I Was Only Your Decoy Girlfriend

To save up enough for a down payment on a house we could call our own, I skimped on everythingeven the copays for my pain medication. I hoarded my medical issues like overdue bills, waiting until I could pack five different surgical procedures into a single five-day hospital stay to maximize my insurance deductible.

For a brief moment, I was a local legend in the surgical ward.

But that was also the day I saw Griffith, my supposedly broke boyfriend, deep in conversation in the hospitals restricted VIP wing.

My feet moved on their own, drawing me stealthily behind them.

They were talking in the hallway, completely unconcerned about who might hear.

"You wealthy heirs love playing the savior to a working-class girl," a voice drawled, laced with amusement. "Christian did it, and now youre doing it. When do you plan on telling her the truth?"

Griffith shrugged, his shoulders shifting beneath a designer coat I had never seen before.

"To be honest, only Christian was actually in love. I only stepped in because I was terrified Christian would crawl back to her and make Haley miserable."

I froze in the shadow of the corridor, my mind going entirely blank. A high-pitched ringing filled my ears.

Christian was my ex-boyfriend, the man who had vanished from my life five years ago after a brutal, ghosting-style breakup. Back then, his entire social circle had humiliated me, treating me like a street dog trying to sit at a banquet table. A single glass of vintage Merlot poured over my head had been enough to wash me out of his world.

Since then, all I wanted was to find a normal, hard-working guy like myself and build a quiet, honest life.

But it turned out I had just been a pawn in another rich man's game.

A physical ache bloomed beneath my ribs, radiating outward.

All the post-operative pain I had been trying so hard to breathe through came rushing back at once.

Months ago, when the dermatologist found an atypical melanoma on my back and warned me of the malignant risks, urging immediate excision, I chose to wait. My stomach had been acting up too, and I figured I would just wait and handle everything at once.

It wasn't that I didn't know the risks.

It was just... a stubborn, foolish optimism. I had always believed that girls like me, grown from the cracks in the concrete, could survive anywhere. We were resilient. If I bundled the surgeries together, it would save us thousands in hospital facility fees and post-op prescriptions.

So I delayed, week after week.

When I finally scheduled the five procedures back-to-back, the surgeon had tried to talk me out of it.

"Going under anesthesia five times in five days before the previous dose has even cleared your system is brutal on the body," he had warned, looking at me with pity. "It's safe enough under our supervision, but you are going to be in absolute agony."

But I had just smiled. At the time, all I could think about was celebrating Griffiths promotion.

He had told me he got a raisean extra thousand dollars a month. Thats twelve thousand more a year for our house, I had calculated, tears of gratitude in my eyes.

Looking back, his performance was flawless. I had been so deeply moved, believing we were finally closing the gap on our dream. After five years together, I thought we were both bleeding and sweating for the same future.

To keep him from worrying, I had even scheduled the surgeries during a week he claimed he had to travel out of town for business.

And yet, here he was.

A slow, hot anger flared in my chest, carrying a heavy weight of humiliation. It felt as though these people could manipulate our lives on a whim, stripping away even our right to a simple, honest love.

I could still hear the echoes of their old taunts. Gold digger. Social climber. A parasite trying to latch onto high society.

When Christian and I were together, I admit I had a few innocent fantasies. I was eighteen, fresh-faced in college, and when a wealthy classmate pursued me, I naively wondered if I was the heroine of some romance novel. I believed that if I loved someone fiercely enough, the world would eventually bend in our favor.

That illusion shattered the night of graduation. He had invited me to a private country club, promising I would finally meet his family.

Instead, his mother had emptied a glass of red wine down the front of my cheap dress.

Then, she slipped a few hundred-dollar bills into my wet clutch.

"For girls like you, this is usually the standard rate," she whispered. "Take it for the dry cleaning."

Christian had stood just a few feet away, swirling his own glass, silently watching. He never contacted me again. He said nothing, which in itself said everything.

I became the joke of the campus. It was Griffith who had appeared in the aftermath, throwing his worn denim jacket over my shivering shoulders and screaming at the crowd, "You think your money makes you gods?"

The memory made my chest tighten until it was hard to breathe.

I dragged my feet back to the standard ward, my head spinning.

The floor nurse saw me and immediately ushered me back into my room. "You need to stop walking around. If your vitals look good tomorrow, we'll let you go home. Not a second sooner."

I nodded numbly, letting the movie of my last five years play on a loop behind my closed eyelids.

That night, Griffith sent me a text.

The business trip is going well. Want me to bring you back any local treats?

I didn't reply.

