You Don’t Want Me Marrying Someone Else

Harper’s voice had not been loud. If anything, it was remarkably calm. It was as if she were simply commenting on the weather.

I sat across from her while staring in disbelief at the woman I had loved for eight years.

Back when we first started dating, she was the one who held me and said that her greatest wish in life was to graduate as soon as possible and marry me.

She had also said that whenever life became exhausting, the thought of marrying me motivated her to keep going.

But somehow, I had become the one pressuring her. I had turned into the one who could not wait.

“Harper, you’re the one who said–”

“So what?” Harper interrupted, sounding impatient.

“People change their minds. I’m busy right now, so I don’t want to get married yet. Can you accept that?”

With that, she shot to her feet.

The chair legs scraped across the floor with a harsh screech.

“Take some time to calm down. Something came up at work, so I’m leaving.”

The door slammed shut behind her, and the sound echoed through the room before everything fell into dead silence.

I sat frozen in my chair, my gaze falling on the closed ring box in front of me.

It felt like a hard slap across my face, the type that left your skin burning and stinging.

On our eighth anniversary, the proposal I had worked up all my courage to make ended in complete humiliation.

A notification chimed on my phone. It was the edited video of our eight years together that I had commissioned.

I had planned to curl up on the sofa with Harper and watch it projected on the screen, but that was no longer possible.

When I set my phone down, I accidentally hit play.

The next second, a bright, cheerful female voice came through the speaker.

“Today is February 14, 2018, Valentine’s Day. Jayden and I came to Lake Eronne. I, Harper Langley, swear upon this lake that I will love Jayden Grant for as long as I live.”

It was the first trip Harper and I had taken by ourselves after graduating from high school, and we had traveled to Dewmere.

Harper had made that vow at the foot of Mount Caelum, beside Lake Eronne.

Every memory I had with Harper played through my mind, frame by frame: holding hands at amusement parks as children, sitting in the same classroom at school, sheltering from rain by the roadside, and cooking together in our first shared home.

In the end, I still could not bring myself to let go of this childhood love.

Perhaps she had only acted this way because the pressure of starting her own business had become too much for her.

I should have been more understanding.

After thinking it through, I grabbed my coat and went to Harper’s company.

Just as I reached the entrance and raised my hand to knock, a woman’s confused voice came from inside.

“Harper, what were you thinking? Jayden’s been with you for eight years. He proposed because he wants to marry you. Did you really have to hide out at the office like this?

“Besides, you used to go on and on in school about being his future wife. Now that you’re at the right age to get married, why are you dragging this out? You didn’t even accept his proposal.”