Chapter 2

Using the location tagged in her post, I took a cab to the beachfront hotel.
After I got into the car, I received a transaction alert from our joint account.

Hannah had just spent a six-figure sum.

The charge was from a jewelry store.

At the same time, she uploaded another post.

The photograph showed the man holding out his wrist, which was adorned with a diamond watch.

The caption said: Men deserve to be spoiled like princes too.

I looked down at my own wrist.

A faint scar ran across it.

The previous winter, Hannah had woken with a stomach ache, so I got up in the middle of the night to make her some soup. I accidentally touched the edge of the pot and burned myself.

She had been so distressed at the time. She held my hand and blew on it for a long while.

“Honey, let me take care of things like this from now on,” she said.

Eventually, she did learn how to make soup.

Just not for me.

In one of her posts, when that man fell ill, she sat by his bedside and fed him soup.

The tenderness I thought I had lost had never really gone anywhere.

It just was not mine anymore.

I just stepped out of the cab when I received a photo from Hannah.

It showed a plush kangaroo.

She said, “Honey, is this cute? I’ll buy it for you.”

I enlarged the image.

Half of a man’s face was reflected in the glass display case beside the kangaroo.

He had one arm around Hannah’s shoulders and was grinning broadly.

I put my phone away and walked into the hotel.

A private party was underway in the hotel lobby, with white roses and a tower of champagne glasses arranged at the entrance.

There was a banner that said: Happy Third Anniversary to Ms. Hannah Levin and Mr. Josh Brevig.

A digital screen displayed a continuous slideshow of photographs of Hannah and the man.

She looked genuinely happy in every one.

I stood frozen at the entrance, like a stranger who had wandered into someone else’s perfect love story.

I suddenly remembered asking her to have professional couple portraits taken with me the month before.

She had said, “Honey, I don’t like having my picture taken.”

Yet every photograph passing across the screen in front of me showed her smiling willingly at the camera.

A man in a suit stepped out of the elevator, with Hannah following close behind.

He was holding a crooked birthday crown and laughing as he tried to dodge her. “Stop it. You already messed up my hair.”

Hannah caught up with him and casually straightened the crown, as though she had done it countless times before.

“Hannah.”

My trembling voice carried into the lobby on the sea breeze.

When Hannah saw me, panic flashed across her face. She instinctively pulled her arm away from the man.

Josh glanced at me. “Hannah, who is he?”

His voice was soft, like a startled fawn.

Hannah immediately reassured him. “He’s just a friend.”

Seven years together. Thousands of days and nights. Countless arguments and reconciliations. In the end, I was reduced to just a friend.

I thought I would cry.

Strangely, not a tear came.

Perhaps when pain cut deep enough, it left you too numb to make a sound.

I took out my phone and opened the photo gallery.

“I’m Hannah’s boyfriend. We’ve been together for seven years.”

I held up the screen.

The first photograph was from the university freshmen welcome party. Hannah stood on stage playing the piano. After she finished singing, she confessed her feelings to me in front of the entire school.

The second was from our graduation year. She used her very first paycheck to buy me a bracelet. She put it on my wrist with clumsy hands and promised that she would get me a better one in the future.

The third showed the night my fever reached 104 degrees Fahrenheit. She carried me to the hospital on her back, her eyes red with panic.

The fourth was from last Christmas Eve. She stood in my parents’ kitchen making dinner. Her hands were covered with flour as she made them a promise. “You have my word. I’ll always take good care of him.”

Hannah’s face grew paler with each one.

Josh froze as well.

He stared at the younger Hannah on the screen as tears spilled down his face.

“You told me you’d broken up years ago.”

Hannah stood there speechless.

Someone nearby finally recovered from the shock and tried to ease the tension.

“Look, being with someone first doesn’t automatically make you the right person for them.”

“Yeah, Hannah and Josh have been through a lot over the past three years. What they have is real.”

“If you really love Hannah, you should let her go.”

“So what if you were together for seven years? Since she kept you a secret, maybe you were the other man all along.”