My Ex's Greatest Regret

Natasha and I had been together for ten years.

Fighting was nothing new for us.

We were both stubborn. Neither of us liked being the first to back down.

But today was the first time she had slammed the door and walked out, leaving me alone like that.

No. Not the first time.

There was one other.

Back when we graduated high school, the class had a farewell dinner.

Natasha and I had already started dating then. We were still in that stage where we were practically glued to each other.

At one point, a girl at the table had a little too much to drink. Laughing, she joked that someone like Vince, so quiet and awkward, would probably never find a girlfriend.

The moment she said it, Natasha's face darkened.

At the time, I didn't think much of it.

I figured she just thought the joke went too far. I even took her hand and told her not to get upset.

Instead, she suddenly shook my hand off.

Without saying a word, she walked out. She left me sitting there with the whole table staring at me.

I had never felt more embarrassed.

That night, her mother said that she never came home. Her phone was turned off, too.

I searched all over town before finally finding her the next day at a lounge.

She only said she had been in a bad mood. She gave a quick, casual apology for leaving me there the night before.

And I believed her.

Thinking about it now makes me want to laugh.

Inside Vince's time capsule was a journal.

One page talked about that exact night.

[Today, Lily Thompson joked about me again, saying I would never get a girlfriend. It hurt, but I'm used to it.

[What I didn't expect was that she would get angry for my sake. She even shook off Alan's hand and came outside to comfort me.

[She stayed with me on the rooftop the whole night. She told me I'm a good guy. That other people just don't see it.

[For the first time in a long while, the whole world felt bright.

[Alan, I'm sorry. I never meant to take her away from you. Even if it was only for one night.]

So that was why she had been in a bad mood that night.

She wasn't upset about anything else. She had simply gone to comfort another guy.

While I spent the whole night worried sick about her, she was up on a rooftop lighting up someone else's world.

There was also a photo in the box, a big group picture from our graduation trip.

Natasha and I stood in the center, smiling brightly.

Vince stood way off in the corner.

His eyes weren't on the camera; they were looking toward Natasha. The loneliness and love in his expression were impossible to miss.

On the back of the photo was Natasha's handwriting.

[May you always smile that widely.]

She had written the exact same sentence in my yearbook on graduation day.

There was also a necklace in the box.

It was identical to the one I was wearing.

Natasha once told me she had searched through several stores before finally finding the perfect matching set for couples.

As it turned out, it wasn't a couple's set; it was a set for three.

Ten years.

My youth, my love, every plan I ever made for the future.

From the very beginning, it had all been nothing but a fragile illusion.

I was never the only one in her heart.

I was just the one she put out in the open.

The pain in my chest grew so sharp that I could barely breathe. I curled up on the couch, feeling like every bit of strength had drained out of my body.

My phone screen lit up.

It was a message from Fiona Carpenter.

She had been Natasha's roommate in high school. They were still pretty close.

I opened it.

It was a photo. The background looked like a private booth in a bar.

Natasha sat in the middle of the booth, a bottle in her hand, her eyes unfocused. She was clearly drunk.

And the man sitting beside her, gently wiping her face with a towel…was Vince.