"Fix that hand. A scar that size is hideous. You're both women, yet your hands don't have half the elegance of Hazel's."
He reached into his pocket and handed me a smartphone.
"Hazel doesn't use this one anymore. You can have it."
Having dispensed his charity, he turned and jogged back toward Hazel's ward without a backward glance.
Three years ago, after my first miscarriage, Thomas stayed by my bedside for a month. When I cried from the pain, he wept harder than I did.
Three years later, he caused both my miscarriage and my injury, yet he felt nothing. He dismissed me with a hundred dollars and a discarded phone.
He bought Hazel the newest model, while I was only fit for her scraps.
Unfortunately, I have never liked secondhand goods—whether phones or men.
I tossed the device into the nearest trash can. As it fell, the screen lit up, revealing the lock screen wallpaper: Thomas and Hazel, smiling radiantly in front of the Lover's Rock at A University.
A sanctuary we once cherished had become the backdrop for his affair.
I drove straight to the university. Ignoring the stares of students, I found our names carved into the stone monument and began to scratch them out.
I gouged at the rock, one cut after another, desperate to erase my past with Thomas.
When the names were finally illegible, I collapsed to the ground, drained. A young couple walked by, fingers intertwined.
A bitter, self-mocking smile touched my lips.
How did we end up here?
We were once the campus myth, the couple everyone aspired to be. Now, the myth was a joke.
Thomas's old vow echoed in my memory—
*'If I, Thomas Gilbert, ever betray Elise James, may heaven strike me down, and may I face ruin and disgrace!'*
Did he really just want to climb the social ladder? Or was I simply too boring?
I shook my head. It didn't matter anymore.
The fault lay with him, not me.
The signs had been there for months; I had just refused to see them. The sudden interest in his appearance. Staying late at school on weekends. The flowers he brought home, which he pruned with obsessive care. The way he changed his profile picture to a cartoon. The secret smiles directed at his phone screen.
I rubbed the raw skin on my hand. The nurse had warned me that delaying treatment would leave a permanent scar.
Good.
This scar would be my reminder: never make the same mistake again. Love is fleeting. A career is the only thing a woman can truly rely on.