Chapter 3

One afternoon, I was at the local bakery, a place Mark and I used to frequent for their apple turnovers.

Tiffany came in with a couple of her friends, laughing.

She spotted me. "Sarah! Hi! You have to try one of these."

She held out a small, elegant box. "Mark just got back from a trip to Boston, and he brought me these Swiss chocolates. They're divine."

Before I could politely refuse, she' d already plucked one out and offered it. "Go on, they' re amazing."

Her friends were already munching on theirs. Not wanting to make a scene, I took the small, foil-wrapped chocolate.

It was good, rich and smooth.

Just then, Mark walked in. He was supposed to be meeting Tiffany.

His eyes scanned the bakery, landed on Tiffany, then on me.

He saw the half-eaten chocolate in my hand, the open box on the counter.

His face darkened.

He strode over, his jaw tight.

"What do you think you're doing?" he snapped, his voice sharp enough to cut through the bakery' s gentle hum.

He wasn't looking at Tiffany. He was looking straight at me.

"Those are Tiffany's," he said, his tone accusatory, loud. "They weren't for you."

The air crackled. Tiffany' s friends stopped talking. The baker paused, wiping his hands on his apron.

I felt a flush creep up my neck.

"Mark," Tiffany said, a slight frown on her face. "It's fine. I offered her one."

"That's not the point, Tiffany," Mark said, still glaring at me. "Some people just don't understand boundaries. Always trying to get attention."

The implication was clear. He thought I was pathetically trying to insert myself into his new life, to remind him of what he' d left behind.

The injustice of it burned. He was the one who had shattered our shared past.

I wanted to scream, to tell him about the thirty years he' d thrown away, about the life we' d built together.

But the words caught in my throat. What was the use?

He wouldn' t hear me. He didn' t want to.

"Mark, don't be like that," Tiffany said, a note of annoyance in her voice now. She was more irritated by his possessiveness than concerned for my feelings.

She picked up the box. "Honestly, they're just chocolates."

Mark finally tore his eyes away from me, his expression still tight with anger.

He forced a smile for Tiffany, but it didn't reach his eyes.

I put the rest of the chocolate down on the counter, my appetite gone.

The sweetness had turned to ash in my mouth.

It wasn't about the chocolate. It was about his public dismissal, his deliberate cruelty.

He wanted me to know my place: firmly outside his new, shiny life with Tiffany.

And he didn' t care who knew it.

This wasn't just indifference anymore. This was active hostility.

A cold knot formed in my stomach. This Mark, the one standing before me, was capable of a pettiness I' d never seen in him before.

Or maybe I' d just never been on the receiving end of it.