My girlfriend dumped me over a hamster that never existed, and I almost lost thirty thousand dollars and my sanity because I said no in the worst way possible.

It started on a Tuesday night that should have been stupidly simple.

Me and my girl, Amelia, were on the couch about to Netflix and chill. The lights were off except for the TV glow, a bowl of popcorn was balanced between us, and my dog was curled up at our feet snoring. We’d been together long enough that these nights felt easy. Comfortable. Like the part of the movie when the music softens and you just know the main couple is solid.

In the middle of scrolling through options, Amelia turned to me, eyes bright the way they always got when she talked about animals.

“Do you want to see my sister’s new hamster?” she asked.

I didn’t even think.

“Nah, I’m good,” I said, barely glancing over as I leaned in to kiss her.

The next few seconds moved so fast they felt fake. She jerked away like I’d slapped her. The popcorn bowl flew, kernels bouncing off my face and into my lap.

“I knew my family was right about you,” she snapped, her voice sharp enough to cut. “You’re disgusting.”

Before I could get a word out, she grabbed her keys, stormed out the front door, and slammed it so hard my dog jumped awake and barked at the empty hallway.

I just sat there blinking at the door like, What in the world was that?

I figured maybe she was tired or hungry, so I did what I always did when things felt a little off. I tried to fix it with food. I waited until she got back to her apartment, then DoorDashed her Wingstop, adding extra fries because that was her thing.

Thirty minutes later, I checked my phone to see if she’d texted.

Nothing.

I opened Instagram.

Couldn’t find her profile.

Texts to her number suddenly turned green instead of blue. Calls went straight to voicemail.

Amelia had blocked me on everything.

After a few hours and a couple of very pathetic attempts to convince myself she just needed space, reality started to creep in. And with it came that harsh, ugly feeling I hate admitting to: post-nut clarity. Not the funny kind people joke about online. The real kind. The kind where you replay your own words and realize how bad they sound when you strip away your ego.

Amelia was obsessed with animals. She volunteered at shelters. She memorized dog breeds for fun. She talked about wanting to foster senior cats when we moved in together. And I’d turned down meeting her sister’s new pet like it was some annoying chore.

There wasn’t a good reason.

I just… didn’t feel like it. And in that tiny decision, I’d told her more than I meant to about where my priorities were.

By the time the sun dragged itself up the next morning, I’d decided to fix it.

First thing, I drove to the animal shelter on the south side of town. The place smelled like bleach and wet fur and something vaguely sad. In the small animals room, a tiny brown hamster with shiny black eyes pressed his nose against the glass of his cage like he recognized me.

“I’ll take him,” I heard myself say.

The worker looked surprised but handed me a clipboard. Twenty minutes later I walked out with a cardboard carrier that rustled every few seconds.

I named him Brownie because I’m not creative and he was brown. He squeaked like he didn’t love the name either.

My plan was simple. Show up at Amelia’s apartment with a hamster of my own. Apologize. Tell her I got it. That I understood how important her world was to her and I wanted to be part of it.

It sounded dumb and cheesy and a little desperate, but sometimes relationships are dumb and cheesy and a little desperate.

I drove straight to her place, heart pounding the whole way. Brownie’s small box sat on the passenger seat, vibrating softly every time I hit a bump.

When I knocked on her apartment door, my entire body went cold.

The door swung open and there he was.

Tommy.

Her ex.

He stood there like it was the most normal thing in the world, wearing basketball shorts and a white tank, a faint sheen of sweat on his chest like he’d just finished moving furniture or her around the bedroom. His hair was messy, and he smelled like body spray and smugness.

He looked at me.

He looked at the hamster box in my hands.

His mouth twitched into something between pity and amusement.

“Sorry, bro,” he said.

Then he shut the door in my face.

The sound echoed down the hallway.

I stood there like an idiot, staring at the chipped paint on her door, Brownie squeaking softly from inside his carrier like he was narrating my humiliation.

Not only did I just lose the love of my life over a rodent, I thought, but we were supposed to sign a lease in two days.

A lease we’d already put down a thirty-thousand-dollar, non-refundable deposit on.

Suddenly the floor felt like it tilted.

I walked back to my car in a daze, put Brownie carefully on the passenger seat, and just sat there gripping the steering wheel.

I was about to be literally homeless in a week.

When panic hits, some people call their moms. I called my friend Luciana.

