Chapter 1

My girlfriend, Aria, never had a nice look for me.

When I gave her presents on her birthday, she called me a psychopath.

Whenever I stepped up to pay the bill after our dates, she would lash out with venom:

"You're just doing this because you want to get me into a hotel room tonight, aren't you?"

I thought about breaking up with her more than once, but all our friends urged me to hang in there.

"Aria just has an avoidant attachment style because of her messed-up childhood. She just doesn't know how to express her feelings."

So we eventually got married. I paid for her to take the violin lessons she always wanted, spending year after year trying to teach her how to love.

Until she hooked up with the very violin teacher I hired for her.

She even put down my phone number at the abortion clinic and charged the entire procedure to my linked credit card.

Only then did I finally understand. It wasn't that she didn't know how to love.

She just took me for an idiot with a deep wallet.

On the other end of the line, Aria's voice was dripping with impatience:

"You were the one who wanted to marry me, remember? Are you calling right now because you're having second thoughts?"

"Whatever. If you really love me, why can't you just turn a blind eye? It's not like I'm keeping the baby anyway. I'm getting rid of it."

Before I could get a single word out, the line went dead, leaving only the droning dial tone in my ear.

A suffocating weight stuck in my throat, choking the breath right out of me. In the end, all I could do was let out a bitter laugh and smash my phone against the floor.

Aria didn't even bother to offer an excuse or a fake explanation.

Not even a lazy, made-up lie about having too much to drink.

A few days ago, when Aria started dry-heaving constantly, I had called a doctor over to our place to check on her.

She ended up kicking the doctor out of the house.

Back then, I just assumed she was being paranoid again, thinking I had "ulterior motives," so I didn't question it.

Besides, before we tied the knot, Aria had laid down three ground rules. Rule number one was absolutely no kids.

I had gotten a vasectomy years ago.

A pregnancy was the absolute last thing that would have ever crossed my mind.

Now I finally got it. I was just a blind fool.

I was sterile, but that didn't stop her from stepping out on me.

I tried to squeeze out a few tears, but my eyes stayed bone dry.

A few days earlier, my mom's condition had taken a sudden turn for the worse. I pulled every string I had, calling every doctor friend in my contacts.

Every single one of them told me the same thing: she didn't have much time left.

They told me to stay by her side and make her last days count.

I didn't even have the luxury of grieving. All my energy went into figuring out how to make her final moments peaceful and painless.

And aside from me, the person my mom cared about most in this world was Aria.

It was well past midnight. Worried about waking her, I opted to send a quick text instead of calling.

Almost instantly, Aria rang back.

In all the years we'd been married, the times Aria had actually called me could be counted on one hand.

So the moment the screen lit up, a surge of raw, fragile hope nearly broke me.

Standing in the sterile hospital corridor, phone pressed to my ear, I was just about to push open the door to my mom's room.

"Aria, Mom's really bad. Can you come by tomorrow morning to see her?"

Her response was nothing like what I had hoped for.

Aria's voice shrieked through the speaker, venomous and loud:

"Are you out of your mind, Henry? Why the hell are you sending me such depressing crap in the middle of the night?"

Her tone was vicious enough to tear someone apart.

"She's your mom, not mine. I don't owe her a deathbed vigil. Message me again and you're blocked."

With that, she hung up.

Inside the room, my mom lay pale against the sheets.

The lights were off, so she couldn't see, but hearing the door open alongside the faint echo of Aria's voice, she struggled to push herself up.

"Is that Aria? I knit you two some sweaters with my own hands. Come, take a look."

The contrast between the screaming in my ear and the fragile woman before me was too much to bear. I lost control of my voice, managing only a weak, hollow, "Mom."

Faint and drained, the sound must have struck her as disappointment, or maybe disgust.

A helpless look crossed my mom's face.

"I made them a while back. I was going to save them for Aria's birthday. Don't worry, they haven't caught any of my sickness or bad luck."

"Did Aria come...?"

I couldn't bear to hear another word. I rushed forward and wrapped my arms tightly around her.

She needed her rest, so after holding her for a moment, I carefully tucked the blanket around her shoulders.

I turned and lay down on the small cot beside her bed, spending the entire night staring at the ceiling, wondering how the hell Aria and I had lasted five whole years.

When we first started dating, we were college seniors.

Aria confessed her feelings to me, and I said yes.