I smiled to myself as I walked to the store. My plan was to get everything I needed for dinner and then go to Rafael’s office to wait for him to finish work so I could catch a ride back with him. I didn’t mind the walk to the store – I enjoyed it in fact, but I hated walking back laden down with groceries.

I was shocked to discover that I was already missing Rafael. We had only been dating for two weeks, but we had seen each other pretty much every night of those short weeks. Last night was an exception because he had a conference call with someone in another time zone so he was at the office until the middle of the night. One night without seeing him and I was missing him this much already. That thought should have scared me, and it did a bit, but more than anything, I felt excited. I really felt like this could be the start of something special and I knew in my hearty, despite the pangs of guilt I occasionally felt that this was the right time to let Craig go.

I wandered into the store, debating what to cook for dinner. I went to the ATM to check my balance. That would decide to an extent what I could afford to buy. I was still between jobs, but I had an offer from a firm that I was seriously considering taking.

I put my card in and my jaw almost hit the ground when I saw my balance. What the fuck was that? The bank must have made some sort of a mistake. I would have to go and look at my list of transactions and see how much I actually should have. I pressed a few buttons and got up a mini statement and my shock turned to anger.

My balance was correct. The bank hadn’t made a mistake. Rafael had paid me for the week I spent at his sister’s wedding event. I hit the button to return my card and I stormed from the store, our dinner forgotten. I marched to Rafael’s building and went up to his floor. I walked down the corridor to his office. I didn’t bother to knock when I reached it. Fuck that. I didn’t care who heard what I had to say.

Rafael looked up from his desk when I opened the office door. He started to smile and stopped when he saw my expression. Even then, when I was so angry I could throttle him, I couldn’t help but appreciate how gorgeous he was. But I wasn’t going to let that distract me.

“What the fuck Rafael?” I said. He looked confused, like he had no idea what I was talking about. “The fee for the wedding?”

“Oh shit. Has it still not cleared yet. I’m sorry I thought it would have gotten through escrow today,” he said. “Let me call the bank.”

“What?” I demanded. “No. It cleared. I can’t believe you did that. You treated me like some sort of whore.”

“What? No, I didn’t. God, Lena, I didn’t mean it to seem that way at all. I sent it because we had a deal and it seemed wrong to not send it, like I would be taking advantage of you. I mean if you had still worked here and we had sex, you still would have wanted your wages right?” Rafael said.

“Oh come on Rafael, that’s completely different and you know it,” I shouted.

“Is it?” he said. “Because from where I’m standing, it’s exactly the same. You were being paid to do a job and …”

He was still talking but I could no longer hear him. I bent double as the most intense pain I had ever felt in my life ripped through my insides. I felt as though someone’s hand was in there squeezing my internal organs while wearing a glove studded with broken glass. I needed to scream, but the most I could manage was a whimper.

Oh my God. I was going to die and the last conversation I had had with Rafael would have been a stupid argument about something that didn’t even matter in the big scheme of things.

Another pulse of pain went through me, and tears coursed down my face as I whimpered again.

“Lena? Lena? What’s wrong?” I heard Rafael saying.

It sounded as though his voice was coming from miles away rather than from beside me. I tried to answer him, but I couldn’t speak. I felt myself tumbling towards the ground and then I felt Rafael’s strong arms around me. He caught me before I hit the floor and he held me in his arms. I tried to tell him I was sorry, but it was too late. Everything went black.