I Saved Every Penny for Our Cramped Apartment, He Bought an Island for His First Love

I heard the elevator arrive.

A soft ding.

She stepped inside.

The hallway went quiet again.

Caleb was still standing behind me.

I waited a few seconds. He said nothing.

Finally, I turned to look at his face.

The smile was gone now.

"What were you smiling about?"

I asked him.

He didn't answer. His gaze drifted toward the elevator at the end of the hall.

That direction.

I stared at him.

Caleb looked at me, picked up the moving contract, folded it twice, and slid it into his coat pocket.

"Take care of yourself."

He said.

He turned to go.

"Caleb."

He paused.

Leaning against the doorframe, I wiped the dust off my hand onto my pants and gave a small laugh.

Even I knew the laugh came out wrong, but I was past caring.

"I don't want to see either of you again," I said. "Either one of you."

He looked at me.

"Fine."

He left.

I didn't look at him before the elevator doors closed.

The next day I went to the bank. Three hundred thousand had landed, not a cent short.

When Caleb decided to do something cleanly, he really did it cleanly.

I rented an apartment near the office, sixty-five hundred a month, first and last plus a deposit.

The night I moved in, I sat by the window and ran the numbers. Three hundred thousand, minus rent and living expenses, left a little over two hundred.

Nowhere near enough to buy a decent place in this city.

But I could save.

These two hands had scraped together a down payment in five years once. They could do it again.

A couple of buns on the way to work, the fifteen-dollar lunch combo at the office cafeteria, a bowl of noodles with an egg at night.

The days weren't much different from before, except I no longer had to run around hardware stores, no longer had to crouch on the floor comparing tile prices down to the cent.

In the office break room, people gossiped that the office building across the street had been leased out entirely by a company under the Henson Group.

I didn't join in. I carried my cup back to my desk.

That noon I went downstairs to grab lunch, and while waiting at the light, I glanced up and saw the French restaurant across the street.

The glass wall was bright, clear enough to see the window seats inside.

Gabriella sat there, a plate plated to look like a flower in front of her.

Across from her sat Caleb, in a charcoal sweater, sleeves rolled to his forearms, a glass of red wine in his hand.

The light held for over sixty seconds.

I stood at the crosswalk, gripping a convenience-store plastic bag, a thirteen-dollar chicken-rice plate inside.

Gabriella saw me first.

She was cutting into something, her wrist pausing for a moment, then she smiled at me and lifted her wine glass, tipping it lightly through the air in my direction.

Caleb followed her line of sight.

He saw me.

One glance, then he turned back.

Gabriella was still smiling.

The light turned green.

I smiled too.

Five years ago he'd added me on iMessage at the subway entrance, saying, Hi, I live around here too.

He'd played broke in front of me for five years, played it so earnestly, so hard.

And only today did I finally find it funny.

Back at the office, I gave the chicken-rice plate a spin in the microwave and opened it at my desk.

The drumstick was small, the sauce a little too salty.

I stirred it up and finished it, bite by bite.

The lights in the building across the street were still on.

I looked down at my hand. The little cut at the base of my thumb had scabbed over, but the scar was still there.

Before long, this scar would be gone too.

I opened my laptop, pulled up the proposal for the project on my plate, and went through it from start to finish.

My supervisor kept saying that finishing this project would earn me the quarterly bonus, probably a little over twenty thousand.