The day the bandages came off my eyes, he never showed up; instead, I received a message from his childhood sweetheart.
“You may have saved him, but don’t try to hold it over his head. He doesn’t have time to pick you up, so make your own way home.”
I called him, only for him to hang up the instant his phone rang.
When I finally saw him again three days later, he demanded to know why I had sent such a message to slander his precious childhood sweetheart.
I watched the aura of fortune above his head hemorrhage away.
Suddenly, accepting that I was the heroine of a melodramatic angst novel did not seem so difficult after all.