02

02

He glanced down, but his attention was pulled away at once by Vivian Shaw beside him.

By the time I got home and had everything packed,

Nathan Abbott finally strolled in.

He pushed the door open in high spirits. "Baby! Guess what I brought you!"

The room was dark.

I sat on the dim sofa,

and he froze for a second. Before he could ask, someone behind him gave him a shove.

"What are you standing there for? Give my Debbie her present already."

The lights snapped on, and he took the custom ring out of his coat.

Inside the red velvet box lay a platinum band, the huge, showy diamond catching the light.

He reached for my hand, but I slipped it away without making a thing of it.

I asked him calmly, "Did you read the text I sent you?"

Nathan's face cleared with understanding. "Baby, I didn't ignore your messages on purpose. My phone died the moment I landed."

Vivian laughed too. "Right. You have no idea, Nate nearly died getting you that ring."

Fingers closed around mine, and the ring went onto my hand, loose and not really a fit.

Before I could say a word,

Nathan and Vivian suddenly burst out laughing together.

Their laughter filled the whole apartment, and I stood there like an outsider.

It had always been like this with them.

They had their own little secrets,

and every time I looked curious, itching to know, Nathan would just smile.

"It's nothing. You wouldn't get it anyway."

He never once explained. Not once.

This time I didn't ask. I only let my eyes settle on the suitcase in the corner.

Three years of living together, and there wasn't much I could take. Just that small suitcase in the corner.

Small enough that no one had even noticed it.

Nathan swept a glance over the room, saw the bare table, and frowned. "You didn't cook?"

Vivian draped herself over his shoulder. "Then let's just eat out! I'm sick of Debbie's cooking anyway."

Something flashed on her hand. When I looked closer, I saw it was a delicate diamond ring,

clearly expensive, a band ringed with tiny diamonds around a glittering red stone at the center.

Seeing my eyes land on her ring,

Nathan's face flickered with something awkward. "All right, since that's settled, go ahead and grab us a spot in line. Call us when it's almost our turn."

Back in college, Nathan always had part-time jobs he could never finish.

Every meal, I'd go ahead to hold our place and take a number, again and again, until it just became the default that I went and waited first.

Once he'd handed that off, he pulled Vivian inside to play video games.

Their voices carried on, loud and cheerful, and I was the one who felt out of place.

I'd already decided I was done with him, and still my chest ached, sour and tight.

I picked up the suitcase and walked slowly out of the place I'd lived in for three years, and at the last I took a long look at the two of them laughing inside.

Nathan, this time I'm the one who doesn't want you.

In the elevator, a little girl tugged gently at her mother's sleeve and said, all innocence,

"Mommy! Look, the lady's ring is exactly like mine!"

It was the custom wedding ring I'd forgotten to take off.

But the next second, when I saw clearly what the girl was holding up,

my head went with a loud ringing hum,

because the ring in the child's hand really was exactly like the "custom wedding ring" Nathan had given me.

The young mother smiled, a little helpless.

"That's the lady's wedding ring, a real diamond. Yours is a fifteen-dollar thing off a street stall. There's no way they're the same."

She gave me an apologetic smile and led her child out of the elevator.

As if something moved my hand for me, I slid off the ring and scraped it hard with my nail,

and white paint powder came away on my fingertip, exposing the dull brass underneath.

03

03

I stared at that ring,

and all at once I thought of the ring gleaming on Vivian Shaw's finger, and I understood at last—

so the custom diamond ring he'd supposedly nearly died to get had been on Vivian's hand all along.

The one on my finger was nothing but a fifteen-dollar knockoff.

I slid the ring off and set it aside without a second's hesitation.

A light rain was falling outside, and muddy water splashed up onto me.

I went back to the old house. When my mother saw me, her eyes landed on my suitcase and she frowned.

"What are you doing back here? Did you and your boyfriend fight?"

I drew a deep breath. "We broke up."

Just those few words, and my mother went off like a bomb.

"Broke up?! Have you lost your mind? Debbie, you're twenty-eight this year, not eighteen! Don't get married soon and you'll be a thirty-year-old spinster!"

"Did you do something wrong again? Get back there and apologize, right now!"

Her accusations came at me almost in a roar, and she reached out and shoved me hard toward the door.

In that moment, all I felt was bone-deep exhaustion.

"Mom, Nathan doesn't love me. Even if we got married—"

"You still have to get married! Even if you marry him and then divorce, that's better than being some unmarriable dead weight!"

I froze where I stood, staring at my mother in disbelief.

The next second, someone shoved me right out the front door.

The rain came down harder. I was shivering with cold, and the old house was too far out to catch a cab, so it was nearly the middle of the night before I found a run-down little motel.

The sharp reek of mildew and the stench from the toilet filled the room. Crammed into a space barely two square meters, I couldn't even stretch out my legs without hurting.

I slept in a daze until morning,

and the next day at work I drifted through everything in a fog, until suddenly I heard a commotion.

