Keep Your Money, I Quit

I was about to propose. Then I heard my boyfriend of five years call me a gold-digger.

Her? Lawrence said. Gold-digger, through and through. A pause. A low laugh. Fun to keep around. But bring her home? They'd laugh me out of the family.

I had the ring box in my coat pocket. My fingers closed around it. I took two steps back.

I'd paid good money for a finishing school that promised results in writing: land a rich man in a month, marry into money within the year. Five years I'd spent on Lawrence. Five years, and not one ring.

The last thing my instructor ever told us came back to me then.

Girls. If the big prize isn't coming, don't dig your heels in.

Cut your losses.

Your youth is the one thing you'll never buy back.

Chapter 1

I let the door bang.

Out on the balcony, Lawrence turned, saw me, and smiled into the phone. "Gotta run. My little socialite's home."

Then he crossed the room and slipped my coat off my shoulders the way he always did, hanging it in its usual spot like nothing had happened. He knew I'd heard every word. He wasn't going to explain a single one of them.

"So," he said. "What'd they teach you today?"

I knew that voice. Fond, with a thin blade of contempt laid underneath it.

The old me would have played deaf and sweet, exactly the way the course taught. Smile. Lean in. Let it go.

But Irene's voice was still running through my head, soft and even as water. Girls, your youth is precious. If the big prize isn't coming, don't hang yourself on one tree.

I knocked his hand away before it reached my hair.

"What's there to say?" I said. "So you can laugh at me?"

He'd known about the class since the day I signed up. He hadn't objected. He'd just pinched my earlobe like I was a thing he'd bought and kept, and said, "It's good for you. Go find yourself a hobby, Viv. Less for me to worry about."

Everything they taught me, I'd practiced on him. Expensive gifts. Property. Cash.

I'd gotten all of it.

Everything except a ring.

Every time I brought it up, he'd answer in that same tone I'd come to hate. "Good Viv. Take a few more classes. Learn your way into my heart, and maybe I'll marry you."

The classes were over now.

I never did learn my way in.

I was tired.

It had been a while since he'd heard me go cold, and for a second he looked almost surprised. Only a second. Then he slid back into that easy, unbothered version of himself.

"Is that the new trick they taught you?" He tilted his head. "You sound like you used to."

Like I used to. Back in school, when we'd just gotten together. Top of my class, pretty, and proud enough to show it. Everyone who came at me got the same look. Stay back if you're a stranger. Get lost if you're not.

Everyone but him.

Two months after he started chasing me, I let him have me.

He never told me who his family was. He gave me the broke, sweet, scraping-by version of college love instead, and I believed it. Right up until the afternoon I overheard one of his teammates on the phone with him.

"Law, you seriously gonna keep this Vivienne thing going? She still thinks she's dating a guy on three hundred a month. Your account earns more than that in interest before lunch."

A laugh on the other end.

"You lost the dare, man. Cody bet you couldn't play broke and actually land her. Nobody thought you'd pull it off. He's still crying over the bike he handed you."

They'd left the phone on speaker. The locker room was supposed to be empty.

Lawrence's voice came through, thinned out by static. "It's just for fun. Once we graduate and the family starts pushing the merger marriage, the fun's over anyway."

"So what then? You dump her?"

"We'll see how it plays out." A pause. "Just don't run your mouth in front of her."

The teammate hummed his agreement, pulled his shirt on, turned around, and saw me.

Something guilty and panicked crossed his face. He stammered into the phone.

"Uh. So. She I think she just heard all of that."

Chapter 2

I broke it off. No hesitation, no door left open.

Lawrence apologized. Begged. He even hauled the teammate who'd run his mouth over to apologize to my face.

I lost count of how many times he told me he was sorry. Then, for the first time, his composure cracked. "Vivienne. What do you want from me? Whatever it is, I'll give it to you."

I looked straight into his eyes.

"I want the real thing. Sincerity. That's the only thing that actually counts." I held his gaze. "Can you afford that, Lawrence?"

