I spent $8,000 on my girlfriend’s smile. Eleven weeks later, she asked me to kiss her and I turned my face. Bria never asked me to pay. That matters. She’d covered her mouth when she laughed for as long as I’d known her. In every photo, she smiled with her lips closed. At my sister’s wedding, she spent the whole reception with her hand near her face. One night, she told me she’d been embarrassed by her teeth since eighth grade. She said it casually. I could tell it still hurt. I saved for five months, found a cosmetic dentist, and surprised her on her birthday with twenty-eight porcelain veneers. She cried so hard she sat on the kitchen floor. When the final set was placed, she stared into the hand mirror for almost a minute. Then she laughed—head back, loud, free. The kind of laugh she’d never let herself do around me. She kissed me in the parking lot and kept checking her reflection in the car window the whole way home. For nine days, I thought I’d given her something permanent. Then I noticed the smell. It wasn’t normal morning breath. It came back fast after she brushed. At first, I blamed the new dental work. I told myself it would settle. One night on the couch, her head was in my lap. She turned to kiss me. I caught it and flinched. I kissed her cheek instead. “I’m tired, babe.” She looked at me for a second. “Okay.” I didn’t know that one small movement would cost us everything….