He Chose His Childhood Sweetheart, So I Lost Our Baby

1: 1

There was an app running a couples promotion: link up as a couple, post your photos together, and win a prize.

But I tried a few times, and it kept telling me I couldn't link my account with Hubert Floyd's.

He took the phone back and said it lightly.

"The platform's probably just glitching. It's only a bouquet. If you want flowers, I'll order you a few from the florist."

Two days later, his little childhood sweetheart came up to me carrying a bunch of roses that had long since wilted and dropped their petals.

"You linked up too late. Hubert and I bound our accounts ages ago. He even took time off work to take pictures with me. I already got the roses from the prize."

"I heard you wanted a prize too. These flowers are wilted now, sure, but at least I saved you a couple of leaves so you could see."

"Hubert, don't you have anything to explain?"

I stared at the flirty photos of the two of them on the phone and demanded an answer.

Hubert didn't take it seriously.

"Didn't we agree? I give in to Mel on the little things, but on the big things I'm always on your side. She wanted that bouquet, so I went along and linked with her."

He told me to give in to his childhood sweetheart on the little things.

But in five years together, there had never once been a big thing.

1

I really wanted to ask him what counted as a big thing.

Last week, at my birthday, everyone was there in the private room.

Right in the middle of the cake, all noise and laughter, Melody Chase suddenly got it into her head that she wanted to go up the mountain to look at the stars.

Hubert didn't hesitate for a second. He left me there to make her happy.

Drove three hours to take her hiking out in the countryside.

When I confronted him about it, he came home, collapsed on the bed exhausted, and pulled the covers over his head.

"There's a birthday every year. I'll celebrate with you next time. It's one little thing. No point nitpicking over it."

But the next day Melody came to the house, and this time she took a liking to my pile of birthday gifts.

Hubert decided all on his own to tear open every present I hadn't unwrapped yet and give her everything she wanted.

By the time I woke up, all that was left on the floor was a heap of gift wrapping nobody had cleaned up.

He acted like it was the most natural thing in the world.

"None of those gifts were worth much anyway. If they'd been expensive, I never would've let Mel take them."

"We're all friends. And I basically watched her grow up like a little sister. I couldn't upset her over a few things like that."

In five years, there'd been more of this than I could count.

I looked at those carefully staged, sweet photos and my eyes stung, my chest aching.

Every one of them shot from an angle chosen with care.

In every picture, Hubert was smiling at the girl.

Not a trace of impatience in his face.

"This platform is so generous. It gave out nine hundred and ninety-nine roses in all. Hubert and I took so many pictures together."

Melody forced the flowers into my arms and pouted.

She shoved them so hard that a bunch of the rotting roses fell right off, leaving nothing but bare stems.

"The flowers are wilted, sure, but if you take them home and put them in water, the stems'll hold up another two days."

"They're already dead. What would I want with this garbage?"

I pressed my lips together and dropped them straight into the trash.

I'm not the one who collects garbage.

Who can't afford a bouquet of flowers?

What mattered was the thought and the joy between a couple.

Melody curled her lip in contempt.

She looped her arm through Hubert's, close and cozy, and pointed at the figurine shop across the way, wheedling.

"Hubert, let's go paint a plaster figurine together, you do half and I'll do half."

"Then when we come out, we can go grab a meal, and this afternoon we'll check out the art gallery."