I Deliver Takeaways To My Ex-Wife

I was pulling a graveyard shift for a delivery app when I unexpectedly ran into Beth.

She took the pharmacy bag of condoms from my hands, pulling her silk robe tighter around herself. Her neck was pale, dotted with fresh red marks.

She looked at me with casual indifference. Is this all you do now?

I offered a polite smile. "I am broke. Don't forget to leave a five-star review."

A mans voice called out from inside the penthouse, urging her to hurry. Beth glanced back over her shoulder, but still paused to look at me.

"I haven't changed my number."

"If you are struggling, all it takes is a phone call."

I did not bother giving her an answer. I just turned and hurried down the hallway as the app pinged with my next order.

Honestly, I was already used to not loving her anymore.

When I got back to the dispatch station, my phone buzzed with a bank notification.

Beth had just wired one hundred thousand dollars into my old checking account.

I stared at the screen for a moment. After a long hesitation, I hit the button to reverse the transfer.

I was working myself to the bone to save up medical fees for my family.

Truth be told, that kind of money would instantly lift the crushing weight off my shoulders. But it would also drag me right back into another abyss.

An abyss named Beth.

It took me three years of crawling through glass to climb out of there. Jumping back in would make me a complete fool.

Beth did not send a follow-up text. But the very next night, she ordered delivery again.

The algorithm assigned the route to me.

When I arrived at her luxury high-rise, the elevator that worked perfectly fine yesterday was suddenly blocked off with an "Out of Service" sign.

I had no choice. I climbed thirty-six flights of stairs.

When I finally stood panting in front of Beth's door, she just raised an eyebrow.

"Sorry about this. We used up all the ones from yesterday."

I waved it off, catching my breath. "Sounds like you two have a very active sex life. Good for you."

I turned to leave, but Beth reached out and grabbed the back of my jacket, her grip tight.

She gritted her teeth, her voice thick with a bitter resentment I could not even begin to understand.

"Noah, why do you always have to be so damn stubborn?"

"Would it kill you to just say one soft word to me?"

I had no idea what game she was playing. I twisted my arm, broke her grip, and walked away to grab my next delivery.

Three years ago, I said every possible word a man could say to Beth.

I begged. I cursed. I screamed. I whispered shattered declarations of love.

All I ever got in return was the deafening slam of a door and endless busy signals on my phone.

What exactly did she want to hear from me now?

Running into Beth again felt like a nightmare waking up from hibernation.

You forget the exact details the second you open your eyes, but that heavy, suffocating dread clings to your skin all day.

Or at least, I thought that was the worst of it.

When I returned to the station, Beths sleek black sports car was parked right out front. Frank, my shift manager, rushed out to meet me. He slapped my back, looking a mix of furious and amused.

"Noah, why didn't you tell me your sister is the billionaire heiress they always talk about on the financial news?"

"She is sitting right inside my office. Says she came to take you home."

"Listen to me, man. Stop fighting with your family. Go back and live your life as a rich kid."

The blood drained from my face, leaving me freezing cold. My legs gave out. I crouched down in the shadows by the curb, curling into myself.

My voice was completely muffled.

"She is not my sister. She is my ex-wife."

"The kind of ex-wife you have a very, very ugly divorce with."

Franks face changed instantly.

He stayed quiet for a second, then shoved me deeper into the shadows by the alley so I was completely hidden.

He walked back inside to deal with Beth himself.

I do not know what he said to her, but it did not take long for Beth to march out the front doors, her face dark with anger. Frank practically herded her to her car.

By the time I gathered my composure and walked inside, Frank was staring at the table, looking incredibly stressed.

He gave me an awkward smile when he saw me. Then he reached behind his desk and pulled out a cheap grocery store cake and two six-packs of beer.

The light from a single candle flickered in his eyes.

"Look at this mess. I was supposed to give you a surprise."

"Happy birthday, brother."

That was when it hit me. Today was my birthday.

Seven years ago on this exact day, I was the happiest groom on the planet.

Three years ago on this exact day, I pressed a paring knife against my own throat and signed the divorce papers.

Today, I was just me.

And I had absolutely nothing to do with Beth anymore.

I wiped the moisture from the corners of my eyes, closed them, and made a wish.

I wished for Frank to live a long, happy life.

I wished for Lily to get well soon.

And I wished that the last two days were just a bizarre glitch in the universe, and that Beth and I would never cross paths again.

Frank felt bad about how the night went down, so he insisted on treating me to dinner.

We found a late-night diner. After a couple of beers, something inside me broke loose, and I started telling him about Beth.

