My name is Chloe. For three years, I was in a relationship with a man named Kenny. Three years of my life, a mountain of debt, and a shattered sense of self-worth. I need to get this off my chest before I explode.

We met during what should have been a boring travel day. The Amtrak train I was on got stranded in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania. They bussed us all to a tiny town with one diner and one bar to wait for eight hours. I ended up at the bar, and Kenny was sitting two stools down. He made a joke about the universe wanting us to appreciate small-town America. I laughed. He was cute, with messy dark blonde hair and nice hands.

He was on his way to an interview, he said, sick of the corporate grind and wanting to build something “meaningful.” He didn’t get that job, or the next one, or the one after that. There was always something big on the horizon, always an opportunity that was almost perfect.

Six months in, his lease was ending. My place was bigger, and since his funds were “temporarily tight,” moving in together seemed logical. This is where things started to shift. The first month, he paid his share of the rent. The second, he was a week late. By the third, he had a story about a delayed freelance check and a promise to cover the next month. I didn’t push it. I could handle the rent on my own. It was tight, but doable. I told myself it was temporary.

The excuses got more elaborate. A client was late paying. A project timeline got extended. Always something just beyond his control, with a solution just around the corner. Meanwhile, my bank account was getting thinner. I started taking on extra shifts. Kenny would give me back rubs when I came home exhausted and tell me how he’d make it all up to me when his career finally took off.

My friend, Jay, was the first to say something. She asked how long I was planning to “bankroll Kenny’s lifestyle.” I got defensive, spouting clichés about teamwork and ups and downs. But her comment stuck. I started paying more attention. I noticed how often he used my credit card for small things without asking, how my grocery bill had doubled but the fridge seemed emptier.

Then, things got weirdly better for a month. Kenny started going out more, to “networking events” and meetings with “potential clients.” He seemed energized. I wanted to believe him.

Last Friday, my friend Maya texted, asking to grab dinner. Kenny had a networking thing, so I agreed to meet her and her boyfriend alone. I got to the restaurant early. Maya was acting strange, giving me weird, sympathetic looks. Finally, her boyfriend arrived and started talking about a tech event he’d been to the night before.

And then he said it. “Did Kenny enjoy the open bar? I saw him there with his fiancée.”

I must have looked confused, because they all got quiet. Maya took out her phone, apologizing, saying she’d seen something on Instagram that morning that didn’t make sense. She handed it to me.

It was some woman’s profile I didn’t recognize. A blonde named Daria. Her most recent post was from the night before: string lights, champagne glasses, and her hand, adorned with a new diamond ring. The caption: “I said YES! Can’t believe I get to marry my soulmate.”

I scrolled. Posts of them going back at least a month. Captions about “my man” and “date night with the love of my life.” One was from the beach, two weekends ago, when Kenny had told me he was visiting his parents upstate.

I excused myself from dinner and went straight home. I checked our shared credit card account. Charges for restaurants I’d never been to. A hotel downtown from three weeks ago. A jewelry store charge from last week: $2,800. He had bought her ring with my money.

I sat by the window in our apartment, scrolling through all the evidence until it got dark. Around 9 p.m., I heard his key in the lock. He came in, kicked off his shoes, and went straight to the fridge for a beer that I had paid for.

“Where have you been?” I asked, my voice shaking.

“Just networking,” he said. “Things are looking up.”

“Did you get engaged recently?” I asked.

You should have seen his face. First shock, then a weird smirk, like he was almost impressed I’d found out. He just shrugged.

“You spent my money, lived in my house, and proposed to someone else!” I screamed it at him.

And that’s when he said the thing I can’t get out of my head. He rolled his eyes, took a swig of beer, and said, “Come on, Chloe. You really thought I’d give you a ring? You’re the kind of girl men settle for when they fail. I didn’t fail.”

I don’t remember deciding to hit him, but suddenly my fist connected with his chest. He stumbled back. Before he could recover, I slapped him across the face. I told him to get out. He tried to argue, said I was overreacting. I grabbed his backpack and started shoving whatever I could reach into it. I told him if he wasn’t gone in five minutes, I’d call his new fiancée and tell her everything. That got him moving.

The night after I threw him out, I couldn’t sleep. The next morning, I called in sick and sat down with all my bank statements. What I found made me gag. It wasn’t just the recent charges. Going back further, I found small withdrawals, random purchases, subscription services I didn’t recognize. He’d been slowly bleeding me dry for months. The total damage was closer to $5,400. On top of the rent, the groceries, the utilities.

I called the locksmith to change the locks. It cost $170 I couldn’t afford. While he worked, I gathered all of Kenny’s remaining stuff and shoved it into garbage bags. I texted him once, telling him his things would be by the dumpster for 24 hours. He showed up as I was dragging the last bag out. He tried to talk to me, saying there were things I didn’t understand, that Daria wasn’t what I thought. When he grabbed my arm, I yanked it away so hard I scraped my elbow on the brick wall. “If you touch me again,” I said, my voice shaking with rage, “I’ll call the cops.” That shut him up.