She was the kind of friend who always knew what to do, who made color-coded spreadsheets for fun and reminded you when your car inspection was due. I’d known her since freshman year of college, and she’d always liked Amelia. When I told her what happened, I expected her to say something reasonable like,

Okay, you messed up, but this is fixable.

Instead, she went completely silent.

The bad kind of silent.

“Lu?” I asked. “You there?”

When she finally spoke, her voice was low and tight.

“I can’t believe you just did that.”

“Did what?” I asked, even though I already knew.

“That’s the problem,” she snapped. “You don’t even see it. Just how fast did you say no when she asked you about the hamster?”

I stared through my windshield at the parking lot.

“Like… straight away,” I admitted.

On the other end of the line, I heard her let out this long, disappointed breath.

“Wow,” she said. “You aren’t who I thought you were. All men really are the same.”

“Luciana, come on—”

The line went dead.

I pulled the phone away from my ear and saw the screen.

Call ended.

I tried to text her. The little blue bubble I was used to seeing turned green.

Blocked.

By lunchtime, it felt like the whole world had somehow gotten a memo about what I’d done.

My mom called and went straight into, “I can’t believe what you did, I am extremely disappointed in you,” before I could even say hello. When I tried to explain, she cut me off.

“Mom, wait—”

Click.

Then my boy Malik texted.

Dude, you really messed up. She’s devastated.

When I asked what he meant, he left me on read.

Everywhere I turned, someone else was siding with Amelia over an interaction I barely remembered in detail.

Forty-eight hours until I lost thirty grand, a girlfriend, and the apartment that was supposed to be our fresh start.

My one ace, if you could call it that, was that I was still logged into Luciana’s Instagram on my phone from the last time I helped her with a story template. She’d forgotten to log out.

So I used her profile to search Amelia’s account.

Every single story post from the last twenty-four hours had Tommy in it. Tommy at her favorite coffee place. Tommy walking her dog. Tommy doing that stupid peace sign pose he always did like he was in a boy band.

My chest burned.

But something wasn’t adding up.

If Amelia wanted to dump me and run back to her ex, why not just… do that? Why the weird hamster dramatics? Why the moral outrage like I’d committed a felony instead of acting like a lazy boyfriend for five seconds?

I clicked on her Amazon wish list out of habit and froze.

Still there: couple’s Halloween costumes in my size and hers, added three days ago. Matching Scooby-Doo pajamas. A set of his-and-hers mugs that said, “Dog Mom” and “Dog Dad.”

Her Pinterest wedding board had been updated yesterday with fall barn wedding ideas.

With me.

She wasn’t planning a breakup.

I was still making sense of that when my phone rang again. This time the screen showed a name that tightened my throat.

Lucy.

Amelia’s younger cousin, the one who always thought I was funny and sent me TikToks at two in the morning.

I didn’t pick up. I told myself I’d talk to her later. Right now, I needed answers.

The next morning, I finally texted Lucy, cutting straight to the point.

Does your sister need help taking care of her hamster?

The typing bubbles appeared. Disappeared. Came back. Vanished again. It went on long enough that I started to sweat.

Finally, a message popped up.

Tieran, are you okay? What the hell are you talking about?

It felt like someone slapped me across the face.

Turned out, there was never any hamster.

Not at Amelia’s sister’s place.

Not anywhere.

I looked over at Brownie’s travel cage on my dresser. He squeaked loudly, as if to make sure I knew he was, in fact, very real.

Less than a day to go until the lease signing. I had a fake hamster test, a very real hamster, no girlfriend, and a thirty-thousand-dollar problem.

By lunchtime, my brain felt like static, so I did what I always do when I’m stressed: I drove.

I circled the same blocks again and again with no destination in mind, Brownie’s carrier wedged into the passenger seat like he was my tiny, judgmental copilot.

That’s how I ended up pulling into a Shell station across town, more out of habit than anything. I needed gas. I needed water. I needed my life not to be on fire.

I got out of the car, shoved the pump into the tank, and that’s when I saw it.

Her car.

Amelia’s beat-up little sedan, parked at the next pump over.

Except she wasn’t the one holding the nozzle.

Tommy was.

He stood there in another pair of basketball shorts, his tank showing off a stupidly good gym routine, pumping gas into her car like it was the most normal thing in the world.

I froze. My fingers tightened on the pump handle.

He noticed me first. His face shifted from surprise to something weirdly gentle.

“Hey, no hard feelings, broski,” he said when he walked over. He even went in for a little half-hug, half-bro handshake.

I let my hand hang at my side.

“Hard feelings about what exactly?” I asked tightly.

