When My Fiancé Chose My Best Friend Over Me

The printer was in Declan's study. That was the only reason I went in.

Our wedding rehearsal ended at ten. Declan drank too much champagne and fell asleep in the guest suite of his parents' penthouse, mouth open, one arm flung across a pillow that wasn't me. I kissed his forehead. I felt nothing strange. I only remember that because of what came after.

I walked down the hallway of the Griffin penthouse in bare feet, the marble cold under my heels. Declan's study was at the end. Dark wood. A single lamp. The laptop sat open on the desk, screen dimmed to sleep.

I needed to print the ceremony itinerary for the coordinator. That was all. Twenty pages. Timeline, seating chart, vendor contacts.

I tapped the trackpad.

The screen woke. His email was open. Below the email tab, another window sat minimized. A folder. The name was a single letter. B.

I don't know why I clicked it. I wasn't suspicious. I want that on the record, for whoever I used to be. I wasn't looking for anything. My hand just moved.

The folder opened.

Rows of video files. Dozens. Each one labeled with a date. The most recent was from four days ago.

I opened the first one.

I watched it standing up. My hand didn't shake. The volume was low but I could hear enough. I recognized the wallpaper behind them. It was the guest bedroom in my own apartment. The one Brittany used to stay in when she visited from Boston. The pillowcases were the ones I had picked out with her at a store in SoHo two Christmases ago. She had laughed and said, these are so you, Hazel.

I closed that video and opened another. Then another. His parents' beach house. The back office of the boutique where I bought my wedding gown. A hotel room I didn't recognize but the sheets were monogrammed with a D.

I didn't count how many I watched. I watched enough.

Then I saw the messages.

The thread was pinned to the top of his phone mirror. Months long. I scrolled to the beginning and read forward, the way you would read a book.

Brittany: she cried again last night about the scar. i swear to god declan its like she wants a medal.

Declan: i know. its suffocating.

Brittany: pathetic charity. thats what her whole personality is.

Declan: dont. shes still paying for the honeymoon lol.

Brittany: obsessed with that scar. its creepy at this point. like babe its a scar, get therapy.

Declan: she thinks its romantic. every time she wears something low cut its like a billboard. LOOK WHAT I DID FOR YOU.

Brittany: 🤮

I read all of it. Every message. I did not skim. I gave them the courtesy of my full attention, which is more than they ever gave me.

When I finished, I closed the laptop. The click was very soft.

I sat down in Declan's chair. The leather was cold through the silk of my slip. I looked at my left hand.

The ring was a cushion cut, three and a half carats. His grandmother's setting, reworked by a jeweler on Madison. I had chosen the band myself because Declan couldn't decide between platinum and rose gold and I had said, don't worry, I'll handle it.

I'll handle it.

That had been the refrain of my entire life.

I slid the ring off. It caught for a second on my knuckle, then let go. I set it on the desk. The click it made against the wood was almost identical to the sound of the laptop closing.

My thumb moved on its own. Pressed against the inside of my ring finger. That small, unconscious thing I did when I was thinking. I watched it happen from far away, like watching a stranger's hand.

I made it stop.

I held my fingers still until they forgot the shape of him.

Then I got up, walked back down the hall, past the guest suite where he was still asleep, back to my own apartment three blocks away. I took the elevator up in silence. I brushed my teeth. I hung tomorrow's dress on the closet door — the gown I had been fitted for eleven times, the one with the hand-sewn pearls along the collarbone that Brittany had helped me pick because, she said, it would frame the scar so beautifully.

I got into bed.

I slept.

I want to tell you I lay awake staring at the ceiling. I want to tell you I wept into the pillow. I didn't. I slept the deepest sleep I had slept in three years. My body, which had been holding something for a very long time, finally set it down.

***

The buzzer woke me at nine.

"Hazel? It's me! Open up, the champagne is getting warm!"

Brittany's voice through the intercom. Bright. Familiar. The voice I had known since I was twelve years old.

I got out of bed. I put on the silk robe she had given me for my last birthday. I walked to the door.

I opened it.

She stood in the hallway in her bridesmaid gown — the dusty rose one I had custom-fitted for her at Bergdorf's, three separate appointments, because she wanted the neckline exactly right. A bottle of Ruinart in her hand. My favorite. She knew.

"Bride!" she squealed. She came in on a cloud of my perfume — she wore my perfume — and set the champagne on the console. Her fingers went to my hair, fluffing it. "God, you look tired. Big day nerves? Come on, sit. Let me do your veil."

I sat.

She stood behind me at the vanity, humming, pinning the veil into my hair with the practiced ease of someone who had rehearsed this moment in her head a hundred times.

In the mirror, I watched her face. The little smile at the corner of her mouth. The way her eyes flicked to the ring finger on my left hand and stayed there half a second too long.

She didn't ask about the ring.

I met my own eyes in the glass.

I smiled back at her.

"Careful with the pins, Britt," I said. My voice was perfectly even. "I want everything to be perfect today."

Her smile widened.

"Don't worry, babe," she said. "I've got you."