Griffith had always been so good to me. He bore none of the cold arrogance of the wealthy elite. He would cook dinner for us after a long shift, knowing the price of every vegetable at the local market. He even knew how to mend a torn hem.

He ate at greasy diners with me, and we would argue playfully over which brand of soy sauce was the better value.

We fit together perfectly. Because of that, I never suspected a thing.

I truly believed we were from the same world, two ordinary people pulling the cart together. I had brought him home to my parents, who treated him like the son they never had. I fully expected him to be my husband.

He was my only one.

That was why I worked myself to the bone to save for that down payment. I wanted to prove that regular people could build a beautiful, comfortable life. I had given up on fairy tales; I just wanted something real.

When I didn't reply for several hours, my phone rang.

I stared at the screen, hesitated, and finally picked it up.

Griffiths voice rushed through the receiver, warm and energetic. He rambled about his day before adding, "Hey, Naomi, since Im so close to my hometown, I think I'm going to drop by my parents' place for a few days. You take care of yourself, okay?"

"Yeah," I murmured quietly, hanging up.

I opened his social media profile. There were photos of him standing with his "parents" in front of a modest suburban house. But now I knew they were actors. His entire digital life was a curated set piece, likely visible only to me.

A wave of bitter sorrow washed over me.

During our third year of dating, we had gone to meet his "family." I had spent weeks agonizing over my outfit. My parents, wanting to show their utmost respect, took a day off work and bought expensive gifts for me to bring.

At the time, Griffith had only sighed. "You didn't need to go through all this trouble. Just having you there is enough."

How hilarious.

Of course it wasn't a trouble for himthey weren't even his real parents. But it certainly was a hassle to hire actors to play along with our earnest, working-class hopes.

I wondered if, on our wedding day, he would have handed me a forged marriage certificate to keep the lie alive for another few decades, all to ensure his precious childhood friend Haley was safe from Christians lingering regrets.

What a grand sacrifice.

The next morning, I discharged myself from the hospital.

I went straight back to work. I needed the distraction; work was the only thing that had never lied to me.

But during an afternoon run to deliver some legal documents to a partner firm downtown, I ran into Christian.

It had been years. The old anger had faded into a dull, cold indifference. I tried to step around him, but he blocked my path.

"You and Griffith don't belong together, Naomi," he said, his voice tense.

I looked up at him, a dry laugh bubbling in my throat. Was this a sudden burst of conscience, or was he just bored and looking to play the good guy?

Before I could speak, a hand gripped my wrist with bruising force, pulling me backward.

I stumbled, my lower back slamming into the sharp edge of a marble reception desk. The pain from my recent incision flared white-hot. I gasped, looking up to see Griffith standing over me, his eyes locked furiously on Christian.

"Stay the hell away from my girlfriend," Griffith spat.

My wrist was already turning red under his grip, but Griffith didn't notice. His focus was entirely on Christian. He wasn't trying to protect me from being hurt; he was terrified Christian might still feel something for me, the girl he had abandoned.

That was his entire mission.

Griffith dragged me toward the exit, muttering under his breath, "He's not the kind of man you can just climb up to. Why can't you just..."

My mind snapped into sharp focus. I wrenched my wrist from his grasp and walked away without looking back.

I didn't need anyone telling me where I belonged.

I had no interest in Christian. And I was officially done with Griffith.

That evening, Griffith came back to our apartment.

Seeing me applying ointment to my bruised wrist, his expression softened into something resembling guilt.

"Im sorry about earlier. I lost my temper. I was just so worried he would hurt you again."

I didn't have the energy to argue. I silently reached around to try and dab medicine on the deep bruise near my lower back where I had hit the desk.

Griffiths eyes flickered with remorse, and he reached out to help me. But before his hand could touch my skin, his phone buzzed.

His face went instantly rigid. He grabbed his coat and walked out the door.

An hour later, Haley posted a sad emoji on her social media, captioned with nothing but a single dot.

The punishment for my defiance arrived the very next morning.

When I walked into the office, the usual morning chatter died instantly. My supervisor, who had promised me a promotion and a raise just last week, handed me a termination letter without meeting my eyes.

My body went cold. I stared at the paper, unable to process the words.

"Why?" I whispered.

My supervisor didn't answer directly. He quietly slipped an extra month's severance into my file and murmured, "Naomi, sometimes it's not about your performance. Did you happen to offend someone powerful?"

A sickening realization began to settle in my chest, but I still fought against believing it.

Griffith knew how hard I worked. He knew how difficult it was for a girl from a rural town to secure a decent corporate job in the city. He knew every late night and skipped meal that had gone into building this modest career.