The next week, I was called into my manager’s office. They were restructuring. My position was being eliminated. They gave me two weeks’ notice and an insulting severance package that wouldn’t even cover my next month’s rent.

I spent my two weeks of notice applying for every job I could find. Seventy-three applications. Six responses. Zero offers.

The first week of unemployment, I had a routine: apply for jobs, eat a cheap lunch, apply for more jobs. By week two, my bank account was down to three digits. I canceled Netflix. I started taking shorter showers. I ate ramen and eggs. My landlord started leaving voicemails about the rent. My electricity was shut off for 48 hours before I scraped together enough to get it turned back on. I ate plain rice for three days straight because it was all I had left.

I finally swallowed my pride and applied for temporary assistance. The process was humiliating. They gave me a list of food banks. I stood in line, accepted a box of canned goods and nearly expired bread with a smile that felt like it might crack my face, and carried it home on the bus.

That night, I got an email. A small warehouse needed temporary help. The pay was less than half what I’d been making, but it was something.

The work was physically brutal. Ten hours on my feet, lifting boxes, scanning inventory. My hands developed calluses. My back ached constantly. But I made enough to pay part of the rent.

Then one morning in late November, I woke up feeling like I’d been hit by a truck. My throat was on fire, my head pounding. My temperature was 103.8. I should have gone to urgent care, but I had exactly $27 in my checking account. So, I took some ibuprofen and somehow made it to the bus.

I don’t remember much about that day. I remember waiting for the bus home, shivering violently. The next thing I knew, I was on the ground. I had passed out.

I made it home somehow and collapsed on the living room floor. That’s where my new roommate, Rosalie, found me when she got home. My neighbor had seen my eviction notice and suggested her cousin Rosalie as a potential roommate to help with rent. Rosalie had moved in two days prior. She later told me she thought I was dead. She put me to bed, forced me to drink water, and put cold washcloths on my forehead all night. The next day, she marched down to the warehouse in person and raised enough hell that they actually looked into their policies and found that even temp workers qualified for five paid sick days. When she told me, I cried. It was the first time anyone had fought for me in I don’t know how long.

One particularly cold morning, I was waiting for the bus when an older woman next to me struck up a conversation. She mentioned she worked at a medical office down the street and that their warehouse needed reorganizing. I immediately asked if they were hiring.

I updated my pathetic resume at the library and walked into the medical office the next day. The manager hired me on the spot. It wasn’t full-time, just 20 hours a week handling medical supply inventory, but it paid $3 more per hour than the warehouse.

For the next few weeks, I worked both jobs. It was brutal, but for the first time in months, I could pay my bills on time. By mid-January, I’d saved enough to quit the warehouse job.

The medical office job wasn’t glamorous, but it was steady. The manager kept finding more hours for me. By February, I was working 35 hours a week. With regular paychecks, I started tackling the mountain of debt Kenny had left me with.

The random sightings of Kenny stopped, but the texts from new numbers increased. I just kept blocking and ignoring.

Then came Valentine’s Day. I was home alone, eating frozen pizza, when someone started pounding on my door. I knew it was Kenny. I tiptoed to the door and looked through the peephole. There he was, holding grocery store roses and a small box. I backed away, hoping he’d leave. After what felt like an eternity, he did, leaving the items on the floor.

Curiosity got the better of me. Inside the box was a cheap ring, a simple silver band with a tiny stone that was probably cubic zirconia. The card read: “I know I can’t undo what I did, but I want to start making it right. This is the ring I should have given you instead of her. I’ve changed. Please call me.”

I stood there and felt nothing. Not anger, not sadness. Just emptiness. This man had wrecked my life, and he thought a cheap ring and a cliché line would fix it. I dropped the ring and card into the trash can by the elevator and went back inside to finish my now-cold pizza.

Life went on. My hours at the medical office increased to full-time with actual benefits. Rosalie and I renewed the lease. My credit score inched up. I even went on a date or two.

Then last month, Jay texted me. She’d bumped into Kenny at a coffee shop. He was moving to Pittsburgh for a fresh start. I felt a sense of relief.

Which is why I was completely thrown when I opened my apartment door last week and found him standing there. He looked different—cleancut, healthier. He held up his hands, said he was on his way out of town and just wanted to drop something off.

He handed me a small gift bag. Inside was an envelope and a box. The envelope contained $1,500 in cash. The box contained a ring—the ring. The one he’d bought for Daria with my money.

He explained that when Daria left him, she’d thrown the ring at him. He was returning what was technically mine. He said he had a job lined up in Pittsburgh and would continue sending payments until he’d repaid everything he owed. He said he was genuinely sorry. And then he left.

I took the ring to a jeweler the next day. It wasn’t worth nearly what he’d paid. I got just under $1,000 for it, which went straight into my savings account.

So, that’s it. That’s the end of the Kenny saga. I’m doing okay now. The medical office gave me a small raise. Rosalie moved in with her boyfriend, but I found a new roommate. My back still acts up on rainy days, a souvenir from the warehouse. I still catch myself checking the locks twice before bed. But I’m building something new, something stable, something that is entirely my own.