PART 2 — The Screenshot Hit Her Best Friend Before It Hit Her Pride

Part Description

Maren panics when she sees Hayes’s message. Delaney tries to claim Nolan is bitter, but Maren realizes Hayes has been using her to manage Delaney. Then Nolan discovers Hayes’s girlfriend Tessa was never out of the picture.

Maren called me eleven times before midnight. I watched the first three calls ring through while Opal made toast neither of us wanted. By the fourth call, Maren started texting between attempts. “Do not send that to Delaney yet.” Then, “Nolan, answer me.” Then, “You don’t understand what this could do.” I stared at that one for a while. People always say you do not understand consequences when they mean they were hoping to control them. I finally replied, “You are very protective of timing.” The phone rang again immediately. I let it ring until the last second, then answered without saying hello. Maren was breathing like she had run upstairs. “That screenshot is fake,” she said. “It has to be fake.” Her voice cracked on the second fake, which told me she already knew it was not.

I sat at Opal’s kitchen table with the returned ring receipt folded beside my elbow. “Why would it have to be fake?” I asked. “Because Hayes wouldn’t say that.” “Wouldn’t he?” “No. He’s complicated, but he cares about Delaney. He’s been trying to leave Tessa for months.” There it was. She said the name before she meant to. Opal looked up from the sink. I leaned back in the chair. “So Tessa exists.” Silence. Long, thick, expensive silence. Then Maren said, “Delaney knows about her.” I said, “Does Delaney know she’s the practice round?” Maren snapped, “Stop saying that like you’re enjoying it.” “I’m quoting,” I said. That stopped her harder than an insult would have.

The truth came out in pieces because Maren wanted every piece to look smaller than it was. Hayes still lived with Tessa because of a lease, a dog, money, and “shared obligations,” which was a phrase that sounded like it came wrapped in a napkin at a restaurant bar. Hayes had told Delaney the relationship was emotionally over. He had told Maren the same thing. He just needed time. He just needed courage. He just needed to know Delaney was serious. I said, “That phrase does a lot of unpaid labor.” Maren ignored that. She said Delaney had been terrified I would propose and make everything harder. She said Delaney did not know how to stop it without hurting me. “So you all let me book dinner,” I said. Maren did not answer. The silence answered for her.

Around one in the morning, Delaney started calling from blocked numbers. I did not answer. Then she texted from the bakery phone, which meant she had either gone back there or kept the work phone at home for emergencies she created herself. “Maren is crying. What did you do?” I looked at the message for a long time. I thought about answering with everything. I thought about sending her the screenshot and watching her explain around it. Instead, I wrote, “I sent her a screenshot from the man who chose you.” Delaney called immediately. I answered once because there are some doors you close better by letting the other person hear the lock. “What screenshot?” she demanded. No hello. No shame. Just anger first, because anger is easier to wear than fear. “Ask Maren,” I said. “Maren says it’s private.” “That seems to be everyone’s favorite word when proof arrives.”

Delaney’s voice lowered. “Hayes loves me.” I almost felt sorry for her then, not enough to soften, but enough to recognize the cliff under her feet. “Hayes is evaluating you,” I said. “You’re lying.” “No. I’m finished.” “Nolan, don’t do this.” “Do what?” “Make yourself into the victim.” I looked at the empty place on Opal’s table where the ring box had been before I returned it. “Delaney,” I said, “you called me practice outside your bakery while our engagement dinner was still booked.” She inhaled sharply. “I didn’t know you were actually going to propose.” That was such a careful lie it embarrassed both of us. “Goodnight,” I said, and blocked the bakery number too.

The next morning, I made a folder on my laptop. Not because I planned to sue anyone. Not because I wanted to post anything. Because people who call you practice tend to rewrite the rehearsal. I saved the dinner cancellation email from Graham Bell. I saved the ring return receipt. I saved the screenshot from Hayes to Maren. I saved Maren’s call log and Delaney’s messages. I named the folder “Delaney,” then changed it to “Proof,” then changed it again to “Memory Insurance.” Opal watched me do it from the doorway with a cup of coffee in her hand. “Smart,” she said. “Sad, but smart.” I said, “That should be the family motto.” She smiled without showing teeth. “It already is.”

