From A Humiliating Bet To The Boss He Can’t Have Chapter 31
Sloane had deleted the edited video, published the original records, and formally committed in writing not to use my name for attention again.
I did not ask for compensation.
But in order to prove she had not been the only organizer, she attached the full list of participants to the statement.
The people who had rushed to distance themselves from her two years earlier were dragged back into public view all over again.
They demanded furiously to know why she had done it.
Sloane gave only one answer:
[Why should I be the only one to lose everything?]
The old friends started turning on one another.
Some said Sloane had started the betting pool.
Some said Grant had been the host of the engagement party.
Some admitted they had placed bets, but insisted they had only been joining in on the joke.
Not one of them was willing to say they had ever really believed the insults they were hurling.
They had just thought it was funny.
And they had thought I would never leave.
In the end, the private club permanently revoked Sloane’s membership.
That card she had once sworn she would eat never had the chance to be used again.
She had posed with it in countless photos and used it to prove she belonged in that world.
Now it was nothing more than a piece of plastic that opened no doors.
Grant withdrew from the club, too.
After having his assistant shut down The Prenup Pool, he never attended another gathering with that group again.
But it still didn’t earn him forgiveness.
His former friends blamed him for publicly confirming the betting pool and dragging all of them down with him.
Lily moved into school housing as well, only coming home when necessary.
In the empty Beacon Hill apartment, all that remained was the box I had sent back years before.
Grant still hadn’t unpacked all of it.
The car keys, the key card, the gifts, and the Excel ledger were still there in the same order.
The cashier’s check for $28,614.37 had expired.
He had tried to return it to me.
I didn’t want it.
He had tried to give me property.
I didn’t want that either.
Only then did he finally understand that money could never prove love.
And it could never buy back the trust he had destroyed with his own hands.
One night, deep into the small hours, he opened the email he had sent me two years earlier one more time.
[I don’t do long-distance relationships. If you go to Chicago, this is where we end.]
He had used that line to force me to stay.
In the end, he was the one who made it come true.