The Seven Year Breakup

Seven years together.

Every time I brought up marriage, my boyfriend suddenly developed hearing loss.

That is, until the day I was scrolling through a local Reddit thread.

Deliberately giving my girlfriend the cold shoulder so I can surprise her with a proposal on her 30th birthday. Any advice?

The location tagged was the exact restaurant we were currently sitting in.

The next second, the lights went out.

My boyfriend took two steps forward and dropped to one knee.

My breath hitched in my throat.

The words I do were already trembling on the tip of my tongue.

Then, a three-tiered cake fell from the sky, smashing directly over my head.

My boyfriends female best friend leaped out from the shadows.

She giggled, a sharp, piercing sound.

"Happy dirty thirty, future wifey!"

"Love the little surprise your good boy and I planned for you?"

The crowd erupted in cheers. Confetti cannons blasted overhead.

Glitter mixed with thick, sugary frosting, sliding down my face in clumps.

The "effortless, no-makeup" makeup look I had spent three hours perfecting was, in an instant, reduced to a total joke.

But Blair wasn't done.

On the restaurants projector, she threw up a slideshow of my most tragic high school photos.

The girl on the screen had her head bowed timidly, her frame frumpy and her face violently broken out in cystic acne.

Blair let out a bark of laughter and slapped Cameron hard on the shoulder.

"Damn, Mommy's little boy, am I seeing things? Is that your gorgeous future bride on the big screen? I thought it was a before-picture for a tragic makeover show."

Camerons frat brothers exchanged glances, snickering behind their hands.

"That's brutal, man," one of them muttered.

Cameron kicked the leg of Blairs chair.

"Who told you to dig up these photos?"

Blair put her hands on her hips, looking entirely unbothered.

"Oh, so we're getting an attitude now? You're yelling at your creator?"

"I seem to recall a certain someone who couldn't aim straight into the toilet when we were kids. I basically had to potty-train you. Now you get a girl and suddenly you forget who raised you?"

Cameron slipped one hand into his pocket and flicked her forehead with the other.

"Are you insane?"

The words were a reprimand, but the trailing edge of his voice dripped with an undeniable, sickening indulgence.

"Where's the lie?" Blair twisted her head to look at me. "Seriously, Jo, you don't believe me? When we were kids he used to see who could pee the farthest"

Before she could finish, Cameron clamped a hand over her mouth.

"Will it kill you to shut up for two seconds?"

"Mmph! No!"

They were practically tangled up in each others arms, half-wrestling, half-embracing.

Bickering back and forth.

The body language was electric, intimate.

Anyone walking into the room would have assumed they were the couple.

"Cameron! Let me go, or I'm suing for harassment."

"With that flat chest? Please, who'd want to harass you?"

"Yeah, yeah, go touch your ugly bride."

"Watch your mouth."

"Blah blah blah~"

I stood there, staring at the absolute absurdity unfolding in front of me.

My chest felt like someone had pressed a heavy, scalding wet towel over my lungs.

Suffocating. Humid. I couldn't drag in a breath.

I grabbed my purse.

"You guys have fun. I'm done."

Cameron took two quick strides and blocked my path.

"Don't take it to heart, Jo. She's been living in Europe for too long, she just doesn't have a filter anymore."

"We're just messing around."

I shoved his arm away.

"A joke is only a joke if the person being laughed at finds it funny."

The velvet ring box in my palm was pressing so hard into my skin it ached.

I had it all planned out.

If he didn't take the initiative tonight, there was no shame in a woman proposing.

I had replayed the exact sequence of the proposal in my head a thousand times.

Will you marry me?

I had practiced those five words for half a month.

I had imagined a million different outcomes.

But I never, ever imagined this.

I never imagined he would use the very concept of a proposal as a punchline for a prank.

A sharp, acidic burn flared in the back of my nose.

By the time I realized what was happening, hot tears were already spilling down my frosting-covered cheeks.

A flash of panic crossed Camerons eyes. He kicked one of his friends in the shin.

"Hey, don't cry. I'm sorry, okay? I screwed up."

"What are you idiots standing around for? Get over here and apologize to Jo."

The guys shuffled over, looking properly chastised.

They mumbled reluctant apologies.

While Cameron was lowering his voice to coax me, Blair suddenly snapped.

"Why are you apologizing to her? We worked our asses off to plan this surprise. If she's too stuck-up to appreciate it, fine, but what is this dramatic little performance?"

"Throwing a tantrum over nothing. Women are so much drama. Next time you guys go out, don't even bother inviting me."

Before she stormed out, she made sure to leave one final ultimatum hanging in the air.

