The bus rocked along and passed the intersection where I'd first met Sebastian.

Back then I'd fainted right here from low blood sugar, and he was the one who carried me into the shade, went and bought me water, bought me chocolate.

Afterward I thanked him over and over and tried to give him money, but all he wanted was my number. Then came the kind of pursuit no one could hold out against.

I once mentioned some dessert shop on my feed, just in passing, and he ordered from it for our whole department for an entire quarter.

Because I liked flowers, a fresh bouquet showed up at the front desk every single day.

It wasn't that I never wavered. But a coworker told me the watch on his wrist was a Patek Philippe Nautilus.

A number my whole family, sold off together, still couldn't have paid for.

So I brought him home. I told him about my background, about my parents.

He didn't say a word. He just turned and walked out the door, and something in me eased even as I couldn't help sinking.

But ten minutes later he was back, holding a new light bulb.

"I saw the kitchen bulb was burnt out. It's hard for your mom and dad to change it, so I'll do it."

The kitchen light came on. And looking into his eyes, mine lit up too.

He took my hand and said, "You're the only one I care about. Your background, what people think, none of it can touch that."

So why had it come to this?

I clutched the hem of my wedding gown. For a moment there I really had believed happiness was mine.

The scenery slid backward fast outside the window, and then that street corner was gone for good.

I was still lost in it when a friend sent me a message and a video.

"Mona, why isn't the bride you?"

My hands shook as I opened it, and there was Sebastian, arm in arm with Beatrice, moving through the guests to toast them.

Every so often he leaned in and murmured to her with a smile, telling her what to call each person who came up.

When they hit a guest she didn't know, he'd smooth it over with a laugh and tell her who the person was.

My eyes stung before I knew it, and I closed them with something dead settling in my chest.

Just last week, Sebastian had sent me all the guest information.

Eighty tables at the reception. He'd left exactly one for my friends.

And nearly eight hundred names on the Henson guest list, which I was supposed to have memorized within a week.

So that the moment I saw someone, I could rattle off whose husband he was, whose child.

When I flat out said I couldn't, Sebastian blew up at me.

"Marrying you is already enough of an embarrassment to the Henson family. Can you please not make things harder for me? These are the Hensons' relatives and business partners. My mother isn't giving you a hard time on purpose. If you want to marry into this family, the least you can do is show her you mean it."

In that moment whatever fight was left in me went out, and I just stared, numb, at my parents happily picking out their formal clothes.

Marrying up feels like swallowing needles. But if it set my parents at ease, if they'd stop feeling guilty for being a burden to me.

A grievance that size, I could bear.

What I didn't expect was that the day Sebastian and I went to pick up the wedding gown, we'd run into one of the Henson guests.

Sebastian pulled me over to say hello, but he wouldn't tell me how I was supposed to address the man, and he wouldn't let me ask either.

He just watched, cold-eyed, as my face went from red to white, nothing like the way he'd gently introduced each guest to Beatrice.

In the end it was the guest who stepped in himself and said his name was Owens, which was the only thing that spared me.

After we'd said our goodbyes, I couldn't hold it back and cried in the car, and Sebastian asked me irritably, "Did you even try? Why can Beatrice know all of them?"

But he never once mentioned that the Hensons and the Gilberts went back generations, that their circles overlapped completely.

Everything from these past weeks sat on my chest like a knot of gloom that wouldn't lift.

All these years of good times and sunk cost, my parents' hopes of seeing me settled, all of it had kept me from letting Sebastian go.

But now all I felt for him was weariness and numbness.

And when I casually opened the second video my friend had sent, the last thread in my head called reason finally snapped.

In the video, the friends who had taken time off from all over the country to come to my wedding banquet sat crammed at the table in the farthest corner.

The other tables were already getting their dishes, course after course, but the table marked as the bride's head table didn't even have water on it.

Sebastian moved from table to table with Beatrice on his arm, raising toasts, and when his eyes passed over my friends it was only a flick of contempt before he moved right on to attend to the other guests.

My friends glanced at one another, and then, under the surprised or disdainful stares of the people around them, they ducked their heads and fiddled with their phones, awkward and at a loss.

Not one of them said a word of blame or complaint. They only asked me carefully: "Did we do something wrong? Or did we walk into the wrong banquet hall?"

My nails dug hard into my palms. What was left of my reason could barely hold down my fury. The blood surged up to my head, my temples throbbed with it, and even breathing came hard.

These were friends I'd had for more than ten years. The Hensons refused to pay for their flights and hotels.

I paid to bring them over myself, and when they found out, every one of them insisted on giving the money back to me.

Some of them rode more than ten hours on a slow train to get here. Some handed their kids off to the grandparents and came to stay in a hostel.

And now the Hensons wouldn't even offer them a cup of hot tea. I had said this to Sebastian a long time ago.

I'm not naive. I know that marrying up means living at the mercy of your in-laws.

Whatever the Hensons wanted to put me through at the wedding, I could take. But my parents and my friends were my line.

Now it was clear Sebastian had never taken a single word I'd said seriously.

I forwarded my friends' video to Sebastian, then forwarded him the photos of dishes his relatives had posted to their feeds.

"Why did you have Beatrice toast in my place?"

"Sebastian, is this the Henson family's idea of dignity? Your idea of hospitality? Didn't I tell you the Hensons could put me through anything, that I married you and I'd accept it, but the Hensons were not to look down on my parents and my friends?"

There was no reply from his end for a long time, so I called him, over and over.

Finally, after the eighteenth call was hung up on me, Sebastian sent over a few voice messages.

"I told you long ago that if you couldn't make it in time, Beatrice would go through the toasting for you. This is your own problem. You should be thanking Beatrice for covering for you."

"Your friends gave $888 each and still had the nerve to come eat at a Henson banquet? Honestly, it's pretty embarrassing."

None of my friends came from wealthy families. That $888 might have been a week of groceries for a whole household.

But they gave me that amount anyway, afraid of dragging me down, afraid of making me lose face.

And Sebastian summed them all up, just like that, so lightly, with the word embarrassing.

When the bus announced my stop, Sebastian sent me a photo and a message.

It was a picture of me crying on the bus, with a line from him attached.

"Even so, you still came, didn't you?"

"In a bit, go find the makeup artist first and fix your face. Your makeup's a mess. The Hensons can't lose face. Be good."

He'd seen my ruined, tear-smeared makeup, and instead of one word of comfort, all he offered was a perfunctory be good.

After I stepped off the bus, holding up the hem of my wedding gown, I gripped my anxious parents' hands tightly in both of mine.

Since you, Sebastian, care most about the Henson family's face, then today I'll grind your faces under my heel.

I wiped off the ruined makeup, and under the startled gaze of the receptionist, I walked step by step to the doors of the banquet hall.

The doors opened, and the spotlight fell on me.

When he saw me appear, Sebastian smiled.

It was the smile of a man who thought he'd already won. There was contempt in his eyes as he looked at me, as if to say: I knew you'd come after all.

But when they saw me, Beatrice's and Mrs. Henson's faces went unusually grim, gray in a way their makeup couldn't hide, like a scheme that had come up empty.

I walked toward Sebastian step by step. Beatrice's father, disdain on his face, reached out to help me along, and I shoved his hand away.

Sebastian frowned in displeasure, his eyes warning me.

But I paid him no attention. Ignoring all the noise of the guests, I snatched the microphone from the emcee.

Just as I was about to speak, a voice cut me off: "Wait."