His Promise of Frozen Pizza
My boyfriend, Miguel Rossi, called himself an old-school man.
For our tenth anniversary, I gave him a vintage Patek Philippe watch I had spent ages searching for. In return, he gave me a rusty, counterfeit Zippo lighter.
"That watch is all flash, no soul. Must've cost a fortune! But look at what I got you—this is practical. It's got history. It's got a story."
Miguel promised to make it up to me. He’d throw us an engagement party at his nightclub, he said, and even invite my parents and family—a gesture he knew meant the world to me.
We arrived at his club, buzzing with anticipation, only to find a table laden with cheap draft beer and frozen pizzas in a service corridor behind the VIP lounge.
"You know me. I came from the streets, I'm not about all that fancy stuff. This? This is keeping it real. Not many guys like me stay true to where they came from!"
The faces of my older family members hardened. My parents’ expressions were a mask of pure humiliation. I could only force a brittle smile, a silent plea for them not to storm out.
But the moment I stepped out of the club, I received a notification from my bank. The four hundred thousand dollars my family had transferred to his account for the party had been withdrawn in a single transaction.
At the same time, Miguel's childhood sweetheart, Gia Bellucci, was flaunting on her Instagram the Maserati he had just bought for her birthday.
"I told Miguel I wanted to celebrate my birthday, and not only did he buy me a Maserati, but he also booked the entire venue to throw me the most lavish party!
"When a man truly loves you, he gives you the world, he doesn’t teach you how cruel it is. A real old-school man knows how to spoil his queen!"
I gripped my phone, my knuckles turning white. As I looked back at Miguel, the man who constantly preached about staying true to his roots, the sheer exhaustion of maintaining this unequal relationship hit me like a physical blow.