"It's me or her. Choose."

Cameron froze.

But his eyes remained locked on Blairs retreating figure.

Frantic. Anxious.

I watched the way he looked at her.

And suddenly, the agonizing throbbing in my chest just... stopped. It went completely still, like a pool of dead water.

"If you want to go after her, go."

"I'm not stopping you."

Having received his permission, Cameron practically sprinted out the door after Blair.

Terrified he wouldn't catch her in time.

I went back to our apartment alone.

A hollow shell, I curled my knees to my chest inside the porcelain bathtub.

The frosting and the cheap confetti from the cannons had formed a concrete-like paste in my hair.

The more I scrubbed, the more tangled it became.

Eventually, my arms gave out. I collapsed into the murky, lukewarm water.

My body temperature plummeted, then began a slow, feverish climb.

As the bathroom tiles began to spin, the buzzing vibration of my phone echoed against the porcelain.

I dragged myself up to answer it.

The voice on the other end sounded distant, repeating my name with mounting urgency.

"Cam?" I murmured instinctively.

"Jo, it's me," my coworker corrected, her voice thick with second-hand embarrassment.

I stared at the wall for a few seconds, then whispered an apology.

"I forwarded the client feedback to your email. We've got a briefing in ten."

"Jo, you don't sound right. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. Give me five minutes."

Trembling, I pulled myself from the tub.

I tore through the medicine cabinet for Advil, but found nothing.

Desperate, I dialed Camerons number.

Usually, even in the middle of a high-stakes meeting, he would answer my calls on the first ring.

Especially on the nights I was home alone.

He used to stay on the line with me until the sun came up.

But now.

A dozen calls went straight to voicemail.

Maybe the fever was making me delirious.

Or maybe the crushing weight of seven years of repressed emotions was finally suffocating me.

The more he ignored me, the more obsessive I became.

I mashed the call button until my thumb bruised.

Until a notification popped down from the top of my screen.

An Instagram story from Blair.

A mirror selfie.

She was wearing a massively oversized white button-down.

No pants in sight.

The caption:

[Who's a good boy doing Mommy's laundry? ~]

The next slide was a Boomerang.

Cameron, bent over the sink, vigorously scrubbing a pair of her blood-stained underwear.

And right there, resting at the bottom of the sink, sinking beneath the frothy, pink-tinted water... was the custom platinum band I had bought for him.

I stared at the screen for a long, long time.

My hand, which had been suspended in the air, finally went slack.

It fell to my side.

Cameron vanished for ten straight days.

I only knew he was alive because of Instagram.

Blair opened her boutique bar.

From mixing drinks to seating VIPs, Cameron was doing it all himself.

Cameron, the heir to a tech empire, a man who usually looked down on the world from a glass penthouse, was currently wearing a tight black bartender's uniform, complete with a collar and cat ears, drawing in a crowd at the front door.

One of his frat brothers texted me, telling me not to overthink it.

[Bros help bros out.][Cam doesn't even see her as a girl. Think about it, they grew up together, theyd take a bullet for each other. If they were going to hook up, it wouldve happened long before you came along.]

I let out a single, cold laugh.

I locked my phone and boarded my flight.

For half a month, I ran on fumes.

Business trips, endless meetings, rewriting proposals.

I used work as an anesthetic.

On the day of the final contract signing, Cameron, who had been MIA for weeks, suddenly materialized.

He leaned against my office doorframe, spinning his Porsche keys around his index finger, an eyebrow cocked.

"Why the shocked face? Isn't today your big signing day?"

Right.

In the past, Cameron had always used his family's connections to smooth the way for my deals behind the scenes.

He would drive me to the client's office himself.

The moment the clients saw Camerons license plate, even the most stubborn executives would suddenly find a reason to give me a fair hearing.

But I didn't need that anymore.

While he was burying himself in a hipster bar, I had closed the deal myself.

It wasn't until the client nodded and reached for the pen that I finally realized it.

I could survive without him.

"Go back and keep Blair company," I said, brushing past him to grab my trench coat.

"Baby."

Cameron softened his voice, hooking his index finger around mine.

When the cold metal of his ring dragged against my skin, my mind violently flashed to that sink full of dirty, pink water.

A wave of pure nausea rolled through my stomach.

"Don't touch me!"

Cameron recoiled, genuinely taken aback by my shout.

"What is your problem?"

"Are you still throwing a fit because I didn't come home for a few days?"

"Didn't I explain this over text? My bro was opening a bar, I had to be there to help out. I have my own life, Jo. I can't orbit around you 24/7."

