"You're the one who told me she was heartbroken, that she was in a bad way, so I looked out for her a little extra. For your sake."

"It's bad enough you're suspicious of everything all the time, but now you're jealous of your own best friend?"

"With a personality like yours, no wonder you've never had a single friend your whole life!"

Back when Charity first broke up with her ex, I'd told him about my childhood. About being shut out, being pushed away, being the girl Charity took in. Back then Jim had sworn to me, hand on his heart.

"It's okay. From now on, you have me."

"Your best friend is my friend too. I'll help you carry it."

And now he was calling me paranoid.

Saying I deserved it.

A thousand things rose up in my chest and stuck there, and not one of them would come out.

All I wanted was to get out of that suffocating room.

I was about to turn away when Charity beat me to it and burst into tears.

"Mary, why would you say that about me?"

"My boyfriend abandoned me, and now you're abandoning me too."

"Is that really all I am to the two of you? Someone that worthless?"

"Fine. If there's no room in this world for me, then I'll just die."

"Once I'm dead, no one will ever get in the way of you and Jim's happy little life again!"

With that, she shoved me hard and ran for the door.

My lower back slammed into the corner of the table.

I sucked in a sharp breath and grabbed at Jim's arm without thinking.

He flung me off.

He glared at me, and the anger in his eyes wasn't even hidden anymore.

"Go on, Mary. Make your scenes, keep making them."

"Charity's the only friend you'll ever have in this life. If anything happens to her, let's see what you do then!"

He didn't spare me another glance.

Jim went after Charity and slammed the door behind him.

The one making scenes—was that me?

My lower back ached badly.

I slid down and sat there on the floor.

For a long time, I couldn't pull myself together.

I spent the whole night sitting with the pregnancy report, miserable.

I turned it over and over, and in the end I decided to sit down and really talk it through with Jim.

Seven years together. That wasn't easy to come by.

I opened my phone, and the first thing I saw was Charity's new post.

"Love is acceptance. It's having someone to lean on. It's a shoulder that holds you up, steady and sure."

Posted five minutes ago.

Location: a high-end private screening room.

Charity, eyes still red, was leaning on Jim's shoulder.

The lighting was dim and yellow, but you could still make out their fingers laced tight together.

A mutual friend had commented below.

"You and Jim are together now? Does Mary know?"

Charity didn't reply.

Jim didn't explain.

It seemed like the answer had been there all along.

My heart gave one hard, twisting clench.

I deleted the long, careful message I'd written out.

I replaced it with one short line.

"Jim. Let's break up."

When I refreshed, the post was gone.

Right after, Jim's call came through.

"Mary, don't read too much into it."

"That trash ex of Charity's has a new girl, and she couldn't stand it, so she just asked me to play her boyfriend for a bit."

"We only saw a movie together yesterday. Nothing else, I swear."

Whether they'd done anything, I didn't know.

What I knew was that the movie they'd watched was the surprise I'd planned for Jim.

I'd ached for how hard he'd been working lately.

I'd wanted to carve out some time and give him a real evening, just the two of us.

But in his evening for two, there was no me.

I slid my hand slowly to my belly, and when I spoke, it was with everything tangled up inside.

"It has nothing to do with that."

"It's that your Charity's care has already outweighed mine."

I didn't want to be the spare part in this relationship.

I'd had enough of being shut out and pushed aside back when I was a kid, and I was done with it.

Jim sighed.

There was anger threaded through the exhaustion in his voice.

"Mary, can you stop being so unreasonable? I'm exhausted, all right?"

"I have to work, I have to take care of you, and on top of that I take care of your friends for your sake. Maybe you could think about me for once?"

I was so tired.

Too tired to argue.

I hung up and blocked Jim's number.

Then I started packing to move back home.

Once I'd calmed down, I'd think it all through properly—him, and the baby.

Halfway through packing, something felt off.

I lifted my head and looked slowly around the room.

The things had changed.

After Charity's breakup, she'd started staying at our place now and then.

Bit by bit, the photos in the living room had been swapped out for pictures of the three of us.

Jim and Charity leaned close together, smiling brightly.

I was crowded off into the corner, only half my head showing.

