The Wedding That Will Never Be

Dante didn't come home that night, and I didn't call him to ask where he was either. I'd already seen Isobel's social media updates.

After leaving the hospital that afternoon, Dante and Isobel returned to Isobel's home to inform her family about her pregnancy. I saw a picture of Isobel's grandmother affectionately holding Dante's hand while saying something to him. He had an unusually tender smile on his face as he stroked Isobel's abdomen with his other hand.

In the five years we'd been dating, Dante only agreed to visit my family with me once, after we'd decided to get married.

Even though it was less than a half-hour drive between our houses, he had never taken the initiative to visit my family before that, not even once. He said he didn't like spending time with older people. It made him feel uncomfortable.

During that visit, he merely treated my family politely, unlike the warmth he showed Isobel's family, which I saw through the photos.

I closed my eyes. Doing my best to quash the bitterness I felt, I turned off my phone.

The next day, I reached out to a few friends and told them that the wedding had been called off.

Dante once said that he didn't like wedding ceremonies. He thought they were a meaningless formality. At my insistence, he reluctantly agreed to have a small wedding ceremony with only our closest family and friends invited.

Everyone around me knew how much I loved Dante. My friends were stunned to hear that the wedding had been canceled.

"Haven't you been in love with Dante for ages? Why have you suddenly decided to break it off with him?"

An indescribable sense of heartache washed over me. It wasn't easy to abruptly terminate a bond that had lasted for two decades. However, as it turned out, our relationship didn't start on an equal footing. All along, I was the one who did my best to keep up with him. He had never paused for me.

At first, I didn't care about that. I told myself that if I could wait until he agreed to marry me, then after we were married, I could keep waiting until he truly loved me.

I was willing to wait until he opened up his heart to me.

Alas, it all changed six months ago when Isobel, his so-called savior, showed up.

At last, I realized that Dante wasn't cold and indifferent to everyone. In front of Isobel, he was always gentle and generous with his smiles. As for me, I was never anything more than a side character in his life.

Still, the hardest thing for me to bear was his deceit. While he pretended to seek my approval, he had secretly made Isobel pregnant through artificial insemination.

It was from that moment on that it finally hit me. There was never going to be a future with Dante and me.

I didn't tell my friends the truth. I simply said that I was leaving for work at a different hospital and would get in touch with them sometime later. Feeling apologetic about the suddenness, I hung out with them until late at night before heading home.

When I got back, Dante had only just arrived as well. Smelling the stench of alcohol on me, he frowned and backed away. He covered his nose and impatiently snapped, "Stay away from me. Don't get any of that alcohol odor on me."

I let out a self-deprecating laugh. He was probably just worried that the alcohol might end up affecting Isobel. After all, she was a pregnant woman.

Without saying anything, I went to the bathroom and took a shower. When I came back out, Dante was tapping away on his phone with a smile on his face.

I spared him a glance before deciding to head to the bedroom to sleep, but he stopped me.

"I need to discuss something with you," Dante said.

I paused in my footsteps. He had said the same thing two weeks ago, when he first told me he wanted to have a baby with Isobel. We'd been arguing ever since then.

Isobel was already pregnant, so what else did he have to discuss with me?