The Anniversary Gift

Chapter 1

Zara’s POV

The champagne bottle slipped from my fingers, shattering against the hardwood floor in a symphony of broken glass and wasted dreams.

Five years. Five goddamn years, and this is what I come home to on our anniversary.

"Katy?" My voice cracked like the champagne bottle at my feet. "What the hell—"

The woman beneath Robert—my Robert, my fiancé of five years—turned her head toward me with eyes wide as saucers. Her auburn hair was splayed across the leather couch cushions, the same couch I'd been making payments on for the past two years. The couch where we watched movies on Sunday nights. The couch where I'd fallen asleep so many times after working double shifts to keep our lights on.

"Zara! Oh God, Zara, I—" Katy scrambled to cover herself with the throw pillow I'd embroidered with our initials last Christmas. How fucking ironic.

Robert didn't even have the decency to stop moving. He glanced over his shoulder at me with the same casual indifference he showed when I asked him to take out the trash.

"You're home early," he said, like I'd interrupted him watching television instead of screwing my best friend senseless.

The grocery bags in my other hand tumbled to the floor. Strawberries rolled across the tile—organic ones, because I'd splurged for our special night. The receipt was still clutched in my sweaty palm: $47.83. Nearly half a day's wages for ingredients to make his favorite meal.

"Early?" I laughed, but it came out strangled and raw. "It's eleven-thirty, Robert. I worked a double shift today so I could afford—" I gestured at the scattered groceries, the broken champagne, the candles I'd planned to light. "So I could afford this."

Katy finally managed to push Robert off her, wrapping my grandmother's quilt around her naked body. My grandmother's quilt.

"Zara, please, let me explain—"

"Explain what, exactly?" I stepped over the broken glass, my work shoes crunching against the fragments. "Explain how my best friend of eight years decided to fuck my fiancé? On our anniversary? In our living room?"

"It's not what you think—"

"Oh, really?" I could feel hysteria bubbling up in my chest like carbonation in a shaken soda bottle. "Because it looks like you were riding him like a mechanical bull at a country bar."

Robert finally stood up, not bothering to cover himself. The man who claimed he loved me, who'd promised me forever, stood there naked and unashamed while my world crumbled around me.

"Don't be so dramatic, Zara," he said, reaching for his boxers. "It didn't mean anything."

"Dramatic?" The word exploded out of me. "DRAMATIC?"

"You're always so emotional about everything," he continued, pulling on his clothes with maddening calm. "This is exactly why—"

"Why what, Robert? Why you decided to cheat on me with my best friend?"

"Why things happen," he shrugged. "Katy understands me in ways you don't."

The words hit me like a physical blow. I actually staggered backward, my hip colliding with the kitchen counter.

"Understands you?" My voice was barely a whisper now. "I've been understanding you for five years, Robert”.Understanding when you spent my rent money on poker night. Understanding when you came home drunk and angry and took it out on me."

Katy's face went white. She knew about the bruises I covered with concealer. She'd helped me pick out foundation that matched my skin tone after particularly bad nights.

"Zara—" she started.

"How long?" I cut her off. "How long has this been going on?"

They exchanged a look. A look that spoke of inside jokes and shared secrets and intimate moments that should have been mine. The look said everything I needed to know.

"Six months," Katy whispered.

Six months. Half a year of lies. Half a year of her sitting at my kitchen table, drinking my coffee, listening to me worry about Robert pulling away.

"You've been screwing him for six months, and you sat there while I cried about feeling like he didn't love me anymore?" My voice was getting higher, more shrill. "You helped me pick out lingerie to try to win him back!"

"I never meant for it to happen," Katy said, tears streaming down her face. "It just... happened."

"Things don't just happen, Katy. People make choices. You made a choice to betray me. Every. Single. Day. For six months."

Robert was putting on his shirt now, that expensive silk one I'd bought him for his birthday last month. The one that cost me a week of groceries.

"Look, if you're going to throw a fit about this, maybe you should leave for the night," he said. "Let everyone cool down."

I stared at him. This man I'd given everything to. This man I'd worked myself to exhaustion for.

"Let everyone cool down?" I repeated slowly.

"Yeah. Go to your sister's or something. We can talk tomorrow when you're not being hysterical."

Hysterical. The word my parents used to use when I'd cry about being ignored, pushed aside, treated like an inconvenience. The word that had followed me my entire life.

Something inside me snapped. Not broke—snapped. Like a rubber band stretched too far.

"This is my apartment too," I said quietly.

"What?"

"This is my apartment. My lease. My furniture. My electricity bill. My water bill. My groceries in my refrigerator." I was walking toward the door now, grabbing my purse and keys. "If anyone's leaving, it's me. And when I come back, you better be gone."

"Zara, wait—" Katy lunged forward, still clutching the quilt.

"Don't." I held up my hand. "Don't you dare say another word to me. Eight years of friendship, Katy. Eight years, and you threw it away for what? Good dick?"

She flinched like I'd slapped her.

"And you," I turned to Robert. "Five years of my life. Five years of believing you when you said you loved me. Five years of thinking I wasn't good enough, wasn't pretty enough, wasn't interesting enough. Turns out I was wrong. I was too good for you."

I headed for the door, glass crunching under my feet with every step.

"Where are you going?" Robert called after me.

I paused at the doorway, looking back at the ruins of my life scattered across the living room floor. Broken champagne. Ruined groceries. My grandmother's quilt wrapped around the woman who'd pretended to be my sister.

"Anywhere but here."

The door slammed behind me with a finality that echoed through the empty hallway. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely get my key into the ignition. The car roared to life, drowning out Katy's voice calling my name from the apartment window.

I didn't look back.

The city lights blurred past me as I drove with no destination in mind. Every red light was a moment to remember another lie, another betrayal, another sign I'd ignored. The hotel sign appeared like a beacon in the darkness—"Vacancy" glowing in neon letters that promised temporary refuge.

As I sat in the sterile hotel room an hour later, staring at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, I saw a stranger looking back at me. A woman who'd spent five years giving everything to someone who'd given nothing in return. A woman who'd been so desperate to be loved that she'd accepted scraps and called them a feast.

But for the first time in five years, I wasn't crying.

I was planning.