Love's Gentle Storm

We had been in love for six years and I was preparing to marry Patricia Mcbride when she suddenly asked me to wait. She said she needed to have a grand wedding with her first love before she could marry me.

This was because it was her first love's terminally ill mother's last wish. She couldn't bear to let the elderly woman pass away with regrets and tearfully promised at her bedside to give her first love a home.

But she forgot that my mother had also been eagerly waiting for me to get married.

I was stunned and asked her what I should do and she impatiently scolded me, "Can't you have a little empathy? It's just a matter of waiting two more months. Do you have to act like a desperate woman wanting to get married?"

I told her my mother had a heart condition and couldn't take the shock, but she made an appointment for the marriage registration right in front of me, "Anyway, the groom for this wedding has to be Terry. Even if your mom can't wait and dies, she'll still have to queue up behind me marrying you first!"

Watching her determined back as she left, I called my sister at home, "Sis, help me switch the bride for the wedding in ten days!"

——

When my sister heard that I wanted to switch brides, she was shocked, "What's going on with you and Patricia? Marriage isn't a game. Mom can't handle that kind of shock!"

Precisely because I knew Mom couldn't handle the shock, I turned to my sister for help. Fortunately, in the six years I had dated Patricia, she had always refused to meet my family. My mom only knew I had a girlfriend but didn't know who she was.

"Sis, I'm serious. I can't marry her!" After all, I didn't want to commit bigamy.

I thought my sister would scold me for being reckless, but after a brief silence, she comforted me instead, "When she hid your relationship from me and got together with you, I told you to be cautious. If you weren't so head over heels for her, I wouldn't have accepted her as my sis-in law! Now this is for the best!"

"Actually, before Mom and Dad knew you were in a relationship, they had already picked out a match for you, a girl who can't take her eyes off you every time she sees you. She's been waiting for you to break up. Just the other day, she joked that if your wife wasn't as good as her, she'd crash your wedding," she continued.

When my sister mentioned her, I immediately knew who she was. My parents had brought her up back then, but I had already been secretly dating Patricia for two years.

At the time, my heart was entirely with Patricia, so how could I be willing to marry someone I didn't know?

After I hung up, Patricia was so jealous that she passionately kissed me to assert her claim, "Anthony, you'll never marry anyone but me in this lifetime!"

She had tearfully begged me to grow old with her and finally confessed to my sister that we had already secretly promised ourselves to each other. Even when my sister scolded her for being a sneaky, unethical woman, she didn't talk back.

When my sister asked if she had truly let go of her first love, Patricia knelt and swore to God that she would only love me in this life. Her idea of 'this life' turned out to be very short.

With only ten days until the wedding, time was running out, so I interrupted my sister, "Let that girl be my bride instead. There's no need for her to crash the wedding."

As soon as I finished speaking, Patricia, who had returned to grab her ID card, froze at the door, "Crash the wedding? Are you planning to crash my wedding?"

She glared at me as if facing a major threat, "Anthony, I said I'd marry you and I will. If you still want to marry me, don't stir up trouble! If you dare to crash the wedding and ruin mine and Terry's holy matrimony, don't blame me for turning against you!"

Before I could say a word, she had already cast me as the villain. But hadn't she already turned against me when she asked me to wait for her and Terry's wedding?

In the six years we'd been together, every birthday, she would promise we'd get married the next year. Yet every 'next year,' she would find a different excuse to avoid meeting my family and postpone the wedding.