He laughed, but not in a mean way. More like he was talking to a kid who didn’t understand how the game worked.

“Listen, man,” he said. “It took me months to figure out their loyalty test system. It’s… intense. I failed mine two years ago. But I studied up, came back, said yes to everything.”

He shrugged, as if that explained everything.

“Been back with Amelia for twenty-six hours now.”

It felt like my stomach dropped clear through the concrete.

Loyalty test system.

He went on like we were teammates instead of two guys who loved the same girl.

“They have this rule,” he said. “Every family member gets one weird favor they can ask a partner. Say no once and you’re out. Forever.”

The words landed with a dull thud in my chest.

“The hamster was your test,” he added.

Brownie, from his carrier in my car, squeaked once like a tiny judge banging a gavel.

I stared at Tommy, my jaw tight.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, even though a part of me already knew he was dead serious.

He shrugged again.

“I’m just saying,” he said. “Once you know the rules, it’s easier. But you gotta actually play the game. Their game.”

He clapped me on the shoulder.

“Good luck, man. She’s already picked out rings with me.”

Then he walked back to Amelia’s car like he hadn’t just set a bomb off in my life.

I sat in my driver’s seat for almost an hour after that, engine off, hands gripping the wheel while Brownie stared at me through the bars of his little travel cage.

Tommy knew exactly how their system worked because he’d studied it. He’d learned the rules by heart.

But he’d also just given me the playbook.

And if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s playing games once I know the rules.

On paper, that sounded smart.

In reality, it almost wrecked me.

Sitting right there in the Shell parking lot, I pulled out my phone and started googling like a man possessed.

“Family loyalty tests,” I typed. “Weird boyfriend tests families do,” “relationship tests that decide everything,” “families that make you say yes to everything.”

What I found made my stomach twist.

There were entire Reddit threads about this exact kind of thing. Forums with thousands of posts from people whose partners’ families played games with secret rules. Some had money tests. Some had time tests. Some had bizarre tasks like showing up to help at two in the morning or babysitting a random cousin’s kid with no notice.

The pattern was always the same. Say no once and you were done.

The more I read, the more I felt sick. I started screenshotting every post that seemed even remotely relevant. Notes about how to pass these tests. Long rants from people who refused to play. Stories from guys who said yes to everything until they burned out and ghosted.

After twenty minutes of that horror show, I realized I needed insider information, not strangers off the internet.

So I texted Lucy.

Can we talk about something important? About your family?

She replied pretty fast, saying she could meet for coffee near campus but only had fifteen minutes because she had plans later.

I drove straight there. The coffee shop was buzzing with students pretending to study and baristas who looked too cool to be steaming milk for a living.

Lucy was already at a corner table when I walked in, her dark hair piled up on her head in a messy bun, a sweatshirt hanging off one shoulder. She looked more confused than mad.

I got us both drinks, then sat down and took a deep breath.

“Okay,” I said. “I need you to tell me if I’m crazy.”

I laid everything out. What Tommy had said. The idea of the loyalty tests. The hamster setup. The way everyone suddenly turned on me.

Her face went from confused to pale.

“I thought Aunt Sabine was joking,” she whispered. “About testing boyfriends.”

She stared into her coffee, eyes darting around like she was replaying memories in fast-forward.

“Once,” she said slowly, “my mom asked my ex, Jake, to help move furniture at three in the morning.”

I blinked.

“Three?”

“She said her back hurt, the couch was stuck, whatever,” Lucy said. “Jake was like, ‘Ma’am, I have work at seven a.m., can we do it tomorrow?’ It seemed reasonable to me. But within a week, everybody went cold on him. Stopped inviting him to things. My mom kept saying I deserved someone more
‘committed.’ We broke up a month later.”

She swallowed hard.

“I always thought it was just… random,” she said. “Now it kind of sounds like that was his test.”

I asked if she knew anything else. Any rules. Any patterns. Any secret group chats where the family kept score.

She shook her head.

“If there is,” she said, “I’m not in it.”

Fifteen minutes went fast. She had to leave. I watched her go, my mind racing.

If Lucy didn’t know everything and Tommy only knew the game from the outside, there was one person who absolutely had the full picture.

Luciana.

She’d already blocked me, but she lived ten minutes away.

So I drove to her place.

I knocked on her apartment door for a full five minutes before she finally opened it a crack, chain still on. She looked exhausted and annoyed.

“What are you doing here, Tieran?” she asked.

I told her everything about the loyalty tests, about what Tommy said, about the group making decisions about me in some secret system I didn’t even know existed.