The bitterness in my mouth tasted like ashes.

When I returned to the apartment, Griffith was in the kitchen.

The air was thick with the scent of extra-spicy chili. This was his traditional way of apologizing. He hated spicy food, but whenever he knew he had upset me, he would force himself to cook it to make me smile.

Usually, seeing him sweat over a hot stove for my sake would melt my anger instantly.

But now, it only made me shudder.

Which transgression was he apologizing for today? The bruise on my back, or the fact that I had just been blacklisted from my industry?

Probably both. To him, they were one and the same.

My throat tightened, raw and dry.

"Griffith, we're done. I want a divorce from whatever this relationship was."

He froze, the spatula hovering over the pan. Then, he quietly finished stirring and turned off the burner.

"It's going to be okay," he said, his voice incredibly calm. "Once they get this out of their system, things will go back to normal. Just think of it as a setback, a tough lesson learned. You can find an even better job later, somewhere far away from them."

He didn't even ask why I had been fired. He already knew.

A cold dread settled deep in my bones as I stared at him.

To people like Griffith and Haley, lives like mine were as fragile and disposable as paper. They couldn't begin to comprehend the concept of hard work because everything they had ever wanted was handed to them on a silver platter.

Haley never had to lift a finger; an army of men stood ready to burn down my life just to keep her smiling.

But I had only wanted to live my own life. Why did they have to drag me into their theater, break my spirit, and then tell me I hadn't learned my lesson?

Tears burned the backs of my eyes, but I refused to let them fall.

Haleys social media feed updated again. It was a photo of a beautifully lit restaurant table.

Thank you to my boy for always being there to clean up my messes.

There was a single like from an account I recognized instantly.

It was Griffiths real profile.

Even after five years of careful deception, some habits are hard to break. He used the same unique handle structure he always used. I clicked through the account and saw his familyprominent, old-money philanthropists who looked nothing like the hired actors he had brought to meet my parents.

Griffith hadnt been on a business trip last week. He had been celebrating Haleys birthday at an exclusive resort.

I spent the next two weeks pounding the pavement, looking for a new job. But at twenty-seven, in a saturated market and with a sudden, unexplained termination on my record, every door remained firmly shut.

I wanted to go home.

But before I could even pack my bags, my mother called.

She didn't mention anything wrong at first. She just kept her voice light, asking, "Sweetie, how are things going? Is work keeping you busy?"

A chill ran down my spine. My mother was caring for my ailing grandmother; she never called in the middle of a workday unless something was wrong.

After I pressed her repeatedly, she finally broke down.

Both she and my father had been laid off from their municipal jobs on the same day. The small income they relied on was gone, and the shock had caused my grandmother to collapse. She was currently in the ICU.

"Don't worry about us," my mother wept, trying to sound brave. "You and Griffith are saving for your house. Keep your savings for your future. We'll find a way to handle things here."

The tears I had held back for weeks finally spilled over.

I hung up and immediately tried to wire my savings to my mother's account.

Transaction Declined: Account Frozen.

A furious, desperate rage erupted inside me. I opened our shared expense app, tracked Griffith's location, and ran out the door.

I arrived at an exclusive private lounge downtown. Before I could even push the heavy oak doors open, the sound of laughter drifted through the gap.

"Man, Griffith, you really went all out," a male voice laughed. "Getting her fired was one thing, but getting her parents blacklisted from their town jobs? That's cold. Shes definitely going to learn her place now. She won't dare show her face near Christian again."

"Griffiths always been the ruthless one," another chimed in. "Christian just wanted to date her for a bit back in college. Griffith went ahead and played the fake boyfriend for five whole years just to keep the playing field clear for Haley."

The words felt like physical blows, knocking the wind from my lungs.

My parents had treated Griffith like their own flesh and blood. They had cooked for him, bought him gifts, and prayed for our future. And all of it was just a joke to these people.

Then, Christians voice cut through the laughter, sharp and tense.

"Enough. We dated for four years. She never asked me for a dime, and she never took anything from me. I was the one who chased her."

He glared at Griffith.

"You've gone too far. Stop playing god with her life. Haley and I are fine. We don't need you running around ruining lives to protect her. Treat people like human beings for once."

Griffith stood up, his chair scraping loudly against the floor.

"What, you still have feelings for her? I warned you, Christianstay away from her. She belongs to me now."

The room fell into an uncomfortable silence. The tension was thick enough to choke on.

"We should probably get going," someone muttered, sensing the impending explosion.

As they opened the door to leave, they froze.

I stood there, my fingers clenched into tight fists, staring directly at them.