Leaving The Man Who Never Chose Me

When my boyfriend went on a date, he made a point of bringing his sponsored student along, saying he wanted to show the girl a bit of the world.

Over dinner, he casually handed me a bouquet of roses—the $9.99 group-deal kind.

But when I looked up, I watched a $2,999 arrangement from a luxury florist being carried over to Yolanda Swanson.

When I asked him about it, he answered like it was nothing.

"She's young, she likes all that flashy ceremony stuff. You're mature. You don't need any of that."

He and I once won a stuffed animal at a claw machine together. The very next day he gave her a whole carload of Jellycat plushies.

He brushed it off.

"Girls should be spoiled, or some punk will lure them away. I'm just granting her one little wish."

After that, every time he gave me a gift, he'd turn around and give Yolanda something more expensive.

Until our wedding day, when Greg Mann suddenly went dark.

I searched for him like a woman gone mad, and finally walked in on him in a groom's tuxedo, kissing Yolanda at another wedding.

He saw me, and his voice was flat, like he was mentioning something trivial:

"Yolanda envied your wedding, so I just went ahead and threw her one too."

And the wedding he'd arranged for Yolanda had the largest hall, with even the flowers flown in from Provence—lavender, straight from the fields.

With him, what I got was always the budget version.

This love that would forever leave me second best—I didn't want it anymore.

……

Greg lifted his wrist and glanced at his watch.

"I still have toasts to make. Don't wait for me. Go home and rest first."

Then he draped his coat over my shoulders and told me to be careful on the way.

I gripped his sleeve, my voice hoarse: "Then what about our wedding?"

He pulled his hand free, his tone apologetic.

"Yolanda's still waiting for me."

Then he turned and walked straight toward her, up on the stage.

The coat still held his warmth, yet it left me shivering all over.

I went home in a daze.

The wedding officiant called, asking if the groom had been found.

I shook my head, my voice calmer than even I expected: "It's off. There's no groom."

As I set the coat down, Greg's phone slipped out of the pocket.

I picked it up and unlocked the screen.

The passcode was still my birthday, but the lock screen wallpaper had been changed to Yolanda, seen from behind.

I opened his transfer records.

The same Greg who'd been crying poverty to my face just last week had turned around and wired Yolanda $100,000, with a note that read: for a wedding dress.

That same week, I'd had my eye on a $5,000 gown I wanted to rent for our wedding.

He made a pained face and urged me not to be so wasteful.

So I understood, and picked a cheap dress that cost under $800.

The cut was awful, and it ran a size too big, hanging on me all wrong.

My chest tightened. I opened his private photo album, and inside were pictures of him and Yolanda vacationing in the Maldives.

The day they'd left was our dating anniversary.

And the day before, he'd only spent half a rushed afternoon walking around the next city over with me.

He'd claimed it was a business trip. In truth, he'd gone out of his way to make it up to Yolanda with a better vacation.

I scrolled down, and there was a couples photo shoot of the two of them.

Once, I'd begged and wheedled to get him to do a couples shoot with me.

He'd kept a cold face the whole time, without a trace of a smile.

Now, looking at his smile in these photos, my stomach churned.

After I ran to the bathroom and threw up, I opened his chat history again, like I was punishing myself.

And there it was: he'd thrown his full support behind Yolanda's application for the Cambridge exchange program.

Around that same time, I'd just received an invitation to study at a prestigious school overseas, and wanted to take a third of our joint savings for tuition.

Greg stopped me: "Yolanda has better credentials than you. The exchange experience will do more for her résumé. Spending this money on your studies is pointless. Better to save it for her."