By noon, Maren sent another message. “I confronted Hayes.” I did not reply. She sent more anyway. Hayes denied the screenshot first. Then he admitted the words were his but said they had been taken out of context. He claimed he meant Delaney had helped him “practice being brave enough to leave Tessa.” I read that sentence twice and almost laughed for the first time since the bakery. Practice being brave. That was the kind of phrase cowardly men used when they had good lighting and no plan. Maren followed with another screenshot, fresh from that morning. Hayes to Maren: “Do not let Delaney spiral. If she goes back to Nolan, I lose the clean exit.” Clean exit. There it was, polished and ugly. I was not just the man Delaney wanted to discard. I was the fallback Hayes needed removed before he decided whether to risk his own comfortable life.

That changed something in me. Until then, I had thought Delaney humiliated me because she believed she had been chosen. Now I saw the larger machinery. Hayes wanted Delaney emotionally separated from me before he committed to anything. If she rejected me publicly or privately, he could read it as proof that she was serious. If she hesitated, he could retreat to Tessa and call Delaney unstable. My proposal was not a romantic threat to him. It was a useful experiment. I forwarded Maren’s new screenshot into my folder and wrote nothing back. She texted, “I didn’t know he was using me.” I looked at that message until the screen dimmed. Then I typed, “You knew you were using me.” I did not send anything else.

That evening, Delaney showed up at Opal’s house. Opal’s porch camera caught her stepping out of a rideshare, face pale, hair pulled into a messy knot, green coat buttoned wrong. Opal answered before I could. I heard her through the hallway. “My porch has a camera and I already returned the casserole dish, so choose your crisis.” Delaney said, “I need to talk to Nolan.” Opal turned and looked at me. She did not tell me what to do. That was one of the reasons I trusted her. I stepped outside and closed the door behind me. Delaney looked furious and scared, which made her look younger than twenty-nine. “Hayes explained everything,” she said. “He didn’t mean it like that.” “Which part?” I asked. “The screenshot. The practice thing. He was scared. He loves me. Tessa is basically gone.” I looked at the wet leaves stuck to the porch steps. “Basically gone people usually still have a toothbrush.”

Her eyes filled with tears, but her voice stayed sharp. “You’re enjoying this.” “No,” I said. “I’m watching you learn the vocabulary you used on me.” That landed. She crossed her arms, then uncrossed them, like she could not decide whether to defend herself or collapse. “You don’t understand what Hayes and I have.” “You’re right,” I said. “I don’t understand why someone who has what you have needs Maren to keep her calm.” Delaney flinched. Then she said the sentence that cut the whole thing open. “At least Hayes didn’t let me embarrass myself at an engagement dinner.” Everything went still. Even the porch light seemed to hum louder. I stared at her. “He knew?” Delaney froze. Her eyes moved away from mine for half a second, and that was enough. Hayes knew about the planned proposal. Maren knew. Delaney knew. And nobody had stopped the dinner until I did.

I opened the door behind me. “We’re done.” Delaney stepped forward. “Nolan, wait.” “No. You had a reservation, a ring, parents coming, and a man on standby waiting to see what you would choose. That’s not confusion. That’s cruelty with witnesses.” Her tears finally spilled over. “I didn’t want to hurt everyone.” “You were comfortable hurting me.” I went back inside and locked the door. Opal stood in the hallway, arms folded. “You all right?” she asked. “No,” I said. “But I’m accurate.” She nodded like that was enough for the evening. At midnight, Maren texted again. “Tessa just messaged me. She wants to know why Hayes told her he was at a work dinner tomorrow night.” Tomorrow night. The canceled engagement dinner. My private room. My proposal. What Tessa sent next proved Hayes had planned to use my proposal night for his own escape test, and by then I understood something Delaney still did not: she had not been chosen. She had been staged.