“Of course.”
I handed her my phone so she could forward them to me, and that was when everything changed.
Her expression morphed from casual concentration to confusion, to recognition, then to something harder and colder.
It was like her face drained of colour.
“Marley?” I asked, my heart starting to race. “What’s wrong?”
She didn’t answer. She just kept staring at my phone screen, her jaw tightening in that way it did when she was trying to control her emotions.
“What did you see?” I reached for the phone, but she pulled it back, still staring.
I tried to snatch it away, but she dodged, taking a step back. When she finally looked up at me, her eyes were different.
They seemed distant and closed. I had never seen them like that before.
“Let’s get into the car,” she said calmly. Too calmly, in a way that made my blood freeze and my heart thump loudly.
She got into her side of the car, my phone still clutched in her hand.
“Marley, wait?—”
But she didn’t wait. Instead, she slammed the door and my breathing quickened, my heart hammering against my ribs.
What had she seen? What was on my phone that could make her face go so blank, so cold?
Wait. Oh, no… no, no, no… God, please not that…
I said a silent prayer as I got into the passenger seat and shut the door.
Jesus… Why had I saved that to my photos?
“Marley, please, I can explain… it’s… it’s not what you think,” I said as I turned to face her.
Her mouth was set in a deep frown, one I’d never seen before, as she stared straight ahead through the windscreen. The silence stretched until I thought I might suffocate.
“A wedding invitation,” she said finally. “With your name on it. April thirteenth. How romantic.”
My chest hollowed out.
“How long?” She still wasn’t looking at me.
“Mar—”
“How. Long. Have. You. Known?”
Each word was clipped, like she was barely holding herself together.
“Since New Year’s Day.”
The confession sat between us while I watched her absorb it, watched her hands start to shake before she clenched them into fists.
“New Year’s Day.” She was nodding slowly now. “New Year’s Day. When you got that call from your folks, when you looked like someone had died.”
She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out her cigarettes and lighter with shaking hands. The lighter flicked once, twice, three times before it caught. She took a long, desperate drag.
“Over a month. Over a month you’ve known you were going to marry someone else in a few months, and you said nothing.” Her voice was getting tighter. “Do you have any fucking idea what this month has been for me?”
