My girlfriend, who I had been in love with for ten years, finally agreed to my proposal. I was so happy that I drank two more glasses of wine at the engagement party.

She, who was always gentle and elegant, suddenly seemed like a different person. She scolded me for not knowing the rules and kicked me out of the car when I was drunk.

I endured the headache and walked alone on the street for three hours in the middle of the night.

When I got home, I saw her hugging Harold in our wedding room and talking to her.

“I regret it. As long as you are willing to come back to me, I am willing to do everything for you.”

Seeing her gentle and patient appearance toward Harold, I suddenly felt regretful.

In order to prevent her from regretting the marriage, I ran away on the wedding day.

No one expected that after I left, the usually noble and aloof woman actually looked for me all over the world like crazy.

The window of the wedding room reflected two familiar figures. It could be seen that they were hugging each other tightly at this moment.

I kicked off the leather shoes on my feet. This pair of shoes was an engagement gift from Audrey.

I liked it very much, but it was a size too small and my feet were bleeding all the way. So now, I would rather walk barefoot than wear it anymore.

I called the familiar overseas number.

“Dad, I’m not getting married. I want to find you.”

Dad was silent for a moment before saying, “Okay, Dad is old and this family business will be left to you sooner or later. If you come earlier, you can adapt earlier.”

I choked up and responded.

I heard a sigh from the other end of the phone. “I thought that child was different... I didn’t expect that he would still follow the old path of me and your mother.”

Dad continued, “Chase, don’t cry, you are still young. A man’s world is not just about marriage and children. You can also have your own career. Think it over, Dad will wait for you.”

Before tonight, I also thought Audrey was different.

She was a strong woman, but she was clean, gentle and polite.

She kept a polite distance from all the boys, except me.

Even after her career was successful, there was no scandal.

Until tonight’s engagement party, she saw Harold, who came uninvited.

The first time she lost her temper and broke a wine glass.

The first time she got angry at me for a trivial matter and left me alone on the roadside.

If Audrey had seen someone else, I would have thought that everything might have been a misunderstanding.

I would be willing to give Audrey another chance.

I would be willing to spend another ten or twenty years with her without asking for anything in return.

But the man in the room was Harold.

It was Harold who bullied me for more than twenty years and it was Harold who took away everything from me.

It was Harold whom I could never forgive.

The moment I saw Audrey take Harold home on her own initiative, I completely gave up on this woman in my heart.

But for some reason, my hand still turned on the surveillance at home uncontrollably.

In the surveillance, Harold was lying in our wedding room in my pajamas.

Audrey, who never did housework, disliked me for drinking and was unself-respecting, took the initiative to go to the kitchen to cook him a hangover soup.

Harold looked up and asked her, “A substitute… You really married him?”

Audrey didn’t answer, but bent down to rub Harold’s feet.

“You don’t need to tell me, I know that you did all this just to be angry with me. You held an engagement party just to force me to show up. You can’t forget me at all. This room is decorated in the style I like. The wedding ring you chose is also the style I like. The cake has our initials on it. Even the shoes on his feet are the ones I want.”

Harold put his feet on Audrey’s chest.

“In fact, it has always been me that you love.”

Audrey still said nothing.

After a moment of silence, she suddenly threw herself into Harold’s arms.

Using a passionate kiss, she expressed her full love.

Seeing this, I was already in tears.

I remembered that we had been in love for ten years. Every time I was emotional and wanted to kiss her, she would turn her head away indifferently.

I thought she was shy.

Unexpectedly, she just gave the most passionate love to Harold.

For ten years, she and I shared the same bed, loving each other deeply.

But in my heart, I remained faithful to my Audrey.

I took a deep breath and prepared to take a taxi to leave.

I didn’t know when Audrey came downstairs and called my name.

Seeing me turn around, she subconsciously let go of Harold’s hand.

“Harold drank too much tonight. He is your friend. I was worried that he would be unsafe walking on the road alone, so I brought him home. He is a good man with a sense of propriety. He was afraid that you would misunderstand, so he insisted on leaving first.”

