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He Filmed My Tears and Priced My Forgiveness at $8
Novelix
new
Completed
My boyfriend filmed himself hurting me and bragged that eight dollars could buy my forgiveness, until I exposed his experiment and refused the design license his launch depended on.
Chapters (3)
Chapter 1
The first card says: Forget your anniversary.
The second: Tell her another woman is prettier.
The third: Let your assistant wear your shirt. See how long it takes your girlfriend to cry.
I stop scrolling.
The livestream belongs to my boyfriend's company.
All three things happened to me this month.
Onscreen, the host fans out the cards from a pink box.
THE GIRLFRIEND CHALLENGE.
The comments fly past.
Someone behind the camera laughs.
"Blake, does Audrey seriously not know she's your test subject?"
My boyfriend answers from offscreen.
"If I tell her, it ruins the test."
Another laugh.
"What happens when she finds out?"
"She'll get upset. I'll buy her bubble tea. We'll be fine."
I sit up.
The host reaches into the box again.
"What about the breakup card?"
"Don't need to test that one," Blake says. "She's not going anywhere."
I recognize the confidence in his voice.
I used to love it.
Ten minutes later, I send him a message.
You got that one wrong.
We're done.
He replies with a voice message.
"Audrey, seriously? We're rehearsing the launch. I don't have time for this right now."
Someone in the background asks him to move closer to the lights.
Then he adds, "I ordered your usual. Large taro, less sugar."
A delivery notification appears.
Eight dollars.
I stare at it.
He hasn't asked what I saw.
He hasn't asked whether I'm hurt.
He's already paid to make it go away.
Blake gets home after eleven.
He carries his laptop beneath one arm, his jacket over the other.
The untouched drink sits beside the door.
He looks at it.
"You're really doing this?"
I'm at the kitchen table.
"How many times?"
He drops his keys into the little bear-shaped tray on the console.
I drew that bear four years ago, on the floor of our first apartment.
Blake couldn't afford a designer. I had a pencil, a secondhand camera, and a free afternoon.
By morning, he'd made it his profile picture.
Then it went on the company's first paper bags.
Then mugs.
Key chains.
Collectible figures.
Milo the Bear.
One ear has a tiny notch where I erased too much of the original sketch.
Blake wouldn't let me fix it.
"That's how we know he's ours."
Now his keys lie across its face.
"How many times, Blake?"
"Seven. Eight. I don't know."
"What did you do?"
"You saw the cards."
"I want the whole list."
He takes a bottle of water from the fridge.
"The anniversary. Not answering texts. Canceling plans. Saying Tessa looked good. The shirt thing. Getting you the wrong gift."
He shakes his head.
"Marketing got a little carried away."
He's almost smiling.
I dig my thumbnail into my palm.
"The hospital?"
His smile disappears.
"When Grandma had surgery. You got there, then said you had to go back to work."
He sets the bottle down.
"That was the canceled-plans test."
I remember sitting outside the recovery unit with my phone in my hands.
The update I couldn't understand.
The nurse asking whether someone was coming.
Blake came back after midnight with hot dumplings.
He crouched beside my chair and held out the container.
I was so relieved to see him that I cried.
"What about the food?" I ask.
He looks away.
His phone lights up on the table.
A notification from the launch team.
SUBJECT A: 8/10 complete. Subject initiated breakup. Revising Card 9.
Blake turns the phone facedown.
Too late.
"Two more?"
"I'll have them delete whatever bothers you after the launch."
"Whatever bothers me?"
"All of it. Fine. All of it."
He reaches for me.
I move back.
His hand hangs between us.
"Audrey, I just said I'd delete it. What else do you want?"
For one desperate second, I want him to say it wasn't planned.
That he forgot.
That he was selfish.
That when he left me alone at the hospital, he wasn't waiting for someone to mark a box.
"We broke up," I say.
He studies me.
Then he gives a small, indulgent smile.
"Okay."
"I mean it."
"When you're really upset, you go quiet. When you say things like this, you want a reaction."
He picks up the drink, pushes the straw through the lid, and sets it beside me.
