1: 1
Three days before the wedding, when I went in to settle the veil, the shop assistant hurried over with an odd look on her face.
"Miss Fletcher, Mr. Gilbert called and said... the wedding is being postponed for now."
"Postponed? Why?"
"Mr. Gilbert didn't say. He's keeping the hotel venue, just switching it to Miss Pruitt's promotion party."
Muriel Pruitt. The ex-girlfriend Blake Gilbert claimed to hate down to his bones, the one he'd badmouthed five thousand four hundred and seventy-five times.
I stood in front of the mirror and called Blake.
It rang three times before he picked up.
"The invitations have already gone out. You're just canceling, like that?"
He was quiet for a few seconds.
"She made regional director that day. She wants to throw a party and every hotel's booked solid. If she wants it, she gets it."
My chest went tight all at once, and my voice broke.
"This wedding, I spent two years planning it..."
"The wedding lands on the same day as her promotion. It feels like bad luck to me..."
The same old lines again.
The woman in the mirror stood there in a wedding gown, her eyes red.
Years ago, when Blake's startup failed and he was buried in debt, Muriel dumped him.
He hated her. Hated her so much he wouldn't even touch the garlic pork ribs she used to love.
And now he wanted to hand the wedding over to her.
Five years. Long enough to walk the whole equator on foot. But I'd never made it into his heart.
The assistant kept her eyes off mine and asked, careful and quiet,
"Miss Fletcher, then this gown..."
"I don't want it."
...
By the time I reached the base of his office building, the sky had gone full dark.
Blake's office door was half open, and there were voices inside.
It was Muriel's voice.
"Blake, is it really okay to give me the hotel venue? Georgia Fletcher's going to be upset."
Blake.
I'd called him that once, in a soft moment. He slammed on the brakes and snapped at me, told me never to use that grating little name again.
The grating one wasn't the person who called him "Blake." It was me.
"Get out of your head. She's a hundred times more sensible than you, she won't make a scene over nothing. Coffee again? You'll be up all night losing your mind."
"I... I just don't want the two of you fighting because of me..."
"Drop the act. There's no us to fight over. You're not worth that."
"But..."
"No buts. Quit hanging around where I have to look at you. You're fouling the air."
A laugh slipped out of me, one that never reached my eyes.
Blake had never once been kind to Muriel's face.
His tone was always hard, his mouth full of disgust. Yet he'd set a custom ringtone just for her, and pushed back a wedding for her.
I gripped the door handle and pushed it open.
Blake turned toward the sound, and the pen in his hand stilled.
Muriel stood in front of his desk, a cup of coffee in her hands. It was the couple's mug, mine and Blake's.
She wore a camel coat, her hair loosely pinned up.
Blake loved that kind of coat too. When I'd asked him why, he said it was so he could wrap me up inside it.
To play along with that little bit of sweetness, I'd bought a lot of coats like it.
So it turned out the style was hers all along.
"Georgia's here, so I'll go first."
She set the coffee cup down. Passing me, she paused a step and said, her voice gentle,
"Don't blame him about the wedding. I'm the one who couldn't find a venue."
"Miss Pruitt, this is between him and me."
The corner of her mouth pulled into an awkward smile. She lowered her head, pushed the door, and left.
Only Blake and I were left in the office.
His voice softened, and he stood and reached out to hold me, the way he had soothed me countless times.
"Why are you here?"
I turned aside, away from his arms, unwilling to let it go.
"I came to ask. Your ex's promotion party, how much more does it matter than my wedding?"
His hand froze in the air, and his voice dropped low.
"I explained it all on the phone. Can you not bring her up?"
"Explain what? Explain that because your wedding day is when she's celebrating her promotion, you feel sick? Not in the mood to get married?" I paused. "Aren't you the one who hates her most? She can't find a venue, you should be thrilled."
I took half a step forward and met his eyes.
"You said you hated her for abandoning you when you were down, hated her for stealing your project at the worst possible moment, that even sharing a company with her made you sick. So why are you postponing our wedding for her?"
Blake pressed his lips tight and rubbed the space between his brows, his tone irritated.
"Georgia, can't you be reasonable?"
I kept my eyes locked on him.
"Fine. Let's be reasonable."
"You said a master calculated this wedding date, a great and auspicious day, that it had to be this one. There are only three days left, and you postpone it just because you say so."
His throat worked, and he had no answer, but the anger in his eyes rose bit by bit.
I understood then.
Drunk, the name he called was "Muriel." Every time he saw garlic pork ribs, he thought of her, once again.
All those five thousand insults had never been hate at all.
"Blake, the invitations..."
His hand dropped abruptly, and he cut me off, his voice sharp.
"Enough!"
"It's just a postponement, we're still getting married. What are you making a fuss over?"
I stood there in front of him, my chest so clogged it made me panic, and all at once I had no strength left to argue.
The five years I'd spent at his side looked like one thorough joke.
My fingertip brushed the ring on my finger. I slid it off slowly and slapped it down hard on his desk.
Then I picked up the couple's coffee mug Muriel had used and threw it in the trash.
I turned and walked out of the office.
Blake called out in a panic, "Georgia."
The next second a phone rang, and his footsteps stopped.
My own phone lit up.
Muriel had posted a photo to her feed.
It was her promotion party invitation.
【Thank you to a certain someone for giving me the venue. So grateful. See you the day after tomorrow.】
Blake commented instantly: 【Bad luck!】
I stared at those two words and felt the irony of it.
I closed her feed and was about to block Blake.
Right then a message came through from him:
【Let me know when you get home.】
As if nothing had happened at all.
I sat down on the edge of a planter and opened each chat thread one by one, canceling the invitations.
【Georgia, are you really sure about this?】
【Good that you've come to your senses. The family company needs you.】
I looked up. The light in Blake's office was still on.
I booked a ticket back home.
This heart, the one I'd thrown myself at and still couldn't get into, I wasn't trying anymore.
