My freshly emptied stomach seized all at once, a violent cramp that had cold sweat breaking out all over me.

I clapped a hand over my mouth and shot to my feet to make it to the bathroom.

But Lucy and Ken caught me from either side and held me down.

"Mon! You can't throw up!"

The pain in my stomach was unbearable, like it was on fire.

I fought them with everything I had, but with my ribs just removed, I couldn't break free.

The wound only tore back with a stabbing pain, until the tears ran down my face.

Ken acted like he didn't see any of it and shoved me back into the chair.

He was rough about it, and my already churning stomach heaved.

I glanced at Lucy, all that smugness in her eyes, and I was certain then that she knew this diet drug was no good thing.

Fine. So I let myself throw up all over her.

That pure white mermaid gown was filthy in an instant.

The streaks of red blood mixed into it stood out sharply.

But not one person saw them.

"Ah! Mon, this is your wedding dress! How could you throw up on your own wedding dress!"

Lucy dabbed at the gown with tissues, looking heartbroken over it.

Ken turned on me, his face cold.

"Monica! You did that on purpose, didn't you?"

Once I'd been sick, the worst of the cramping eased.

I looked steadily at the man in front of me, his face flushed red with rage, and said flatly,

"If that's what you want to think, there's nothing I can do about it."

Hearing that familiar line, Ken's face went from red to a sick shade of green.

Because clearly, he remembered the second time he pushed back the wedding, when I'd asked him,

"Ken, the first time we delayed, you said the date wasn't lucky enough for us. This time your parents won a round-the-world trip and it'd be a waste not to go. Do you just not want to marry me? If that's it, say so. I'm not the kind of woman who clings and begs."

Back then he'd answered,

"If that's what you want to think, there's nothing I can do about it."

And he'd added,

"Anyway, to make it up to you, I had my parents order a mermaid gown made just for you over in Ferristan."

He'd shown me the design, and it really was the mermaid gown I'd secretly saved pictures of.

So I swallowed every bit of my hurt and let myself look forward to wearing it and marrying him.

But when the dress came back, it wasn't my size.

When the zipper wouldn't even close, his parents laughed at me behind their hands.

"Mon, we were only away a month. How did you put on so much weight!"

Ken blamed me too.

"The wedding's in seven days. If you can't fit into this dress, we'll have no choice but to postpone it!"

I didn't want our wedding pushed back again.

So I went online and asked people how to get a waist tiny enough to hide behind a sheet of paper in seven days.

Everyone joked that removing ribs was the fastest way, so I actually went to the hospital and had two of mine taken out.

And now the pain in my stomach and my belly was laughing at how naive and stupid I'd been.

"Ken, what do we do! The dress is ruined, your wedding..."

Lucy really did love this gown; her tears spilled over from panic.

Ken shot me a cold look.

"Apologize to Lucy!"

I couldn't help but laugh out loud.

"She got my wedding dress dirty, and I'm the one who has to apologize to her?"

"Anyone who didn't know better would think this was her wedding dress!"

I slapped my forehead, my eyes dropping to Lucy's waist, and I clicked my tongue.

"You know what, this dress fits her so well it's like it was made for her! No wonder I couldn't squeeze into it no matter what I did!"

"Monica! What's that supposed to mean? Do you even still want this marriage or not?"

Caught out, Ken flew into a humiliated rage.

I refused to back down.

"I already told you. If it comes to it, we just don't get married!"

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!"

Ken saw that I still wouldn't play along, and his face dropped again.

"Monica! Do you always have to ruin everything?"

"You're the one who kept whining about losing weight, but you couldn't keep your mouth shut or get off the couch. Now we're going out of our way to help you, and it's seven days, tops. You can't even manage that?"

Not going along with them was called ruining everything.

Before, I gave in to them on everything, just so I wouldn't ruin the mood.

And what did I get for it?

Lucy shot Ken a sharp glare.

"Shut up! Don't kill Mon's motivation like that!"

Then she took my arm and pulled me toward the door.

"Mon, if you don't want to go running, then we'll do the stairs. That works, right?"

She ignored what I wanted and dragged me into the fire stairwell.

