This jackass was serenading my girl with one of my own damn songs.
Not my girl. Hadn’t been my girl for a long time.
I’d been thinking of her only minutes ago when I’d been trying to write and now I was somehow looking at her, like I’d conjured her with my thoughts. I glanced at Kelly to see if he was messing with me, but he was focused on the video.
He hadn’t been there. He’d only seen the aftermath. How could he know seeing her was like a knife to the gut?
I wanted to get up and walk away rather than have to look at her again, but I couldn’t pull my eyes from the screen. She was smiling and looking adoringly at the guy singing.
I didn’t need to see this.
I worked up the willpower to stand, but Kelly said, “No, wait, man. You’ll miss the best part.”
The guy finished singing and then looked out at the woman I’d once loved the way I’d probably looked at her once upon a time…and asked her to marry him.
Shit.
What cruel god had I angered that I had to see this? I hoped the guy was about to slip off the stage or get stampeded by an elephant or something because there was nothing funny about this video.
I shouldn’t have wanted to hit him in the face for looking at her like that. For wanting to claim her all to himself.
But I did.
In that moment, I knew the stark truth. I’d spent eight years waiting for her to come back.
At first I thought maybe she’d miss me and change her mind. Even after what she’d done, I would’ve taken her back. But when months passed, I threw myself into the work instead, into making myself into the kind of musician she’d believed I was.
And all the success, the awards, the sold-out shows…always felt a little hollow. I won my first Grammy and as I went to bed that night wondered if she’d seen it. Our music charted over and over and over again until it was impossible for her to not have heard it, but she never called. I’d been a clingy, needy kid and I’d driven her away by pushing for too much. Tracking her down, showing up at her work, would only have been a repeat of that.
If she came back, it had to be because she wanted me.
Now I had my answer. All this time, she’d been thriving without me, building a life with someone else.
Despair ripped a chasm in my chest. This guy was taking a dream away that had never really belonged to me, but that didn’t make it hurt less.
The camera panned back to Maia, who was no longer smiling. She was taking shallow breaths and looked like she was about to cry.
Overcome by emotion at the romantic proposal? The Maia I knew would’ve slapped me upside the head for pulling shenanigans like that in front of a crowd, but this woman was a stranger to me.
The guy stepped down from the stage and started to approach her…and if I had to watch them kiss I was going to gauge my eyes out.
But then, in a twist that caused an audible gasp from the wedding guests, Maia got up and ran the other way.
Triumph thundered through me before I could catch myself. She was gonna turn him down!
The camera got shaky trying to follow her, but refocused just in time to see Maia grab a trash can and spectacularly throw up.
Next to me, Kelly snorted with delight. “The last way you ever want someone to react to your proposal, right?”
You have no idea.
The person holding the phone was merciless and turned back to catch the guy’s reaction.
Horror was written plainly on his face even as he kept walking slowly towards her, like he knew she didn’t want him and still somehow couldn’t resist her pull.
The poor schmuck.
Welcome to the club, bro.