Audrey, who was taciturn, seemed to have endless words to say when she mentioned Harold.

And every sentence was defending him.

I looked at the woman in front of me and suddenly felt strange.

Obviously, I was her childhood sweetheart who grew up with her.

Obviously, I was her fiancé who had been with her for ten years in starting a business.

Why, in the end, I became a substitute?

I suppressed my heartache and took a deep breath.

“He is not my friend. He is just a bastard born by a mistress.”

After hearing what I said, Audrey suddenly became angry.

“Chase! How could you say such vicious words to Harold? Apologize to Harold quickly! No wonder you were abandoned by your parents since you were young, no wonder everyone dislikes you. I hate your sarcastic look, you deserve no one to love you!”

Seemingly afraid that I would hurt Harold, Audrey knocked me to the side of the road and protected him.

The gentle moonlight sprinkled on Audrey’s face.

That nervous look overlapped with the little figure in my memory.

Many, many years ago, when we were still children, Audrey also protected me like this.

At that time, my mother cheated and got pregnant with someone else’s child. In order to be with the bastard, she forced my father to divorce.

My father went abroad in anger and I became a superfluous existence in the family.

Every time Audrey heard us quarreling next door, she would rush over to protect me.

She said, “Chase, you are the best person in the world. Even if no one wants you, I will love you forever and ever.”

When I grew up, I always kept Audrey’s words in my heart.

I worked hard to make money, wanting to get rid of my bad family of origin and build a happy family in my heart with her.

But when I mentioned this, she always frowned.

She said indifferently, “That was just children’s words.”

And now, Harold appeared.

She didn’t even say such euphemistic words to me.

She only used “You deserve no one to love you” to pierce the most painful wound in my heart.

I turned my head away and didn’t want to look at her again.

But my eyes couldn’t help but redden.

Audrey’s eyes trembled slightly.

I didn’t know if she realized that she had said too much or noticed my bleeding feet.

She sighed and said, “Tonight I will treat you as drunken nonsense and in the future…”

“There will be no future,” I said lightly.

“What?”

Audrey didn’t understand and wanted to continue asking, but suddenly saw Harold running away in tears.

She no longer cared about the questions in her heart and hurriedly chased after him.

She walked too fast and didn’t notice that the star necklace in her pocket fell off.

I picked up the necklace on the ground and thought of the small star tattoo on Audrey’s left chest.

All the details that I ignored were connected at this moment.

Childhood sweethearts couldn’t resist the gift of heaven.

The so-called ten years of love was just my wishful thinking.

In this case, there was no need for me to struggle for an unworthy woman.

When I turned around and went home, I received a message from my father.

He booked a flight abroad for me.

The time was exactly half a month later, the day of our wedding.

The wedding countdown in the living room had now become my departure countdown.

I smiled bitterly and threw away all the wedding room decorations and couple supplies.

God’s will was to use this last half month, to say goodbye to everything in my past.

After daybreak, I was woken up by the ringing of Audrey’s cell phone.

“Chase, are you awake? I ordered your favorite soup dumplings for you. I won’t go back today. There’s something urgent at the company. Let’s take the wedding photos another day. You don’t have to worry about what happened last night. I apologize to Harold for you.”

“Okay.”

Audrey didn’t expect me to agree so readily.

A little embarrassed, she added, “The wedding is just a face-saving project. We have such a good relationship that we don’t need to use these to prove anything. Just keep it simple.”

“Okay.”

Keep it simple.

There was no marriage certificate, no wedding photos, no emcee and no groom at this wedding.

After hanging up the phone, I used a marker to cross out the “wedding photos” schedule on the calendar.

Audrey was very busy at work and didn’t have time to accompany me.

So I wrote down all the things I wanted to do most on the calendar.

I wanted to take advantage of the time of marriage to realize all my wishes at once.

Unfortunately, each wish was covered by thick markers.

