I was at the supermarket with my boyfriend.
I wanted to buy a bottle of water, and he told me I was being wasteful.
Then he turned around and filled an entire cart with expensive fruit and imported snacks for his foster sister.
At checkout I grabbed a two-dollar bag of chips out of habit.
"Shirley Fox doesn't like those."
Theo Delgado didn't even look up. He just lifted the bag back out.
I put it right back in the cart.
"They're for me."
"Still no. Shirley doesn't like the smell, and last time you ate these it made her sick for days. Besides, they're bad for you."
He said it with complete conviction, and tossed the chips out again.
I looked down at the cart, at the imported gourmet pastries, the mangoes, the beef jerky.
Then I looked at Theo, holding the shopping list, head bent, carefully checking everything off.
And suddenly I had no appetite at all.
I didn't do what I usually did, didn't pout or play the pitiful card to get him to buy it for me.
On the drive home, I stayed silent the whole way.
Theo just assumed I was sulking.
He took a phone call, and then hit the brakes hard and pulled over to the side of the road.
"Shirley's not feeling well. I'm going to check on her."
"You know her health has always been fragile. We have to look after her a little more. Get yourself an Uber home, I'll just take a quick look and come right back."
And with that, Theo left me there in the rain and drove off without a second's hesitation, in the opposite direction from home.
In that moment, all of it suddenly felt pointless.
Maybe it would be better not to get married at all.
...
The sky was dark, and the rain kept coming down harder.
I waved my arm frantically in the rain before I finally managed to flag down a passing taxi.
I was just about to open the door.
Then I remembered the sixty-nine cents left in my phone's payment balance.
My hand froze on the door handle.
When we decided to be together, I'd handed my salary card over to Theo to manage.
But after I gave him that card, I found it harder and harder to get any money.
I make thirty-five thousand a month.
Theo gave me ten dollars a day for living expenses.
After daily meals, what was left wasn't even enough for a bottle of water.
Even normal social expenses meant I had to ask him over and over.
"Are you getting in or not?"
The driver yelled, out of patience.
"Sir, I don't have enough on me, could I maybe—"
I wanted to ask if I could leave my bracelet as collateral.
But before I could finish, the driver slammed the door, cursing.
"Get lost! Where'd this broke nobody come from, no money and still trying to take a cab?!"
The car tore past me.
The wheels rolled through a puddle at the curb and splashed muddy water all over me.
My foot slipped, and I went down hard on the ground.
A searing pain shot through my knee, and blood mixed with mud ran down my shin.
I bit down on my bloodless lips, and in the end I still dialed that number I knew by heart.
But all that came through the receiver was the beep, beep of a busy line.
Heh.
I let out a bitter laugh.
How could I have forgotten?
Just because Theo's foster sister Shirley had severe nervous exhaustion and needed quiet.
So Theo had set his phone to do-not-disturb for everyone.
Except, of course, for Shirley.
Whenever something urgent came up, I could never reach him right away.
Including the time my mother was in a car accident.
I'd been away on a business trip then.
When the hospital called me, I was frantic.
I called Theo dozens of times, and not once did he pick up.
In the end I sped the whole way back from the next city, three hundred kilometers out, just to get to the hospital.
