My Fiance Married His Childhood Sweetheart Before Our Engagement Party Chapter 05

My Fiance Married His Childhood Sweetheart Before Our Engagement Party Chapter 05

That night, Adrian returned to the apartment.

He saw the keys and the necklace on the cabinet.

Then he pushed open the guest room door.

It was empty.

He froze for a moment and dialed my number.

[The number you have dialed is no longer in service. Please check and try again.]

“Do you think he’ll look for you?”

Olivia handed me a mug of hot milk.

I sat curled on her couch and took it from her.

The milk was freshly heated.

The cup was hot against my palms.

“He will,” I said. “But not because he cares about me.”

“Then why?”

“Because he’s used to me.”

I stared at the thin skin forming over the milk.

“The apartment won’t clean itself. His shirts won’t iron themselves. The bills won’t pay themselves. The vegetables in the fridge will rot, and the trash will overflow.”

“He doesn’t miss me. He misses the person who did everything.”

Olivia leaned against the arm of the couch and looked at me.

She opened her mouth, then said nothing.

Olivia was not a quiet person.

But over those three days, she stayed quiet more than she had in the past three years combined.

The next afternoon, her boyfriend sent her a message.

His name was James Carter.

He was in Adrian’s friend group.

Olivia had kept that from me until this whole thing made it impossible to hide.

James said Adrian had sent more than thirty messages asking around for me.

He went to the bridal rental shop.

The owner said Evelyn had returned the gown and left, no contact information.

He went to the little noodle place I used to eat at.

The owner said she hadn’t seen that girl in ages.

He even went to the coffee shop where I used to do part-time translation work.

The front desk checked the old schedules for a long time, then said

that person hadn’t worked there in years.

He asked everyone.

No one knew where I had gone.

Because in his world, no one had ever truly known me.

When he introduced me, he always called me “someone helping out.”

He never brought me to friend gatherings.

He never brought me to company events.

Even when he went back home for holidays, he went alone.

For three years, I was a nameless shadow behind him.

Washing dishes.

Cooking meals.

Paying bills.

Staying up late to revise pitch decks.

Now the shadow had disappeared.

Only then did he realize the apartment was empty.

On the third evening, he called Olivia from his company landline.

I sat beside her and listened.

Olivia answered and put him on speaker.

“Olivia, is Evelyn with you?”

“No.”

“Where did she go? Do you know?”

“Why would I know? Ask yourself.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Olivia took a deep breath.

“Adrian, when your friends called her a fool, did you ask where she was? When you left her standing in front of two hundred people, did you wonder where she would go? Now you’re anxious?”

The other end was silent for a long time.

So long I thought he had hung up.

Olivia hung up first.

She turned to me with an expression that was half satisfied and half heartbroken.

“I yelled at him. Feel better?”

“On my behalf.”

She smiled, then sighed.