Gaslit by Reality: My True Husband's Gone

After parting ways with Rachel, I wandered the streets with more questions weighing down on me. From the way she spoke and the look in her eyes, I was almost certain she wasn't lying.

I even had the engraving inside the wedding ring examined by a professional. They said it was over ten years old, not something recently forged.

Just as I was sighing to myself, someone patted me on the back. "Hey, what's with you? You look like a wandering ghost. Your shadow—I mean, Brandon—isn't with you today."

I turned around and saw my best friend, Judy Sanders.

Brandon had always been cold and distant. He liked being alone and never clung to anyone. Jake, on the other hand, was the complete opposite. He always wanted to stick close to me every second of the day and had never been willing to be apart for long.

Seeing how pale I was, Judy dragged me into an ice cream shop and sat me down with a cone in hand. "What are you spacing out about? Come to think of it, this is where you and Brandon first got together."

The ice cream slipped from my hand and fell onto the floor, but I didn't even notice.

Back then, I used to be shy. Every time Jake asked me out, I would drag Judy along with me. Even when he confessed to me, she was there too.

We were both freshmen then. It was the peak of summer, unbearably hot, and Jake bought us ice cream. He confessed his feelings to me for the first time right here, in this very shop.

"Hey, your ice cream fell on the floor! I'll buy you another one," Judy said, her voice pulling me back to the present.

I stared at the ice cream she handed me, but my confusion only grew. "Judy, are you saying Brandon confessed to me here?"

"Yeah. How could you forget something that important?" she said helplessly. "You used to be super shy, so every time you went out with him, you dragged me along—even on that amusement park trip."

My heart skipped a beat. I quickly pulled out my phone and found the photo of Jake and me at the amusement park. "Was it this amusement park? Do you recognize this man, then?"

Judy looked at Jake's picture in confusion and shook her head. "Yeah, it's this amusement park. But who's this cutie? I thought Brandon was your first love. Wait, you dated someone else before him?"

I grabbed her hand tightly. "Do you still have pictures from when the three of us went here?"

"Are you okay? Your face has gone completely pale. Relax. I'm not going to tell Brandon."

As she spoke, she scrolled through her phone and pulled up an old photo from college.

In it, Judy, Brandon, and I were at the amusement park. It was a carbon copy of the photo on my phone, except that Jake had become Brandon.

I kept scrolling through the photos on her phone. Every single one was of the three of us together, without a single trace of Jake anywhere. In fact, Jake had been replaced by Brandon in every memory I had of dating him.

Panic rose in my chest until I finally heard Judy hiss in pain. Only then did I realize how tightly I was gripping her hand, and I quickly let go.

"Judy, can you go to campus with me?" I asked softly. "I want to… revisit those days."

"Didn't take you for such a nostalgic person. Brandon was the campus heartthrob back then. Tons of ladies chased after him, but he only ever had eyes for you. I guess being childhood best friends with him did give you a head start."

The campus heartthrob? Jake had clearly been the campus heartthrob throughout all four years of college. Why did she remember it being Brandon instead?

Confused and conflicted, I followed Judy back to college. She led me to the wall where old photos of popular male students were displayed.

"Look. Brandon's photo is still here. You even secretly wrote 'I'm into you' under his photo."

I reached out and touched the handwriting beneath the picture. It was mine indeed.

Yet, the photo hanging here back then had been Jake's, and I had left that confession for him. Why was everything completely different from my memories?

Not only had Jake been erased from my present life, but even the past had been rewritten, as if he had never existed.

After parting ways with Judy, I slipped into the college administrative office and pulled out the archived records. There wasn't a single mention of Jake in the student registry.

How could that be? How could he not exist?

I didn't believe it, so I pulled out the group photos from all four years of my time here and flipped through them one by one. Someone was missing.