Chapter 1

Before I moved in with my boyfriend, he said he'd cover the rent and I'd cover the groceries.

But the rent was two hundred fifty a month, and the groceries ran at least three thousand.

I figured couples shouldn't split things down to the penny, so I let it go.

One day, while he was tearing into the crab I'd bought, he said through a full mouth,

"My parents and my sister are coming to stay for a while this weekend. Buy some extra food."

But my whole paycheck had just gone to my mom's surgery bill. I had nothing to spare.

I asked if he could chip in a little for groceries, and he slapped his phone down on the table.

"I'm the one renting this place and you live here for free, and now you want money out of me? Some gold digger, digging right into my pocket?"

"How much does a few groceries and a meal even cost? My coworker's wife feeds them for two bucks a meal. You've got it made."

I looked at him and said nothing.

He had no idea this apartment belonged to my father, that the market rate was at least four thousand a month.

Quietly, I texted my dad: 【Dad, don't rent to him anymore.】

【And make him pay the difference for the rest of the lease, like the contract says.】

……

"Buy more jumbo shrimp next week, and pork ribs, the spare rib cut, my sister loves those."

Cary Gibson rattled off his orders while digging his chopsticks through the plate of spicy crab.

At the bottom of another plate sat the last piece of braised pot roast.

I'd just reached for it when his chopsticks swung across, snatched it up, and shoved it into his mouth.

I set my bowl down.

Since we'd moved in together, most of the food on the table ended up in his stomach.

One day not long before, I'd worked overtime until eight, my stomach aching with hunger.

He came to pick me up outside my office building, and we ducked into a small restaurant.

He ordered one basket of dumplings, ten in all.

When they came out, I was starving, and I ate three in a row.

Just as I reached for the fourth, Cary slammed his chopsticks down on the table.

"Do you know how many you've had?"

"You only think about yourself, don't you? Ten in the whole basket, and you polish off three on your own. Did you ever once think about me?"

I was stunned. I stared at him in disbelief. "Ten in a basket, five each. I've only had three. What's the problem?"

He flared up at once. "Five? You've got the nerve to say that? You know perfectly well I eat more than you. If you have five, I don't get enough. How can you be so selfish?"

I waved for the owner, about to order another basket.

He clamped his hand down on mine. "Order what? More?"

"A basket of dumplings is fifteen bucks. Money burning a hole in your pocket? You don't know how to run a household."

It was beyond ridiculous. "Then what am I supposed to do, stay hungry?"

His tone softened. "Fern Harding, you don't get it. A girl eating a lot is embarrassing. Back home, people would point at your spine and call you a glutton. I'm not letting you eat for your own good."

With that, he pulled the basket in front of himself and dug in.

In the end he finished every last dumpling, wiped his mouth, and dragged me out.

I went home hungry and boiled myself a pot of plain buttered noodles.

That was the day I started keeping a ledger.

That fifteen hundred, that two hundred fifty in rent, didn't even cover half a month of his own food.

He demanded meat at every meal, and seafood on weekends.

All of it, I was paying for.

The sound of him picking his teeth pulled me back.

He grabbed a napkin, wiped his mouth, and went on. "Anyway, think it over. My parents are coming, first to see me, and second to taste your cooking."

"You're going to be their daughter-in-law. What matters is that you're good in the home, that you're hardworking. You'd better make a good impression. Don't embarrass me."

He got up and walked off, leaving the whole table a mess.

Cary and I were college classmates, both in the astronomy club.

He was the president. At the welcome mixer, he went from the Orion Nebula to black holes, from the Big Bang to the nebular hypothesis.

I thought he was brilliant and well-read. We hit it off, and it felt natural to end up together.

But real life had no oceans of stars, only a floor full of clutter.

Since we'd graduated and moved in together, every bit of housework fell to me alone.

Every day he'd come home, sprawl on the couch, start gaming, and wait for me to put dinner on the table.

The reason he felt so entitled was that in his mind, he'd paid that two hundred fifty in rent, and that meant he was supporting me.

Me doing the housework and waiting on him was just a fair exchange.

But what he didn't know was that renting this place at all had been a complete accident.

When we were apartment hunting after graduation, he took one look at this finished two-bedroom and loved it.

Except the landlord was my father.

When my dad came in to sign the lease and saw it was him, he took pity on two new grads scraping by, and cut the rent from over four thousand down to two hundred fifty.

We didn't want to bruise his pride, so we kept it from him all along.

But my dad had cleverly buried a trap in the contract.

He presented it as a woman-friendly unit, rented at a discount.

The condition: if the bills ever showed the woman spending more money than the man, the tenant had to pay the difference for the rest of the lease.

At the time Cary just thought he'd scored a steal. He signed without even reading it.

Looking back now, my dad had seen it all coming.

Since he was so sure he'd gotten the deal of a lifetime off me, fine.

He wouldn't be living here anymore.