She Wears Boundless Glory, I Withdraw From Our Lifelong Love

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The day of the awards, the first thing Crystal Fox did after winning Best Actress was announce her retirement from the industry.

The internet exploded onto the trending topics, but inside the studio group chat, the party was just getting started.

Can't wait to see how Cuckold Pierce cleans this one up.

"Didn't he pour his whole heart into making Crystal a Best Actress? And now she's quit the industry outright for Finn Cox. Bet that devotion feels great right about now."

A new intern typed a timid line.

"But if Crystal's retiring, doesn't that mean we're all out of a job?"

Crystal's assistant, her friend of many years, dropped a grinning emoji.

"You're new, so you wouldn't know. Cuckold Pierce has been orbiting Crystal for over ten years, licking her boots like a dog. No matter what stunt Crystal pulls, he always smooths it over. It's nothing but a couple extra drinks with the backers to say sorry, that's all."

"This time Finn Cox threw a fit, said he didn't like Crystal wearing so little at the ceremony. She put out that statement just to keep her little boyfriend happy."

"What I really want to see is the look on that old man Pierce's face right now. He's probably about to blow a gasket, hahaha."

Among the blinking messages, a voice clip suddenly popped up.

It was Crystal's voice, sweet and coaxing, with a lazy heat to it.

"Keep it down, Finn doesn't like being disturbed."

That only whipped the group up further, and they started demanding Finn Cox get an official title.

"A six-foot college hunk with a rock-hard six-pack, you can't just be sleeping with him for free with no name to it, Crystal."

"Just hurry up and break it off with Cuckold Pierce, bring Finn Cox along, and come do the Colorado road trip with us out in the open."

"While that old man's busy running damage control for you, bring up the breakup now and he probably won't even have the energy to argue. He'll nod along without catching a word."

"Won't catch a word? More like he's old and going deaf."

The group howled with laughter.

I opened the app, drafted a separate statement from the studio account, and hit send.

01

"Fox Studio is dissolving effective today. Its signed artist, Crystal Fox, will no longer take part in any performance activities from this day forward."

"To compensate for all financial losses to fans, this studio is opening a refund channel. We will fully refund and reimburse every ticket and piece of merchandise our fans have purchased within the past three years, at no cost to them."

I pinned Crystal's personal bank account number in the top comment under the post.

She wanted to retire, break up, and be with someone else. Fine. I'd give her all of it.

Once it was sent, I closed the page and booked myself a flight to the Maldives for the next day.

In the fifteen years I'd been with Crystal, I'd given everything I had, poured myself dry for her career, and never taken a single day off.

I lifted Crystal into the industry, got her into films, made her a Best Actress, and along the way pulled every one of her friends into the studio with jobs paying over ten grand a month.

What I got in return wasn't gratitude. It was being called a doormat who threw himself at her.

I drank until my stomach bled to land Crystal better projects, ground through drinking parties and card games back to back, on the clock for a solid month until my whole brain went numb.

In their mouths it was nothing more than a breezy "a couple of drinks."

They were the ones tripping over themselves to go on a girls' road trip with the college kid Crystal was cheating with.

And in all the years I'd been with Crystal, I'd bought them countless meals, driven them to and from countless nail appointments, and never earned a single word of respect.

I'd told them so many times I didn't like the name they'd given me, "Cuckold Pierce," and not one of them cared. If anything, they said it more.

I'd told Crystal about it countless times, and all she ever did was hug my arm, unbothered, and make excuses for her friends.

She said they only called me that because I looked mature, that there was no malice in it, and I shouldn't be so petty.

While I was packing, my phone rang.

It was the ringtone she'd set herself, back the year we first got together, a soft a cappella goodnight song she'd recorded.

Gentle, quiet guitar and a clear, sweet girl's voice.

"Nathan Pierce, I wrote this myself. I'm not releasing it. It's just for you."

"Use it as my ringtone, so whenever you hear it, you'll think of me."