It became an unspeakable regret.

I no longer put my mind on Audrey.

After submitting my resignation to the company, I met with a few colleagues who were on good terms and said goodbye.

In the next few days, I contacted my friends one after another and told them the news of the cancellation of the wedding.

“Actually, we all guessed it…”

My friend opened Audrey’s Instagram story and showed it to me.

“During this period, Audrey has been with Harold. People who are not familiar with him think that the person in her Instagram story is you, but we recognized it at a glance.”

Audrey, who had never posted a photo of me, now had Harold’s back in her Instagram story.

They went to the amusement park to relax, went to the wedding shop to try on dresses, went to the beach to drink and watched the sunrise.

Her love for Harold was open and generous.

But she blocked me.

My friend looked at me with some concern.

“Chase, don’t be too sad. Harold is not worthy of you. If Audrey knew Harold’s true face, she would regret it.”

“It’s okay. I don’t care anymore.”

I looked at the busy streets.

In a few days, I would leave here forever.

I didn’t have extra time and energy to be sad for Audrey.

So when Audrey, who had not returned for many days, appeared, I still had no reaction.

After returning, her hands kept replying to messages and she looked around casually.

“Why is the house empty? Didn’t you decorate it?”

“Don’t you tell me to keep everything simple?”

Audrey was speechless and her eyes fell on the countdown “7”.

“Time flies so fast, our wedding will be in a week.”

I tore off two pages and said, “Our wedding will be in five days.”

The wishes written on these two pages were “ride the Ferris wheel together” and “watch the sunrise and sunset together”.

But Audrey would never notice anything about me.

At this time, my father called and I went to the balcony to chat briefly.

When I came back, Audrey was still looking at her phone and asked, “What’s the matter? I seem to have heard something about visas.”

“Nothing, it’s about work.”

“Okay, don’t prepare any honeymoon trips. I’m too busy and don’t have time to go.”

“I know.”

After Harold came back, she couldn’t bear to be separated from Harold for a moment.

Seeing that the atmosphere was a little awkward, I gave the star necklace to Audrey.

Her calm eyes lit up instantly.

“I had been looking for it for a long time.”

“I know, I saw the high-priced lost item post you posted on the Internet.”

It said: [140.496 dollars, looking for an old star necklace.]

Meanwhile, the total cost of our wedding was only 28.099 dollars.

I looked at Audrey and suddenly asked, “Where is your wedding ring?”

She was stunned for a moment and then looked at her bare fingers belatedly.

“I don’t know when I lost it…”

Audrey wanted to explain, but another message came on her phone.

It was Harold’s exclusive notification tone.

She took a look, stood up and kissed me on the forehead.

“I’m sorry, husband, I’ve been too busy recently, so I’ll leave the wedding to you. After this busy period, I promise to make you the happiest man in the world.”

The taciturn Audrey suddenly spoke sweet words.

If it were in the past, I would definitely be touched and happy.

I felt that I had warmed up the iceberg.

But now, I just washed my face with disdain and continued to be busy with my own things.

Time passed by little by little.

Soon, it was the day before the wedding.

The corresponding wish on the calendar was “have a reunion dinner together”.

This was my biggest wish for more than 20 years.

But I also knew that this wish would never come true.

Dad would not forgive Mom.

I would not forgive Audrey either.

I went to ride the Ferris wheel by myself and watched the sunset on the Ferris wheel.

The sunset covered the city where I grew up and all the memories seemed to have dissipated in the evening breeze.

And Harold posted a new status.

The whole family was having dinner.

Mom smiled as she watched Audrey pick up food for her.

The caption read: [Both parents met to discuss the final wedding details.]

I wasn’t angry, I just found it funny.

Whose wedding? Mine, or Harold’s?

I blocked, deleted Harold and wanted to say something to Audrey. I edited it for a long time but didn’t send it out.

Just when I was about to go home, Audrey called me.

“Where are you? Why aren’t you home?”

“Send me your location, I miss you.”