He flipped it over to see the personalization. His name and our engagement date.
“You didn’t have to do this,” he said, still staring at the watch in amazement.
“I wanted to.”
My lips pressed against his. Public displays of affection once made me cringe with discomfort, but now I welcomed the intimacy, craved the sensation of his chest anchored to mine.
A week later, I was grabbing my morning latte from the coffee shop closest to my apartment. As I waited at the pickup counter, I had the definite feeling of being watched, not an unusual occurrence in the city, but this time it felt different, similar to the strange sensation you experience in a parking lot at night, an instinctual warning.
Across the café, a woman sat at a circular corner table, staring at me. The longer I looked at her, the more familiar she appeared. Recognition soon clicked. She’d been at the Italian restaurant on the night of our engagement party. I remembered her striking auburn hair, the sentiment of seeing a past version of myself through her.
She strode toward me, coffee in hand. “Tippi Rathbone?”
At this point, I was curious. Maybe this was more than a coincidental run-in. Maybe she was a follower on social media, or we’d met before at one of Ava’s parties.
“We need to talk about Oliver,” she said. Something in the way his name plunked from her mouth felt alarming.
“I’m sorry, have we met?” My throat suddenly felt like it was constricting shut.
“It’s important,” she said, her eyes cutting across the crowded entryway, taking notice of everyone within earshot.
“I’m late for a meeting,” I lied, exaggerating my urgency. “I have to go—”
“Does he still have that blue convertible? The Alpine?”
The specificity of the detail startled me. Oliver’s car was rare and his most prized possession. I took a step forward, tightening my grip on the warm drink in my hand.
“Who are you?”
“You need to be careful,” she said. “I’m afraid he’s doing it to you now.”
My instincts told me to turn away from this woman, but something in her expression, in the intensity of her stare, forced me to stay. “Doing what to me?”
“Making you fall in love with him. Proclaiming you’re the most important person in the world. In his world. I bet you’re starting to wonder how you made it this far in life without someone. Failing to imagine what a future would be without him.”
On the surface, her rant felt personal, an invasion of my own emotional space. But I couldn’t deny that every statement this stranger rattled off rang true.
“He made me feel that way at first,” she said, her expression somehow appearing even more vulnerable. “And it ruined my life.”
“Oliver is my fiancé,” I said, taking a step back. “He wouldn’t do anything to hurt me.”
My mind raced, trying to recall who this woman was. How she fit into my world before the first time I remembered seeing her at the restaurant. I reexamined everything Oliver had told me about his life beforeme.
The realization came as swift and steady as a hammer being dropped. “You’re Danielle.”
She balked. “He told you about me?”
More accurately, he’d told me everything she’d done.
They’d met at a charity event for the American Diabetes Association; Danielle had been living with type 1 diabetes since she was a child. They married young. She worked as an artist while he accepted an entry-level position in sales. About a year into their marriage, she started acting erratically. She’d leave and not return for days at a time, flake on commissioned art projects. One night, he returned home after work to find their apartment trashed, the furniture ruined with globs of paint, and manic drawings on the walls.
Danielle was outside on their thirteenth-story balcony, staring at the concrete streets below in a trancelike haze. He pleaded with her for over an hour to come inside so he could take her to an emergency room.
Oliver remained vague about the specific diagnosis she received, but she was prescribed a slew of different medications, some of which interacted with her insulin injections, and it became an ongoing struggle trying to find the right pharmaceutical fix. Still, he stayed with her, out of love and duty. He endured more violent outbursts, increasingly paranoid ideation. Finally, after she refused her most recent treatment plan, he was left with no choice but to file for divorce.
He’d said it was the hardest decision he ever had to make.
I charged past her and exited the coffee shop. When she followed me onto the sidewalk, I spun around. “Stay away from me!”