We'd only climbed a few steps with her hauling me along when a stabbing pain shot through my stomach.

The doctor had warned me: no strenuous activity for three months.

I tried hard to pull my hand free, but Lucy stared at the cold sweat on my forehead and made a show of it.

"Mon, how are you this out of shape? You really don't move around enough!"

She called Ken over.

"Let's both take Mon up together, that way she'll actually stick with it!"

I was in too much pain to speak, but Ken was already pulling with Lucy, hauling me up the stairs.

The force of it made me suck in a sharp breath from the pain.

My body instinctively fought against their pulling.

The second they felt me resist, the two of them let go at the same time, like they'd planned it.

The momentum threw me backward down the stairs.

I tumbled down step after step, the pain everywhere, until the tears came pouring out.

Lucy and Ken snapped out of it and came scrambling down to stop me from rolling any further.

But coming down the steps, Lucy stumbled and fell.

Ken, who should have grabbed my hand, twisted around instead and caught Lucy against his chest.

In the end the weight of both of them came crashing down right on top of me.

The pressure crushed my stomach, and the pain sent stars bursting across my eyes.

Something warm and metallic rose up my throat.

"Lucy, are you okay?"

Ken helped Lucy up, saw the scrape bleeding on her forehead, and swept her into his arms, rushing straight for the hospital.

No one saw me cough up a mouthful of blood, and then black out completely.

When I woke again, I was in the hospital.

The nurse told me a neighbor had found me passed out in the fire stairwell and called 911 for me.

The doctor frowned and scolded me.

"Didn't I tell you there's a limit to this weight-loss business?"

"You just had ribs removed. First you're throwing back diet pills from God knows where like your life doesn't matter, and now you ignore my orders and go do strenuous exercise. Do you actually have a death wish?"

"Ten more minutes and not even a miracle could have saved you!"

That was when I learned that the impact of the fall, plus that one crushing blow from Ken and Lucy, had turned my spleen to pulp.

To stop me from doing anything else this reckless, the doctor shoved a photo of the spleen they'd cut out right in front of me.

"See for yourself. Was this weight really worth losing?"

I looked at the picture and wanted to defend myself.

In the end all I did was quietly thank the doctor and the neighbor.

"I know I was wrong."

Wrong for loving a man who wasn't worth it, and a best friend who wasn't worth it.

This time, I was in no rush to get discharged.

Five days in the hospital, and not one call from Ken or Lucy.

Instead, Lucy's feed had a new post every day: photos of Ken at the cosmetic surgery clinic, keeping her company while they repaired the scar on her forehead you could barely even see.

The day I was discharged, my phone buzzed. A bank charge.

The amount was $129,000, paid to the cosmetic clinic fixing Lucy's scar.

Then my phone lit up with an update alert from my budgeting app.

After Ken and I started dating, I'd picked up the habit of logging every expense so we wouldn't overspend.

Now the app was telling me that over three years together, after subtracting what I'd spent, Ken had spent a total of $130,000 on me.

Just now, he'd added in the $50,000 for the wedding dress.

So the $129,000 he'd pulled from my account through our linked payment account, I understood exactly what it meant.

But even in a breakup, that's not how you settle accounts.

Before I could go looking for him, Ken called.

"You saw the bank charge, right? That's the medical bill you owe for hurting Lucy."

"Lucy told me not to blame you, so I won't say anything more."

"At tomorrow's wedding, if you can fit into the mermaid gown, I'll marry you as planned."

"If you can't, then Lucy will wear the gown and the veil and stand in for you, and you can come out when it's time for the toasts."

"To marry you, this is the only way I could think of that works for everyone. Mon, don't hold it against me, and don't make things hard for Lucy anymore..."

I cut him off softly.

"Fine."

Ken breathed out in relief, and before he even hung up, he was telling Lucy, delighted:

"Lucy, you really are the smart one. She saw me settling the accounts and thought I was angry, that I didn't want her anymore! So to marry me, she actually agreed!"

"So when you stand in for her tomorrow, she definitely won't make a scene!"

I laughed softly and hung up.

I didn't want the gown or the man anymore. But the scene I was going to make, that still had to happen.