Amiah Tate
I'd been married to Jackson George for ten years.
I'd met every single one of his girlfriends from our time together.
Whenever he got bored and wanted someone new, I was the perfect excuse he used to break up with them:
“If you marry me, you'll end up just like her. Eventually, we'll get so familiar that there's no spark left.”
On our wedding anniversary, I was wiping the tears of the college girl he'd just dumped, while he was out watching a movie with his new girlfriend.
After going through a whole pack of tissues, it felt like I was looking at a younger version of myself.
So, I asked Jackson for a divorce.
For once, he seemed genuinely confused. “You're not gonna wait a little longer? I might just settle down for good.”
I just gave a faint smile and didn't answer. I booked a flight across the ocean.
I couldn't wait for you to change. I had to leave first.
...
It takes a saint to be married to a player.
That thought popped into my head as the tissues in my hand grew thinner.
The girl sitting across from me was Sophia Stewart, a senior in college.
She'd been crying for two hours straight since she walked in.
Their whole honeymoon phase with Jackson had only lasted a month.
Hardly long enough to be worth crying her makeup off.
I opened my mouth to try and console her, but she suddenly stared at me, her eyes red.
“He said I was a little like you. Looking at you now, I can see it.”
I froze. None of Jackson's other girlfriends had ever said that.
Sophia sniffled, wiping the corner of her eye.
Cast aside after she'd served her purpose, her voice dripped with sarcasm.
“I don't need your pity. You're way more pathetic than I am.”
She wasn't wrong, was she?
Everyone in Harbor City knew Jackson George had the perfect wife.
A wife so perfect she'd get cheated on again and again, and still have to comfort his exes for him.
I called every girl he got with after we were married an “ex.”
I'd long since thrown away any pride I had as his actual wife.
My phone buzzed. It was a text from Jackson.
[Jackson: Not done yet? The movie's about to start.]
I flipped my phone face down on the table and met Sophia's eyes, which had somehow gotten even redder.
“Tell me what you want as compensation. Anything. I'll help you get it.”
I'd said that line so many times I sounded like an HR manager handling a layoff.
She scoffed and shot up from her seat.
“I don't want anything.”
I sighed. “You should take something.”
Money, a car, an apartment—something tangible you can hold onto would be good.
Her gaze turned even colder.
She lifted her hand and slowly poured the cold coffee over my head.
“I'm pregnant.”
“And I'm keeping it.”
I stared at her, speechless, forgetting what I was about to say.
I forced a bitter, barely-there smile onto my face.
Jackson, in the end, you didn't keep a single one of your promises to me.