Everyone said I was a fool. Getting married, and not even throwing a wedding.
I always smiled and explained that Abner Swanson had severe social anxiety, that a crowd could send him into a panic so bad he'd nearly black out.
Until this afternoon, when my best friend sent me a photo.
The man who wouldn't even go out to dinner with me was standing in the middle of a party.
He was laughing, his arm wrapped around Pansy Sullivan, letting her smear cake across his face.
I sat there a long time, frozen.
I swiped back to the previous screen on my phone, to the notes app crammed with line after line, every excuse I'd ever rehearsed for why we weren't having a wedding.
Looking at those small, groveling little sentences, I suddenly had no idea what I'd been doing with myself.
My best friend's message popped up right then:
【Take a good, hard look at who he's got his arm around.】
【Five years together. He hid behind that social anxiety the whole time, never once met your parents, and you still want to marry him?】
I looked down at Abner's grinning face in the photo.
The man who claimed he could barely breathe sitting across from me in a restaurant was perfectly happy to party in a crowd for someone else.
I bowed my head and slowly typed:
【We're done.】
——
The message had barely sent when the door opened.
The moment Abner saw me on the couch, he came straight over and pulled me into a tight hug.
"Why are you sitting here with all the lights off?"
Before I could answer, he buried his face deep in the curve of my neck, his voice trembling.
"Trudy Cooley, the elevator was so packed just now. I almost couldn't breathe again."
The air conditioning in the room was cranked low.
Against the side of my neck, his warm breath carried the unmistakable smell of champagne and frosting—the smell of a party.
I lifted my hand and slowly pushed him off me.
"The elevator was too crowded?"
"And now elevators come with champagne showers and cake-cutting too?"
Abner froze for a second, then casually wiped at his neck.
"There was a kid having a birthday down in the lobby. Must've gotten some on me by accident."
Watching him not so much as flinch, I almost laughed.
"Really?"
"The lobby was that busy, and you didn't keel over on the spot?"
His expression dropped at once, and he shot to his feet.
"I'm so wrecked right now I can barely breathe. I feel like I'm dying!"
"You can't even ask if I'm okay, and instead you sit there throwing snide little jabs and accusing me?"
I said nothing. I just held the photo up in front of his eyes.
Abner faltered for a heartbeat, then let out a long, drawn-out sigh.
"I can actually go to crowded places like that now. Shouldn't you be happy about it?"
"It was Pansy's birthday today. We're all old classmates, so I went."
The instant I heard that name, my whole body started to shake, and I couldn't stop it.
Pansy.
The Pansy who led the whole class in freezing us out. The Pansy who locked Abner and me in the storage room in the dead of winter.
And now Abner—the one with the social anxiety—had not only gone to her birthday party, he'd stood there laughing while she rubbed cake into his face.
I stared at him, the dark closing in at the edges of my vision.
"Abner!"
"Have you really forgotten what she did to us?"
He turned his head away and rubbed at his brow.
"That was years ago."
"Everyone's grown up. Why do you have to be so petty about it?"
I looked at him, and inside there was nothing left but a dead, scorched stillness.
"You can get past it. I can't."
"Let's break up."
Abner stared at me, startled at first, then he reached out and, with a put-upon air, patted my head.
"Trudy, I know you're upset that I didn't tell you. But I really don't have the energy right now to play your little crying-screaming-threatening game."
