The Last Goodbye

Synopsis

The night I lost the promotion, I sat on the curb and bought a box of fries. I stuffed them into my mouth one by one, tears rolling down my cheeks. I texted my boyfriend, James Grant: [I'm a bit tired today, but the fry is really good.] He didn't reply. Half an hour later, I couldn't resist sending another message: [Are you busy? I want to talk to you.] He finally replied: [What do you mean by sending this? Are you expecting me to cover it for you?] I stared at those words for a long time, in disbelief. James's startup had just gotten off the ground when his mother took all the money, leaving him with over 30 million dollars in debt overnight. Since then, what he hated most were gold diggers. And I did everything I could to show I wasn't like that. For six years, I never spent a single penny of his. Whenever we went out, we always went Dutch; I returned every gift he gave me, and at work, I made sure all my project results were laid out for everyone to judge. As I scrolled through my feed, I saw the intern who'd just landed the promotion showing off a sparkling diamond necklace. Her post read: [Thank you, Mr. Grant, for celebrating my promotion. I'll keep working hard.] I remembered seeing that necklace in a magazine, only three of them existed in the whole world. In six years, not once did James ever give me anything worth more than 300 dollars. But the necklace hanging around Emily Carter's neck was worth 3 million dollars. Tears blurred my phone screen, and suddenly, I realized that the innocence I had spent years trying to prove was probably not even worth the price of a single fry in his eyes.