The longer I watched, the more it curdled in me, until a bitter laugh scraped out.
They'd done everything but kiss.
And now they wanted me to believe nobody had crossed a line.
Chad's posts kept coming, one after another.
Greeting guests. Toasts. Working the room. The parents' speeches.
Somewhere in there it had gone far past what Lorraine promised me, which was only that he'd get to feel the entrance walk.
It wasn't until the very last part, the bouquet toss, that Lorraine finally bothered to message me.
【Are you at the hotel yet? Wait in the lounge a little longer. Chad's having fun, so he went ahead and did the rest of it too.】
【Don't be upset about it. Call it your apology for making him cry earlier.】
The lounge was two rooms down from the ballroom.
Even that close, she couldn't be bothered to come look at me once.
I didn't answer her.
I just took a screenshot from the corner of one of Chad's videos, the wedding cake already wrecked past recognition, and sent it to her.
【Why did you let him touch my cake.】
【It's just a cake, what's the big deal, I'll have the hotel go buy another one.】
I bit down hard on the soft flesh inside my cheek.
【The things you promised me. Have you forgotten all of them?】
Why, when I was already this far past disappointed, did it still hurt this much?
The suit I'd hunted through more than a dozen shops to find, ripped when Chad tried it on behind my back. Lorraine said, what's the big deal, we'll swap it.
The little garden chapel I loved, quietly switched to some dreamy fantasy-style ballroom by Chad. Lorraine said, listen to him, he has better taste.
By the very end of the planning, the one thing I asked for was to make the wedding cake with my own hands.
I'd told Lorraine this. As a pastry chef, it was the one thing I wanted most.
Chad hadn't come back to the country yet, back then.
Lorraine stood in front of the dessert shop that was about to open and threw herself into my arms, laughing.
"My baby is so easy to please."
"Fine. Come the wedding, I'll watch every single guest go down the line, and each of them has to finish it and write my pastry master an eight-hundred-word rave review."
I gave her nose a gentle tug.
"Smart mouth."
I dragged the progress bar back again and again, watching that short clip.
The cake I'd come to the hotel early to make, hacked into pieces.
Before anyone had even tasted it, Chad smeared it across the face of one of Lorraine's friends.
The whole crowd broke into laughter, wiping cream on each other.
My one wish, ground under their heels, smeared on the wall, scraped into the food waste.
The reply on the other side stalled for a few seconds.
The next second, it drove straight back into my chest.
【Julius, don't be so ungrateful.】
【It's just a cake, why make a thing of it. Not one of your relatives showed up, my family put on this whole wedding, and even the groomsmen were people Chad rounded up to keep up appearances for you.】
The old wound, torn open again.
I hit the screen so hard it clicked.
【Why my parents wouldn't come, aren't you the one who knows best?】
The other end went quiet.
The pain I'd buried came down on me again, riding in on the memory.
That day, I was walking down the street when a sign came out of nowhere and hit me.
Red all over the ground. A tearing kind of pain.
On instinct, I dialed the one number I trusted most.
The moment it connected, a rude male voice was already shouting.
"Hey, hey, you busy man. You said you'd hang out with your buddy all day. Phone off, no calls!"
There was the bright jingling clatter of the parade floats, then the "beep-beep" of the call being hung up.
And I lost consciousness completely.
When I came to, I was lying in a hospital.
The first face I saw wasn't Lorraine's. It was a stranger's.
