, as if no one else were there.

And all at once I saw through the last little lie I'd been telling myself.

...

The drones stretched out DUNCAN, WISHING YOU HAPPINESS across the night, the line glaringly bright in the wind.

Someone beside me sucked in a breath.

"Five million! Ms. Vance really goes all out..."

"Duncan's got some serious face. I hear these drones came from a team flown in specially from overseas..."

I kept my head tipped back until my neck ached and my eyes stung.

What kept flashing through my mind was Quinn's voice cracking on the phone and Amelia's cool indifference, not even lifting her eyelids.

Five dollars, and now ten million.

That day she hadn't even looked up. Knotting her scarf, she'd said, "Money doesn't stand for friendship. Why do you insist on using it to prove something?"

And now here she stood, using a display worth tens of millions to prove to everyone just how much she valued another man.

"Brad?"

A clear voice came from beside me.

I turned. Duncan had come over at some point, watch, cufflinks, and lapel pin all in gold, the light glancing off them sharp enough to make my eyes sting.

"Nice, isn't it?" He tilted his head slightly. "Amelia flew all the way to Switzerland just to order these for me. She said an engagement has to have the full gold set to show it really matters."

I knew that brand.

The cheapest set in the magazines still ran seven figures.

The birthday present she'd given me for my twenty-fifth.

A belt, a little over two thousand, without even a brand card in the box.

I heard myself give a small laugh. "That was very thoughtful of her, then."

A buddy who'd had too much came grinning over. "Amelia, look at this spread you laid on for Duncan. Full gold set, drones, the whole venue. You really came through as his friend."

Then he turned to me, his tongue thick with drink. "Brad, when are you two tying the knot? Amelia's bound to spend even more on you!"

Every gaze swung to me at once.

Amelia said nothing, just held her glass and gave me a look, a half-smile that wasn't quite a smile.

There was that familiar appraisal in it.

She was probably waiting for me to show hurt, jealousy, or whatever emotion she'd already predicted.

She waited a while. I only smiled, calm. "We'll see."

The truth was, I had been waiting for Amelia all this time.

Sophomore year, one autumn, she'd kissed me at the foot of the dorm building and promised she'd marry me the first autumn after graduation.

But afterward she broke that promise, year after year.

Amelia's brow creased, almost imperceptibly. Her eyes left my face and settled on Duncan's full set of gold. "My own wedding will naturally be the grandest of them all. Your fiancée, though—"

"Can't even come up with the gold set. What exactly are you planning to marry?"

Duncan watched her, the tail of his voice lifting lightly. "Amelia, my other half is so broke they can't even scrape together a dowry, and yet here you are. You've spent a whole month running around for this engagement party of mine. Drones, the watch, the yacht, the gold set flown back from Switzerland..."

"People who know say it's friendship. People who don't would think it's you getting engaged today, Amelia."

"If you really can't bear to let go—"

"Why don't you try snatching the groom right here, right now?"

The guys roared with laughter. "Duncan, don't go egging Amelia on, she'd actually do it!"

"Right, right, once Amelia's worked up there's nothing she won't—"

Everyone was waiting for Amelia to answer, watching to see whether she'd laugh and concede or toss back some flirty joke on purpose. No one remembered that I was Amelia's boyfriend, standing right there beside her.

I set down my glass.

Then I turned and walked through the room full of laughter and glittering light, toward the doors of the banquet hall.

If their world had no room for me, then I'd bow out. That was all.