"Daniel, I'm not just grown up now. I'm Mrs. Halloway, too."

I smiled as I placed our order, just like I always used to. "The same dishes as before. No cilantro, no spice." I knew Adrian's favorites by heart, down to what he couldn't stand.

However, just as the owner nodded, Adrian cut in, "No. Medium spice. And with cilantro."

He turned his gaze on me, puzzlement flickering there before hardening into certainty. "Jules, my tastes changed a long time ago."

My smile froze, but I quickly soothed myself. It was fine. I'd lost ten years of memories. In ten years, people's tastes were bound to change.

I brushed it off, unwrapped his silverware, and handed it to him. "Even better. I like cilantro and spice. Now we can finally share the same dishes."

Instead of taking them, Adrian passed the tableware to the woman who'd been silent until now.

"Van. Here."

Van.

The name made me falter. In that instant, I understood why she'd looked so familiar.

Vanessa Grant was Adrian's first love, his elusive, untouchable, precious sweetheart from when we were twenty.

So some tastes didn't change, not even after ten years.

Was that why, a decade later, I'd decided to divorce the man I'd loved for fifteen years? Because I saw her again?

A sour ache spread through my chest. My fingers brushed the strap of the crossbody bag at my side. Inside was the handwritten divorce agreement and a journal.

Something whispered that if I opened that journal, I'd find the reason I wanted to leave Adrian, but I only clutched the strap tighter, refusing to look.

I loved him.

The twenty-year-old me still loved Adrian with everything I had.

At the table, Adrian and Vanessa talked to each other like no one else was there, as if I didn't exist.

Jealousy burned hot in my eyes. I slammed my plate down just to make a din, to force his attention, but Adrian didn't so much as glance my way.

Maybe the thirty-year-old me could've offered a polite "excuse me" and walked out with her pride.

But twenty-year-old me? I didn't know how to play gracious.

I smacked my cutlery down and snapped, "Adrian, I'm pissed! Really pissed! And nothing you say is going to fix it this time!"

Snatching up my bag, I stormed out of the restaurant.

I loved him. That didn't mean I wouldn't get angry.

I sat on a park bench, waiting for him to come after me, to apologize. However, three hours passed, and he never showed up.

Surrounded by a world that felt foreign and a head gone blank, I somehow managed to cheer myself up again.

It was fine. I'd long since gotten used to Adrian's cold, indifferent ways. Otherwise, I never would've ended up marrying him.

Crossing my legs, I pulled out my phone and messaged him: "Babe, where's our home? You know I've forgotten."

Almost instantly, his reply appeared. It was a pin dropped for a villa named Halloway Villa, and one cutting line: "If your brain's broken, stop wandering. Stop stirring trouble for me."

I ignored that last part, sent him a string of kiss emojis, and added a playful "Thanks, honey!".

When I finally walked into the house, the emptiness hit me like a wall.

Home was a cavernous space, silent and bare. There was only one pair of slippers and one toothbrush. Even the bed had a single pillow.

It didn't feel like a home for two. It felt like a single woman's apartment.

So I went down to the basement, found our dusty old wedding portrait, and hung it back on the wall.

Then I went online, ordered piles of matching couple sets, and placed them carefully in every corner of the house.

I couldn't wait to see Adrian's face when he came home and found the house transformed.

When he finally returned, he froze at the doorway, his brows immediately furrowing.

"Juliana, I don't care if this amnesia is real or fake. You're thirty years old. Can you stop acting like you're still twenty? How childish."

He didn't even step inside. He slammed the door and left.

One of the porcelain figurines I'd carefully picked out toppled from the cabinet and shattered across the floor. I knelt, gathering the pieces, fitting them back together. The jagged cracks looked like badly sewn scars.

Stroking its tiny head, I whispered, "Little porcelain man, you know Adrian's always like this. Don't cry. Don't cry…"

Once again, I comforted myself.

In the days that followed, I tried every trick in the book to cross paths with him.

When it rained, I showed up under his office with an umbrella. Unfortunately, he drove off in his luxury car with Vanessa by his side. When they passed me, he didn't even lower the window, and the splash from the wheels soaked me through.

When I heard he'd be at the golf course, I went early and even crammed in a quick lesson with a coach just to impress him.

The second he spotted me, he turned without a word and headed for another green, leaving me stranded and humiliated.

Still, I brushed it off. I would keep trying. Alas, Adrian never spared me a real glance.

On the sixth day, he finally came home. I'd been working in the kitchen all morning, my hands blistered, just to put a feast together.

He rubbed his temple, then swept the plates straight into the trash. "Juliana, could you stop with these little acts of self-pity? It's exhausting."