She listened with her arms crossed, then sighed and shut the door.

For a second I thought she was just done.

Then I heard the chain slide.

She opened the door again and stepped back to let me in.

“You really didn’t know?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “If I’d known the hamster thing was some kind of exam, obviously I would’ve—”

She cut me off with a sharp look.

“A good boyfriend would have said yes without needing to know it was a test,” she said quietly.

I had no answer for that.

After a moment, she walked over to her couch, grabbed her phone from the coffee table, and held it up.

“I’m not supposed to show you this,” she said.

“Please,” I said. “I need to understand.”

She hesitated, then unlocked her phone and tapped into a group chat titled FAMILY HQ.

Messages filled the screen.

Two days ago, Amelia’s mom had typed:

He failed the hamster test. Hard. Didn’t even hesitate.

Underneath were responses from what felt like the entire extended family.

Knew something was off about him.

If he can’t say yes to a pet, he won’t say yes when it matters.

Amelia deserves someone who prioritizes family.

My chest tightened as I scrolled.

The worst part was seeing a message from Aunt Sabine.

Maybe we should give him another chance, she’d written. He didn’t know the rules of the system.

But Amelia’s mom shut it down immediately.

A good boyfriend would say yes to meeting family pets without needing to know it’s a test, she replied. That’s the whole point.

I scrolled, looking for Amelia’s name.

Nothing.

She hadn’t defended me. She hadn’t agreed with them either.

Just silence while her family planned our breakup like a business decision.

I looked up at Luciana.

“Is there any way to get another test?” I asked. “To prove I get it now?”

She shook her head.

“Once you fail, you’re done,” she said. “Unless you do what Tommy did.”

“Disappear for two years and come back fully reformed?” I said.

She nodded.

“He studied us,” she said. “Learned all the values, all the preferences, all the pressure points. Now he drives Grandma to bingo every week without being asked. He remembers everyone’s birthday and shows up with gifts. He basically turned himself into the perfect family-oriented boyfriend.”

I thought about Tommy at the Shell station, easy smile, offering me a weird kind of sympathy.

“Is there really no other way?” I asked.

Luciana hesitated.

“There might be one loophole,” she said. “If you can get to Aunt Sabine. She’s basically the family matriarch. She has veto power over test results.”

“Will she talk to me?”

“She hates when outsiders try to game the system,” Luciana warned. “If she thinks you’re manipulating, she’ll double down.”

I thanked her anyway and left before she could change her mind about showing me the chat.

In the parking lot, I pulled out my phone and scrolled through my contacts until I found Sabine’s number from when I’d helped plan Amelia’s surprise birthday party last year.

My hand shook as I hit call.

She picked up after one ring.

“Tieran,” she said, her voice completely neutral.

Hearing my name like that made my throat dry.

“I need to talk to you,” I said. “About Amelia. About the tests.”

There was a pause.

“Diner on Maple Street,” she said finally. “One hour. I’m not interested in sob stories or manipulations. If you’re genuine, I’ll know. If you’re not, you’re wasting both of our time.”

Then she hung up.

I drove to the diner and got there twenty minutes early, so I just sat in the car and watched people go in and out. Construction workers, a couple of nurses still in scrubs, a mom with a toddler on her hip.

When Sabine arrived, she walked right past my car without looking, like she already knew I’d follow.

Inside, she chose a booth in the back corner with her back to the wall and a clear view of the door. She ordered coffee without looking at the menu.

Then those sharp eyes landed on me.

“Why did you say no to the hamster?” she asked. No warm-up. No small talk.

I took a breath.

“Because I didn’t think it was a big deal,” I said. “I was comfortable. Lazy. I felt like I didn’t need to prove anything anymore. I wanted to kiss my girlfriend, not look at a rodent. I thought that was fine.”

For a second, I thought she was going to rip me apart.

Instead, she laughed. A short, humorless little sound.

“That’s the most honest answer I’ve heard from someone who failed a test,” she said.

Then she told me how it all started.

Years ago, her sister’s husband had left after fifteen years of marriage for his secretary. No warning. No signs anyone had recognized. He’d been the perfect son-in-law on the surface. Brought flowers. Helped carry groceries. Smiled in family photos.

When he left, he said he’d been unhappy for a decade.

Sabine watched her sister crumble and swore she’d never let another man blindside her family like that.

“So we came up with the tests,” she said. “Small favors that reveal big truths. If someone won’t do a small, inconvenient thing for you, they won’t be there when it really matters.”

