Collette had been through a bad breakup. Not only did she find Nicola, her no-longer-girlfriend in bed with some guy who looked like every jock stereotype rolled into one, but Nicola smiled in a way Collette hadn’t seen in two years. Oh, and she never got the fifty back that she lent her for fuel in that last month.
During her post-breakup mourning stage, Collette went on a cleaning frenzy, removing all signs of Nicola she could find. A pair of underwear, their book of photos, Nicola’s collection of films that she hated but watched with her anyway, and her various editions of Emma. Rifling through her dresser drawers during her purge of everything Nicola, Collette found the present she’d hidden away for Nicola’s birthday; It would’ve been in a month. She stared down at it, the new hardback copy of Emma and a silver bangle with a jade stone, and wondered why she’d even bought it for her at all.
It wasn’t because Nicola had been a cheating bitch, but she looked at these things, these objects, and she couldn’t imagine having spent money on them. The edition of Emma was nice, but by buying her another copy of it, she sanctioned Nicola’s stupid obsession of getting the same fucking book over and over again. The clothbound cover felt weird in Collette’s fingers and was an obnoxious shade of pink that motivated her to chuck it out the window. She didn't hear it land.
As for the bangle, yeah it looked nice, but why jade? She’d recalled Nicola saying she liked jade a few times, not that that meant anything. She liked this, she liked that, then never brought it up again.
The stone looked up at Collette, passive like much of her relationship with Nicola. Her forearm rattled, jangling the bangles she wore.
She slid the bangle onto her forearm and slid the drawer to a close, sighed, and continued with her cleaning.
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