My fiancé’s friends joked that he had a backup fiancée waiting if I ever messed up. I smiled like it was no big deal.
Then I walked over to the girl they meant, put the cheap $100 ring in her hand, and said, “Go ahead. He’s yours now.”
The whole room went silent, and I finally felt in control.
My fiancé’s best friend called another woman his backup fiancée at our engagement party in front of twenty people in my apartment while I was in the kitchen cutting cheese.
“Come on, we all know it,” Trevor slurred, swaying with his beer raised high. “If Grace ever messes up, Sienna’s ready on the bench, right?”
Backup fiancée.
The laughter was immediate—and uncomfortable. I stood there frozen, waiting for Jacob to say something, waiting for him to shut it down, waiting for him to defend me, to tell Trevor he’d crossed a line, to prove that I wasn’t just a placeholder until someone better came along.
He laughed.
My fiancé—the man who’d proposed to me six months ago with a $100 ring and called it ironic—stood there and laughed while his best friend announced to everyone that I was replaceable.
Sienna, the childhood friend he’d always sworn was “like a sister,” sat on my couch, smiling. Not embarrassed. Not horrified.
Please.
That smile told me everything I needed to know.
So I made a decision.
I pulled the engagement ring from my jacket pocket, walked through the silent crowd, and handed it directly to her.
Tag in, sweetheart. He’s all yours.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
To understand how I got to that moment—how I ended up destroying my own engagement party in front of everyone Jacob cared about—you need to know who I was before that night. You need to know the life I thought I was building.
My name is Grace Daniels. I’m 31 years old, and until three nights ago, I thought I had everything figured out.
I’m a graphic designer, freelance, which means I work from home in pajamas more often than I’d admit in polite company, and my downtown loft doubles as my office. It’s small but mine: exposed brick walls, tall windows overlooking the city, just enough room for a bed, a workspace, and a vintage couch I found at an estate sale and convinced myself was charming instead of uncomfortable.
I love that space. Still do.
It was fully mine. My name on the lease, my furniture, my rules.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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