Chapter 2Receipts of Revenge

Noah sat beside her, head bowed, saying nothing.

His silence was an admission.

“She’s right! It’s all about growth!”

“YES. This is the kind of self-aware queen we need.”

“Some women are just anchors holding men back. Good for him for cutting the rope.”

“Leaving you was the best decision he ever made!”

I stared at the words on the screen.

Every letter was a tiny, sharp needle jabbing into my eyes.

I closed the livestream.

The room was quiet again.

I scraped the soggy ramen into the trash can. Then, I walked to my bed and knelt down, pulling a dusty old suitcase from underneath.

I unzipped it.

There was nothing of value inside. Just a few old clothes and a notebook wrapped in brown kraft paper.

I picked up the notebook and blew the dust off its cover.

I opened it to the first page.

My own neat handwriting filled the lines.

“Month X, Day X. First day in the new apartment. Rent is $600, first and last month’s plus security deposit. I paid. Noah said he’d pay me back.”

I flipped to the middle.

“Month X, Day X. Bought our first pot, $12.99. Noah used it to make me our first meal: scrambled eggs with tomatoes.”

I turned the pages, one by one.

For a long, long time.

Finally, I closed the ledger.

I took a picture of its simple, brown cover with my phone.

And I posted it.

I didn’t hide it from anyone.

The caption was simple.

“Noah, remember the first pot I bought for our business? It was $12.99. Do you remember?”

It was like dropping a bomb into the quiet waters of my social circle.

My phone started vibrating nonstop. Private messages from mutual friends, tags from my college group chat, one after another.

“Chloe, is what you posted… real?”

“HOLY SHIT, a $13 pot? A single dish at his restaurant costs more than that!”

Soon, someone screenshotted my post and shared it online.

#NoahsFirstPot

The hashtag quietly crept onto the bottom of our city’s local trending topics.

Noah’s call came almost immediately.

His voice was tight, suppressing a rage that I could hear crackling underneath, along with a flicker of panic I didn't miss.

“Chloe, what the hell is this?”

I said nothing.

My silence seemed to infuriate him.

“We’re over. What’s the point of dragging this out? Are you trying to make me look bad?”

“Am I?” I asked softly.

“By posting this, you’re trying to make everyone think I’m some ungrateful bastard, aren’t you?”

He said it himself.

I still didn’t speak.

His breathing on the other end of the line grew heavy. He was losing his composure, that carefully constructed “dignity” of his finally cracking.

“Chloe, don’t push it.”

“Wasn’t the fifty thousand I gave you enough?”

Fifty thousand dollars.

He said it with such self-righteous indignation. As if he were shooing away a persistent beggar.

I finally laughed, a dry, humorless sound.

“Noah, in your mind, were our five years together really only worth fifty grand?”

“…”

From the other end of the line, I heard Isabella’s voice, intentionally softened.

“Noah, honey, don’t be angry. Don’t stoop to her level. It’s not worth it.”

She sounded so magnanimous.

And so grating.

I scoffed and hung up the phone.

The world went quiet.

A few minutes later, my doorbell rang, sharp and insistent.

It was Jenna, my best friend. She stormed in, holding two cold beers, and threw her arms around me.

“Chloe! I just saw! That ungrateful son of a bitch! That user!”

“How dare he call you?!”

“And that Isabella woman, what a piece of work! Dead weight? She’s the parasite!”

Jenna’s face was red with anger, shouting all the things I wanted to say but couldn’t be bothered to. She ranted for a long time.

I listened quietly, handing her a beer.

She took a long swig, then looked at me.

“Chloe, don’t be sad. He’s not worth it.”

I shook my head.

“I’m not sad.”

I looked at my phone screen. The hashtag had climbed a little higher on the trending list.

Any last shred of hesitation I had vanished.

Some debts can only be collected by yourself.