The Wedding Was Never Mine

Chapter4

After leaving the bridal shop, I told everyone I wasn't feeling well and went home first.

Then I withdrew every cent of the wedding fund I had saved over the years.

I sat on a bench outside and spent the entire afternoon making calls.

I canceled the pre-wedding photos, the printed invitations, the bridal makeup artist, the officiant, the floral arrangements, and the dessert table.

Finally, I canceled the honeymoon flights and hotel reservations.

"Miss Carter, are you postponing the wedding?" someone from the wedding planning company asked.

"It's canceled," I said.

After hanging up, I stared at my phone screen.

I waited for Adrian to notice that something was wrong and ask me what had happened.

But my phone remained silent.

Instead, Serena posted on i********:. The photo showed a necklace and Adrian's blurred silhouette in the background.

The caption read: Wedding countdown. Thank you to the person who's been taking care of everything for me.

Apparently, even my waiting had been unnecessary.

In that case, I would give them a gift too.

It was already dark, but I still went to Adrian's apartment.

When he saw me, he looked startled.

"Why are you here? Didn't you say you weren't feeling well?"

After a moment of silence, I asked him seriously, "Can you not rehearse with Serena? It's clearly my wedding."

"Maisie, it was your parents who came to me. They said Serena is afraid of marriage and may never get married in her life. She just wants to experience a wedding ceremony once. Besides, I'm only walking through the process with her. You wouldn't really be upset over something like this, would you?"

He stepped forward as if to hug me, but his phone suddenly rang.

He seemed to come alive at once. Picking it up, he turned away from me.

Still, I saw the caller ID.

It was Serena.

Her voice trembled with tears on the other end. "Adrian, come quickly. I twisted my ankle just now. What if it's broken? I'm scared. Someone is knocking at the door outside."

His expression changed immediately, and he began to leave. As he passed through the entryway, he casually slipped the medicine box from the cabinet into his coat pocket.

When he saw me watching, he gave me a perfunctory explanation.

"Maisie, something urgent came up at work."

Then he left me behind and walked away.

I stood in the cold wind and watched him look back at me once.

There was guilt in his eyes, hesitation too—and a faint, almost imperceptible sense of relief.

"Go home early, Maisie. Don't catch a cold."

His taillights vanished around the corner.

Then I remembered the medicine box he had put in his pocket.

I recognized it. It was stomach medicine. Serena often took that brand at the dinner table, and my mother had even bought it especially for her.

A note was stuck to the box, written in Adrian's handwriting: Take three times a day, after meals.

My stomach wasn't good either. For five years, Adrian had always said, "Why haven't you been eating properly again?"

But he had never handed me a box of medicine.

So the medicine he had always kept close at hand had never been for me.

On the day of the rehearsal, I got up early.

My mother called first thing in the morning, her tone light.

"Maisie, the rehearsal starts at ten. If you're unhappy, you don't have to come."

I took the USB drive containing the recording from my drawer and closed my hand around it.

Its metal casing was cold, pressing painfully into my palm.

Of course I would go.

I gave one last look at the room I had lived in for more than twenty years.

Starting tomorrow, I would no longer belong here.

And the wedding they had been so eagerly anticipating wouldn't happen.