My Lover Didn't Put a Ring on Me

For ten years, I have stayed by Maren Hale's side without her formally acknowledging me as her boyfriend. Thus, I become the oldest kept man in Harborfield.

After I turn 30, I have asked her to marry me more than 30 times. Each time, she smiles and kisses me.

"Reid, I'll marry you when I'm ready," she says.

When I'm 31, a car accident nearly kills me. Still shaken, I propose to Maren. She tells me to wait a little longer.

By the time I'm 33, a doctor warns me that my kidney function is declining. I wave the diagnosis report in front of her and press for marriage. Yet, she still tells me to wait.

While I wait for her, the sun rises and sets over Mount Carlisle more than 3,600 times.

Finally, I think she is ready. Holding back tears, I promise my seriously ill father that he will live to see me get married.

What I don't know is that Maren is not opposed to marriage. It's just that the ten years she spends fooling around with me are nothing more than an act of rebellion against her mother, who has driven away her former fiancé.

Before the banquet, I see the ring I give Maren inside her handbag. I think she is finally going to accept my proposal.

Nervous and hopeful, I wait the entire evening.

But just moments ago, during a game of dare, she casually tosses the ring to a male model she has just met.

"The kid is turning 20. A pink diamond suits him perfectly. Next time, I'll have an emerald one made for us."

The entire room bursts into laughter.

I laugh along with them.

"Don't bother," I said. "Someone else already has a rock waiting for me, and I said yes."

Reid's POV

Nobody expected me to end things with Maren Hale on my 35th birthday.

The room went quiet at first, but the silence only lasted until someone caught the look of flat impatience on Maren's face. Then the laughter hit like a wave.

"A rock waiting for him? People really do start hallucinating after 35. Aging is a hell of a thing."

"He is just playing hard to get because she turned him down again, right? It's textbook manipulation."

Every pair of eyes in the room swung toward me, including the male model Maren had just slipped her ring to, who covered his mouth and shook with barely contained laughter.

"All right, bets in! I give him three minutes before he takes it back!"

"One minute. A million on it."

"I'll match half!"

The betting pool on how quickly I'd fold was an annual tradition at these birthday parties by now. Plenty of people resented me for costing them money over the years, and the ones who won never thought any higher of me for it.

I let out a bitter laugh under my breath, cursing myself for being this pathetic. Ten years I'd spent with this woman, and only now was I finally working up the nerve to walk away.

I pulled the resignation letter from my jacket and held it out to her. "Sign it, Ms. Hale. Ten years is long enough."

That single Ms. Hale put a thousand miles between us.

Maren leaned forward in the VIP booth, studying me with an expression I couldn't read. "How many more times are we going to do this routine?

"Last year, you told me you were leaving. I signed off on it. And then you called me from the airport in the pouring rain, barely able to get a word out through the crying.

"The year before that, you said we were done. You hadn't even made it out the front door before you were begging me to forget you'd said it.

"Reid, that's enough. You're not 25 anymore. Don't push your luck just because I've always been soft on you."

She yanked her silk scarf loose in irritation, and the open collar of her blouse exposed hickeys scattered across her collarbone, overlapping and unmistakable. She didn't even bother trying to hide them.

That was Maren all right. She would tell me she loved me in one breath and make sure I suffered in the next.

I'd had my suspicions about someone else for roughly a month. Maren, who never lowered herself for anyone, had gotten into a full-blown fistfight at a nightclub over some aging nightclub host.

When I confronted her afterward, she told me, "He reminded me of you. I couldn't just stand there and watch him get pushed around."

I thought about it for a long time, but apart from us both being in our 30s, I couldn't find a single resemblance.

Then today happened. I was standing behind a curtain when I heard Maren's best friend say, "Roman Callister came back this down on his luck? He's actually working as a paid host? He used to be everyone's dream guy back in the day, Maren. Yours included.

"If your mother hadn't put her foot down, you two would probably have kids old enough to run errands by now. If you're thinking about going back to him, what happens to Reid? That man has given you ten years of his life."

A long pause followed. Then Maren's voice came through, so faint I almost missed it.

"Roman was the one that got away. Once I've worked through what I still feel, I'll settle down with Reid. I'll be good to him. We'll make it work."

She sounded so gentle saying it, nothing like the ruthless woman everyone in business knew her as. I stood there in the shadows and watched everything unfold.

I watched Maren position herself just three steps from Roman, her gaze going soft and lingering in a way she had never once looked at me. I watched her toss the ring I had spent ten years hoping for to some random bystander so Roman wouldn't get the wrong idea.

I watched her place an anonymous million-dollar bottle order for Roman, who couldn't move a single drink on his own, and praise him for being resilient and self-made.

And when my name finally came up, all she had to say was this. "Reid is obsessed with me. He'd never leave. Besides, he's 35, with no money, no car, and no house. Nobody in Harborfield would touch a washed-up kept man like that."

Ten years and more than 3,600 days and nights, and all I amounted to in her eyes was a washed-up kept man.

Maren took a long drag of her cigarette and blew the smoke directly into my face.

"Apologize," she said. "Tell me you're sorry, and I'll pretend none of this happened."

The faint fruit-flavored smoke curled around me. I used to love that smell, but now it made my stomach turn.

She had smoked the same cheap brand for ten years. I only found out a few days ago that their tagline was "One Love for a Lifetime".

Maren Hale's one love for a lifetime was Roman Callister.

My eyes burned and I blinked hard, holding her gaze. "Maren, I told you ten years ago that I would wait for you until I turned 35. You never said yes. So I'll find someone who will."