I Canceled Our Wedding the Day Before, He Was at His Ex’s Somewhere in the Alps Chapter 08
The first day after the wedding was canceled, I slept ten hours.
When I woke up, sunlight was falling across the foot of my bed.
My mom sat next to me, peeling a pear. She didn’t ask why I had suddenly come home. She didn’t ask why the wedding was canceled.
She just cut the pear into small pieces and handed them to me.
“Eat something sweet.”
My eyes stung and I almost started crying.
All these years, I had put Caleb first.
So much so that I asked him if he was free before making any holiday plans. So much so that the moment my paycheck came in, I thought about what to buy him. So much so that if his mom said one thing she didn’t like, I would spend three days and three nights overthinking it.
I thought loving someone meant making yourself smaller and smaller. That if you sank low enough, something would eventually bloom. But nothing grows in the dust. You just end up covered in it.
The second day after the wedding was canceled, I started organizing evidence.
Chat logs. Screenshots of the Cancun news article. Receipts for the wedding dress, the ring, the hotel that Caleb bought for Jessica.
The flirtatious voice messages she sent him. The screen recording of him saying “a friend got married.”
I sorted everything into categories. Date. Amount. Event. Damage value.
When Sophie saw the spreadsheet I made, she was quiet for a long time. “Emma… what is this for?”
I said, “I don’t want them to twist the story later. And I don’t want to forget.”
In that spreadsheet, I listed thirty-two separate incidents.
My twenty-fifth birthday. He said he was working late. Actual location: Movie theater near Jessica’s apartment. My damage value: 8 out of 10.
Our seventh anniversary. He gave me the same bracelet he gave Jessica. Note: My packaging was the standard box. Hers was a limited-edition gift set. Damage value: 7.
The night I had horrible cramps. He said there was an emergency at work. Actual chat log: Jessica’s building lost power. He drove over to keep her company. Damage value: 9.
Three days before our wedding. He had a wedding ceremony with Jessica in Cancun. Called her his wife publicly. Damage value: 10.
I looked at those numbers and suddenly felt how absurd it all was. Heartbreak could be quantified. I hadn’t fallen out of love overnight. I had been deducted point by point down to zero.
On the third day, Caleb showed up.
That morning, I had just gone for a run. Under the sycamore tree at the entrance of my neighborhood, a man was standing.
He wore a wrinkled shirt. He hadn’t shaved. His eyes were bloodshot. He looked nothing like the Caleb who was always so composed and in control.
When he saw me, his eyes lit up. “Emma.”
I stopped walking. “How did you know I was here?”
His throat bobbed. “I went to Sophie. She wouldn’t tell me. Then I asked some of your old coworkers. I figured you might have gone back to your hometown.”
I didn’t say anything.
Caleb stepped closer. “Emma, I’m sorry. What happened in Cancun was my fault.”
“I shouldn’t have agreed to Jessica’s request. I shouldn’t have lied to you. But I never planned on not marrying you.”
He rushed through the words, like he was afraid I would turn and walk away.
“I already decided. After our wedding here, I was going to cut things off with her completely, put all my focus on you. We would still sign the papers, still live our lives. I would make it up to you.”
I looked at him and suddenly felt how pathetic this was. “Caleb, do you really think, even now, that all I care about is whether you legally marry me in the end?”
He froze. “Isn’t it?”
I smiled faintly. “Of course not.”
I took out my phone and opened that spreadsheet. “Let me ask you a few questions.”
Caleb stared at the screen, and his face slowly changed.
I said, “On my twenty-fifth birthday, I waited for you all night. You said you had to work late. Where did you actually go?”
Caleb’s lips moved. “I…”
“Tell the truth.”
He lowered his head. “I took Jessica to a movie.”
“Why?”
“She was having a bad day.”
I nodded and mentally checked off that line on the spreadsheet. “On our seventh anniversary, you gave me a bracelet. I later found out Jessica has the same one. What were you thinking?”
Caleb’s eyes darted away. “I didn’t think that much about it.”
“Really?” I looked up at him. “Then why did she get the limited-edition gift box, and I got the standard one the saleswoman grabbed off the shelf?”
Caleb’s face went pale. He was quiet for a long time before he said in a hoarse voice, “She said she liked the packaging. So I…”
“Gave her the better one.” I finished the sentence for him.
He looked like he had been slapped.
I continued. “The night I had bad cramps, you said there was an emergency at work. You went to be with her, didn’t you?”
Caleb closed his eyes. “Yes. Her building lost power. She’s afraid of the dark.”
I smiled. “I’m afraid of pain too. But you didn’t care.”
Caleb’s eyes turned red. “Emma, I didn’t know it was that bad.”
“I texted you. I said I could barely get out of bed from the pain. You replied with one word: ‘Okay.'”
He stiffened, like he suddenly remembered.
I put my phone away. “One last question. The wedding chocolates.”
“Jessica told you to bring them to me so I could have some of your wedding good luck. You really didn’t see anything wrong with that?”
Caleb’s face went completely pale. His lips trembled. He didn’t answer right away. This time, he didn’t say “I didn’t think about it.”
He said quietly, “I knew. I knew she did it on purpose. But I thought you wouldn’t find out. I thought…”
I finished his sentence. “You thought that because I love you, even if I did find out, I would forgive you.”
Caleb’s head snapped up. Tears finally fell.
“Emma, I was wrong. I’m so sorry. It’s not that I don’t love you. I just got too used to having you there. I never thought you would actually leave.”
He reached for me. “Please give me another chance. Okay?”
I stepped back. “Caleb. Do you know why I didn’t make a scene at the wedding?”
He stared at me.
I said, “It’s not because I couldn’t bear to hurt you. It’s because I couldn’t bear to hurt myself.”
“I didn’t want to stand there in my wedding dress and cry in front of everyone. I didn’t want people to remember me at my most pathetic.”
“And I definitely didn’t want my seven years to become a public joke.”
The wind blew. My voice stayed calm.
“So I left. That was the last bit of dignity I gave us.”
Caleb cried harder. He reached for me again but didn’t dare touch me.
“Emma, please. Seven years. How many people get a seven-year relationship?”
I looked at him. I had asked myself that question so many times.
Because of seven years, I couldn’t let go. Because of seven years, I kept enduring. Because of seven years, I kept believing he would change.
But now I finally understood. Seven years was not a reason to keep getting hurt. Seven years was just the evidence I needed to stop the bleeding.
“Caleb. There aren’t that many seven-year relationships in a lifetime, and I’m not wasting my next one on you.”
His expression crumbled.
I walked past him.
He suddenly grabbed me from behind and hugged me, his voice breaking. “Don’t go. Emma, please don’t leave me. I’ll cut Jessica off. I’ll move out. You can yell at me. Hit me. Just come back.”
I pried his fingers off me one by one. Like I was unlocking seven years of chains.
“Caleb. The regret you’re feeling right now isn’t because you love me so much. It’s because you finally lost the one person who always put you first.”
“But I was never your backup plan. And I was never your safety net.”
I looked back at him one last time. “Don’t come find me again. Or I’ll make all the evidence public.”
Caleb stood there frozen.
I turned and walked into the neighborhood. This time, he didn’t follow.