Chapter I
I’ve loved breakup songs for as long as I can remember.
The devastating metaphors about losing someone you love. Watching an entire chapter of your life blur before your eyes, almost in slow motion. Missing someone with an ache so deep it feels stitched into your bones.
Ironically, I’d never broken up with anyone.
Those songs let me borrow someone else’s pain.
For three and a half minutes, I could mourn a love I’d never lost, memorize every devastating verse, let someone else’s grief settle beneath my skin, and then, when the song ended, go back to my perfectly ordinary life.
It felt like cheating.
I had all the catharsis and none of the consequences.
At least, that’s what I used to think.
Because today, my life had somehow become the opening verse of one of those songs under the worst possible circumstances.
And nobody had bothered to warn me that living through that kind of heartbreak was significantly less poetic than singing about one.
My hands won’t stop shaking.
I clutch the silk of my wedding dress so tightly that the fabric wrinkles beneath my fingers. Across from me, Sophie is fanning my face with so much determination that I’m surprised she hasn’t pulled a muscle. Her lips keep moving, but I can’t make out a single word. The voices around us blur together until they become nothing more than distant static.
Even my sister looks out of focus.
It takes me a second to realize my eyes are full of tears.
The feeling reminds me of the first time I fell off my bike when I was eight. The dizziness. The confusion. That strange delay between the accident itself and the moment the pain finally catches up to you.
Only this time, I know I’m not dealing with a scraped knee that will heal in a few days, or a Band-Aid followed by one of Mom’s reassuring speeches.
This feels permanent. Something that doesn’t heal so much as it quietly rearranges the rest of your life.
The ballroom doors swing open.
“It’s like the ground swallowed him whole.”
I recognize my older brother’s voice before I see him.
Gavin storms into the bridal suite with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his tie hanging crooked around his neck. His breathing is uneven, as though he’s spent the last twenty minutes searching every corner of the venue.
“He’s not here,” he says, his voice shaking with fury. “That coward actually didn’t even show up. But I swear to God, the second I find him—”
“You’re not going to do anything, Gav.”
Sophie doesn’t even look at him. She keeps fanning my face with one hand while dabbing at my cheeks with the other. I hadn’t even noticed she’d been holding a handkerchief until she began wiping away my tears with incredible care, barely letting the fabric touch my skin, as if she were afraid I might come apart beneath it.
“Can’t you see she’s been through enough?” she says quietly, never taking her eyes off me. “Breathe, Vee. Four seconds in... hold it... now four seconds out. That’s it. You’re doing great.”
Somewhere along the way, someone presses a paper bag into my hands. I don’t know who. I only realize I’m breathing into it because Sophie tells me to do it.
The door opens again.
Mom.
She’s still wearing the navy gown she’d chosen months ago, her hair pinned into the same elegant chignon she’d spent an hour perfecting that morning. Not a single strand has escaped. Her lipstick is untouched. Even in the late June heat, she somehow looks as though she’d stepped out of the house only moments ago.
I stare at her, wondering how she manages to look so composed when her world has to be unraveling just as quickly as mine.
She never rushes. Never raises her voice. Never lets panic announce itself before she’s had the chance to deal with it.
Growing up, I was convinced nothing could shake her. She could have looked effortlessly chic at the end of the world. But as she walks toward me, I notice the slightest tremor in her hands.
I can’t help thinking about the day I took her shopping for the dress she’s wearing now.
A few months ago, back when I still believed today would be the happiest day of my life, we spent nearly three hours wandering through downtown, drifting from one boutique to another, coming dangerously close to giving up before stumbling across a tiny shop tucked between luxury bridal stores we couldn’t even dream of affording.
The owner was a middle-aged Japanese woman who had spent her entire life making dresses by hand. When Mom stepped out of the fitting room wearing this one, the woman smiled softly and pointed to the tiny embroidered cranes hidden inside the sleeves.
She told us that, according to an old Japanese tradition, cranes symbolize a long and happy marriage, and that wearing them on a wedding day invites good fortune into your marriage.
We bought that dress. And I remember feeling relieved.
Now I guess she was wrong.
Mom crosses the room in quick strides. The moment she reaches me, something inside me finally gives way. The sob that escapes doesn’t even feel like mine.
Sophie quietly steps aside, giving us room, and Mom cups my face in both hands.
“Listen to me, Vienna,” she says, brushing a few loose strands of hair away from my forehead. “None of this—not in any way, under any circumstances—is your fault. Do you understand me?”
I don’t.
“Vee.”
She says my name so gently it almost hurts.
Her hands tighten ever so slightly around my face until I have no choice but to look at her.
“I need you to understand this.”
I nod.
“No. Not like that. I need to hear you say it.”
“Say... what?” I whisper, barely recognizing my own voice.
“That it wasn’t your fault.”
The words lodge somewhere behind my ribs. For a moment, I can’t seem to reach them.
“It... it wasn’t my fault.”
She wraps her arms around me.
