Just as I was about to hit send, messages started blowing up across the top of the screen.

Ever since Lorraine had added me, her girlfriends' group chat had stayed dead silent. Now it was suddenly buzzing.

【Chad: Keeping the wedding low-key today.】

A dozen photos flooded the screen in an instant.

The backdrop was the inside of the bridal car, Chad pulling Lorraine close for a whole string of cozy couple shots.

Heart-hands, cheek to cheek……

My eyes caught on the last photo and stayed there.

In it, Lorraine had her head resting in Chad's palm, smiling soft and doting.

I'd shown her that exact pose from a reference photo when we were shooting our engagement pictures. She'd called it corny and childish.

The replies piled up fast.

【You two really are the perfect match. The couple I've been rooting for since we were kids finally happened.】

That was Lorraine's childhood friend.

She'd once thanked me for healing the heartbreak Lorraine carried after Chad went abroad, said the two of us were made for each other.

【If I'd known you two were getting married today I wouldn't have skipped the reception. Could never stand watching that social climber swoop in the second our Chad left the country. Is there still time if I book a flight and rush over?】

That was Lorraine's cousin.

Lorraine had once asked me to bring her some documents she'd left at home.

It was pouring rain that day, and my tires skidded and hit a lamppost.

By the time I limped in to hand them over, she'd nearly cried, saying those documents were tied to a multimillion-dollar deal, that I was her lifesaver.

Then there was Lorraine's other cousin, her college roommate, the senior from her dorm floor……

Every single person in this chat, Lorraine had introduced me to. To my face they were all decent and warm.

Behind my back, they tore me down and insulted me however they pleased.

Delusional, entitled loser. Clingy simp swooping in on someone's weak moment……

Lorraine dropped one flat line into it.

【Don't bring him up. Let's talk about how handsome Chad looks.】

Teeth clenched, hands shaking, I typed out a few lines.

【Nice face-swap.】

【Do you people even hear yourselves?】

The second my messages landed, the chat went quiet for two full seconds.

The last message read:

【Oh crap, ladies, wrong group.】

Lorraine's incoming call flashed up, fast and frantic, cutting off my typing.

I tapped to answer.

No apology, no explanation. Just two words, almost cold.

"Apologize."

The absurdity of it spread through me before I could stop it.

"Me? Apologize?"

I was so angry I nearly laughed.

"Apologize for what? For them trashing me behind my back? Or for the fact that after you added me, you all just built a second group somewhere else?"

The line went silent for a few seconds.

I heard Lorraine sigh, put out.

"Jules, you're not a hundred-dollar bill. You can't make everyone like you."

"Those people in the group grew up with me and Chad. You showed up out of nowhere. It's normal that some of them don't accept you. Chad adding you to the chat was already a lot of respect."

I tipped my head back and forced the tears down.

"So?"

Lorraine paused, her voice dropping a notch.

"Just apologize in the group. Say you don't mind."

"Chad, he……he's crying so hard right now. He feels awful, blames himself, thinks it's his fault for adding you in the first place."

Something tore open in my chest, and cold wind came whistling through.

So it turned out that all it took was Chad crying, and I was supposed to go bow my head to the people who'd insulted me.

She seemed to keep talking, but I couldn't make out anything after that.

Everything in front of me blurred. My voice came out raw.

"Lorraine, let's break up."

"I'm not getting married. And I'm not going to sign for the license either."

Lorraine didn't answer.

The receiver was muffled by a hand. From the other end came the faint rustle of plastic and paper, and the sound of Chad crying.

Then came Lorraine's patient coaxing.

"There, there. Jules said it's not your fault. He's just too sensitive, that's all."

"Wipe those tears. We're going on soon, and didn't you say you wanted photos for your socials?"

It took a while before the other end went quiet.

Then Lorraine's voice came again, clear this time, edged with impatience.

"Okay, enough. Just go apologize in the group already. We're about to get married and you're throwing a fit? It's a happy day, I don't have the energy to keep coddling you."

Then she thought of what I'd said, and gave a little scoff.

"Besides, you really can't go through with it? You'd actually give it up?"

Ten years together. She didn't believe I would ever leave.

I hung up, shifted toward the window, and rolled it down.

I let the wind pour in and tear apart the hairstyle I'd done just for the wedding.

The driver, who'd heard every word, kept starting to speak and stopping himself.

In the end he couldn't hold it in.

"Kid, what kind of girl did you land yourself? Someone like that can still find a husband?"

"Back when I was chasing my wife, I'd have hung the moon for her. Ran out in the pouring rain just to bring her a home-packed lunch."

A lunch made with love.

A faint bitterness spread through my chest.

The thing is, Lorraine used to bring me things like that too.

That year, the snow came down so heavy it buried the campus half a person deep. Even classes were canceled.

My fever hit a hundred and four.

My roommates could only follow some method they found online, swapping out one frozen-stiff towel after another on my forehead.

The second Lorraine heard, she pushed past everyone trying to stop her and ran to the campus clinic three miles away to buy me cold medicine.

She came back holding a bowl of thin porridge.

She'd wrapped it inside her own down jacket, and it was still warm when it reached my hands.

She was the one who ended up with frostbite.

Back then her heart was so plain that even the storm outside could see it.

The driver clicked his tongue when I finished.

"So how'd she turn into this?"

I shook my head in silence.

I didn't know either.

Maybe she changed the moment Chad came back.

The first time she lost it over Chad, she smashed the couple's mugs we'd made with our own hands.

The first time it rained, she left me stranded at the office until midnight and went to pick up Chad instead.

The first time I had surgery, she was at the amusement park riding roller coasters with Chad.

From the day Chad announced he was against marriage, Lorraine acted like she finally had a reason, and she doted on him right out in the open.

Countless first times, countless times I let it slide, all of it piling up, until somehow it became this.

When I left the group, Lorraine sent me a single question mark.

And then nothing.

In her eyes, this was just me throwing a small tantrum in protest.

Give it a little while and I'd come crawling back, head down, admitting I was wrong.

But this time, I really was done.

Under the front desk's quietly puzzled looks, I went back up to the room.

I mussed the styled hair, peeled off the suit.

I collapsed onto the bed, staring at the hotel's snow-white ceiling, still half in a daze.

How had it all come to this so suddenly.

Just last night, on this same bed, I'd been too thrilled to sleep.

When I opened my phone, Chad had just posted something.

【In case certain people get sensitive again, let me send everyone a video to set the record straight. It really is just a mock wedding experience. Rainie and I absolutely did not cross any lines.】

The video attached was footage of the wedding processional.

I opened it like I wanted to torture myself.

I watched Lorraine in her wedding dress, walking gracefully toward Chad through the applause of family and friends.

I watched her vow before the officiant never to part, till death did them part.

And at the end, exchanging rings, fingers laced together.

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.