Bro?

The absurdity of his word choice almost made me laugh out loud.

For the past few days, my timeline had been flooded with videos from our mutual friends.

Blair sitting in his lap, tipping bourbon into his mouth.

The amber liquid sliding down his throat as he demanded another round.

The most damning video was them playing Suck and Blow with a playing card.

Their lips pressed together, separated only by a paper-thin barrier of cardboard.

He calls that a bro?

Hilarious.

"Whether you were 'helping out' or just screwing around with Blair, you know the truth."

My words hit a nerve.

His voice dropped an octave. "Enough. I've told you a million times, Blair and I are like guys. Why do you always have to make her the villain?"

"Then stop doing things that make me cast her as one."

I finished gathering my files.

He blocked the doorway, refusing to budge.

"I said, I'm driving you."

The air pressure in the room plummeted.

A standoff.

I took a deep breath.

Whatever.

There was no point in arguing with a madman. The contract was what mattered.

"Where's the car?"

Inside the Porsche, the silence was suffocating.

The passenger seat had been readjusted. It dug uncomfortably into my lower back.

"My mom wants you to come over for dinner tonight."

"I don't have time. I have a client dinner."

"I'll have someone cover for you."

"No need."

The light turned red, and he slammed on the brakes.

The tires shrieked against the asphalt.

I had no idea what I had said to set him off this time.

He whipped his head to face me, his eyes dark, his tone dripping with acidic sarcasm.

"Jo, when does this end? You're the one who was practically begging to get married, and now you're the one refusing to see my parents."

"You've been picking fights for weeks. This is all because I didn't play into your little hints about a ring, isn't it? You didn't get your way, so you took it out on Blair, and now you're taking it out on my mother?"

His face was slightly distorted with rage.

So he knew.

He knew the whole time I wanted to marry him.

That unnamable, hollow ache rushed back into my chest.

I thought of my Nana, lying in the ICU back in my hometown.

That frail, shrinking silhouette.

Smiling through the oxygen tubes, telling me she just wanted to see me settled and happy before she let go.

I didn't want her to leave this world with regrets.

That was the only reason I kept bringing up marriage.

During those brutal weeks she was in the hospital, I would finish work, rush to the airport, fly back home, and then catch a pre-dawn flight back to New York just to make it to the office.

Six hours of commuting, day in and day out.

I remembered one specific evening, stranded in the rain during rush hour, unable to hail a cab to the airport.

Standing on a crowded Manhattan street, I was so desperate I could barely breathe through the tears.

In my most helpless moment, the moment I needed Cameron more than anything.

Where was he?

He was throwing a massive welcome-back gala for Blair.

New York City banned private fireworks.

So he rented hundreds of drones, lighting up the night sky to mimic falling stars.

Then, the drones rearranged themselves to form a glowing portrait of Blairs face against the clouds.

The crowd gasped in awe, holding up their phones to record the spectacle.

And I was left standing on the wet pavement, staring up at that familiar face in the sky.

I knew that face.

It was the girl from the photo he had carefully cut out of his high school yearbook and hidden away for a decade.

"Here's the prenup. Read it over, and when you're done acting out, sign it."

Camerons voice snapped me back to the plush leather interior of the car.

"You have three days. After that, the offer expires."

Cameron pulled over an entire block away from my office building.

I knew exactly what he was doing.

He wanted to teach me a lesson.

To force me to lower my head and come crawling back in the rain.

He had no idea.

Today was just a formality.

Whether it was my career, or the rest of my life.

I didn't need him anymore.

In the corporate conference room, the ink dried on the contract.

Both my boss and I let out a massive sigh of relief.

The company's numbers had been slipping lately. This was one of the few lifeline accounts we had landed.

My boss leaned back, asking me what I wanted as a reward.

A massive year-end bonus, or a month-long vacation in Europe?

I thought about it.

"We just opened a new branch in Syracuse, right? I want to go."

"But aren't you and the young Mr. Cameron"

My boss stopped mid-sentence, catching the look in my eyes. He smoothly pivoted.

"Going back to your hometown is a great idea. Spend some time with family. The new branch is desperate for senior leadership anyway."

I took a sip of my black coffee. The bitterness coated my tongue.

"Let me give you a heads-up now. Once Cameron and I are officially over, his family's connections to our firm might take a hit."

My boss waved a hand dismissively.

"Look, those CEOs gave you meetings because of the Cameron name, sure. But they aren't stupid. They sign the checks because you do the work."

"That last client specifically requested you for the next quarter. Honestly, I'm less worried about his family pulling strings and more worried you're going to take all my best clients with you to upstate."

