Fighting through the pain, I picked up my bag and started for the door of the private room.
Lucy went pale and quickly grabbed my arm, then tugged at Ken.
"It's my fault. I shouldn't have worn Mon's wedding dress without asking her, and I shouldn't have told her to lose weight or given her those diet pills. This is all on me! I'm the one who should apologize!"
"Mon, I'm sorry!"
Lucy bent at the waist and bowed to me.
But her tears fell, one after another, onto the back of Ken's hand.
He helped her straighten up, aching for her, his voice gentle as he soothed her.
"Lucy, you only wanted to help Mon try the dress on, so she could see how beautiful she'll look in it seven days from now. You gave her the diet pills so she'd be the most beautiful bride on the wedding day. You did nothing wrong!"
"She's the one who's petty and dirtied the dress herself!"
That last line he said looking straight at me, through gritted teeth.
The cold in his eyes made my whole body feel like it had dropped into ice.
This was the man I'd loved for five years.
Once, all his tenderness and care had been for me alone.
Now he gave it to my best friend.
I didn't say a word in my own defense. I turned and went to the hospital.
After the endoscopy, the doctor's face was grave.
"Ms. Simmons, you have burns in multiple places on your stomach lining and your esophagus. Did you swallow something corrosive?"
Before I could speak, he'd already pulled up the record of my rib-removal surgery from the system.
He frowned at once and scolded me.
"You young girls, are you really willing to throw your lives away just to lose weight?"
"What's more important than your health? What could possibly be worth ruining yourself like this?"
I lowered my head and said quietly, "It really isn't worth it. It won't happen again."
When I got home, the apartment was dark.
Ken hadn't come back.
My phone buzzed. It was a message from Lucy.
【Mon, I've already gotten the dress cleaned. It won't affect your wedding.】
I didn't answer her. I started packing.
When I picked up the toothbrush, I went still.
Ken's electric toothbrush and mine weren't a matching pair.
Because mine had broken a while ago, and when I couldn't find the same model, I'd just bought a new couple's set.
But Ken kept making excuses that his was still fine and wouldn't switch to the matching one with me.
Now I knew the real reason.
The woman's one from the set was still in good shape, and it was Lucy's. So he didn't want to switch.
Once I saw through that little scheme, I looked around the wedding home again and realized just how slow I'd been.
Slow enough that only now did I notice: aside from the wedding portrait of me and Ken on the wall, every other framed photo on display had Lucy in it too.
All through this big, beautiful home were the couple's things I'd so carefully chosen.
And every women's item had a matching one that Lucy owned.
She used to say I had good taste, that anything I picked was top quality, that she could buy it sight unseen.
Even the man I'd chosen, she'd take sight unseen.
The lock turned. Ken was back.
The first thing out of his mouth was a rebuke.
"Mon, why didn't you reply to Lucy? You had her worried sick!"
I took out my phone and only then saw that Lucy had sent another message afterward, telling me to come downstairs and go running around nearby Moonlight Lake with them.
Before I could say anything, Lucy, standing behind him, slipped easily into a pair of slippers identical to mine, gave Ken a mock-scolding nudge, and smoothed out his furrowed brow.
"Come on! Didn't you say you were going to talk to Mon nicely?"
"Keep frowning like that and you'll turn into a grumpy old man in no time, and then Mon won't like you anymore!"
Ken's face relaxed in an instant.
"Okay, okay, whatever you say!"
He looked up at me, his tone noticeably softer.
"Mon, let's go run ten laps together."
Watching Ken hang on Lucy's every word, my heart clenched with a pain I couldn't control.
So it turned out that even his willingness to speak gently to me depended on Lucy handing it down as a favor.
"I'm not going! You two go ahead!"
