The bitterness rose in me, inch by inch.
Winston and I had already held our engagement party three times.
The first two times, both had been canceled at the last minute, on the very day, all because Michelle said she didn't feel well.
Every time, I chose to be the bigger person. Every time, I swallowed the hurt alone.
But Winston never once asked me whether I was hurting, whether I was tired.
I forced down the sob caught in my throat, made myself stay calm. "Winston, we've already broken up."
His brows knit tight, his whole face full of disapproval. He didn't take a single word of it seriously.
"Just because I went to Michelle yesterday and left you behind?"
"You know how it is. I only ever think of Michelle as a little sister."
"She's just a kid. Are you a kid too?"
"Ethel, be a little more mature. Don't hold it against Michelle. She just leans on me too much."
He paused, his tone turning accusatory. "Besides……didn't you and Michelle become friends already?"
"You've been patient with her so many times. Why not this once, of all times?"
I really had tried to be friends with Michelle.
After all, Michelle and Winston had known each other for seventeen years. As his girlfriend, I wanted to step into every part of his life.
So I tried to accept her, to understand her, to treat her like my own little sister.
But when I watched Michelle hold her half-eaten ice cream up to Winston's mouth, and watched him take a bite without a flicker of hesitation, I held it in.
When I watched Winston, never minding the mess or the trouble, wash Michelle's blood-stained underwear with his own hands, again and again, I held that in too.
I thought my yielding, my patience, would buy me the same respect in return.
But the moment Michelle broke down crying, Winston dropped me in a foreign country without a second thought and booked a flight home ahead of me.
He gave no thought at all to how chaotic and dangerous it was abroad, to the fact that that night I had no one to turn to, that I was nearly raped.
I simply could not be friends with another woman who stole every ounce of my fiancé's attention.
Michelle and I would never be friends.
I couldn't be the bigger person, and I certainly couldn't forgive.
In the end, Winston and I parted on bad terms.
He never accepted the breakup. To him, it was just me throwing another tantrum, not being understanding enough, not being sensible enough.
I couldn't be bothered to explain, and I no longer cared in the slightest what he thought.
Seven years of swallowed grievances had piled up to this. I'd long since stopped wanting his understanding.
My exchange program was set to begin in a week. The timeline was tight, and I still had to hand things over to the new teaching assistant.
Before I could even tell our friends and families that Winston and I had broken up, an engagement invitation suddenly popped up in the college class group chat.
The names on it read Winston Cobb and Michelle Henson.
In the photo, the cheongsam Michelle wore was the very one I'd fallen for at first sight, the one Winston had said didn't suit me.
So it was never that the dress didn't suit me. It was that I didn't suit him. And our engagement shoot, it turned out, was somewhere they had been too.
The group chat exploded instantly, messages flooding in one after another.
"I just got an engagement invitation from Ethel Winfield and Winston Cobb a little while ago. I thought they were solid, about to get married any day now."
"How did it suddenly become Michelle Henson? Professor Cobb, this is so out of nowhere."
"A brilliant man and a beautiful woman. The two of them look so perfect together."
The messages slid across the screen, every word a needle. I read all of them, then said only one thing. "Winston and I have broken up."
The moment my message went out, Winston's reply came right on its heels.
"The one I've loved all along has really been Michelle. I wasted seven years of Ethel's life. I won't waste her eighth."
The instant I saw those words, the emotions I'd held back for so long broke through the dam all at once.