She told me Tommy had failed his test two years ago because he refused to drive Amelia’s grandmother to bingo, claiming he was busy when he was actually home playing video games.

“He studied us after that,” she said. “Watched. Learned. Changed. Or at least learned how to look like he changed. Now he never says no.”

She leveled her gaze at me.

“You’re desperate,” she said. “About the lease. About Amelia. About money. Desperation doesn’t impress me. I need to see actual change, not someone trying to save thirty thousand dollars.”

“Is there any way to get another chance?” I asked.

“I’ll be watching,” she said simply. “What you do next will tell me more than anything you say here.”

She finished her coffee, left money on the table, and walked out.

I sat there for a long minute, staring at the doorway she’d just disappeared through.

When I finally checked my phone, I had three missed calls from Jessica at the leasing office and one voicemail.

“Hi, Tieran. We still don’t have confirmation from both tenants. If we don’t have signatures by 5 p.m. today, you’ll forfeit your full deposit and the unit goes back on the market.”

It was already 2 p.m.

There was no universe where Amelia would show up at a leasing office to sign anything with me.

I walked out of the diner and sat in my car, the numbers spinning in my head.

Thirty thousand dollars.

One hamster.

One stupid, reflexive no.

I thought about what Sabine had said about real change. About what mattered to the family.

Amelia was obsessed with animals.

So I drove back to the shelter.

This time, I didn’t walk to the small animals room. I asked the woman at the front desk if they needed volunteers.

Her eyebrows shot up.

“Always,” she said. “You free right now?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Right now.”

She handed me a plastic apron and led me to the back. The dog kennels were louder than I remembered, a chorus of barking bouncing off concrete walls. The smell hit me so hard my eyes watered.

“Start by cleaning these,” she said, pointing to a row of cages. “Hose the floors, scrub the drains, fresh bedding. I’ll check on you later.”

I picked up a mop and got to work.

Thirty minutes later, sweat plastered my shirt to my back. My arms ached from scrubbing. Bleach stung my nose.

It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t Instagram-worthy.

Which, of course, is exactly why my brain suggested I post it.

I pulled out my phone and snapped a selfie with a couple of shelter dogs in the background. I posted it with a caption about “giving back to the community” and “using my free time to help animals in need.”

Within two minutes, Luciana texted.

This is pathetic.

Another message followed.

Stop trying so hard.

A second after that, Tommy texted too.

I saw your shelter post. She knows you’re watching her stories from Luciana’s account, by the way. This isn’t going to work, man.

I stared at the screen, feeling like an idiot.

He was right.

I was trying to game a system that was literally designed to catch people who were gaming it.

I deleted the post, shoved my phone back in my pocket, and went back to mopping.

If I was going to be there, it had to be for the dogs. For myself. Not for some invisible panel of judges.

Kennel by kennel, I cleaned and scrubbed and refilled water bowls until I got to the last cage in the corner.

A pitbull mix was pressed against the back wall, shaking so hard his tags rattled. His tail was jammed between his legs. His eyes were huge and terrified.

I put the mop down and just sat on the concrete outside his kennel.

I didn’t talk. Didn’t reach in.

I just sat.

Ten minutes passed. His trembling slowed.

Another ten and he inched closer to the front of the cage, nose twitching.

I slowly slid my fingers through the chain-link. He sniffed them carefully, then backed up again.

The shelter coordinator walked by and stopped.

“He’s new,” she said. “Shut down. We really need a foster for him. This place is too loud and scary.”

“I’ll do it,” I said, the words out of my mouth before my brain caught up.

She blinked.

“You sure?”

I nodded.

I was not sure.

I was crashing on my friend Jose’s couch that night. His landlord didn’t allow pets, not even visiting ones.

But this dog looked at me like the world had never been kind to him, and for once, I wanted to say yes without overthinking it.

The coordinator handed me paperwork to fill out.

As I wrote my name, my phone buzzed.

A text from Jessica.

You have 2 hours left. Need confirmation or I’ll have to process the forfeiture.

Two hours.

Thirty thousand dollars.

A hamster.

A trembling pitbull.

It felt like all the bad decisions of my life were converging on a single afternoon.

In desperation, I texted Amelia.

I know about the tests, I wrote. I know I failed. I’m not asking for another chance. I’m asking you to sign the lease cancellation so we can try to get some of the deposit back. There’s an early termination clause we can use. Please.

She replied almost instantly.

