He Married Her On The Day We Were Supposed To Wed Chapter 01

He Married Her On The Day We Were Supposed To Wed Chapter 01

On Valentine’s Day, my boyfriend, who was supposed to marry me at the courthouse that day, suddenly vanished without a word.

That evening, I happened to come across a Facebook post he had forgotten to hide from me.

[From twenty to twenty-eight, we wrote our story together. Today, we finally made it official.]

The photo showed their marriage certificate beside two matching wedding bands.

In the courthouse wedding photo, a woman I had never seen before leaned against his shoulder, her smile soft and radiant.

Furious, I opened the comments and was about to confront him when I saw a comment from my best friend.

[Congratulations to two people who’ve loved each other for years. After everything you’ve been through, you finally made it official!]

My heart clenched. With trembling hands, I called her.

After a long silence, she finally admitted the truth.

“Yes. They’ve been together for eight years. All our friends knew.”

“We didn’t mean to hide it from you. We knew you’d be petty about it and make a scene.”

“Lila and Ryan have always been better suited to each other. It wasn’t easy for them to get here. Women should support other women. Be the bigger person.”

Tears spilled down my face, cold as ice, yet they burned a hole straight through my heart.

It turned out that for eight of the twelve years Ryan and I had been together, he had been in love with another woman.

Everyone had known. They had all worked together to keep me in the dark.

***

I kept scrolling through the comments, as if I were determined to torture myself.

Besides my best friend, plenty of our other mutual friends had posted their congratulations.

[Lila is a good woman. If you ever hurt her, I’ll be the first to kick your ass!]

That was Ryan’s best friend. Just last week, he had kept calling me Ryan’s future wife as if I were already part of the family.

[You married the woman you love most. I’m so happy for you, Ryan! We’re drinking until we drop tonight!]

That comment came from my college roommate.

[Celebrate all you want, but for my brother and Lila’s sake, remember to keep this quiet. Whatever you do, don’t let a certain someone find out.]

That was Ryan’s sister. Years ago, when she was starting a business, she had borrowed twelve thousand dollars from me and told me I was the only woman she would ever accept as Ryan’s wife.

[Absolutely. We’ve got it covered. For our prince and princess, we’ll make sure the wicked witch never finds out!]

That was the newly hired junior assistant at Ryan’s company. She was scatterbrained and had nearly been fired several times.

I had vouched for her and patiently shown her the ropes, which was the only reason she had made it through her probationary period.

I lifted my chin, stubbornly fighting to keep my tears from falling.

Everyone had known Ryan had been with another woman for eight years, yet every single one of them had chosen to hide it from me.

I was the “certain someone” in their coded comments, the wicked witch standing between the prince and princess, and nothing but a joke.

The page refreshed, and Ryan’s Facebook post suddenly disappeared.

A second later, my phone rang. It was Ryan, who had been unreachable all day.

“I’m sorry, babe. Our system crashed at work, and I’ve been dealing with it nonstop. I haven’t even looked at my phone.”

“Work has been crazy lately. Let’s postpone the courthouse wedding for now.”

“By the way, babe, did you happen to see anything interesting on Facebook today?”

His voice was tense, and his clumsy attempt to test me was painfully obvious.

I forced myself to answer.

“I couldn’t reach you all day, and I’ve been at the hospital taking care of my mom. When would I have had time to scroll through Facebook?”

“Go deal with work. As for the wedding… we can talk about it whenever you finally have time.”

Last year, my mother had been diagnosed with late-stage stomach cancer.

Her doctor said that even in the best-case scenario, she might have three years left.

Her only wish was to see Ryan and me legally married before I turned thirty.

Today was Valentine’s Day, and it was also my thirtieth birthday.

She was still lying in her hospital room, eagerly waiting to see the official marriage certificate bearing both our names.

But I could no longer fulfill her final wish.

Ryan was already someone else’s husband.

I crouched in a corner, curling in on myself as tightly as I could.

My tears splashed onto the screen, blurring the bold letters into halos of light.

I wiped the screen dry and silently memorized the location where they were celebrating.

[Aurelia, the Hudson Room.]