The girl she was that year had a smile that crinkled her eyes, the clearest, purest thing.

I answered, and the voice on the other end clicked her tongue, impatient and cold.

I thought she'd found out about the refund post and was calling to confront me.

Or maybe she'd finally realized the chat where she'd been gossiping with her friends wasn't their little group but the big group with me in it, and she was calling to explain.

But what she said was,

"Why'd it take you so long to pick up? Go buy a bottle of champagne and bring it to the Starlight Hotel. Get the best one."

"Finn's just a young guy, he wants the whole mood. Says sex is better with the right drink."

I held the phone, silent for a long moment, and then, unexpectedly, I smiled.

I thought back to our first time. No wine, no floor-to-ceiling city lights from some five-star suite.

Only sweat-damp school uniforms and a filthy abandoned restroom.

That was the year the grandmother who had raised Crystal died. She fell apart, gave up on herself, told me she wanted to break up.

She skipped classes to dye her hair, to fight, wearing that look like she'd thrown everything away.

So I gave her everything I had, trying to fill the hollow place inside her.

I paid her tuition with my New Year's money. I kissed her tears without being asked. I held her and promised, over and over against her ear, that I would stay with her forever, that we would face every hardship together.

Later we got into the same college. Crystal worked a whole summer and spent every dollar of her wages on a watch as a birthday gift for me.

She fastened it on my wrist herself, looked down and smiled, though her eyes were wet.

She said, Nate, wearing this is a promise. You have to stay with me forever.

More than ten years have passed.

Crystal has everything now, but she can't even remember my birthday anymore.

I glanced at the time. Midnight.

The first hour of my thirty-third birthday.

I answered evenly. "Okay, I'll go get it now."

But Crystal went quiet.

"Never mind. I'll ask Narelle. Your eyes are bad, don't drive in the middle of the night."

I made a sound of agreement and was about to hang up.

Then, on the other end, Crystal suddenly said, "Nathan, everyone likes a little novelty. I'm no different."

"Either way, in the end I'm going to spend my whole life with you. So playing around a bit before we get married, it's nothing, right?"

Any other time, hearing that, I would have blown up at her, demanded to know how she could soil what we had like that.

But tonight I was suddenly tired.

Too tired to even bother saying the word breakup.

I made the sound again. "Understood. Go ahead and play, then."

I hung up and left a message for the realtor I knew, handing him full authority to list this place for sale.

This was where we rented the year we first came to New York.

At our poorest, Crystal and I crammed into this one-bedroom, one-living-room, cooking a single pack of instant ramen for the two of us to share.

Later, when she got famous, she moved to a big open-floor place.

But I couldn't bring myself to give this up, so I just bought it, and I've lived here alone ever since.

After I finished tidying up, I sat down on the couch, meaning to take a look at how the war was going on the feed.

The next second, someone unlocked the front door from the outside with a key.

Crystal walked in, pulled out a small brocade box, and set it in my palm.

"Birthday present."

"I saw all that stuff they said in the group chat. They really went too far this time. I'll say something to them later, for you."

I opened it and glanced inside. A bracelet, the unisex kind, plain in design.

The sort that most often shows up as a filler purchase at a luxury store.

And three days ago, Finn had just bought a new men's bag from that same brand.

Over these three days, I'd seen this same bracelet in various colors on the wrists of nearly everyone at the studio.

It wasn't hard to guess where this gift came from.

I closed the box again. "Thank you."

Crystal blanked for a moment, not expecting my reaction to be so flat.

The year before last, on her birthday, she'd finally nodded and said she could accept my proposal, so I booked out a whole restaurant a full day ahead and set everything up.

But I waited for her until the restaurant closed, until the waiters started looking at me with pity.

And all I got in the end was, "Finn has a game today. I'll have dinner with you tomorrow."

We had a huge fight after that, and didn't speak for half a month.

Last year, on my birthday, she stood me up again, so I cooked myself.

