If anything, it made it worse. Each fitting. Each centerpiece decision. Each sweet little favor wrapped in twine and calligraphy is another tiny cut.
And I keep bleeding.
Quietly. Efficiently. Without complaint.
I stay late at the bar after events, pretending to help clean up so I can cry in the storage room for exactly five minutes and then pull myself together all while avoiding Will.
I go home to a dark apartment. The plants are dying. My laundry’s in piles. My fridge is mostly condiments and leftover takeout I never eat.
I tell Bonnie I’m just busy.
I tell Sam I’m tired from work.
Even Nash has stopped texting.
I don’t tell anyone that I stare at the ceiling most nights wondering if I’m ever going to feel like a real person again.
Will hasn’t reached out since the hospital.
Not a text. Not a call.
I see them sometimes—Will and Missy—around town. At the grocery store. At the farmer’s market. At his bar. Her arm draped over his. Her smile too wide, too proud. Like she won. Like I was the competition and never the choice. And maybe that’s what I can’t forgive.
Not that he didn’t choose me.
But that he let me believe he might.
The final dress fitting is in two days. Olive wants me there. She keeps saying things like ‘you’ve been such a rock for me’ and ‘I couldn’t have done this without you’.
And I smile.
Because that’s what rocks do, right?
They stay solid.
They don’t bleed.
Even when they’re cracking.
Two weeks before the wedding, I’m at the bar, pretending to sort through table assignments for the reception when Bonnie slides into the booth across from me. She doesn’t say anything at first. Just watches me quietly, the way people do when they’re not sure how much of you is still in there.
Then she says it.
Soft. Almost gentle.
“Will and Missy broke up.”
I freeze.
Not dramatically—no gasp, no shattering glass, no wide-eyed reaction.
I just… stop. My pen stills on the page. My eyes lift from the clipboard to Bonnie’s face.
“That so?” I ask, like we’re talking about the weather.
She blinks, clearly expecting more. “It happened last week. Nobody knows why exactly, but it sounds messy.”
I nod. “Huh.”