There is no early termination clause, she wrote. You insisted we skip it to save $50 a month.

I remembered that conversation with crystal clarity. Me waving off the clause like it was a scam. Me saying, “We’re solid. We’ll never need that.”

I stared at the text until the words blurred.

The pitbull watched me from the corner of his kennel. I felt like the biggest idiot in the world.

I called my mom.

She couldn’t take on the lease. Couldn’t co-sign. Couldn’t bail me out.

“I warned you about moving too fast,” she reminded me. “You never listen. You rush in.”

I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the shelter floor, phone pressed to my ear, bleach stinging my nose.

With ninety minutes left before everything went up in smoke, I drove to Amelia’s apartment complex.

Her car was there.

So was Tommy’s truck.

They were carrying boxes to her trunk when I pulled in, moving around each other like a couple that had done this a dozen times before.

She was wearing the faded college sweatshirt I bought her last Christmas. Tommy was carrying the lamp we picked out together at Target.

They looked happy.

I sat in my car and watched them, Brownie’s little carrier wedged between the seats. He squeaked like he could sense the chaos.

Eighty-seven minutes.

I could have turned around. Accepted the loss. Let them live their carefully tested life.

Instead, I grabbed Brownie’s cage and got out.

Amelia saw me first. Her whole body went stiff, like she was bracing for a storm.

Tommy shifted the box in his arms and stared.

“I brought you something,” I said.

I held up the cage.

Brownie ran on his wheel, tiny paws a blur.

“I adopted him the morning after everything happened,” I said. “I was trying to fix what I messed up. I thought… I don’t know what I thought.”

For a second, Amelia’s face softened. Her eyes flicked to the hamster, then back to me.

Then her expression hardened again.

“I can’t take him,” she said. “Tommy’s allergic to small animals.”

I almost laughed.

“Was that why he failed his test?” I asked. “The grandma to bingo thing?”

She flinched.

“That’s not funny,” she said.

“You should keep him,” she added. “You made the commitment. That’s your responsibility now.”

Tommy set the box down and pulled me a few steps away.

He smelled like too much cologne, like he’d poured half the bottle on.

“Look,” he said quietly. “I feel bad about the deposit. If you need help with immediate housing, I can loan you five grand.”

His eyes kept shifting, like he hoped I’d say no.

I looked at him, at Amelia, at the boxes stacked in her car.

“Is it worth it?” I asked. “Spending two years studying their tests just to get back in?”

He looked tired in a way I hadn’t noticed before.

“Some days I’m not sure,” he admitted. “But I love her enough to play by their rules.”

It was one of the saddest things I’d ever heard.

“I’m good,” I said, stepping back. “Keep your money.”

I walked back to my car with Brownie’s cage in my hands and checked the time.

Seventy-one minutes.

Jessica’s text popped up as I slid into the driver’s seat.

Last call. Please confirm.

I called her.

“Don’t process the lease,” I said. “But I’m not signing it either. If there’s any way around losing the full thirty, I’ll take it. If not… just do what you have to do.”

There was a pause on the line.

“Wait,” she said. “There might be one option. If we can find someone to take over the lease within twenty-four hours, the complex might approve a transfer with a five-thousand-dollar fee instead of full forfeiture.”

Five thousand versus thirty.

It wasn’t great.

But it was survivable.

“I’ll find someone,” I said.

I hung up and immediately started posting in every housing group, on every platform, texting anyone I knew who might need a place.

Large one-bedroom. Great location. Can move in today. I’ll cover $1,000 of your first month if you take it.

Within minutes, my phone blew up.

The first couple who came to see the place loved it. Perfect credit. Solid jobs. But they wanted to move in next month.

Didn’t work.

The second guy couldn’t afford it alone and kept asking if he could find a roommate later, which the complex wouldn’t allow.

Didn’t work.

The third guy had weird vibes and asked if Amelia would still be living in the building and if she was single now.

Definitely didn’t work.

I was sitting in the leasing office, head in my hands, ready to accept that I was about to lose thirty grand, when my phone buzzed.

Lucy.

My coworker just broke up with her boyfriend and needs a place TODAY, she wrote. Good credit. Stable job. Can I give her your number?

Yes. Please.

Twenty-two minutes later, a woman named Marina walked into the leasing office holding a folder and a cashier’s check.

She’d just gotten out of a bad relationship. Needed a place fast. Loved the unit. Could sign immediately.

Jessica processed the lease transfer right there.

In the end, I lost six thousand dollars instead of thirty.

That still hurt.

