I Upgraded To First Class And Downgraded Him To Ex-Husband Chapter 10

I Upgraded To First Class And Downgraded Him To Ex-Husband Chapter 10

The day the court’s mandatory divorce decree arrived.

It was raining heavily in Oakhaven.

Caleb was wearing a hard hat, doing hard labor at a construction site.

A mail carrier in a raincoat handed him a waterproof envelope.

“Caleb Reed, right? Court’s special delivery. Sign for it, please.”

With his mudcaked hands, Caleb scrawled his mark on the receipt slip.

He tore open the envelope.

On that thin sheet of paper, the words dissolving the marital relationship were printed with stark clarity.

A violent wave of vertigo washed over him.

The wheelbarrow in his hands tipped and crashed to the ground.

An entire load of red bricks smashed onto his instep.

In the hospital ER.

Caleb sat on a bench, one leg lame.

He couldn’t even scrape together the couple hundred dollars for an X-Ray. He’d had to borrow a little loose change from a kind coworker just to wrap it casually in gauze.

In his hand, he clutched that thin paper declaring the two of them completely severed.

He buried his face in his hands and let out a guttural, animal-like sob.

His phone vibrated frantically in his pocket.

It was his mother calling from the countryside.

“Caleb, when are you wiring money back? Jenna says she wants the newest iPhone. The villagers are all laughing at her for using that piece of junk.”

“And my back is killing me again. You absolutely have to get three thousand dollars back to me today for my medicine!”

Caleb didn’t react at all.

Over the receiver, his mother’s self-righteous demands intertwined with Jenna’s shrill urging, like two invisible death warrants.

Without my blood to feed on, this greedy family was finally about to drain him dry.

He mechanically pulled out his phone and pressed the power-off button.

The screen went completely dark.

He leaned against the cold tile wall, entirely reduced to a walking corpse.

The moment the decree was delivered into my hands.

I was sitting in my bright ocean-view apartment.

Sunlight poured through the floor-to-ceiling windows, spilling across the carpet.

I put the copy of the decree away in the drawer.

Took the old photocopy of our marriage certificate and the written promises of reform Caleb had written before.

And fed all of them into the shredder.

The machine buzzed, turning that waste paper into uniform shreds.

I changed into a vivid red maxi dress.

Put on a wide brimmed sun hat.

Carried my light suitcase downstairs.

A taxi was already waiting.

The driver helped me load my luggage into the trunk.

“Miss, heading to the airport?” the driver asked warmly.

“Off on vacation?”

I slid into the back seat and fastened my seatbelt.

Without a moment’s hesitation, I answered.

“Yes, to Havenport.”

“Making up for a solo vacation.”

A few hours later, the plane landed at the familiar airport.

I walked out of the terminal.

The breeze off the lake brushed my face once again.

This time, there was no harsh command to go ask the front desk to make do for the night, no errand to run downstairs for iced drinks.

I checked directly into the full ocean view suite I had booked long ago and ordered the most expensive cold drink on the menu for myself.

No more bossy, demanding so-called family.

No more trivial concessions and compromises.

Only the glittering expanse of water and the freedom of my own breathing.

The mountain snow, the lake under the moon.

I lifted my DSLR camera and aimed at the distant scenery.

Pressed the shutter.

I strode forward into the vast, boundless future that no one would ever define for me again.