I thought I knew the man I was going to marry. Six years together, and I believed we had built something real. But one night at a restaurant, he crossed a line I couldn’t forgive.
What he didn’t know was that I wasn’t going to just walk away quietly. My fiancé, Jason, and I had been together for six years when everything fell apart. We met in grad school during a statistics seminar where neither of us could figure out the professor’s accent or his equations.
Jason made a joke about forming a study group for the hopelessly confused, and I laughed so hard I snorted. That was it. We fell fast and hard.
He was funny, ambitious, and so charming with my family that my mom once joked she’d keep him even if I left. I remember thinking I’d hit the jackpot. But looking back now, I realize the cracks were always there.
I just didn’t want to see them. It started small, so small I convinced myself I was being too sensitive. At a gas station on a road trip, the attendant was printing Jason’s receipt, but apparently not fast enough.
Jason rolled his eyes and muttered, “God, how hard is it to push a button?”
I felt this uncomfortable twinge in my chest, but I brushed it off. He was tired from driving, I told myself. Then, at the mall, we were walking past a janitor mopping near the food court when Jason nearly stepped into the wet floor.
Instead of apologizing, he snapped, “Watch where you’re mopping, man.”
The janitor looked up, startled, and mumbled an apology even though Jason was clearly the one who wasn’t paying attention. But the worst one happened at brunch one Sunday morning. Our waitress came by to check on us and asked if we wanted more coffee.
Jason looked her up and down with this smirk and said, “Sure, maybe if you smile a little more, you’ll earn your tip.”
As soon as she walked away, I hissed, “What is wrong with you?”
“Relax, Hannah,” Jason laughed. “It’s just a joke.”
The thing that really got to me was how selective his rudeness was. Around his coworkers, he was professional and respectful.
With my family, he was the perfect gentleman. With our friends, he was the life of the party. It was only with certain people that his mask slipped, people he thought were beneath him.
Cashiers, cleaners, servers. I told myself I was imagining a pattern. But deep down, a pit was forming in my stomach.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
TAP → NEXT PAGE → 👇
