Chapter 2

I held the phone, silent for a long moment, and then, unexpectedly, I smiled.

I thought back to our first time. No wine, no floor-to-ceiling city lights from some five-star suite.

Only sweat-damp school uniforms and a filthy abandoned restroom.

That was the year the grandmother who had raised Crystal died. She fell apart, gave up on herself, told me she wanted to break up.

She skipped classes to dye her hair, to fight, wearing that look like she'd thrown everything away.

So I gave her everything I had, trying to fill the hollow place inside her.

I paid her tuition with my New Year's money. I kissed her tears without being asked. I held her and promised, over and over against her ear, that I would stay with her forever, that we would face every hardship together.

Later we got into the same college. Crystal worked a whole summer and spent every dollar of her wages on a watch as a birthday gift for me.

She fastened it on my wrist herself, looked down and smiled, though her eyes were wet.

She said, Nate, wearing this is a promise. You have to stay with me forever.

More than ten years have passed.

Crystal has everything now, but she can't even remember my birthday anymore.

I glanced at the time. Midnight.

The first hour of my thirty-third birthday.

I answered evenly. "Okay, I'll go get it now."

But Crystal went quiet.

"Never mind. I'll ask Narelle. Your eyes are bad, don't drive in the middle of the night."

I made a sound of agreement and was about to hang up.

Then, on the other end, Crystal suddenly said, "Nathan, everyone likes a little novelty. I'm no different."

"Either way, in the end I'm going to spend my whole life with you. So playing around a bit before we get married, it's nothing, right?"

Any other time, hearing that, I would have blown up at her, demanded to know how she could soil what we had like that.

But tonight I was suddenly tired.

Too tired to even bother saying the word breakup.

I made the sound again. "Understood. Go ahead and play, then."

I hung up and left a message for the realtor I knew, handing him full authority to list this place for sale.

This was where we rented the year we first came to New York.

At our poorest, Crystal and I crammed into this one-bedroom, one-living-room, cooking a single pack of instant ramen for the two of us to share.

Later, when she got famous, she moved to a big open-floor place.

But I couldn't bring myself to give this up, so I just bought it, and I've lived here alone ever since.

After I finished tidying up, I sat down on the couch, meaning to take a look at how the war was going on the feed.

The next second, someone unlocked the front door from the outside with a key.

Crystal walked in, pulled out a small brocade box, and set it in my palm.

"Birthday present."

"I saw all that stuff they said in the group chat. They really went too far this time. I'll say something to them later, for you."

I opened it and glanced inside. A bracelet, the unisex kind, plain in design.

The sort that most often shows up as a filler purchase at a luxury store.

And three days ago, Finn had just bought a new men's bag from that same brand.

Over these three days, I'd seen this same bracelet in various colors on the wrists of nearly everyone at the studio.

It wasn't hard to guess where this gift came from.

I closed the box again. "Thank you."

Crystal blanked for a moment, not expecting my reaction to be so flat.

The year before last, on her birthday, she'd finally nodded and said she could accept my proposal, so I booked out a whole restaurant a full day ahead and set everything up.

But I waited for her until the restaurant closed, until the waiters started looking at me with pity.

And all I got in the end was, "Finn has a game today. I'll have dinner with you tomorrow."

We had a huge fight after that, and didn't speak for half a month.

Last year, on my birthday, she stood me up again, so I cooked myself.

In the end I sat alone with a full table of food and a cake, waiting into the small hours, and she never came home.

That fight was worse. It got so bad everyone around us came to break it up.

This year she probably assumed I was throwing the same tantrum as always, sulking because my birthday had been forgotten.

That's why she'd just grabbed whatever was on hand and rushed over to give it to me.

She reached out to take my arm.

"All right, don't be angry. This year I didn't stand you up. I even brought home a Best Actress trophy for you."

"I know you can't let things go. From now on I'll tell them all to be careful, not to mention Finn in front of you. That works, doesn't it?"

I stepped away from her touch. "Crystal, haven't you looked at the feed?"

Crystal stared at her hand, left hanging in the air, her movement frozen for a beat, her face ugly.

"You mean that refund notice? Another one of those PR tricks you picked up somewhere."

"That's just your job as an agent. You want people to praise you for it too?"

I nodded, understanding now. So that was it.

No wonder that studio dissolution and refund notice had been up for so long, and Crystal and everyone else at the studio hadn't reacted at all.

It wasn't that they were slow to see it online, and it wasn't that they didn't care about this career.

It was that they were certain I would keep chasing after Crystal, always, forever.

No matter what outrageous thing Crystal did, I would find some way to clean up after her, and I would never leave her.

Too worn out to spend the words, I gave a small smile and simply nodded.

"You're right. It's a PR trick."

Crystal watched my expression, went silent for a moment, then said,

"…Once the fallout from this dies down, how about I take a trip somewhere with you? We can call it our pre-wedding honeymoon."