I was handing him a map. I still believed we had a future in us. If he'd given me something real, of course I'd have forgiven him. He was the one man I'd actually fallen for.

But he just went somewhere behind his own eyes and looked at the floor.

"Let me think."

He never got the chance to finish thinking. I stopped having the room to think about him at all.

My father had a stroke. One night, and he was in the ICU.

The money went in like snow into water. The savings were gone almost before I noticed. I worked every shift I could get my hands on, days bleeding into nights, and it still wasn't enough. It was never going to be enough.

I was nearly out of road when Lawrence found me.

"Viv. Let me help. Please."

And it was a relief. He had the name of the best specialist in the city ready before I could even ask for one. He moved my father to a better hospital. He covered every bill. He hired private nurses.

I didn't think to wonder, back then, how he'd known exactly who to call the second I needed it.

The day my father was discharged, he asked me, "Viv. Let's try again."

I looked at how much he seemed to be begging, and I said yes.

I told myself I'd finally earned his sincerity. Then I went headfirst into a love that had started its life as a lie.

Where he was. What he'd eaten. Who he'd walked out the door with. I needed to know all of it, and he let me. His teammates joked we were joined at the hip, and he only smiled.

"Yeah. I never tell her no."

I believed every word of it.

Two years later, we graduated. My love for him had brimmed over that year, and of course I assumed he'd propose at graduation.

What I got instead was one sentence.

"Good Viv. Go find something to do. Stop caging me, yeah?"

It humiliated me. He knew it had. His face stalled for half a second. But he didn't apologize. He just took my hand and gave it a light squeeze.

"Viv, I've got my own life. I can't have you wrapped around me every minute. Be good."

My chest ached, and ached, and ached.

That was the day it finally landed: somewhere along the way I'd become the lesser one in this, and it wasn't even a contest anymore.

I thought about leaving.

But it wasn't a few years ago, when I could say the word and walk. Just the thought of it: no more calls, no more him, the line gone dead for good, and I couldn't pull in a full breath.

Maybe love only ever works like a seesaw. He'd loved me less and less, and I'd gone and fallen for him past the point of saving.

So I taught myself to be smaller. I texted first less often. I waited for him to come to me. When his family started lining up the merger marriage, I didn't let my face do what it wanted to do.

He never once turned those girls down. He only ever said, "I'm keeping the family happy, Viv. Don't read into it."

He took them to dinners. To galas. And not one of them lasted at his side the way I did, so I was far enough gone to call that a comfort.

It's fine. It's fine. He loves me.

But that kind of comfort is made of air. There was nothing on paper, no certificate, nothing at all holding the two of us together.

Chapter 3

After that, I couldn't sit still for a single day.

I was at the end of my rope when I saw it on Instagram. A post one of his teammates had shared.

A finishing school. Results guaranteed.

The teammate had added his own comment. "Didn't expect a place like this to teach so much. Equestrian, golf, piano, sax, even a basic finance track. Honestly tempted to sign up myself."

The replies under it were all people laughing at him.

He answered every one of them, completely straight-faced. "But it actually looks useful. And a steal, the way prices are now. I hear a single riding lesson at Greenwich Valley runs two grand these days." "If my dad hadn't shipped me overseas, if I were back in the city, I'd honestly give it a shot."

I was staring at his comments, somewhere far away, when a new like popped up at the bottom.

Lawrence.

My thumb stopped halfway through a scroll.

I don't know what came over me. I tapped the link.

The very first class, Irene told us, "Never pour your love into a man. And never wait around for him to hand you anything real."

"That's the least reliable thing in the world."

"A man's sincerity is real enough. But it splits a hundred ways, and you'll only ever hold one percent of it. So tell me. What is there to want?"

The first week ended on my fourth anniversary with Lawrence.

A girl from my class, Sienna, kept at me. "Vivi, stop being so sweet about it. Back when you thought your sugar daddy was some broke student, cheap flowers and a homemade cake, fine, you swooned. But you know what he's worth now. You're telling me you're not getting anything out of it for yourself?"

