My Lover Didn't Put a Ring on Me

For ten years, I have stayed by Maren Hale's side without her formally acknowledging me as her boyfriend. Thus, I become the oldest kept man in Harborfield.

After I turn 30, I have asked her to marry me more than 30 times. Each time, she smiles and kisses me.

"Reid, I'll marry you when I'm ready," she says.

When I'm 31, a car accident nearly kills me. Still shaken, I propose to Maren. She tells me to wait a little longer.

By the time I'm 33, a doctor warns me that my kidney function is declining. I wave the diagnosis report in front of her and press for marriage. Yet, she still tells me to wait.

While I wait for her, the sun rises and sets over Mount Carlisle more than 3,600 times.

Finally, I think she is ready. Holding back tears, I promise my seriously ill father that he will live to see me get married.

What I don't know is that Maren is not opposed to marriage. It's just that the ten years she spends fooling around with me are nothing more than an act of rebellion against her mother, who has driven away her former fiancé.

Before the banquet, I see the ring I give Maren inside her handbag. I think she is finally going to accept my proposal.

Nervous and hopeful, I wait the entire evening.

But just moments ago, during a game of dare, she casually tosses the ring to a male model she has just met.

"The kid is turning 20. A pink diamond suits him perfectly. Next time, I'll have an emerald one made for us."

The entire room bursts into laughter.

I laugh along with them.

"Don't bother," I said. "Someone else already has a rock waiting for me, and I said yes."

Reid's POV

Nobody expected me to end things with Maren Hale on my 35th birthday.

The room went quiet at first, but the silence only lasted until someone caught the look of flat impatience on Maren's face. Then the laughter hit like a wave.

"A rock waiting for him? People really do start hallucinating after 35. Aging is a hell of a thing."

"He is just playing hard to get because she turned him down again, right? It's textbook manipulation."

Every pair of eyes in the room swung toward me, including the male model Maren had just slipped her ring to, who covered his mouth and shook with barely contained laughter.

"All right, bets in! I give him three minutes before he takes it back!"

"One minute. A million on it."

"I'll match half!"

The betting pool on how quickly I'd fold was an annual tradition at these birthday parties by now. Plenty of people resented me for costing them money over the years, and the ones who won never thought any higher of me for it.

I let out a bitter laugh under my breath, cursing myself for being this pathetic. Ten years I'd spent with this woman,