The moment I looked up, my whole body went rigid.

My mother had barged in, furious, and Nathan was right behind her.

"Mom, why are you—"

Slap! Before I could finish, something landed hard across my face.

There was nothing held back in that slap. My head rang with it, and my left cheek swelled up at once.

My coworkers crowded over in an instant. "Who are you? Why are you hitting her out of nowhere?"

"Leave now, or we're calling the police."

"I'm her mother. She did something wrong, so I'll discipline her! This is a family matter—call who? Call nothing!"

Her words made everyone pause, exchanging uneasy glances.

She jabbed a finger in my face and yelled, "A grown woman, throwing a jealous fit, making a whole scene about breaking up! Take a good look at yourself. Nathan's already a career elite at his age, and you, a lowly clerk, get to marry him and still don't know how to be grateful!"

A coworker tried to smooth it over.

"Debbie's very capable too. She's one of the mainstays of our company—"

"What good is being capable! A woman's proper path is to marry, have children, and stay home where she belongs."

"Running off to grind away out here, what's the point? In the end she still has to come back to the family."

"Why can't you learn from Vivi? She's so sensible, so obedient! If it were her, she'd never throw a jealous tantrum like this."

"There's a man who wants you right now, so quit making trouble! Do you have any idea—if it weren't for you, you worthless dead weight, that no-good father of yours would never have run off! If you can't get yourself married, I won't claim you as my daughter—"

The uglier her words got, the louder she got,

and every coworker in the office wore an expression of open embarrassment.

I felt like a soft-shelled clam pried open,

the tender flesh inside stabbed apart, cut after cut, until not a scrap of dignity was left.

My gaze drifted to Nathan. He was watching me quietly, with something smug in his eyes.

I knew he had seen the breakup text, and I knew that he was the one who'd brought my mother here to make this scene today.

I'd thought I would be devastated, that I'd trade insults with them.

But it turned out that when disappointment reaches its very bottom, a person can go utterly calm instead.

I heard my own voice, tired and steady.

"So what is it you want from me?"

04

04

My mother snapped upright in an instant. "You're going to apologize to Nathan!"

Nathan's eyes settled on me, and there was a smile in his voice. "Mom, Deb and I are about to get married. Who's talking about apologies?"

"Just behave and stop making a fuss, and we'll put this whole thing behind us."

I stared at him, and at Vivian standing behind him with that smug look on her face, and in that moment I wanted nothing more than to rip their masks off, consequences be damned.

But I knew there was no point. Even if my mother heard all of it, it wouldn't change a thing.

She didn't care. As far as she was concerned, as long as I got married off, it didn't matter what kind of person he was or how old he was, as long as he was a man.

As long as I got married off, so no one could call her a failure of a mother.

I stared at Nathan and, all at once, I smiled.

He froze for a second, and before he could recover, I spoke. "Fine. I won't make a fuss."

He blinked, caught off guard, then let out a soft sigh.

"Good. Tomorrow I'll take you to pick out the rings. You choose yourself. Whatever you like, I'll buy it for you."

This time, at last, he wasn't fobbing me off with little trinkets, and at last he was giving me a choice.

But now there wasn't a single thing I wanted.

The whole group of them left.

The office fell into an eerie quiet. An hour after I got back to my desk, I opened my phone.

There was a new post on my mother's Instagram.

She never shared anything. Back when I offered to teach her, she'd say in that snide tone of hers, "I'm old. I can't learn you young people's things."

But today that photo and caption were right there in front of me, plain as day.

In the picture, Vivian had her arm looped through my mother's, who was all warmth and smiles, the two of them sitting in front of a bubbling red hotpot. Across from them sat Nathan, his expression gentle.

"What a good daughter. She gave me the one happy day of my life as a mother."

The neighbors she knew had all piled into the comments with the same over-the-top praise.

"Oh my, Irma, you really are blessed! Your daughter and son-in-law make such a fine match."

"When's the wedding? You have to invite us for a drink."

At the very bottom, my mother had carefully replied thank you to every single one.

But her stomach was bad. She couldn't take even a bite of anything spicy.

Once, I'd cooked at home, seven dishes, six of them mild and one spicy.

She'd turned on me instantly, pointing at my face, cursing me out.

After that, no matter how much I loved spicy food, I never ate it in front of her again.

I looked at it for a long moment, then blocked her contact and walked over to my supervisor's office.

"Delia, I'd like to apply for an overseas transfer."

She glanced at me, surprised, then nodded and agreed.

The project was urgent. The flight was booked for the next day.

At the airport, Nathan suddenly called. There was a lazy ease in his voice.

"Tonight I've made a point of setting things up with your mom and Vivi. I'm taking you to properly apologize to them."

"Remember to clock out early and go save us seats."

The boarding announcement came again, and I walked slowly toward the gate, my voice calm and even.

"No need, Nathan. We're never going to see each other again."

The line went silent. Then, all at once, his voice came through, frantic and furious.

"Debbie, where are you right now??"