"Wipe your tears. You're on soon. Didn't you say you wanted to look gorgeous for the pictures?"
It took a good while before the crying on the other end finally quieted.
Then Anthony's voice came through again, clear and edged with impatience.
"Enough. Go apologize in the group chat, now. We're about to get married and here you are throwing a fit. It's our big day, and I don't have the patience to coddle you."
Then, remembering what I'd just said, he let out a scoff.
"Besides, if we really don't get married, could you actually stand to walk away?"
Ten years together. He didn't believe I'd ever leave.
I hung up, shifted toward the side, and rolled the window down.
I let the wind pour into the car, tearing apart the wedding hair and makeup that had taken three full hours to finish.
The driver, who had heard every word, opened his mouth, hesitated, then closed it again.
In the end he couldn't hold back.
"Miss, what kind of man did you go and find? A guy like that can still land himself a wife?"
"When I married my wife, I'd have set her up on a pedestal if I could. Carried her over the threshold on my own back."
Carried?
A faint bitterness spread through my chest.
Anthony had carried me once too.
That year of the big storm, snow half a person deep swallowed the whole campus. Even classes were called off.
My fever hit a hundred and four. My roommate kept swapping out towels, one after another, each one frozen stiff, until she was nearly in tears from panic.
It was Anthony who forced his way into the girls' dorm past everyone trying to stop him and carried me on his back all the way to the campus clinic, three miles off.
Drifting in and out, I felt him shivering with cold, stumbling again and again through the snow.
Yet I was warm, impossibly warm. Not even the wind reached me.
Because he'd stripped off his only down jacket and draped it over me, and by the end he was drained and frostbitten.
Back then his heart was so real that even the sky full of wind and snow could see it.
The driver clicked his tongue after he heard it.
"So how did he turn into this?"
I shook my head in silence.
I didn't know either.
Maybe he'd changed the moment Isabel came back.
The first time he lost his composure over Isabel, he smashed the couple's mug we'd made with our own hands.
The first time, on a rainy night, he left me stranded at the office until midnight and turned around to go pick up Isabel.
The first time I was in surgery, he was riding a roller coaster with Isabel at the amusement park.
From the day Isabel declared herself against marriage, it was as if Anthony had found his excuse, showering her with open, shameless favoritism.
Countless first times, countless times I gave way, all piling up, until without my noticing it had become this.
When I left the group chat, Anthony dropped a question mark next to my name.
And then nothing more.
In his eyes this was just me staging a little protest, throwing a small tantrum.
It wouldn't be long before I came crawling back, meek, to lower my head and admit I was wrong.
But this time, I was truly worn out.
Under the front desk's discreet, startled stares, I gathered up the heavy skirt of my gown and went back to my room.
I took off my makeup. I peeled off the wedding dress.
Collapsed onto the bed, staring up at the hotel's snow-white ceiling, I still felt dazed.
How had it come to this so suddenly?
Just last night, on this very bed, I'd been too thrilled, too excited to sleep.
When I opened my phone, Isabel had just posted to her feed.
【In case certain people get sensitive again, let me post a video first so everyone knows the truth. This was purely a wedding trial run. Anthony and I didn't cross any lines, okay!】
Attached was footage of the ceremony's procession.
I clicked on it, like I was punishing myself.
Watching Isabel in a wedding gown, gliding gracefully toward Anthony to a round of applause from friends and family.
Swearing before the officiant that they'd never part, till death did them part.
Then the exchange of rings, fingers laced together.
The longer I watched, the more a bitter laugh slipped out of me.
Everything but the kiss. They'd done it all.
