The Day I Married My Childhood Sweetheart

Tyler Gilbert and my best friend Isabel Sanchez shared the same zodiac sign.

The two of them always had this natural, effortless understanding.

They were both top students. Their SAT scores landed at exactly the same near-perfect mark.

They went to the same university, too.

While I was at the school next door, and even seeing them once meant messaging ahead to book a time.

Later, after graduation, I said I wanted to catch a midnight movie.

The two of them said, in the same breath, that they'd already seen it.

Then they started picking apart the details of the film, and I couldn't get a single word in.

I sank into that hollow feeling, and Tyler reached over, touched my cheek, and said,

"It's fine. You never really liked movies anyway."

"No point putting yourself through it just to fit in with us."

And then Tyler decided to go abroad, and Isabel just happened to pick the same country.

Watching the two of them lined up to even leave the country together,

I offered to go abroad with Tyler.

He turned me down with a frown.

"Elaine Fox, this part was never in your life. You shouldn't change yourself for my sake."

My eyes went red, and I lost it.

"Then why does Isabel get to?"

"You two are shut in a lab together every single day."

"Eating together every day, laughing together."

"Why not me?"

He let out a soft sigh.

"Because that's the path she was always going to walk."

"But you're not."

"You shouldn't sacrifice so much of yourself just to keep pace with my life. That's not fair to you, and I couldn't carry that either."

He was leaving in three days, and he didn't need me along.

Watching him laugh with my best friend as they went over the details of their trip,

I turned away and dialed someone else.

"I broke up. Didn't you say you wanted to marry me?"

"……"

On the other end, when Raymond Simmons took the call, he went quiet for a few seconds.

He didn't ask why I'd broken up, and he didn't sound thrilled about marrying me.

Instead, the first thing out of his mouth was,

"Did he… did he hurt you?"

"Tell me."

"If that Tyler kid dared to hurt you, I'll fly back right now and settle it with him."

I looked up at the two of them, laughing away in front of me, and my mouth twisted into something bitter.

"No. There are just some things I've only now seen clearly."

"The wrong person is always the wrong person."

I used to think that if I just tried hard enough, I could close the gap between us.

One of them was my boyfriend, after all, and the other my best friend.

They were my closest people.

And even as they moved ahead, they'd be willing to bring me along.

But the truth was always a little worse than what I imagined.

They ran experiments together, with an endless supply of things to talk about.

Every time I bounced up and invited them out for a spicy noodle hot pot,

they'd both pinch their noses, thoroughly put off.

"Elaine, only you would love something that reeks like that."

So they'd leave me alone in the noodle shop.

And go get a barbecue cookout next door instead.

Most of the time when Tyler and I were together,

he'd queue up a show for me and tuck me into the couch to watch it like a good girl,

while he sat beside me, buried in his laptop, writing reports, working.

We weren't like other couples with a bottomless well of things to say.

Yet with Isabel it was somehow different.

Whether it was serious conversation or just goofing around, the two of them could go all day without a break.

Even for going abroad to study,

they'd chosen the same country and bought tickets to leave on the same day.

Every time, so perfectly in sync it was as if they'd planned it.

Thinking back over all of it, I drew a breath and asked Raymond, firm now,