Chapter 2

2: 2

When I wouldn't pick up, he texted me:

"It was just to keep her happy, that's all."

"Fern, don't make this hard for me."

He sent a photo. It was the wedding venue we'd spent half a year building together.

"It's only a marriage license. You're still the one I love most."

"Didn't you say you wanted to get married somewhere full of happiness? I had all the lilies you love shipped in for you."

The lilies stood there in the venue, thick and fragrant, quietly open. I looked at them for a long moment.

I thought about how happy I'd been setting up that place, how I'd chosen the very best of everything.

Back then I'd truly believed that after a seven-year courtship, we were finally landing on solid ground.

Instead I got this careless, ugly little ending.

The next day, I meant to tell my parents I was calling off the engagement.

But my mother only got in a few nervous, comforting words before she hung up in a rush.

My father didn't pick up at all.

So I called my best friend. She was always soft-spoken, but this time there was an edge of impatience in her voice.

"Fern, I'm swamped right now, can you not—"

She cut herself off. But I'd already heard it. Wedding music, playing in the background.

It was my favorite song.

My chest went tight. I quickly opened her feed and found a photo of her and Rosalie together, captioned:

"Here to witness your happiness. How could I not cry?"

But the second my finger touched it, the whole feed went blank.

She'd blocked me.

I stood where I was, and my head went to static.

A friend called me on video, her face grim. "Fern, don't be angry."

In the venue I had chosen, Rosalie came walking slowly out, wearing the wedding gown I'd spent half a year making by hand.

She pressed a hand to her mouth, overcome, and watched Luke drop to one knee and slide a DR ring onto her finger.

The cold crept up my fingertips, inch by inch.

That ring was the couple's design I'd spent half a year choosing.

The kind a man can only ever buy once in his life, against his own ID.

Luke had picked it out for me once. He'd said, "This ring is only for you to wear."

Now that ring sat snug on Rosalie's finger.

A perfect fit.

I remembered how he'd taken the ring back saying it needed to be resized smaller, and handed me some cheap ring he'd bought off the street instead.

So it turned out it never needed resizing. It had never been meant for me at all.

Below the platform, my best friend was wiping my mother's tears, and my mother was clapping with everything she had.

My father's eyes were wet, and his fingers trembled as he took the tea Rosalie offered him.

He said:

"If only you were my daughter. So sweet, so hardworking."

But my mother looked at my best friend, worried.

"Fern won't find out, will she?"

My best friend's tone was gentle. "She's probably still off sulking somewhere."

"It's fine, we'll just have Luke go coax her a little later."

"Anyway, she's like a dog. No matter how you shoo her, she won't leave."

"It was the same when she was my friend back in grade school, and it's the same now that she's dating Luke."

"Besides, Luke already got the license with Rosalie, and she still hasn't broken up with him, has she? Worst case she throws a little fit."

My mother, hearing this, wasn't angry at all. She nodded, relieved.

"Good, then."

Just then Luke glanced toward the edge of the stage, and for a moment he looked lost.

Something closed around my heart like a fist.

Those were the plush figures I'd bought on purpose, the anime character I'd loved for ten years.

Luke had once lined up three days to get them for me. They were his token of our love, too.

I'd set them at the edge of the stage to mark our seven years.

But Rosalie looked at the figures and frowned.

Luke came back to himself and threw them into the trash without a second's hesitation.

There was a knife lodged in my throat. I couldn't get a single word out.

My mother glanced at the figures and kicked them farther away, frowning. "A grown woman, still this childish. Upsetting Rosalie over nothing."

My father looked at Luke and sighed.

"Fern doesn't have an ounce of sense. Walks around every day with a dead face on. If I were you, I wouldn't have picked her either!"

So it turned out the people closest to me had all betrayed me.

So it turned out everything I was, in their eyes, didn't weigh as much as a single one of Rosalie's tears.

"Driver, don't take me to that hotel after all."

Suddenly there was no point in going.

I changed the destination to the apartment Luke and I had bought for our marriage, meaning to pack up my things and go.

At the same time, I opened the work app.

The company had wanted to transfer me abroad. To stay a little closer to my family and to him, I'd turned it down again and again.

But this time, I pressed "Accept."