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

Five years I'd spent with Caleb Henson, the two of us pinching every penny until we'd finally scraped together the down payment on a cramped little fixer-upper.

The day we moved out, I happened to catch a transfer record on his phone. Fifty million dollars, sent in a single wire to a woman named Gabriella Henson. The memo read: birthday gift for my baby.

I froze where I stood.

He didn't explain. He only said, flat as a closed door, "You went through my phone?"

It was only later that I learned Caleb was the sole heir of the Henson Group, and that I couldn't even set foot in his world.

He never took me to nice restaurants. Too extravagant, he'd say.

On anniversaries, all I got were handmade cards. That's what counts, he'd say.

I believed it for five years. Until I saw with my own eyes that he'd rented out an entire island to put on a fireworks show for her.

I didn't argue. I just packed my bags in silence.

Caleb blocked the doorway. "You're just going to walk out like that?"

I looked at him, steady. "I put thirty thousand into the down payment on this place. Cash me out. Not a cent less."

"Do you think I'm an idiot?"

When I asked it, Caleb was leaning against the shoe cabinet, still holding the moving contract the company had dropped off.

He glanced down at it. Said nothing.

I asked again. "Five years. Every day I worked until eleven, midnight. Weekends I ran around tile and hardware showrooms, haggling with vendors for half an hour to save thirty bucks on flooring. And what were you doing? Wiring some woman fifty million?"

He lifted his eyes to me.

"That's enough."

He said it.

"Enough of what?"

"Enough of this little tantrum."

I stared at him.

In five years he'd spoken to me countless times. Tender, impatient, coaxing. Not once had he used that tone.

Like he was talking to a stranger.

Caleb set the contract down on the entry table.

He straightened a cuff. I'd never seen those cufflinks before, deep navy, set with what was probably the real thing.

"That apartment," he started. "You did put in thirty thousand. I'll have someone send it to you."

"Right now," I said, "I want you to tell me what you've actually been thinking all these years."

He was quiet for a few seconds.

"Nothing, really."

"Caleb!"

He sighed.

He slid his hands into his pockets and leaned back against the wall, his whole body loose, at ease.

"You really want the truth?"

I nodded.

"Fine."

He said, "The truth is, I never planned to go the distance with you. Not from the start."

I thought I'd cry. I didn't.

Once you've spent a whole night turning a thing over in your head, the road to tears gets sealed off.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Being with you was just about having someone to share a life with."

He tilted his head. "You're steady. Low-maintenance. You don't make a fuss. Living with you meant I didn't have to deal with all the messy stuff. But if you're asking whether I loved you"

He paused, as if choosing his words.

"I never did. Not once, start to finish."

I waited for the rest. For something like but it changed later, or being together so long made it different.

He didn't say it.

"Then why save up for an apartment with me?" I asked.

"That apartment." The words came easy. "You really thought I needed to save?"

No.

He didn't.

The number he'd casually tossed away could have bought ten of our cramped little fixer-uppers.

He'd crammed into a rental with me, eaten sandwiches, walked an extra mile to dodge a few dollars in delivery fees. Not because he was poor.

Because he thought I wasn't worth more.

"You were playing me," I said.

He didn't deny it.

"From the very first day, when you added me at the subway entrance, to when you told me you came from out of town too, that your family was ordinary and you wanted to build a life in this city with me. All of it. You made it up?"

The conditions are real enough, he said. But Im not. As for the rest

He stopped again. Longer this time.

I thought he might finally say something human.

If you have to call it me playing you, he said, his tone flat, then fine. Call it that.

And Gabriella?

The name finally moved something in his face.

She has nothing to do with this, he said.

You wired her fifty million for her birthday.

I have money.

So your feelings for her are real. Mine were fake.

This time he didnt answer.

But sometimes not answering is an answer.

I looked down at my hands.

A full day of packing had left grime in the creases of my knuckles. There was a small cut on the web of my right thumb, sliced open by the corner of some box, I couldnt say which.

I asked him my last question.

In these five years, was there even one single day you imagined spending your whole life with me?

Caleb looked at me.

That look told me the answer.

Someone knocked outside.

I opened the door.

A woman stood there.

White cashmere coat, hair loosely pinned up, a pair of tiny diamond studs in her ears. She looked too clean to be real.

She saw me and smiled.

Hello, she said. Im Gabriella Henson.

I said nothing.

Her gaze went past my shoulder into the apartment, landing somewhere behind me, then drew back and settled on me again.

Top to bottom, bottom to top.

So youre the one who bought the place with him?

She went on. Do you know what the first thing he said to me when he came back was?

He said, that girls hands are covered in dirt.

She paused, as if she found the joke delightful.

My hands had in fact been covered in dirt.