I'd never done anything like that. It felt wrong.

She caught on faster than I did. "What's wrong with it? Look at everything you've poured in. Your time. Your energy. Your youth. None of it's free. Either cut him loose and find a better deal, or you'd better start collecting."

I didn't want to cut Lawrence loose.

So for the first time, I let him buy me something. A bag, the kind with money written all over it.

That night I lay awake until the sky went gray. It should have felt like winning. It felt like I'd handed over something I couldn't get back.

Sometime past midnight, he must have thought I was asleep. He got up and went out to the balcony to call someone.

In the dark I almost missed it, but for a second something almost lost surfaced in his face.

I didn't get the chance to wonder about it. What he said next dropped me straight through ice.

"That class actually works. She's stopped clinging to me. She even asked me for a bag. A real one."

"If she were truly all in, wanting nothing back, I'd probably feel a little guilty, stringing her along like this."

"But splitting up doesn't sit right with me. Not yet. I sleep better with her where I can see her."

"And now? I hand her money, she takes it, she stays put and quiet. Everybody's happy."

"Good arrangement, don't you think?"

Whoever was on the other end must have agreed, because he laughed softly and dropped his head.

He hung up and came back toward the bed.

I closed my eyes before I'd decided to.

The mattress dipped under his weight, and my heart went down with it, all the way to the bottom.

Chapter 4

For the first time, I felt something like hate for the man I'd loved so long.

After that, there was no putting it back.

His sincerity was worthless. Fine. I'd take the things he had that were worth something instead.

Bags and jewelry that ran six figures. The place at Violet Hill. A car they only made a handful of in the world.

He started handling me more carelessly too, like there was nothing he could do to me that money couldn't smooth over. At first he hesitated. The longer it went, the easier it got for him.

I caught him on a date with the girl his family had picked out, and he didn't bother explaining. A six-figure gift was sitting at my door the next morning.

At a dinner once, that same girl talked down to me across the table, slow and sweet, and he watched it happen and said nothing at all. The next day a car arrived with my name on the title.

I had less and less of myself left over for him anyway. There was too much to learn. Equestrian, piano, dance. Networking, finance, etiquette.

I could barely keep up. Some days I almost forgot why I'd signed up in the first place.

But there was always a voice underneath it.

No.

Vivienne.

It isn't supposed to go like this.

So when the last class let out, Sienna asked me, "Vivi, the course is done. If you still haven't locked your man down, you want to look at someone new? I know some good ones."

I shook my head. And for the first time, I broke the one rule they'd drilled into us. A woman never proposes. I bet everything I had left on putting Lawrence and me back on solid ground.

"No," I said. "I'm going to propose to him."

If I hadn't come home to that phone call, I might have actually gone through with it.

Maybe courage only ever lasts a second.

After his words landed on me like a bat to the back of the head, the whole idea of proposing was just gone.

Maybe a thing pushed far enough always swings back the other way. The little flare of nerve that love had pumped into me popped, and I looked at Lawrence's gentle, well-mannered mask and felt something I hadn't expected.

Relief.

"Lawrence. We're done."

The room stayed quiet for a long time after that.

Maybe the last of what I felt for him had finally run dry. I looked up at him without a trace of fear.

He was studying me too, sorting the real from the bluff.

Then he laughed under his breath. He'd made up his mind about which one it was.

"Done?" He tilted his head. "Viv, is this another one of your little classroom tricks?"

"Have to say, the school's not as good as they claim. What kind of place teaches you to dump me?"

He pinched my earlobe and pressed a kiss to my cheek, barely paying attention.

"Quit playing. I've got somewhere to be tonight, so no fifth anniversary, sorry. I'll send money over in a bit. Buy yourself something nice."

Then he stood, pulled on his coat, and walked out without once looking back.

The door shut behind him.

Bzz.

A message.

I opened it.

Chapter 5