“And if you do go?”
“Then at least he has to look at me when he lies.”
She went quiet.
“Are you sure you can handle that?”
“No,” I said. “But I’m tired of letting him decide what I can handle.”
So I packed a black dress, booked a room, and told myself I needed proof that I was over him.
That was a lie.
I went because some bruised part of me wanted Ethan to see that I’d survived.
The night before the wedding, I sat at the hotel bar with the invitation beside my glass.
A man sat two stools away and glanced at it.
“That looks fancy,” he said.
“The paper?” I asked.
“The whole mood around it.”
I looked at him carefully.
He was tall and calm.
“Well, it cost me fifteen years,” I said.
