When I Died on Love Anniversary

If Mason hadn’t tried to help me, I might have been able to get up on my own. But his half-hearted attempts at care only led me to fall a third time. By now, I could barely feel the pain in my body. The repeated falls had finally jolted me awake.

For five years, I had been blinded by Mason’s fake affection. It all started when I was a freshman, lost on our massive campus. Mason swooped in like a knight, took my heavy bags and handed me a tissue to wipe away my sweat. I was smitten by the seemingly perfect, considerate senior. Some people called me shameless, but Mason never turned me down and always seemed to give mixed signals.

He had invited me for midnight snacks after breakfast, given me cute toys as gifts and sweeten the deal whenever he had messed up. But once I became his official girlfriend, things changed. He had gone hot and cold and whenever I felt hurt, he’d throw in some sweet gesture to make up for it.

The beach date was supposed to be his way of making up for forgetting our fifth anniversary. A little slap and then a “makeup” date had become his routine way of controlling me. I kept swinging between his coldness and sweetness, always finding excuses for him—he worked hard, was under a lot of pressure. But now, I saw it for what it was: manipulation.

Mason had always been pretty distant and not the best at expressing his feelings, but I convinced myself he was doing alright by me. Then I saw how he treated Naomi and I realized just how unfair he was.

There I was, with my knees bleeding. Naomi helped me with a tissue to stop the bleeding but then suddenly claimed she needed to buy medicine. A moment later, she pretended to be dizzy and collapsed. Mason rushed to her side, holding her gently and brushing her hair away from her face with a look of genuine concern.

“Where’s the nearest pharmacy? You’ve been walking in high heels—your feet must be sore,” he said, his voice full of worry.

Then he turned to me, dismissing my pain. “Jessica’s fine. It’s just a little bleeding. She can manage.”

He even told Naomi to stay away from me, as if I might somehow hurt her. Even though I had made up my mind to end things, his words made me feel like I was falling into an icy void.

My palm was deeply cut, with shell fragments still stuck in it. My knee was a mess, with blood streaming down my calf and staining the sand. The rest of my exposed skin was covered in large bruises. To Mason, though, it was just “a little bleeding.”

A passerby, clearly moved by my state, helped me to a chair and went off to get iodine and gauze.

Naomi shot Mason a look and said sarcastically, “The nearest pharmacy is just 200 meters away. It should take less than five minutes to get there and back. You’re a big guy—don’t tell me you can’t walk there?!”

Mason realized he had overstepped but couldn’t bring himself to apologize. With a cold expression, he grabbed the cotton swab from a young lady’s hand and pressed it against my knee, applying way too much pressure.

I flinched and tried to pull away and he gave me this look as if to say, “See, she doesn’t want me to touch it.” It was like he was waiting for me to prove him right.

I quickly cleaned the wound and managed to stop the bleeding. I was about to call a taxi to the hospital when I noticed Naomi running over, excitedly holding a camera.

“Jessica, don’t be upset! At least we got some great photos!” she chirped.

Mason chimed in, “Yeah, Jessica, you’ve always wanted to be my model. Now it’s finally happening!”

Naomi pulled up the photo gallery and looked through it, her expression changing from curiosity to embarrassment. She finally said, “Her poses look amazing, but why didn’t you get any photos of Jessica?”

She continued flipping through the gallery, clearly disappointed and then turned to Mason with a frown. “Your skills are all over the place! You got a great shot of me, but her beautiful swimsuit was totally wasted!!”