Honestly, Beth calling herself my sister was not entirely a lie.

When I was nine years old, the Sinclair family took me in. I became their foster son.

My father died when I was a baby. My mother raised me all by herself. She was a senior director at Sinclair Enterprises. One day, the Sinclair heiress came to tour the corporate estate and accidentally fell into the massive ornamental lake.

My mother used every last ounce of her strength to push Beth above the surface. But my mother never came back up.

Beth owed me a life.

From that day on, she was ready to lay down her own life for me at a moment's notice.

When I first transferred to her elite prep school, I fell behind on the curriculum. The rich kids mocked me and looked down on me.

Beth dragged them up to the school roof. She fought them with her bare hands, sobbing the entire time.

When the principal called the parents in, her eyes were still red, but she stood her ground.

"They made fun of my brother! They called him a stray dog with no family! I am not dead yet! My mom and dad are not dead yet!"

Mr. and Mrs. Sinclair rushed to the principal's office. One rubbed his temples, the other offered a helpless smile. Neither of them wanted to be the one to discipline their daughter.

When I first moved into the Sinclair mansion, I could not sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, the nightmares came.

In my dreams, my parents were lying on metal tables under white sheets, and no matter how loud I screamed, they never answered.

I never made a sound in my sleep, but Beth somehow always knew. She would drag her pillows and blankets into my room, yawning, and set up camp right next to my bed.

She would reach up and pat my back.

"Go to sleep, Noah. Your sister is right here."

By the time we hit high school, I started getting confessions from girls. As the attention grew, Beths temper got worse.

She stopped wanting to call me her brother. And if anyone else dared to call her my sister just to get close to me, she exploded like a powder keg.

After she ruthlessly bullied the hundred-and-first girl into crying and running away, her best friend made a joke.

"Beth, are you falling for your own foster brother?"

"You guys do not share any blood. He has not even had his first kiss yet, and you are acting like a guard dog. It makes total sense if you are just jealous."

Beths face turned bright red. It was like a lightbulb finally clicked on in her head.

She went home utterly speechless.

That weekend, Mr. Sinclair called her into his study. They argued for hours.

When she came out, there was a red handprint on her cheek. But she did not care at all. She just looked at me and smiled the sweetest smile.

When we got acceptance letters to the same university, Beth confessed her feelings to me.

I had absolutely no reason to say no.

She was my guardian angel. For over a decade, she had stood firmly between me and my nightmares.

Once she realized her own feelings, she went straight to her parents and confessed, clearing all the obstacles out of our way before I even had to ask.

Without Beth, my life would instantly have a massive, gaping hole in it. A hole nothing else could ever fill.

We dated through college. It was incredibly sweet.

When we graduated, I proposed to her.

And that was exactly when everything started going straight to hell.

After graduation, we both started working at Sinclair Enterprises.

The corporate machine never slept, and Beth and I rarely saw each other.

She was the future CEO. I was just another corporate drone.

Even on our rare date nights, I was always the one getting pulled away by emergency work calls.

Beth hated it. She threw tantrums, and I naturally felt terribly guilty.

After working seven days straight, I finally caught a break. I wanted to surprise her at home.

I thought we were on the same page. When I walked through the door, the floor was covered in rose petals. My favorite love song was playing on the speakers. The air smelled of expensive wine.

My heart melted. I walked into the master bedroom.

And my soul was ripped into a million tiny pieces.

Beth was curled up in the arms of a strange man. He was wearing my bathrobe.

They were dead asleep, exhausted from whatever they had just finished doing.

My entire world collapsed.

I ran out of the apartment we bought for our wedding. I blocked her number everywhere.

It took her three days to track me down.

The proud, radiant Sinclair heiress looked absolutely wrecked. Her face was pale, her eyes completely bloodshot.

She wrapped her arms around my legs, swearing on her life that she just had too much to drink. She claimed she thought that college intern was me.

"Noah, I know I messed up. I deserve to die. But I just missed you so much."

"You are never home. Everyone keeps joking that my fianc is a ghost."

"We have been together for over a decade. Are you really going to throw me away over one stupid mistake?"

I hesitated.

Seeing the crack in my armor, Beth immediately fired the intern. She kicked him out of the Sinclair building in front of everyone.

Watching him walk out the glass doors holding a cardboard box, looking completely humiliated, I actually felt a tiny twinge of pity.

We got married exactly as planned.

At the wedding, her parents cried tears of joy. Beth smiled so hard she looked like she was glowing.