A full day of packing. Black under my nails, a dried scab next to that cut on my thumb.

She glanced down at my hands. Just once. Then lifted her eyes to mine.

You must be exhausted, she said. Playing house with a pauper for five whole years.

Footsteps came from behind me.

Caleb walked out of the apartment and stopped half a step behind me.

Gabriella looked at him, her tone shifting into something coaxing. You never told me. If Id known you were living in a place like this, Id have just had the driver wait downstairs.

Caleb said nothing.

Gabriella turned back to me, then leaned in a little closer and dropped her voice. But that low voice carried every word, crisp and clear.

You didnt actually think he loved you, did you?

I gripped the doorknob tight.

He told me, she said, soft and unhurried, that you were just too sweet. Youd believe anything he said. He spent five years pretending to be poor right in front of you, and you never once caught on. Every time he told me that part, he could barely stop laughing.

She tilted her head, watching for my reaction.

That was when Caleb laughed.

In all the time Id known him, I had never once heard him make a sound like that.

Gabriella was laughing too.

The two of them laughed at each other, with me standing in between.

Gabriella pulled her coat tighter and looked at Caleb. How much longer? The drivers waiting downstairs.

Caleb said, Five minutes.

He was still standing behind me when he said it, but his voice was aimed toward the door.

I stepped aside.

Gabriella glanced at me, didnt come in, and turned toward the elevator.

Her heels touched down on the tile, soft, each step landing steady.

At the elevator she looked back once.

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.

I left the office a little before eleven, the overtime finally behind me.

I stopped at a convenience store for a bottle of water, twisted the cap off, drank a couple of mouthfuls, and headed for the subway.

At the intersection, my legs gave out without warning.

I reached for the lamppost and missed. My whole body pitched toward the ground.

The back of my head cracked against the curb. The world went black, my ears ringing with a low, swelling hum.

When I came to, there was a white ceiling above me and the sharp bite of antiseptic in my nose.

Someone was talking nearby.

"She's awake."

The voice was familiar.

I turned my head toward it.

Caleb was sitting in the chair by the bed, his suit jacket draped over his knees, the top button of his collar undone.

He was watching me with an expression I'd never seen on him before.

I couldn't name it. His brows were drawn tight, his lips parted, but no sound came out.

I asked, "Why are you here?"

"The hospital called me."

He said, "I'm still your emergency contact."

I didn't answer.

It was true. It was my phone. I'd just never gotten around to changing it.

Caleb leaned forward, forearms braced on his knees. He glanced down at his own hands, then lifted his eyes to me again.

"I didn't know you'd push yourself this hard."

He said it quietly.

I just stared at him.

"If I'd known, that three hundred thousand, I wouldn't have"

"Wouldn't have what?"

He paused.

"Wouldn't have given it the way I did."

A nurse came in, took my temperature, and left.

Then it was just the two of us in the room.

Caleb stood and pulled the blanket up a little higher over my feet.

"Every time you got sick these five years," he started, his voice lower than I remembered, "I really was worried. That part was real."

I said nothing.

"Some of it, when we were together, was real," he said. "I never meant to"

"What are you trying to say?"

He looked at me.

"I'm sorry."

He said it.

And once those words were out, something seemed to press down on him, his shoulders sinking.

"When I gave you that three hundred thousand, I just wanted a clean break. I never thought you'd stay in this city. I never thought your office would be so close to mine. I never thought you'd"

"I'd what?"

I asked. "Nearly die on the street right across from your company?"

He didn't answer.

"I read your test results," he said. "You've barely been eating, haven't you. Your hemoglobin's dangerously low."

"None of your business."

He let that one go.

A few seconds passed before he spoke again. "If you'd let me, I can take care of the apartment for you."

I looked at him.

He said, "I'll add a little more. You could buy something small in a better neighborhood. Then you wouldn't have to rent, you wouldn't have to"

"Are you finished?"

He stopped.

"If you're finished, get out."

Caleb didn't move. He just sat there, looking at me.

"I never thought it would come to this," he said. "I thought you'd take the money and go home, or start over in another city. I didn't know you'd stay, that you'd live right beside your office, working until eleven or midnight every night, not even eating properly."

"Well, now you know," I said. "So you can get out."

He stood, looking down at me from the side of the bed.

I pushed myself up to sit, the IV line still taped into the back of my hand.

He didn't stop me. He just stood there.

"I said get out. Did you not hear me?"

Caleb looked at me, his lips moving slightly.

I raised my hand and slapped him.

The sound was sharp and clean, my palm stinging afterward.

His face turned to the side, his hair falling across half of one eye. He didn't move. He didn't cover his cheek.

Are you done? he asked.

Get out!