"There."
I don't touch it.
At the bathroom door, he turns.
"Come to the launch Thursday. Front row."
"No."
"Afterward, you can watch me delete the files. Happy?"
The door closes.
His phone lights up again.
Another message.
Card 9 approved.
Chapter 2
I go to Mercer Studio the next afternoon to collect my camera and two hard drives.
The receptionist is new.
When I give her my name, she stops typing.
"Audrey Lane?"
"Yes."
The man at the next desk looks up.
Then quickly looks down.
Before I reach the elevator, I hear someone say, "Subject A actually came in?"
"Shut up."
"What? Blake calls her that."
The elevator doors close behind me.
For four years, I've walked into this building carrying things they needed.
Product photographs.
Packaging revisions.
A bag of sandwiches because Blake forgot to order food for a late meeting.
Today, I carry an empty camera bag.
The head of design meets me upstairs.
"Audrey. I didn't know you were coming."
"I texted about my equipment."
"Right. Of course. Give me a minute."
Behind him, a wall of Milo sketches runs the length of the department.
My sketches.
I never joined the company. I had my own clients, and when Milo started selling, we put the arrangement in writing.
The character stayed mine.
The company licensed each collection.
Blake used to joke that I was his most expensive girlfriend and his cheapest designer.
I used to laugh.
While the design director finds my drives, I wait beside a conference room.
The door is open.
A production schedule fills the screen at the far end.
LIVE TEST SUBJECT A — 8/10.
The first eight rows have green checks.
Beside the eighth check:
FAMILIAR COMFORT: TIME TO RECONCILE.
The ninth:
POST-BREAKUP EMERGENCY RECALL. TONIGHT.
The tenth:
LIVE BREAKUP CHALLENGE. LAUNCH EVENT.
I take out my phone.
Photograph the screen.
"Audrey?"
Tessa stops beside me with a box of samples against her hip.
She sees where I'm looking.
"Can someone change that slide?"
A man inside reaches for the laptop.
The screen goes black.
"What's Card Eight?" I ask.
Tessa adjusts the box.
"I don't handle the actual research."
"Then who does?"
"Blake and the content team."
"You're on the videos."
"That's different."
She gives me a smile that barely holds.
"Look, nobody meant to hurt you. It's exaggerated relationship stuff. Everyone gets annoyed with their boyfriend."
"Did everyone agree to be filmed?"
She glances toward the design desks.
A few people suddenly find things to do.
The director returns with my equipment.
I check the serial numbers.
Put the drives away.
Tessa follows me toward the elevator.
"Blake does care about you. He brought you dinner at the hospital, didn't he?"
I stop.
"How do you know that?"
Her mouth closes.
"Tessa."
"It came up in the review."
"The review."
Someone calls her from the conference room.
She turns too quickly.
"I have to go."
I stand beneath the brand wall, remembering his thumb wiping a tear from my cheek.
Familiar comfort.
Time to reconcile.
Blake comes out of the meeting room a moment later.
He looks at my bag, then at the blank screen.
"Who showed you the schedule?"
"It was on the wall."
"It's internal."
"So was my relationship."
His jaw tightens.
I point toward the room.
"You approved an emergency test tonight."
"I'll cancel it."
"Now."
He takes out his phone and types.
Then puts it away.
"Done."
"Show me."
"Audrey."
"Show me."
His expression hardens.
"I said I handled it."
The design director is still close enough to hear.
Blake notices.
His voice softens.
"When have I ever wanted you to get hurt?"
I look at him.
For years, that question would have ended the conversation.
Today, I lift my camera bag.
"Tell your team I'm not Subject A."
He reaches for the strap, as if he's going to carry it for me.
I pull it onto my shoulder.
"My name is Audrey."
Chapter 3
At nine that night, I'm packing my first suitcase when Tessa calls.
"Audrey? Where are you?"
"Why?"
"It's Blake. He collapsed. They've taken him to Memorial."
The shirt in my hand falls onto the bed.
"What happened?"
