Chapter 27
Cornelia
By then, I had developed a new coping mechanism: every time I felt a tinge of sadness, I’d head straight to Avenue Montaigne, Place Vend?me, or Le Bon Marché and buy out a few stores.
That day, I woke up from a dream about TJ—one where he never cheated and we were still together. It was a nice dream.
But after waking up from it, I needed some retail therapy. So, I got dressed and went straight to Avenue Montaigne. I shopped a lot and returned to the flat five hours later with ten bags full of stuff.
I arrived at the flat building and started walking up the stairs.
Halfway up—just like I always did—I cursed myself for not accepting my driver’s help to carry my bags.
I also cursed Parisians and their few small lifts, and my grandfather for buying the penthouse.
Though, to be fair, I didn’t curse him much since the views from the flat definitely make all the stairs worth it.
I reached the flat and knocked—I wasn’t about to dig through all the bags to find which one I’d put my purse in to get my keys.
A few seconds later, Mila, a petite brunette thirty-something woman who is one of our staff members stationed in Paris to keep the flat clean and ready for guests, opened the door.
Mila let me in and took my bags. “I’ll put these in your room,” she said, heading in that direction. Then she suddenly turned around, as if she had just remembered something. “Oh, I almost forgot, you have a visitor waiting for you in the living room. He’s been there for almost three hours.”
I hadn’t been expecting anyone, but I thought maybe it was Laurie—he had mentioned he’d visit soon, just not when. I walked into the living room and found a Winthrop standing there—just not the one I had expected.
TJ was there, not Laurie. For a moment, I thought I was hallucinating or imagining things. But as time went on and he remained there, I knew I wasn’t. Still, seeing him felt like looking at a mirage.
He tensed as he noticed my presence in the room. “Hey,” TJ said as he turned to look at me.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, icily. I didn’t want him to realise how much his presence was unsettling me.
“I came to talk to you,” he replied.
I had had this conversation in my head many times before it actually happened. But as it was happening, I realised I didn’t want to have it—because if all the imagined versions had taught me one thing, it was that no matter what he said, there was nothing that could excuse what he did.
“We have nothing to talk about,” I told him firmly.
“What about us?” TJ asked, his voice laced with desperation.
“There is no longer an us,” I replied, keeping my voice steady. “You slept with my mother.”
Part of me wanted to repeat those words over and over like a mantra to remind myself not to waver. But I also didn’t want to say them again. Every time I did, it felt like I was reliving the pain of that night all over again. It still does.
He sighed, clearly frustrated. “If you could just listen—”
“I don’t want to listen,” I snapped, cutting him off mid-sentence.
“If you could just—” he tried again.
“Fine, go on,” I interrupted, giving him a look to hurry up and crossing my arms over my chest.
I didn’t want to, but I figured the faster he finished, the faster he would be gone. And I really wanted—needed—him to leave.
He seemed to be trying to say something, but the words seemed caught in his throat. After a few seconds that felt like hours, the only thing he got out was, “I—I didn’t… mean to.”
“Well, that definitely fixes everything,” I shot back sarcastically.
“You are so exasperating,” he snapped.
“Me?” I asked in disbelief, dropping my arms. “I’m not the one who caused this whole mess. No matter what you say, there’s nothing you can do to change the past. You had sex with my mother, and that ended us for good.”
I looked at him like he disgusted me—which, in a way now, he did—and as if he were a stranger, which, in some ways, he was.
I could never have imagined the boy I fell in love with at twelve could have done something like this to me.
It was like he had become a completely different person.
He changed right before my eyes, and I didn’t even notice.
TJ looked taken aback by the way I was staring at him, but then he stepped closer to me. “Are you sure about that?”
I walked backwards towards the open window. “I am.”
I wasn’t.
I wish I were.
“I don’t believe you,” he said, sounding so cocky.
He was unbelievable. He went from looking like a sorry puppy begging for forgiveness to being all smug and full of himself in a matter of seconds.
“If we’re really over, then why are you still wearing it?” He pointed to the ring on my left hand—the finger where people wear engagement rings.
He had given me the ring on my last birthday, in a kind of proposal-not-proposal way.
He said he knew better than to propose to me with only one ring, and that one day, in a not-so-distant future, he would.
But he knew I was the one he wanted to spend forever with, and that’s why he wanted me to have it.
The ring was a family heirloom from the Victorian era, passed down from TJ’s mother’s side.
All of TJ’s money comes from his father’s side.
His mother didn’t have much when she married his father, but she came from generational wealth.
However, her parents weren’t the best at managing investments and somehow lost it all.
One of the few things she managed to keep was the ring.
It was very important to her. So TJ asking for his family ring and giving it to me was a big deal.
The ring was almost as if it were meant for us.
Made of yellow gold, with a large oval sapphire at the centre—sapphire being TJ’s birthstone—surrounded by diamonds, which happens to be my birthstone.
It resembles Princess Diana’s engagement ring, but with a lot more diamonds.
The ring was one of the most beautiful pieces of jewellery I’ve ever seen.
I was so moved by it, and I remember thinking he was the moon and the stars—the whole universe to me. What a joke that was.
Since the day he gave me the ring, I never took it off until this day.
I took it off and, without thinking, threw the ring through the open window. I regretted it the moment I did.
I shouldn’t have thrown it out. If I didn’t want it anymore, I should have given it to Laurie—it was from his family, too.
But it was too late. In a way, I needed to get rid of it, to have some definite closure, so I wouldn’t be tempted by it.
Still, I regret it deeply. I guess those things aren’t mutually exclusive.
TJ stared at me in shock, then bolted to the window and looked down. “What the hell did you just do?” The sound of his voice in that moment still haunts me. It sounded like something dying. I think it was us dying—him and me. Our relationship dying.
“Like I said, we are done for good,” I said, sounding as distant as I could.
I didn’t want him to know how much this was costing me or how painful it was seeing him.
How much it hurt me, too, losing that ring I used to look at and just smile about, thinking of him. How much all of this was destroying me.
People often talk about the pain of loving someone who doesn’t love you back. However, what’s less talked about—and, in my opinion, more painful—is the pain of leaving someone you know you can never unlove.
TJ didn’t say anything—he just looked at me, sad and defeated, then turned and walked away.
After he was gone, I immediately rushed to the window, scanning the ground below for the ring. But it was nowhere to be found.
Still, that didn’t stop me from spending all afternoon searching for it, and during my entire stay in Paris, every time I was outside the flat, I kept scanning for it. But I never found it.
That ring had survived two world wars, multiple marriages, and divorces—but it didn’t survive us.