The Road I Chose

By the seventh year of my engagement to Tristan, he postponed our wedding for the third time. The reason was simple. His childhood sweetheart, Gabriella, had returned to the country. She had just gone through a divorce and was emotionally unstable. Tristan personally retrieved every invitation we had sent out, his tone calm and steady. "Gabby has no one by her side right now. I can't upset her at a time like this." I held the ring that had already been resized twice and asked, "What about me?" Tristan glanced at me. "You're different. You're sensible." I had been hearing that word for seven years. Sensible. When his startup failed, I sold the old house my grandmother had left me to help him pay off his debts. When he suffered a gastric hemorrhage, I stayed at the hospital for three days straight and missed my own promotion defense. When his mother said my background was too ordinary for him, he only rubbed his temples and said, "Tori, don't make this difficult for me." Every time, I nodded. He once told me that no matter how thick the fog became, he would always leave a light on for me. Until the day Gabriella stood in front of the mirror wearing my wedding dress and smiled as she asked, "Victoria, you don't mind, do you? Tristan said your wedding's being postponed anyway." Tristan stood behind her. He did not deny it. He even reached out and adjusted her veil for her. The fog lamp he had given me with his own hands sat by the display window of the bridal shop. It was still lit, illuminating someone else in the white dress I had waited seven years to wear. Only then did I realize that some roads were not lost because the fog was too thick. It was because he had never planned to come for me at all.