He Betrayed Me in a Language I Knew

On the eve of their second anniversary, a woman hosts a dinner for her boyfriend Henry Hayes and his friends. As the guests drink, her best friend Rachel Quinton starts a game in the Southern dialect, and Henry answers in the same tongue, trading crude jokes and arranging a midnight meeting with Rachel in the guest room. They believe she cannot understand a word, because she is from the North. In truth, her family is from Harborcrest City, where that dialect is spoken too, so she hears every betrayal while smiling beside them. Excusing herself, she finds a torn wrapper in the bathroom and quietly cancels the island trip she and Henry had booked. She then messages her brother, Caleb Scott, asking him to arrange her return home. Later that night, doubled over with pain, she calls Henry, but Rachel answers and he dismisses her. At the hospital, diagnosed with acute gastric bleeding, she faces the truth alone and cancels the anniversary gift she had ordered for him.