But it didn’t destroy my life.

Marina shook my hand.

“Thanks for the opportunity,” she said.

As I was handing her the keys, the front door swung open.

Amelia walked in.

Tommy was right behind her, carrying a folder with their own paperwork.

She stopped cold when she saw me. Her eyes flicked from my face to Marina and back again.

Jessica called their names and waved them over to another desk. As they sat down, Amelia kept looking back at me, confusion and something like anger flickering across her face.

She’d come to sign for an apartment she thought I’d already lost.

Too late.

I left without saying a word.

Jose was already clearing out his spare room when I pulled up to his place that night. He’d convinced his landlord to let me stay for two months under the radar, but no pets.

I told him about the hamster and the pitbull.

He stared at me, then laughed.

“You really know how to pick ‘em,” he said. “Both women and clauses.”

We moved my stuff out of my old apartment using his truck, hauling boxes up and down stairs until midnight.

That first night, I slept on an air mattress in his spare room with Brownie’s cage on the floor beside my bed. Every time I shifted, the plastic crinkled and Brownie chirped at me like he was filing a noise complaint.

The next morning, I went back to the shelter.

The pitbull was still there, pressed against the back of his kennel, eyes wide and scared.

I sat on the floor outside his cage and read a book out loud, my back against the cool concrete.

I didn’t take any pictures.

I didn’t post anything.

I just showed up.

Every day that week, I did the same thing.

By Friday, the dog was wagging his tail when he saw me, inching closer until he finally pressed his head against the chain-link.

The coordinator asked if I wanted to make it a regular thing.

“Yeah,” I said. “I do.”

Saturday, a family came in looking for a dog.

They had two kids under ten and a backyard. They knelt outside the pitbull’s kennel, and he did that whole shy-but-interested thing dogs do when they’re halfway between scared and hopeful.

They fell in love.

I helped them with the adoption paperwork and watched from the parking lot as they loaded him into their car, tail thumping hard enough to rattle the windows.

That night, they sent the shelter a video of him sprinting around their yard, tongue lolling, eyes bright.

I watched it three times.

It felt better than any Instagram like I’d ever chased.

Later that evening, my phone buzzed.

Aunt Sabine.

I heard you handled the lease situation maturely, she’d written. And that you didn’t take Tommy’s money. That shows character.

I read it twice, then deleted it.

I wasn’t doing any of this for their approval anymore.

Two weeks slipped by.

I went to work. I hung out with Jose. I volunteered at the shelter on weekends.

Out of nowhere, Luciana texted.

Can we talk?

When we got on the phone, her voice sounded smaller than I’d ever heard it.

“I’m sorry I was so harsh,” she said. “The whole test thing is getting out of control. Lucy’s boyfriend found out about it and dumped her immediately. Said he didn’t want to be graded all the time. Two of Amelia’s cousins’ relationships are on the rocks because of it.”

She sighed.

“Some of us are starting to question if it’s worth it,” she said. “But Amelia’s mom keeps saying it’s working exactly like it should. That it weeds out weak partners.”

“I get it,” I said. “I really do. But I’m out. You guys can figure it out without me.”

A few days later, Malik hit me up.

He’d heard I was volunteering at the shelter. His daughter wanted a cat for her birthday.

We went together that weekend. She fell in love with an orange tabby that climbed straight into her lap and started purring like an engine.

We grabbed beers afterward.

“I didn’t know what to say when Amelia called me crying about the hamster thing,” he admitted. “The family chat was insane. I didn’t want to get in the middle.”

“I get it,” I said.

And I did.

About a month after the breakup, I walked into the coffee shop near the shelter for my usual order and froze.

Amelia was at a corner table, laptop open, textbooks spread out. Nursing school stuff.

For a second, I considered walking right back out.

Instead, I took a breath, grabbed my coffee, and walked over.

“Hey,” I said.

She looked up. For a heartbeat, her face did that softening thing I knew so well.

Then it smoothed out.

“Hey,” she said.

“Can I sit for a minute?” I asked.

She hesitated, then closed her laptop.

“Sure.”

We talked for maybe five minutes about safe things. Her classes. My job. The shelter.

Then she said something that stuck with me.

“The tests might be getting toxic,” she admitted quietly. “But my family is everything. So… I go along with it. Even when it feels wrong.”

“What about Tommy?” I asked.

She stared into her coffee.

“He passes every test perfectly now,” she said. “But sometimes I wonder if he’s actually being himself. He keeps a notebook of everyone’s likes and dislikes. Studies it before family events.”

