I Will Leave You, Around Winter

1: 1

My best friend got married, so I gave fifty thousand in gift money.

My boyfriend, Thomas Gilbert, snorted. "How much do you even make in a month? Who are you trying to impress?"

I told him she was a friend I'd known since I was little. He clicked his tongue and said nothing more. That same night, he swapped the fifty-thousand red envelope for five dollars.

The next day my best friend called me. "Meg Cox, did you make a mistake? Why is there only five dollars in here?"

I gripped the phone and listened to Thomas explain from the living room, careless as anything.

"Money doesn't stand for friendship. The gesture's what counts."

A week later, his childhood sweetheart Ella Whitney got engaged.

Drones spelled out "A Hundred Years of Happiness" against the sky and rained roses down over everything, and below it all sat a five-million-dollar necklace and a lavish banquet he'd booked out entirely.

Thomas stood beside me, gazing up at the spectacle, his voice gentle.

"It's nothing. All of it together's barely ten million."

"When your buddy gets engaged, you do it right."

As the shimmer poured down out of the sky, he and Ella held each other's eyes across the crowd, long and unhurried, as if no one else existed.

And just like that, I saw through the last little lie I'd been telling myself.

......

The drones fanned out "Ella, may you be happy" across the sky, the line blazing sharp against the night wind.

Someone beside me sucked in a breath.

"Five million! When Mr. Gilbert does something, he really does it..."

"Ella's got some standing, all right. I heard he flew in a team from overseas just for these drones..."

I kept my head tipped back until my neck ached, and my eyes stung and swelled too.

The thing looping over and over in my head was my best friend's tear-choked question and Thomas not even bothering to lift his eyes.

Five dollars, and now ten million.

Back then he hadn't looked up either, fastening a cufflink as he said it.

"Money doesn't stand for friendship. Why do you have to use it to prove something?"

And now here he stood, using a display worth tens of millions to prove to everyone just how much someone else meant to him.

"Meg?"

A soft, sweet voice came from the side.

I turned. Ella had come over at some point, earrings, necklace, and bracelet all in place, the light catching them until my eyes stung.

"Pretty, aren't they?" She tilted her head a little.

"Thomas flew all the way to Belgium to have them made for me. He said for an engagement you have to have three sets of gold, or it doesn't look like it means anything."

I knew that brand.

Even the cheapest set in the magazines ran to seven figures.

And the gift he'd given me for my twenty-fifth birthday.

A thin platinum chain, a little over two thousand, not even a brand card tucked in the box.

I heard myself let out a small laugh. "Then he really put some thought into it."

One of the buddies, half in the bag, sidled over grinning.

"Thomas, look at the setup you gave Ella. Full three sets of gold, the whole drone show booked out. You're a good friend, man."

Then he turned to me, tongue thick with drink.

"Hey, you're Thomas's girl—when are you gonna bring up marriage with him? He'd be even more generous with you, for sure!"

Every gaze swung onto me at once.

Thomas didn't answer. He just held his glass and looked at me with something not quite a smile.

That look held the familiar sizing-up.

He was probably waiting for me to show hurt, jealousy, or any of the emotions he'd already predicted.

He waited a long while. I only smiled, calm. "We'll see."

The truth was, I'd been waiting for Thomas all along.

Sophomore year, that autumn, he kissed me outside the dorm building and promised he'd marry me the first autumn after graduation.

That in a wedding dress I wouldn't be cold, and I wouldn't be hot either.

But afterward he broke that promise, one year after another.

Thomas's brow creased, so faint you'd almost miss it, and his gaze slid off my face and settled on Ella and her full three sets of gold.

"My own wedding will naturally be the grandest of them all. That fiancé of yours, though—"

"Can't even come up with three sets of gold. What kind of nobody are you even marrying?"

Ella stared at him, the end of her words lifting lightly.

"Thomas, my guy's so broke he can't even scrape together the bride price, and here you are—you spent a whole month fussing over this engagement party of mine. Drones, the necklace, the yacht, three sets of gold flown back from Belgium..."

"People who know say it's brotherly loyalty. People who don't would think the one getting engaged today is you."

"If you really can't stand to let me go—"

"Why don't you try stealing me away right here today?"

The buddies burst out laughing. "Ella, don't go egging Thomas on. He'd actually do it!"

"Right, right, once Thomas gets going there's nothing he won't—"

Everyone was waiting for Thomas to answer, to see whether he'd smile and concede or toss back some flirty little joke.

Not one of them remembered that I was Thomas's girlfriend, standing right there beside him.

I set down my glass.

Then I turned and walked through the roomful of laughter and glittering light, toward the doors of the banquet hall.

If their world had no room for me, then I'd just step out of it.