I Am Not Your Keyword

My calm response must have tipped off that something was wrong, because Harrison Evans lowered his voice and started offering excuses.

"Things were crazy busy this afternoon, and my phone battery died before I could charge it."

That had been his go-to excuse for the past three months. If I hadn't seen the truth with my own eyes, I would still have been kept in the dark.

"Okay," I hummed.

His voice was brimming with worry. "How are your injuries? Is it serious?"

I glanced up at the clock. It was 7:40 PM—eight full hours after I had tried calling him.

I snapped a photo of my leg, wrapped tightly in a thick plaster cast, and sent it to him. It was a comminuted fracture.

Harrison looked at it, but he didn't bother asking any more questions. Instead, he sent back a few photos of blooming crabapple blossoms.

"They're all in full bloom," he marveled. "Looks like an ocean of pink. It's breathtaking."

I stared at the images. "Is Charleston really that much fun?"

Was it fun enough for him to make the trek four times in a single month? Fun enough to send me the same photos four times, captured from the same angle with the same composition? He couldn't even be bothered to put any effort into lying to me.

Harrison paused, caught off guard by my question.

"Yeah, it's pretty nice." He hesitated before adding evasively, "To be honest, it was half vacation and half helping out a friend."

I didn't bother asking who this friend was. I knew he wouldn't tell me. Besides, I already knew the answer: it was his ex-girlfriend.

Aurora Dalton had just updated her Instagram feed. She was wearing flawless makeup, posing under the blooming crabapple trees.

Whoever took the photo must have cared for her deeply; they had snapped the shutter at the precise moment when the sunlight hit her just right.

It was nothing like the pictures Harrison took of me, where my face was blurry in nine out of ten shots. Whenever I complained, he would just give me a helpless smile.

"That's just how straight guys take pictures."

Looking at the post, I finally got it. It wasn't that he didn't know how to take a good picture. It was just that he didn't care about the person in front of his lens.

Taking my lingering silence as fatigue, he suggested softly, "Get some rest. I'll head back first thing tomorrow morning."

"Okay," I said before hanging up.

Then I opened Aurora's feed, filled with her gushing happiness.

[Master's Degree Unlocked! Made the back-and-forth trip four times this past month, but I was lucky enough to have someone by my side helping me out every step of the way. So grateful!]

She made four trips, and Harrison accompanied her every time. Meanwhile, he hadn't shown an ounce of concern for our wedding attire, venues, or decorations.

My head throbbed with a dull ache, and the heavy plaster cast pinched tight around my fractured leg. After I called the vendor to cancel the wedding venue, I tossed and turned until two in the morning before finally drifting off to sleep.

When I woke up, Harrison was already back.

He was in the kitchen simmering chicken soup, and when he saw me open my eyes, he walked over and gently touched my face. "How did you get into a car accident?"

I stayed quiet for a long moment, then stared up at him. "I was out and saw someone I knew, but I couldn't catch up to them."

Harrison just gave a casual response. "Well, be more careful next time."

He didn't ask where I had been or who I was trying to catch. Because he didn't care.

My round-trip Amtrak ticket to Charleston was sitting right there in plain view on the entry table, but he couldn't even be bothered to look at it.