My Dearest Beautiful Cousin

ANNABELLE

Annabelle couldn't wait to say YES. They had been in the restaurant for the past hour, eating food she couldn't taste, and she had felt like a woman on the edge of something wonderful. Annabelle had to give Jack his credit; he knew how to keep the suspense.

"I'll be right back," Jack said, standing, patting his jacket pocket the way men do when they're checking for a ring box, and Annabelle Wade smiled into her wineglass and thought, so it's really happening tonight. She'd suspected for weeks that Jack was going to propose. He had been carrying a careful energy that she'd found suspicious.

The dinner had been exactly what she'd wanted it to be, which made her further believe her theory.

Osei's, where they'd had their first date. She'd worn a green dress and knocked over a water glass, and he'd laughed in the easy way that had made her think she had chosen the right man. She'd asked him earlier tonight if he remembered that night, and he'd said yes with a complicated smile. Annabelle did not read too much into it, she thought he must be nervous.

She believed in him and had built a great deal on that foundation.

"You seem far away," Jack said some minutes into the second course, tilting his head with the attentive frown he used when he wanted her to feel seen. He was excellent at it, so much so that she found it endearing.

"I'm right here," she said and smiled. "I'm just happy."

"Yeah?" He smiled back, as if proud of himself.

"Yeah." She reached across the table and touched his hand. "I really am."

He squeezed her fingers and looked down at the table for a moment, and she watched his jaw tighten slightly, watched him swallow something down. She also interpreted it as a sign that he was overcome and gathering himself before a significant moment. She found it unbearably sweet that Jack Mensah, who walked into boardrooms like he owned the air in them, was nervous to ask her a question she'd already decided to say yes to.

"I wanted tonight to be good," he mumbled.

"It is," she said. "It really is."

He nodded slowly, his hand still around hers. She looked at him across the candlelight and the good crystal. She felt the warm and settled

"I've been thinking about us," Jack said. "About what we have been building and what comes next."

Her heart skipped a beat. "Me too," she breathed.

He opened his mouth, then closed it. Reached for his wineglass, but didn't drink from it. "There's something I need to tell you, Ann."

"Okay," she teased lightly.

He exhaled, rubbed the back of his neck and looked up at her, and there it was again, that expression she had been noticing for weeks and calling tenderness. "I'll be right back," he said, standing and straightening his jacket. He left his phone on the table.

She did not notice the phone at first, her mind was too busy mentally rehearsing her reaction. Her goal was to appear somewhat surprised and a little emotional, yet composed, creating a memorable story for later.

She was smiling at nothing when the phone screen lit up with a text.

Miss me already?

The name above the text read Mia with a love emoji attached. Annabelle set down her wineglass with great care.

Mia, whom Jack had introduced six months ago with his hand easy on her shoulder. His childhood friend from his old neighborhood. The same Mia who Annabelle had folded into her life with the open-handed generosity of a woman in love. Why would Jake be missing Mia on the night he meant to propose?

She stared at the message. Curiosity got the best of her, so she picked up the phone. No password. Of course, no password. Why would a man who had thoroughly taken you for a fool bother with a password? Hoping to God she was just being paranoid for nothing, she opened the thread.

Annabelle read backwards, quickly, the way you rip off a bandage, and what she found was six months of messages that rearranged the last six months of her life into something unrecognizable. She read until her vision went strange at the edges. Then a new message stopped her entirely.

Have you told her yet?

No. And she waited. Two responses came in immediately, one after the other.

Ugh, babe, just do it.

I wish I could see her face when you tell her salary is being cut. She's so stupid she actually believes the company is in financial crisis.

Annabelle couldn't believe her eyes, she laughed maniacally, placing her hand over her chest to ease the pain that erupted there.

The company that she had built from a good idea and a G****e Drive folder into something with clients and a reputation and a functioning back end, her company, with Jack's name on the door because she loved him and love had made her catastrophically generous with things that should have had her name on them. It was all a lie.

Her steady hands impressed her, but her mind wasn't as composed, still reeling from the shock that the night had turned out the way it did. There was no proposal, no ring. Her five years with Jack, with nothing but betrayal to show for it.

Annabelle opened the phone's camera. She took a picture of herself, her expression showing a woman calm in the face of a storm. Satisfied with the picture, she typed out a message to Mia:

How about I send you a picture instead, fucking slut?

She attached the photo, hit send and put the phone faced-down on the table exactly where Jack had left it.

Annabelle picked up her bag, Jack came out of the bathroom doorway as she stood up to leave. She didn't look at him not trusting what her face would do if she looked at him, and she had already decided she would not cry in this restaurant and give him the memory of her falling apart because he couldn't keep it in his pants. She walked past him toward the door with the particular posture of a woman who is holding something very large, tightly.

He didn't call after her, and a lone tear escaped, slipping the the left side of her down her face.