He Changed Our Honeymoon for His First Love, So I Left

The night before our honeymoon, Miles Henson canceled the tickets to the Arctic without warning and switched our trip to Egypt.

The text notification came through while I was still in the department store picking out cold-weather gear.

Before I could even ask him about it, Miles called first, his voice carrying its usual chill.

"Julia says she likes the sun. The Arctic's too cold. It doesn't suit her."

I looked down at the winter clothes I'd just paid for and fell silent.

Julia Roman. My cousin. And Miles's first love.

"Gabby, Julia saved my life. If it weren't for her, I might not even be here."

"Be reasonable about this. I'll take you to the Arctic another time."

It was rare for him to soften his voice and coax me like that, but all I felt inside was bitterness.

A single cold pill Julia had once handed him, and Miles had carried that debt of gratitude for three years.

The honeymoon I'd begged him for over three whole months, and one word from her that she didn't like it was enough to change the whole destination.

All at once it just felt pointless, and I answered quietly. Fine.

Then I turned and put the winter clothes back on the rack.

"Miss, you don't want these anymore?"

I smiled and nodded.

"No. I don't."

Miles included. I didn't want him anymore either.

——

The moment I stepped out of the store, a light rain began to fall.

The gray, damp weather actually made me let out a breath without meaning to.

And the instant I noticed that, I froze where I stood.

There was a time when I loved the sun too.

But five years ago, for the sake of Miles's biology research data, I spent six full months in the desert photographing lizards.

Those six months burned my skin so badly that I could never bear sunlight again.

Miles, always so composed and self-contained, looked at my peeling, blistered skin and his eyes reddened for the first time. He stroked my hair, aching with tenderness.

"Gabby, I swear I'll never do you wrong. Not in this lifetime."

In five years of dating, it was the first time Miles had ever expressed love that fierce to me.

The joy in my heart only swelled, so much that even the doctor's regretful look, when he told me I could never step into the sun normally again, was something I simply refused to see.

Foolish as I was back then, I took all that pain across my body as proof of our love.

But now, looking at myself bundled up head to toe under a hundred-and-four-degree sun, I suddenly thought I really was a joke.

Miles. He'd probably forgotten a long time ago.

That was why he'd let Julia set our honeymoon destination as Egypt.

A place where the sun was so brutal I couldn't so much as show my face.

The thought of it made me feel rather pitiful, too.

Ten years of love, a marathon, and it couldn't outweigh one word from Julia that she didn't like it.

The rain came down harder. I hadn't brought an umbrella, and I stood at the store entrance waiting for a rideshare.

Half an hour passed and still no driver accepted the ride. My contacts stayed frozen on Miles's call screen for a long time, and yet I never pressed it.

It wasn't that I was being dramatic. It was just that after all these years, nearly every call I'd ever made to Miles had gone unanswered.

His phone was on silent year-round. Only the people he'd flagged as favorites got an alert.

And the only favorite he'd ever set was Julia.

There was a time I cried, a time I made a scene, but he only frowned. "Gabby, you know my work is unusual. It's not convenient for me to take calls."

"If something comes up, just message me on iMessage. I'll reply when I see it."

And so all my grievance was buried under his offhand words.

On our anniversary, I fainted from acute gastroenteritis, the pain unbearable, and on instinct I called him. But it was the same cold voicemail as always.

It wasn't until a kind stranger took me to the hospital, and I woke up, that I saw he'd finally replied.