She forced a little laugh.

“It’s sweet,” she added quickly. “Just… a lot.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

So I just said, “I hope you’re happy,” and meant it.

Then I left.

A week later, Jose and I were scrolling through apartment listings at his kitchen table when we found a two-bedroom that allowed pets and was somehow within our budget.

We went to see it the next day.

The place was nothing special. Beige walls. Old carpet. A balcony overlooking the parking lot.

It was perfect.

We signed the lease on the spot.

I officially adopted Brownie and got cleared by the shelter to be a regular foster home for dogs.

Moving day was chaotic. Jose’s stuff. My stuff. Brownie’s cage. A foster beagle weaving between our legs while we carried boxes.

By the end of the weekend, we had a couch, a kitchen table, mismatched dishes, and a sense that maybe life wasn’t ruined after all.

Three months after the whole hamster disaster, my phone rang.

Sabine again.

She told me the family was reconsidering their test system after several relationships imploded, including Lucy’s and two of Amelia’s cousins. They were having a big family meeting to discuss it.

“Would you be willing to share your perspective?” she asked. “As someone who went through it?”

I thought about it for maybe two seconds.

“I appreciate you asking,” I said. “But that’s not my problem anymore.”

She was quiet for a second.

“Fair enough,” she said.

Two weeks later, I was cleaning kennels at the shelter when Tommy’s name popped up on my phone.

He sent a long text.

He and Amelia were engaged.

He admitted he was exhausted. That he really did keep a notebook of every family member’s preferences. That he studied it like an exam before every dinner.

He thanked me—of all things—for not warning him earlier.

“If I’d known what I was getting into, I would’ve run,” he wrote. “But I love her. So here we are.”

I stared at the message for a moment, then deleted it and went back to hosing down the concrete.

The next morning, I was at the dog park with a nervous beagle I was fostering when I saw someone familiar.

Amelia’s mom.

She was there with her fluffy white poodle, walking slow laps around the fence line.

She spotted me and walked straight over.

“I owe you an apology,” she said, without preamble.

I blinked.

“For what?”

“For the tests,” she said. “We thought we were protecting the family. But we were pushing away decent people and rewarding men who were willing to fake it.”

The beagle started barking at her dog, tugging on the leash.

“I appreciate you saying that,” I said.

I had to move to the other side of the park before our dogs started a tiny war.

Three more months passed.

Life settled into a rhythm. Work. Home. Shelter. Repeat.

One Saturday, a new volunteer showed up to help in the cat room. Her name was Sarah. She had paint on her hands and a laugh that made the cats perk up like she was shaking a treat bag.

We started talking while cleaning litter boxes.

“So what’s with the hamster?” she asked, nodding toward my T-shirt. I’d accidentally worn the one with a cartoon hamster on it that Malik’s daughter had made as a joke.

I told her the whole stupid story. The fake hamster test. The thirty thousand dollars. The lease. The pitbull. The notebook. The family meeting I turned down.

She laughed so hard she had to sit down on the floor between two cat cages.

“Your ex’s family sounds like a reality show,” she said.

We started getting coffee after our volunteer shifts.

She told me her family was boring in the best way. They asked for help carrying groceries, not moving couches at three in the morning. If a boyfriend said no to something reasonable, they talked about it instead of deleting him from the family tree.

Six months after the whole Amelia disaster, Sarah and I were officially together.

It felt easy in a way things never had with Amelia’s family watching from the sidelines.

Looking back now, I can see that losing that thirty thousand dollars taught me something I probably wouldn’t have learned any other way.

Some games aren’t worth winning if you have to lose yourself to play them.

Brownie’s cage sits on my nightstand. He still chirps at night, running on his wheel like he’s training for some tiny marathon.

Jose turned out to be a solid roommate who actually does his dishes.

The shelter gives me something real to pour energy into on weekends. Dogs and cats do not care whether you passed some invisible test with their aunt.

Sarah thinks the hamster story gets funnier every time I tell it to someone new.

Sometimes, when I’m locking up the apartment for the night and I hear Brownie rustling or a foster dog snoring softly from his bed, I catch myself thinking about that first moment on the couch.

Amelia asking if I wanted to see a hamster that didn’t exist.

Me saying no without thinking.

If I could go back, would I answer differently?

Sure.

But I can’t.

What I can do is say yes to the life I have now, with all its imperfect people and animals and leases that actually have termination clauses.

And that, it turns out, feels a lot better than trying to pass someone else’s test ever did.