"But... are you absolutely sure about this? You guys haven't been dating for a year or two. It's been seven years, Jo. A woman only gets so many seven-year stretches in her life."

I looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the towering glass spire of Camerons family tech empire.

The LED billboard on the side of the building was currently running a looped teaser for Blairs upcoming birthday bash.

I smiled. A genuine, weightless smile.

"There's nothing left to hold onto."

"I'll just consider those seven years fed to the dogs."

I had never actually planned to date Cameron for seven years.

In the beginning, everyone assumed I was just a novelty to him.

I thought the same thing.

He used me to experience how the other half lived; I used his last name to lock down clients.

A transactional arrangement. Nobody owed anyone anything.

So, the first time I walked into my cramped studio apartment and found him wearing an apron, cooking pasta and doing my laundry, I thought he had been possessed by a demon.

My best friend Harpers assessment was blunt:

"He's just bored of being rich. He's playing houseslumming it for fun. Give it a few months, he'll crack."

I agreed completely.

But no one expected the months to turn into years.

He kept doing the chores.

My cold, empty rental slowly filled with the warmth of another human being.

I started to get greedy.

The expiration date on our "arrangement" kept getting pushed back.

In our third year together, my parents were killed instantly in a horrific car crash.

Cameron, a spoiled, entitled trust-fund kid who had never flown commercial in his life, followed me onto a train, then a rusted Greyhound bus, and finally a pickup truck, just to reach my rural hometown to help arrange the funeral.

I knelt by their caskets for three days and three nights.

He stayed right beside me, never leaving my shadow.

I forced myself to play the adult.

I made polite conversation with distant relatives.

I refilled the urns of coffee, set out the trays of stale cookies, and managed the condolences.

Everyone in town praised me for being so capable, so composed.

Everyone told me:

You're the oldest.

You have to be strong.

You can't break down now.

Cameron was the only one who saw the fractures in my armor.

I expected him to offer some hollow, clich comfort like, You don't have to be strong around me.

But he didn't.

That night, we were crammed onto a narrow, creaking twin mattress.

He gently rubbed my back.

And with his terrible, off-key pitch, he slowly, haltingly sang the lullaby my mother used to sing to me.

The heat radiating from his chest bled through his thin button-down, chasing away the bitter chill of the November night.

The emotional dam I thought I had reinforced so perfectly just... shattered.

I wept like an animal.

Snot and tears smeared all over my face, soaking his shirt.

I don't know how long I cried.

Hovering between sleep and waking, I whispered into the dark,

"Cam. I don't have parents anymore."

He kissed the top of my head, his voice a soft rumble. "Then you marry me. From now on, my parents are your parents."

I opened my swollen eyes.

Moonlight was spilling through the frosted windowpane, catching the lines of his face.

His eyes were as bright as the stars.

To say I didn't fall in love with him in that moment would be a lie.

But the tragedy was, the moment I finally surrendered my whole heart to him...

He took a step back.

Handing over my accounts took three days.

In my downtime, I gathered every designer bag, every piece of jewelry, and every pair of shoes Cameron had ever given me.

I scheduled a luxury consignment service to come to the apartment.

Exhausted, I slumped down onto the hardwood floor.

A sudden draft sent a chill down my spine.

I turned around.

The front door was wide open.

Cameron was standing in the living room, his jaw clenched so tight a muscle ticked near his ear. His face was thunderous.

Three of his frat bros hovered behind him.

The air in the room instantly felt like a tribunal.

"Care to explain?"

I furrowed my brow, confused.

Explain what?

Was he mad I was packing up the things he bought me? Did he want them back?

"Still playing dumb?"

Cameron pulled a piece of glossy paper from his pocket and threw it at my feet.

He leaned down, casting a dark shadow over me, his voice laced with venom.

"When did you learn to play such cheap, manipulative tricks, Jo?"

I picked it up.

It was a sonogram.

The one Harper had accidentally left on my coffee table last week.

How did he get it?

His friends muttered behind him:

"I thought a girl like her would at least be decent. Didn't know she was such a gold-digger. Refuses to sign the prenup, refuses to see your mom, and tries to trap you with a fake pregnancy instead."

"Women know women. Blair called it. What a psycho."

Before, they were just bros.

Now that it was convenient, she was a woman who knew other women?

A harsh laugh escaped my throat.

Camerons expression darkened even further.

"Get up. We're going to the clinic."

"You are not keeping this."

I violently slapped his hand away.

"Don't flatter yourself."

"Did I ever say this was yours?"