"His stomach. I don't know. There was blood, and—can you just get here?"
I stop moving.
Tonight.
Emergency recall.
"Put him on."
"I can't. They're examining him."
"I want to speak to someone at the hospital."
"Audrey, his parents are out of state. I'm the only one here."
Her voice breaks.
"Please."
I call Blake.
Straight to voicemail.
Again.
Voicemail.
I know about the card.
I know what I saw.
But knowing doesn't stop the picture forming in my head.
Blake on a hospital bed.
Blake alone.
Blake not answering because he can't.
When I was seven, my parents separated.
For a while, each thought I was staying with the other.
My grandmother collected me from an empty house.
Blake knows that story.
He knows why I ask people to text when they land.
For years, he sent photographs from airports before I even asked.
Still alive. Stop worrying.
He was the person who made the silence easier.
Now he's the one making it.
I call Tessa again.
"Which entrance?"
"Emergency."
"I'm on my way."
In the rideshare, rain hits the windows so hard I can barely see outside.
Two blocks from the hospital, traffic stops.
The driver looks at his map.
"Collision ahead. We're not moving."
I can see a pedestrian underpass across the street.
"I'll walk."
Tessa texts as I get out.
Please hurry.
I send back:
Two blocks away.
The steps into the underpass shine with water.
Someone hurries past me.
My shoe slips.
I reach for the railing with my left hand.
Miss.
My forehead strikes metal.
Then my wrist folds beneath me.
For a second, there's no sound.
Only pain.
A stranger kneels beside me.
"Don't get up."
"My phone."
"Stay still. Someone's calling an ambulance."
At Memorial, a nurse cuts the wet sleeve away from my wrist.
A doctor tells me it's broken.
Seven stitches close the cut above my eyebrow.
The head scan is clear, but they want to observe me overnight.
"Who can we call?" the nurse asks.
I give her Blake's number.
Then I turn my face toward the wall.
He arrives half an hour later.
Dry shirt.
No hospital bracelet.
No blood.
Tessa follows him.
She stops just inside the door.
I look at Blake.
"Your stomach?"
He doesn't answer.
"Did you collapse?"
"Audrey—"
"Were you ever a patient here?"
Tessa starts crying.
"We didn't know you'd run."
Blake turns toward her.
"Stop."
But she keeps talking.
"You said you were two blocks away. We thought you'd just walk in. Then you stopped answering."
I stare at her.
"How long?"
Neither speaks.
"You were timing it. How long?"
Tessa wipes her face.
"Seventeen minutes and forty-six seconds."
"Until what?"
"Until you said you were two blocks away."
"I started the timer when you answered my first call."
The call.
The voicemail.
The rain.
All of it measured.
I look at my left arm.
My drawing hand.
Seventeen minutes and forty-six seconds.
"That's a good result, isn't it?" I ask.
Blake flinches.
"Don't."
"She left you," I say. "You called her back in under eighteen minutes."
He sends Tessa outside.
When the door closes, he sits beside the bed.
"I should have stopped it."
"You told me you had."
"I know."
"You knew why I'd come."
He looks at the bandage above my eye.
"I didn't know you'd get hurt."
"You knew I'd be scared."
He says nothing.
"That was the point."
Later, he returns with soup.
Pulls a chair close.
Lifts a spoon.
"Let me."
I look at his hand.
"Are you timing this part, too?"
The spoon stops.
He puts it down.
In the morning, Nora comes to get me.
I called her after Blake fell asleep in the chair.
She takes one look at my wrist and turns toward him.
"Don't."
It's only one word.
He steps out of her way.
At discharge, the nurse goes over my instructions.
Nora writes them down.
Blake carries my bag into the parking lot.
"We'll get you home."
I take the bag from him with my right hand.
"Nora's taking me."
"Audrey, you need help."
"I have help."
He looks at her, then back at me.
"You're throwing away four years over this?"
I raise my injured arm as far as the sling allows.
"No."
My voice is quiet.
"You kept hurting me because you thought I'd stay."
Nora opens the car door.
"This time, you were wrong."