In the end I sat alone with a full table of food and a cake, waiting into the small hours, and she never came home.

That fight was worse. It got so bad everyone around us came to break it up.

This year she probably assumed I was throwing the same tantrum as always, sulking because my birthday had been forgotten.

That's why she'd just grabbed whatever was on hand and rushed over to give it to me.

She reached out to take my arm.

"All right, don't be angry. This year I didn't stand you up. I even brought home a Best Actress trophy for you."

"I know you can't let things go. From now on I'll tell them all to be careful, not to mention Finn in front of you. That works, doesn't it?"

I stepped away from her touch. "Crystal, haven't you looked at the feed?"

Crystal stared at her hand, left hanging in the air, her movement frozen for a beat, her face ugly.

"You mean that refund notice? Another one of those PR tricks you picked up somewhere."

"That's just your job as an agent. You want people to praise you for it too?"

I nodded, understanding now. So that was it.

No wonder that studio dissolution and refund notice had been up for so long, and Crystal and everyone else at the studio hadn't reacted at all.

It wasn't that they were slow to see it online, and it wasn't that they didn't care about this career.

It was that they were certain I would keep chasing after Crystal, always, forever.

No matter what outrageous thing Crystal did, I would find some way to clean up after her, and I would never leave her.

Too worn out to spend the words, I gave a small smile and simply nodded.

"You're right. It's a PR trick."

Crystal watched my expression, went silent for a moment, then said,

"Once the fallout from this dies down, how about I take a trip somewhere with you? We can call it our pre-wedding honeymoon."

Over the years, Crystal had said the word marriage more times than I could count.

The first time was right after she landed her first leading role.

We'd just gotten our first taste of money and fame, counting the balance in her account, giddy with it.

Right then Crystal said she wanted to get married. She wanted to build a family with me, and never be apart.

But not long after, on set, she met an intern assistant named Finn Cox.

Finn was young and good-looking, with a broken childhood behind him. When Crystal first saw him, his last boss was slapping him across the face, five red fingermarks blooming on his cheek.

He looked so pitiful.

Crystal's heart went out to him, and she pulled Finn onto her own team then and there, paying him a monthly salary far above industry standard.

Only afterward did she come to tell me, the deal already done. "Nathan, Finn really has it rough. He reminds me so much of who I used to be. I want to help him."

"If we get married and have a kid right now, my career's going to take a hit, and then I won't be able to pay Finn a salary like that anymore..."

"Let's wait a couple of years. Once I've made more money, we'll have a beach wedding on an island."

After that, every single year, she said she wanted to get married.

She won an award, she said we'd get married. My birthday, she said we'd get married. My mother was dying, and she still said we'd get married.

But in the end, every time, either Finn had a ball game and wanted Crystal there to cheer him on.

Or Finn's cat wouldn't sit still for a nail trim and she had to go help.

Every time, I stood alone outside the courthouse, waiting from sunrise to dark.

Later I couldn't take it anymore, and I gave her an ultimatum. One more no-show and we were done.

Crystal pulled out a pregnancy test result and swore this time we'd really do it.

I believed her again, took the paper home, and told my parents about the wedding.

My mother was overjoyed. Sick as she was, she dragged herself into the kitchen and made a whole table of the sweet dishes Crystal liked.

But that time, in the end, Crystal still didn't show.

She only sent me a thousand dollars.

"You actually believed it? That test result was AI-generated."

"I wanted to come home and have dinner with you too, but Finn's kitten suddenly stopped eating its food today, and I had to go with him to the vet. Cut me some slack, okay?"

"Consider the thousand dollars a little something for your mom's trouble. Just tell them for me, would you?"

"When things settle down a while from now, we'll talk about getting married again."

Maybe the same memory had surfaced for her too. Crystal lowered her eyes.

She gave a light cough. "This time it's real. I've already booked the wedding gown. We'll go to that island you love and have a small wedding. Very romantic."

I hadn't planned to waste any more words on her.

