Chapter 3Wrecking My Own Wedding

The comments and likes under the photo were piling up.

I clicked on the profile of the person who posted it. Her avatar was a girl in a high school uniform. A stranger.

A breath I didn’t know I was holding escaped me.

It wasn’t Maya who posted it.

But even so, the cheating was undeniable. Set in stone. There was no way two other people in the world had their exact builds, my custom watch, and a one-of-a-kind charm I’d made myself.

Eight years of love, twelve years of friendship, turned to ash in an instant.

Was a man really worth all this?

Maya, who never bought herself a nice handbag, who hadn’t upgraded her phone in two years, had bought me the latest model the second it came out, no questions asked. And me—the first two years after I started making real money, I didn’t get a mortgage for myself. I bought her a car, paid in full.

I treated Maya the same way she treated me. We would have emptied our pockets for each other.

If she and Ethan had just told me they had feelings for each other, I would have stepped aside. I could have walked away from the relationship.

Why did they have to play me for a fool?

Was the thrill of sneaking around that much more exciting?

I wiped the tears from my eyes and opened Maya’s profile.

Back when I was just a student, just starting out, she was already a semi-famous singer at a local club. Every time she posted a video or an update, she’d make me like and comment, and then she’d reply and pin my comment to the top to drive traffic to my page.

After I became a successful illustrator with a steady stream of commercial work, she stopped linking our accounts.

“It’ll hurt your brand,” she’d said. “Driving your followers to a lounge singer’s page will make you lose credibility. You won’t get as many big clients.”

But now, everything was different.

Maya’s most recent post was from a bar event three days ago. The video was shaky, but besides her on stage, the camera kept panning to the right, lingering on a man in a white button-down shirt, only his forearm visible.

I didn’t need to look closely to know. It was Ethan’s arm.

Three days ago, Ethan told me there was a problem with a shipment at work and he had to work late.

How convenient. One minute he’s working late, the next he’s at a bar listening to her sing, not coming home all night.

September 11th. Ethan was “working late” again. But in the background of Maya’s video, I could see his reflection in a TV screen. They were in a hotel room. He was still wearing the watch. Our watch.

September 1st. The owner of Maya’s bar opened a new location out of state. Maya went to perform for the week-long grand opening. Ethan was on a “business trip” for five of those days. When he came back, there was a Band-Aid on his temple and the scrapes on his knuckles were still healing. He said he’d seen a drunk harassing a girl and had beaten the guy up.

And today, Ethan was working late again.

The tears turned to laughter, and the laughter dissolved back into tears. The past and present collided in my head, a chaotic, brutal war. I wanted to believe I was losing my mind, that this was all some paranoid delusion, anything but the reality staring me in the face.

We were supposed to get married tomorrow.

My wedding dress is hanging in the closet. The hair and makeup artists are scheduled to arrive at my apartment in eight hours. My bouquet is sitting on my vanity.

I had practiced the bouquet toss eight hundred times, determined to make sure Maya would be the one to catch it.

Everything was ruined.

They say that after a person breaks, they become colder, more rational. Numb.

I opened my laptop to draft an email canceling the wedding. My eyes drifted back to my phone against my will.

Should I call them? Confront them? Listen to them scramble for excuses, a flurry of pathetic lies until they finally admit their disgusting behavior, only to turn it around and blame me?

The screen lit up. A notification from our joint account.

I tapped it open. A charge from a hotel.

The room type, priced at $1,888, was the “Eros Suite.” Ethan and I had only been there once, the night he proposed.

He really knew how to spend money.

The thought of ending things gracefully lasted for a single second before it was incinerated by a blaze of fury.

I’m the kind of person who holds a grudge.

After what they did to me, I had to get them back.