The Day I Stopped Waiting

On her 28th birthday, Natalie overhears her boyfriend Liam telling a colleague that she is average-looking and beneath his status. They have been together since they were eighteen, ten years in all, yet he admits he is hesitating to marry her. That night she asks whether he wants to break up, and he says yes before leaving to drink with Bella, the childhood friend his family adores.

Natalie does not cry. She messages Jake, an old classmate desperate to marry, and proposes they make do. He agrees, though he is deployed in the Northwest and cannot say when he will be free. Meanwhile Liam kicks her out of the home his family bought, and his mother, Mrs. Thorne, still treats her as a servant, inviting the Blackwood family to dinner so Natalie can wait on them while Liam and Bella sit together like a couple.

With six days left before she can leave, Natalie packs up ten years of a life she thought was permanent, and for the first time looks forward to the change.