Caught up in the magic of the day, I made a silent promise to myself. I was going to care for her more. I was going to be a perfect husband, and one day, a perfect father.

So, when she suggested I quit my job after the wedding to stay home and take care of our family, I agreed without a second thought.

Time flowed by like water.

A few years later, Mrs. Sinclair baked some fresh pastries and asked me to drop them off for Beth at the corporate office.

As I walked past the breakroom, I heard a group of guys laughing and bragging.

One voice sounded incredibly familiar.

"Hey, bet you guys didn't know this. The bosss husband used to be a charity case. He was the Sinclair family's foster kid."

"Talk about a parasite. Seducing his own foster sister to climb the social ladder. Who could possibly be more shameless than him?"

It turned out the entire company knew. The intern never actually left Sinclair Enterprises.

Beth spoiled him rotten. He felt invincible. He said whatever he wanted, and most people assumed he was slandering me under orders from the Sinclair family themselves.

The executive position I emptied when I quit? It was handed to him the very next day.

But Beth was the heir to the throne. I was just the outsider living off her scraps.

Nobody was going to risk their career to cross her and tell me the truth.

I was just a colossal idiot kept completely in the dark.

When I kicked the door to Beths office open, she was signing contracts. She did not even look up.

"Didn't I tell you Noah is coming to see me today?"

"Be a good boy and make yourself scarce. I will spend time with you tomorrow. I will buy you that sports car you wanted."

When she got no answer, she looked up, a soft, indulgent smile still painted on her face.

Instead of her lover, she saw my pale, bloodless face.

I tore the Sinclair corporate office apart. I demanded a divorce.

Mr. and Mrs. Sinclair scolded Beth, then immediately pivoted to lecturing me.

"Noah, Beth only has you in her heart."

"That guy is just a pet to her. Like a stray cat or a dog. It doesn't mean anything."

"In our social circle, keeping a little toy on the side is completely normal. You need to be the bigger person. Do not lower yourself to her level, okay?"

I was the foster son. I had over a decade of history with them.

Before we got married, nobody even brought up a prenup.

Mrs. Sinclair used to tell me I was her own flesh and blood. She promised her company shares would go straight to me, to protect me.

Holding onto a shred of hope, I looked at her. "Mrs. Sinclair, if I were your biological son, would you tell me to endure this? Would you tell me to just swallow it?"

She avoided my eyes. She gave a bitter smile and stopped talking.

When we were kids, Beth gave me a home. Decades later, I realized I never truly had one to begin with.

The second time around, Beth did not panic. She did not look wrecked.

She went to work. She came home. And she kept spoiling her intern.

Nosy friends asked her if she was worried I would actually file for divorce and take half the Sinclair empire.

She leaned back into the intern's chest and laughed.

"Noah? Since we were kids, he has followed me around like a loyal dog. Even if I kick him, he will just whimper and crawl right back."

"Let him throw his little tantrums. He can never escape the palm of my hand."

Everyone thought I was just throwing a fit. They thought I would wake up to reality and never actually leave.

So when I filed the lawsuit and requested a zero-dollar divorceasking for absolutely nothingnobody was prepared.

The tabloids ran wild with the story of the billionaire heiress and the zero-dollar divorce. The Sinclair Group's stock tanked overnight.

Mr. Sinclair went into a blind rage and suffered a massive stroke.

While Mrs. Sinclair was rushing him to the hospital, their car was hit.

Everyone in the vehicle, including the driver, died on impact.

When I arrived at the hospital morgue, Beth charged at me and slapped me across the face with everything she had.

She screamed, her entire body shaking.

"Noah, just because you are an orphan, did you have to destroy my family too?!"

"How can you be so incredibly cold-blooded? I wish... I wish I had never met you!"

I was already paralyzed by grief. Beth hit me with a terrifying amount of force. I stumbled, the room spinning violently.

And then I just blacked out.

The only thought echoing in my head as I fell was a deep, hollow regret.

Beth was right.

If I had never met her, my mother would still be alive.

I would still have a home. I would have someone who genuinely loved me. Someone who would stand between me and danger without a second thought, and always take my side.

Beth, I really wish I had never met you either.

When I woke up, Beth was sitting by my hospital bed.

She was resting a hand on her flat stomach. The hatred on her face flickered, morphed, and eventually vanished.

She spoke softly.

"Noah, I am pregnant."

"You are giving me a family again."

"For the baby's sake, let's just pretend none of this ever happened. Okay?"

I was completely drained. My soul was hollow. In absolute despair, I nodded my head.