The Breakup Dare

I stared at the oversized glass on the table, my face draining of all color and my voice trembling. "Ellery, you know my stomach's bad. Mixing three kinds of liquor like that could kill someone. Do you really want to do this to me?"

Ellery turned to glance at me with a slight frown, sighed, and walked over. Without any warning, she grabbed my jaw and forced my mouth open. I struggled, but she poured the contents down my throat anyway.

My throat and stomach burned like they were on fire. A few seconds later, the room began to spin. The last thing I registered before everything went black was the mocking smile spreading across Theo's face. He had done it on purpose.

...

The video on my phone was still playing on loop, but I had already calmed down.

I opened every social media app in silence, deleting the happy announcements from the night before one by one. Then, I booked a moving service to come to the apartment. After that, I opened the messaging app, pulled up the breakup message Ellery had just sent, and replied: [Okay. Let's break up.]

I put the phone down and went into the bathroom. Calmly, I lathered my hands with shower gel. The ring was on too tight, and this was the only way to get it off. After struggling with it for what felt like forever, it finally slipped free.

I looked at the ring on my palm. I had made it with my own hands. At this moment, all I could do was laugh at myself.

Three different gemstones were set into the band, and each one was Ellery's favorite. I had designed and crafted a matching pair specifically for the proposal.

"Ellery, you once told me these three gemstones were your favorites. Ruby for wealth, sapphire for love, topaz for something precious. So, I spent a long time finding six perfect stones and set them into our matching rings. I wanted to tell you that our love is my most precious treasure."

The emotion from the night before was still vivid, but now, all of it had turned to nothing.

I looked up at my own wrecked reflection in the bathroom mirror, thinking to myself that love and happiness were nothing but a joke.

Ellery and Theo did not come back until the middle of the night. A whole group of their friends trailed in behind them. The moment the door opened, they walked right into the movers packing up the last box.

Ellery froze at the sight of the apartment stripped bare, then her brows furrowed sharply. "Reid, what are you doing?"

It was not until one of the movers passed by her that she snapped out of it and blocked his path. "Wait. Who said you could take anything out of here?"

I heard the commotion and came out. A crowd of people was at the doorway. "I did. Ms. Whitfield, we've already broken up. Is there a problem with me moving my things?"

The second Theo saw me, he clapped a hand over his mouth, his eyes glittering with barely concealed delight. "Oh no, what happened to you? You look terrible. Don't tell me you're actually upset over a dare?"

Ellery looked like she had just heard the funniest thing in the world. "Over a dare? Reid, can you stop being so childish?"

Theo pouted and draped an arm over her shoulder, taunting, "Your man's got a fragile little heart. He's not like us. You'd better hurry up and apologize."

Ellery looked me up and down with complete indifference and let out a scoff. "It was just a game. Fine, I'll apologize. There. It's over."

A few of the friends behind her chimed in, "Come on, it's not that big a deal. Is this really worth all this? Ellery had too much to drink. You know how she gets when she's drunk."

That was when I noticed the watch on Theo's wrist. It was the same one Ellery had kept in her shopping cart. It was worth over a hundred thousand dollars, and she had bought it for Theo without blinking.

Yet after I gave her 880,000 dollars worth of wedding gifts as her family had requested, she claimed her family was struggling financially and could not even manage 30,000 dollars worth of gifts.

When my parents raised a mild concern, she turned around and snapped at me, accusing me of having no sincerity and nickel-and-diming the marriage.

Her heart had never been with me.

I let out a bitter laugh and held up my hand, pointing to the bare finger where my wedding ring should have been. "My ring's gone. Do whatever you want with yours."

That finally rattled her. She stepped closer, her frown deepening. "I already apologized. Theo was worried about you, so he came all the way back with me just to check on you. Why do you have to keep being so unreasonable about this?"