No Longer His Girlfriend by Terveen Gill

I’m the girlfriend. Or was. He’s dead now. There was a funeral. I wasn’t invited. We lived together, laughed together, doing everything a normal couple was expected to do. He was twenty years older. So what. I was twenty years younger. It wasn’t as if we were competing with each other.

If he had stuck around, marriage was on the cards. We had even written down our vows. I shall love and obey, and till death do us part. Unfortunately, his heart gave up before we could even start. At least he didn’t suffer. We kissed good night and before morning he was gone. The doctor said it could’ve been worse. Coma or paralysis.

He had a father, a mother, and a ghastly brother. They were a trio of unkindness. Even when he was alive, I was invisible to them. We hardly met, and when we did, they hardly noticed me. I was just a nobody trying to be a somebody. If they could have had their way, we wouldn’t have been together for a single day.

But we survived for seven years. They weren’t enough, but something is better than nothing. I cried for days. They buried him in his favorite suit. They didn’t even know. I had to tell them. I watched from a distance as they put him in the ground. Didn’t even get to kiss him goodbye.

They asked for the keys and all his belongings. I was being wiped out. Our past was being erased. They would pretend I never even existed. Then one day, they showed up unannounced. An unfamiliar man with them. They all spoke at once and showed me some papers. It was his last will and testament.

I’m no longer his girlfriend. I’m the sole beneficiary of his entire inheritance.

Ouch!