Over her shoulder, I catch Gavin standing a few feet away, caught in what looks like the world’s least subtle internal battle. Half of him wants to grab his car keys and hunt down my ex-fiancé. The other half knows I probably won’t make it through the next ten minutes without him.
Eventually, he gives up trying to choose.
He pulls both of us into his arms.
A second later, Sophie squeezes herself in too.
Somehow, the four of us end up tangled together in the middle of the bridal suite. The morning has unraveled in the most spectacular way imaginable. And yet, I can’t remember the last time I felt so grateful.
Being left at the altar wasn’t exactly how I’d planned to start my summer.
Miles and I met at the University of Michigan and had been together ever since. I had just started my Master’s in Music Production, while he was working toward his MBA. On paper, we made very little sense.
I could spend three hours explaining why a particular chord progression could make a person cry. Miles could spend those same three hours explaining why financial markets reacted predictably to certain economic signals.
And somehow… We worked.
We were living proof that opposites really do attract.
As the years went by, we became that couple. The one that made people roll their eyes whenever they saw us walking across campus hand in hand. We weren’t obnoxious, just steady.
While everyone around us seemed trapped in an endless cycle of breakups and reconciliations, we never really fought. We never took breaks. Our friends came to us for relationship advice—a fact that probably should have embarrassed me a little more than it did. Instead, I found it strangely flattering.
If I’m being completely honest… It made me feel just a little superior. Because I thought I’d found the kind of love people spend their entire lives looking for. At least, that’s how it looked from where I was standing.
So when Jamie walked into the church that morning instead of Miles, I knew immediately that something was wrong.
Jamie had been Miles’s best friend since they were seven years old. Somewhere along the way, he’d become one of mine too. Usually, seeing him would have made me smile.
Today… The sight of him made my stomach drop.
He was pale and sweaty.
He looked like someone had just handed him a live grenade and informed him it was his responsibility to throw it.
I caught Mom’s attention and motioned for her to stop the ceremony before it could begin.
Then I grabbed Jamie by the wrist and led him behind the church, doing my best to ignore the sea of confused faces turning to watch us.
“What is it, Jamie?”
My voice sounds calmer than I feel. Somehow.
The bodice of my dress suddenly feels two sizes too small, pressing against my ribs every time I try to breathe.
Jamie won’t look at me.
“Vee...” He swallows. “I... I couldn’t stop him.”
A cold knot settles somewhere beneath my sternum.
“Stop him from what?”
“I’m so sorry.”
“No.”
The word comes out sharper than I intended. I point a finger straight at his chest.
“Don’t tell me you’re sorry. Saying you’re sorry means you’re apologizing for someone who isn’t here.”
I take a step toward him.
“Where’s Miles?”
My mind immediately begins reaching for explanations. A flat tire. Traffic. His phone died.
Maybe someone rear-ended his car on the way here. Nothing serious or irreversible.
I picture him standing on the shoulder of the highway, apologizing to another driver while checking his watch every thirty seconds.
Miles hated inconveniencing people. Today, I hope he makes an exception. I hope he throws money at the problem. Signs whatever needs signing. Does whatever it takes.
Just to… Get here.
Then I look at Jamie. Really look at him. And I know it before he says another word.
This isn’t the face of someone about to explain why the groom is late. It’s the face of someone who already knows Miles is not going to show up.
“You need to talk to him once he’s had time to think.”
The sentence lands somewhere outside my body. It doesn’t make sense.
“What?”
“I tried to change his mind.” Jamie’s voice breaks. “I swear I tried.”
“What exactly did he say?”
He closes his eyes just for a second. Long enough to gather the courage to repeat words that were never meant to be his.
“...He said he isn’t ready.”
Everything inside me goes unnaturally still.
“He’d been acting strange for a few days,” Jamie says quietly. “I thought it was just wedding nerves. Everyone gets nervous before a wedding, right? I thought it’d disappear the second he saw you.”
He stops. My vision is already blurring.
“Oh, God.” He rubs a hand over his face. “Vee... I’m so sorry.”
I shove him hard enough that he stumbles back a step. The room tilts beneath me. Voices from inside the church drift through the walls. Guests laughing. Talking. Completely unaware that, a few feet away, my future has just quietly fallen apart.
I turn back to Jamie, unable to meet his eyes.
“Did he send you?”
“What? No. I came because... because you deserved to know.”
He hesitates.
“I don’t even know if he was going to tell you.”
My stomach twists.
“He said he needed time. That everything was happening too fast. Something about… being too young.”
For the first time since he’d walked into the church… I believed him.
Because that sounded exactly like Miles.
I never doubted that he loved me. What I’d underestimated was how quickly Miles could skip to the worst possible outcome.
He had always treated uncertainty like something that needed fixing.
He arrived at airports three hours early before a national flight.
Read the fine print before buying cereal.
Compared the same coffee maker across four different websites before clicking Add to Cart.
He checked hotel reservations twice. Driving routes three times.
He always had a backup plan.
And then a backup for the backup.
I should have known that one day he’d start treating us the same way. Running the numbers. Calculating the risks. Looking for the safest possible outcome.
Apparently...
I hadn’t made the final equation.
