After I Saw His First Love, I Left

Chapter 5

The night wind carried a faint chill. Eliseo and I walked out of the hospital.

He shot me a quick glance, his tone sharp with irritation. "What are you crying for? If anyone should be crying, it's Isadora, my future wife."

My heart skipped a beat, a sour, heavy bitterness slowly swelling in my chest.

"What if you don't end up marrying Isadora?"

"Impossible. I'm definitely going to marry her!" Eliseo shot back immediately.

He paused for a second, then added, "If I can't marry Isadora, I'll just find someone who looks just like her."

The light slowly faded from my eyes.

He had actually followed through on that offhand comment, too. He'd found me, someone who bore a faint resemblance to Isadora.

Seeming to realize what he'd just said, Eliseo tensed up like he was facing a full-on crisis, rushing to explain, "Don't get the wrong idea, okay? Yeah, you look a little like Isadora, but I've never once mixed you up with her!"

I clenched my hands into fists and said nothing.

We didn't exchange another word the entire walk home.

Once I got to my room, I turned on my computer like usual.

Messages from Eliseo popped up one after another, flooding the screen like snowflakes.

They were all random little snippets of his day, plus all the usual little check-ins asking if I'd eaten, if I'd gotten home okay, and so on.

Staring at the flirty chat history on Chatter, then thinking about the disgusted look he'd given me just earlier, I felt dead tired.

The next day…

The school put out a notice about the New Year's Eve Gala.

During break, the class monitor held up a sign-up sheet and called out loudly, "Every class has to put on a show for the New Year's Eve Gala, and we drew the play Cinderella. Anyone want to volunteer for a role?"

Before he even finished speaking, Eliseo jumped to his feet. "Cinderella's so pretty and gentle. Isadora's obviously the perfect person to play her!"

I stared down at my notes in silence, totally out of place in all the buzzing excitement.

After a bunch of noisy back-and-forth, Isadora was locked in as the female lead, and Eliseo as the male lead. The only role left unfilled was the evil stepmother, and no one wanted to take it.

Just then, Baxter popped up out of nowhere. "Let Calixta do it! She's always jealous of Isadora and Eliseo, right? She'd be playing herself; it'd be perfect."

The whole class let out a chorus of snickering, knowing "Oohs."

My grip on my pen tightened. I was just about to turn it down when I heard Eliseo's lazy voice drift over from behind me.

"Sounds good to me."

He was so sure I'd never say no to him.

I lifted my head, and my gaze crashed right into Isadora's cold, faintly mocking eyes.

The monitor just handed us the scripts directly. "Find some time to rehearse together, okay?"

Eliseo agreed immediately, but he bailed on the last period of evening study hall.

By the time school ended, and almost everyone had left, he finally walked back in, carrying a small cake from Honeywood Bakery.

He walked right past me, setting the cake down on Isadora's desk. "Isadora, this is for you."

Isadora blinked in surprise for a second, then deliberately looked over at me. "Aren't you giving one to Calixta too?"

Her totally unsubtle, performative question made me flush with embarrassment.

Eliseo's eyes were fixed entirely on Isadora. "She doesn't like sweet things. Don't worry about her."

I loved sweet things.

Especially the sweet treats he gave me.

Not just the creamy hard candies, but the cakes from Honeywood Bakery too.

The shop had been around forever. It only opened at 2 p.m. every day and closed before 8 p.m., and while it was open, the line out front stretched halfway down the street.

But Eliseo would spend hours waiting in that never-ending line just to buy me the prettiest little cake they had...

I gave a faint, wistful smile. "Yeah, I hate sweet stuff more than anything."

After all, every last bit of sweetness from those old memories had curdled into bitter ash ever since I got thrown into this messed-up time travel do-over.

Eliseo frowned at me, his gaze hardening by the second.

We didn't start running lines until Isadora finished her cake.

Isadora and Eliseo huddled so close together they might as well have built an invisible wall just to shut me out.

"I'll marry the girl whose foot fits this glass slipper." Eliseo was half-kneeling in front of Isadora, holding a textbook that was standing in for the glass slipper.

Isadora was perched on a stool, but the second Eliseo's hand was about to brush her foot, she popped up to her feet, frowning at the clock on the wall.

"Oh no, I forgot I have a tutoring class today. I gotta head out now."

I saw the crushing disappointment on Eliseo's face clear as day, he looked exactly like the prince who'd just watched Cinderella vanish into the night.

Just when I thought I'd finally get to escape this stifling, cringey atmosphere, Isadora scrawled a string of numbers on a scrap of paper and slid it over to Eliseo.

"Add me on chatter, yeah? We can run lines online later."