It was Christmas morning, and the living room smelled of cinnamon and pine. Wrapping paper littered the floor, mugs of cocoa steamed on the coffee table, and for once, everything felt warm and simple. Ethan handed me a small, carefully wrapped box, his eyes glimmering with excitement. “This one’s from Claire,” he said.
Claire. His coworker. The one who always lingered too close at office parties, whose laugh was always a little too loud when he spoke. I forced a polite smile and opened the gift. Inside was a sleek leather watch—expensive, masculine, elegant. But something was wrong.
The engraving on the back read: To E. Always.
My heart stuttered.
I looked up sharply. Ethan’s smile faltered the second he saw my expression. “What is it?” he asked, though his voice carried a note of dread.
I handed him the watch. His face drained as he read the engraving.
“It’s… it must be a mistake,” he stammered.
“A mistake?” I whispered. “She gave me your gift. That’s not a mistake, Ethan. That’s a message.”
The room suddenly felt too small, the twinkling lights mocking me with their cheer. I replayed every moment with Claire in my head: the way she always found excuses to text him late at night, the time she “accidentally” left her scarf in his car, the knowing smirk she gave me at the office holiday party. And now this.
“Tell me the truth,” I said, my voice trembling. “Is there something going on between you two?”
“No,” he said too quickly. “I swear, there’s nothing. She must’ve meant it as a joke—”
“A joke?” My laugh came out sharp and bitter. “Engraving ‘Always’ on a watch isn’t a joke. That’s a promise.”
He reached for my hand, but I pulled it back. I couldn’t bear his touch, not when every nerve in my body screamed betrayal.
The rest of the day passed in silence. The gifts under the tree felt meaningless. Every carol on the radio sounded hollow. That watch sat on the mantle, taunting me, gleaming with a truth Ethan refused to admit.
Later that night, when I finally confronted him again, his voice cracked. “She’s… she’s had feelings for me. But I didn’t encourage it.”
Didn’t encourage it. Yet he wore the cologne she once said she liked. Yet he laughed at her jokes even when no one else did. Yet he let her sit too close, text too late, linger too long.
The watch wasn’t just a gift. It was proof. Proof that I wasn’t imagining the distance between us. Proof that I wasn’t the only one he made feel special.
I slipped it back into the box, closed the lid, and handed it to him. “Give it back to her,” I said coldly. “It was never mine to open.”
Final Thought
Sometimes the sharpest betrayal isn’t in the lies spoken aloud, but in the gifts meant for someone else that land in your hands by mistake. That watch taught me a painful truth: you can wrap love in pretty paper, but you can’t disguise where the heart really belongs.