Charity's cartoon-print pajamas were hanging in the bedroom too.

Jim had bought three sets of them on his own, back then.

Mine had been too small and got returned; Charity's fit just fine.

After that, those two sets of pajamas had stayed in the closet of the master bedroom.

A bright, blatant announcement of Charity's unshakable place here.

Now those pajamas, and everything around them, seemed to be telling me without a single word.

"Mary, you're the spare one."

My heart hurt so much it felt ready to burst.

The tears I'd held back for so long finally fell, blurring everything in front of me.

My hands shook as I typed it in, over and over.

At last I dialed my mother's number.

"Mom, Jim and I broke up."

"Will you come and take me home?"

"I want to go home. To my own home."

My mother gasped, then said anxiously,

"What happened, sweetie? Weren't you two supposed to get engaged next year? How is it a breakup now?"

"All right, all right, stop crying first. Your dad and I are coming for you right now."

The two of them rushed back in no time at all.

My mother didn't ask a thing.

My father packed up my things without a word.

In that crowded apartment.

The things that were actually mine ended up filling just one small suitcase.

In the car I cried and told them the whole story, start to finish.

My father's hands gripped the wheel tight.

My mother held me and just cried.

Afraid I'd do something to myself, the two of them took turns taking time off to stay with me.

My old friends came around asking how things stood between Jim and me.

When they heard we'd broken up, one after another they sighed.

"Forget it. Honestly, you're better off split."

"There's something I never dared tell you. I was afraid you'd read too much into it."

"This whole time, a lot of us have run into Jim and Charity together."

"All over each other. Like they could barely stop themselves from making out right there on the street."

Someone sent me a screenshot of Jim's social media feed.

Seven years together, and he'd never once made us official.

Now his feed was full of Charity.

The two of them out shopping together, going to the amusement park together.

Going to every place I'd wanted to go, the places he'd never had the time to take me.

It would be a lie to say it didn't hurt.

A thousand kinds of hurt all pressed together into one thing.

"Let it go."

Jim and I were finished.

This baby, I'd raise on my own.

I made up my mind to forget the past.

And of all times, that was when Jim showed up at my family's door.

He pounded on it, roaring,

"Mary, get out here."

"Aren't you so clever? What kind of talent is it, hiding behind people's backs to run your mouth!"

The second I opened the door, Jim seized my wrist.

"Why are you out there telling everyone Charity's a homewrecker?"

"She was already in a bad place, and after she saw those messages you posted yesterday she nearly slit her wrists in the bathroom."

"You almost cost a person her life, do you understand that!"

Behind him, Charity was crying so hard she couldn't get the words out.

She choked them out anyway, between sobs.

"Mary, if you don't like me, just say so. Why would you destroy me in a way this vicious?"

"I know you've been jealous of me since we were kids, because people liked me, because I had friends."

"But I never hurt you, I never once thought about wrecking things between you and Jim. Why are you doing this to me!"

I had no idea what she was talking about. I wrenched my wrist out of Jim's grip.

"I didn't do anything!"

"The two of you behaved like that. How is that my fault?"

The shouting was loud enough now to pull the neighbors' eyes to us.

Jim couldn't stand losing face, and it only made him angrier.

"Still talking back. Apologize to Charity, now!"

"She already told me. When you were a kid, people froze you out because you were always smearing and lying about them behind their backs."

"She's too kind, always covering for you. I'm not that easy to fool."

"If you don't apologize to her today, I'll make you pay for it a hundred times over!"

"Don't forget, your promotion is still sitting in my hands."

The future I once gave up for love.

Now it was the leverage Jim used against me.

I let out a cold laugh and shook my head, not able to believe it.

"You're out of your mind."

I turned to leave.

Jim grabbed my hair and yanked me back, hard.

I had no guard up, no balance.

I went over backward and tumbled down the stairs.

My father had just come home from work and saw the whole thing.

He rushed forward, roaring in fury.

"Jim, have you lost your mind?"

"Mary's pregnant. How could you do something this cruel to her!"

Jim's eyes went wide in disbelief.

He reached out to help me up, full of regret.

But it was too late.

The pain tore through me from the inside.

I closed my eyes.

Blood spread across the floor.