My husband’s best friend bet him I’d cry when they served me divorce papers at Christmas dinner. Women are so predictable. He laughed. I signed immediately, then handed them a wrapped present. Their faces dropped when they opened it.
“Do you think she’ll cry when she reads them?” His best friend chuckled from the living room.
They didn’t realize I was in the hallway holding a tray of drinks, feet frozen, breath halted, pulse roaring in my ears.
Brandon’s voice followed—light, smug. “She’ll crumble. Women always do.”
That was five days before Christmas.
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But this story didn’t start there. Not really. The unraveling began long before they wagered on my tears. It started with laughter—always laughter.
“You know I could leave you tomorrow, right?” Brandon would joke at dinner parties, eyes twinkling with faux affection as he rubbed my shoulder.
Everyone chuckled. So did I. But inside, something shriveled, tightening like a knot behind my ribs. People didn’t see the weight of those words, not how often they came or how easily.
They didn’t notice how I stopped wearing my red dress after he scoffed, “Trying too hard, aren’t we?” Or how I started checking his tone before I spoke in public, praying my sentence didn’t shift into a monologue about my flaws.
He never shouted, never raised a hand. Brandon was smarter than that. His words were blades dipped in honey.
“Don’t embarrass me in front of my boss.”
“You know you’re lucky I’m still here.”
“I mean, come on. What else would you do without me?”
Each comment arrived with a grin, a chuckle, the clink of his whiskey glass. I’d smile back. I had learned to smile.
At first, I defended him to friends.
“He’s just sarcastic,” I told Jenny—my childhood best friend—after she caught one of his remarks at a barbecue. “He doesn’t mean it like that.”
She didn’t look convinced. “He doesn’t have to mean it. You look like you’re disappearing.”
Maybe I was.
I stopped posting on social media. I started missing book club meetings. Calls from my sister went unanswered more often than not. My world became smaller, centered around Brandon’s moods, his rhythms, his thresholds.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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