When Chloe uses her fiancé’s laptop, she discovers intimate and incriminating emails between him and another woman. As she confronts him, she realizes her world is about to change—but she wants to do more than just leave him. Instead, she decides to interfere with his belongings first.

“It all happened by accident. I needed to make an online payment—so, I used Dale’s laptop.” Only to stumble upon “dirty love letters between Dale and some woman named Mandy.” As he cooked dinner, she confronted him. Dale claimed, “Mandy was just for me to realize how good I have it with you.” Chloe decided to leave but not quietly.

With Dale gone, Chloe began her acts of creative vengeance. She changed his tablet settings to French, knowing he never learned the language. Next, she replaced his thermostat with one programmed to randomly alter temperatures. “A lovely forty degrees at breakfast and a tropical eighty-five by dinner,” she thought.

Chloe then targeted Dale’s morning routine by swapping his regular coffee beans for decaf and mixing salt with his sugar. She also locked his favorite TV channels with a PIN. “Try binge-watching now,” she scoffed.

With everything packed, Chloe left her house keys on the hallway table, declaring, “It’s the end of the Dale chapter.” At her parents’ house, her phone lit up with Dale’s texts—first confusion, then annoyance, and finally desperation. When Dale called, demanding answers, Chloe replied, “Maybe check your thermostat settings,” before blocking his number. Dale became just another part of her past.