I hadn't meant to cry, but the weariness in his voice cut deep. His dark eyes fixed on me dismissively, like everything I'd poured out was worthless.

Tears spilled fast, hitting the floor one by one like broken pearls.

Adrian went quiet, then let out a sharp laugh. "What are you pretending for? Haven't you been used to this for years?"

On one's own lips, those words tasted like bitter humor. On someone else’s, they stripped you of all dignity.

After he left, I sat staring at the food in the trash, staring at the emptiness of this house filled with nothing but loneliness.

I thought, 'Do I really not understand why my thirty-year-old self wanted a divorce? Or do I just refuse to understand?'

That night, I sat at my desk, staring at the journal and the unsigned divorce agreement.

My best friend, Hannah Price, had once asked me on the phone, "What exactly is so special about Adrian Halloway? What's made you love him for fifteen years straight?"

I could never put it into words.

When we first met, I could list a hundred things I admired about him, but the more I loved him, the less I could explain why.

Isn't that what a teenage crush was? No rhyme or reason, just hurling every ounce of love at someone until you hit a wall and can't turn back.

I closed the journal again.

Maybe the thirty-year-old me had been too proud, too unsure of how to act, so she left it to the version of me with only twenty years of memories to choose for her.

Even if it was the last chance.

I sent Adrian a message: "Adrian, today was my fault. I'm sorry. Will you come home tomorrow? Please."

Adrian really did come home, but he brought Vanessa with him.

The confetti I'd prepared for my "proposal" showered down, circling both of them instead. Once again, I became the joke.

Adrian's face darkened, his jaw tight as he brushed the confetti angrily from his shoulders. "Juliana! I must be insane. I knew you weren't right in the head, and I still agreed to come back!"

He turned, taking Vanessa by the hand, ready to leave.

Watching his retreating back, a thought struck me: was it the same ten years ago?

That night when I knelt on one knee and asked him to marry me, did he wear the same cold expression, the same look of annoyance, as he walked away and left me standing there alone?

I ran ahead, arms stretched wide to block his path. "No! You can't leave!"

His eyes filled with irritation. "Move. Haven't you made enough of a scene? Do you want Vanessa to laugh at you forever?"

Sure enough, Vanessa smiled at me, mockery glinting beneath her sweetness.

Shaking, I locked eyes with Adrian, emotions surging so hard I could barely breathe. "I don't care about Vanessa! I just want to know, do you love me or not? If you don't, then why marry me?

"And if you don't love me, Adrian, then why have you worn the bracelet I gave you for ten years?"

I pointed at the strip of warm, wood-brown peeking from his wrist.

When I was nineteen, I'd polished those beads by hand, climbed a thousand temple steps, begged the abbot to bless them. I'd given them to him as a birthday gift.

Adrian froze.

Vanessa let out a soft "Oh?" and tilted her head. "You gave him that bracelet? Adrian, wasn't that the one I brought back from overseas for you?"

The crash inside me was deafening.

I stared at Adrian, horrified. "What did she just say? That's my bracelet. Mine. Isn't it?"

His eyes flickered away, unable to meet mine. He even shifted his right hand behind him, as though to hide it. "Jules… don't make a scene…"

"I'm not making a scene! Let me see. Show me!"

Clutching his wrist, clinging to my last shred of hope, I turned the beads one by one.

Where our names should have been engraved—Adrian Halloway and Juliana Rowe—the letters had been altered. They spelled Vanessa Grant.

In that instant, I felt like the biggest fool alive. All my stubborn love, all my desperate persistence—it had been nothing but my own delusion.

I dropped to the ground, bawling like a child whose candy had been snatched away.

A crack split through Adrian's expression, panic flashing across his face. Instinctively, he took a step toward me. Then his eyes landed on something on the floor, and he stopped cold.

It was the "ring" I'd planned to propose with.

The last clear fragment of my twenty-year-old self was me slipping a soda can pull-tab onto his finger and grinning as I said, "Adrian Halloway, if you wear my ring, you're mine. So, will you marry me?"

Back then, his dark eyes had held nothing but me.

Maybe Adrian remembered it, too. His fingers twitched. His gaze fixed on that simple "ring" and lingered, unmoving.

I don't know when Adrian and Vanessa left, or how long I cried.

Later, sitting at my desk in the wash of moonlight, I finally opened the Pandora's box of a journal.

May 21, 2015. Not only did I propose, but I also married Adrian Halloway! I want the whole world to know! I, Juliana Rowe, am no longer a lovesick fool. I'm Mrs. Halloway!