But watching her lie without a flinch, watching the way she trampled someone else's whole heart underfoot without a second thought, something in me refused to let it go.

For the sake of the man who once split his living money in half, going without, just to cover Crystal's tuition.

So I held out my hand. "Let me see."

"See what?"

"The order for the wedding gown. You said you booked it, didn't you?"

Crystal went quiet.

I just took her phone, opened her transfer records, and pulled up her recent bills.

Eighty thousand dollars, men's luggage.

Fifty-two thousand, transferred straight to Finn.

Thirty-nine thousand, a matching couple's bracelet.

And one hundred and twenty dollars, an order off a bargain discount site.

I tapped into it.

Sure enough, a men's suit. In her chat with the seller she was still asking, can the cuffs be embroidered? She wanted one word stitched there. "Nathan."

Then I found her chats with Finn and searched island.

There it was. Last week Finn had said he was sick of living this hidden, sneaking-around affair, said he felt like some man's dirty secret.

Crystal booked an island getaway on the spot to soothe him.

"Next month I'll take you to the islands for a little vacation, to clear your head, okay?"

"Only we still have to bring Nathan along. He's my agent, and if he doesn't come, the two of us could get photographed by the press, and then people would talk about you."

I couldn't help it. I started laughing, laughing until the tears came.

"Crystal, this is the romantic wedding you said would be ours?"

"A hundred-and-twenty-dollar suit. And a three-way island trip to keep your side piece happy, with me tagging along."

"Fifteen years with you, and I'm worth a hundred and twenty dollars."

Crystal snatched the phone back, seething.

"Nathan! Can you stop making a scene over nothing? You're wearing everyone out."

"You said it yourself, it's been fifteen years. Any ordinary couple would've split ages ago. I've stayed with you this whole time. Doesn't that prove I love you?"

"I'm not keeping some rich man on the side. I just found a younger guy to keep me happy. Is that really not allowed?"

"Even if I loved someone else for a little while, that's only human. Who in this industry isn't juggling more than one person? At least I didn't dump you the second I made it big. Don't be greedy."

Somewhere in the middle of it, one of us pressed the call button by accident.

Crystal's phone dialed out to Finn, and a familiar melody started playing.

Except it wasn't the same as the one set for me.

Mine was a girl's soft, unpolished voice singing to a guitar.

The one coming from her phone now, the ringtone she'd set just for Finn, was a duet.

Two voices, one high and one low, passing tenderness back and forth line by line.

The air went still for a beat. Crystal looked at me, and across a face that had been all anger and impatience a moment ago, something guilty flickered.

The next second, Finn picked up.

"Babe, you said you were just going out to grab a bottle of wine. What's taking so long? I'm about to fall asleep here."

Crystal lunged forward, snatched the phone away, and cupped the receiver, dropping her voice.

She seemed afraid I'd suddenly lose it and shout something that would make Finn jealous and sulk.

"...Not many places are open this late. If you're tired, don't wait up. I'll come back as soon as I've bought it."

Finn laughed low on the other end.

"I'm not tired anymore. I want the steamed crab dumplings from that place on East Street. Go get them for me, okay? If I don't eat, I won't have the energy for later."

Crystal answered gently, "Okay, wait for me."

By the time they finally finished talking and hung up.

My heart had gone completely cold.

The room turned heavy.

Crystal frowned, like she wanted to say something.

I cut her off. "That dumpling place on East Street only stays open till three. You've got half an hour. If you don't go now, you won't make it."

Crystal lowered her head, silent for a long moment, then said, "Nathan, give me a little more time. I just don't know how to bring up a breakup with him."

"I promise you, I'm yours. No matter what, the only two people who ever sign a marriage license will be us."

She hurried out to buy the dumplings and the wine.

I sat on the couch.

After sitting there half an hour.

I went back to the bedroom, pulled out the two suitcases I'd already packed, went downstairs, got in the car, and drove to the airport.