The Ring He Was Putting on My Finger, the Money He Was Sending to Her Chapter 07
In the afternoon, I went back to the apartment to pack.
There wasn’t much to take. Anything he’d touched, I didn’t want.
Water glasses. Pajamas. All swept into trash bags.
As I zipped up my suitcase at dusk, the front door was shoved open.
Dylan stumbled in, reeking of alcohol.
He didn’t even take off his shoes. He dropped to his knees at my feet and wrapped his arms around my legs,
holding on so tight it hurt.
“Claire… please don’t go…” He buried his face in my skirt, sobbing messily.
“The Morgans humiliated me. They stepped all over me. I just wanted to prove that I could buy everything they had!”
“Claire, I was just playing a game. Getting back at her. I went too far. I thought… I thought you’d always wait
for me…”
I looked down at this man who used to be so untouchable, now groveling at my feet.
I didn’t struggle. That would mean I still cared. Still felt something.
I just watched him cry. When his sobs finally quieted down, I crouched in front of him.
I reached out and stroked his hair, the same way I’d done a hundred times before when he was exhausted
from work.
His whole body jolted. He looked up with red, swollen eyes, a desperate, pathetic joy in them: “Claire, you
forgive-”
My hand slid from his hair down to his fingers, the ones gripping my skirt.
And then, one by one, I pried them off.
“Mr. Foster,” I said, standing up and smoothing out my wrinkled skirt, my voice so soft it was almost a whisper. “Your suit is all messed up. Tiffany wouldn’t like that.”
The light in Dylan’s eyes went out completely.
He stared at me blankly, all life drained from his face.
Before I left, I set the apartment key on the entry table.
I dragged my suitcase out the door.
As the elevator doors closed, I saw Dylan collapse by the foyer.
He grabbed my old trench coat from the rack and pressed his face into it.
Through the closing gap, all I heard was the sound of a man suffocating on his own sobs.
