Ten Years Wasted Before Spring Chapter 03

I stumbled into the bathroom and splashed cold water over my face again and again, but I couldn’t calm down.

My wedding was today.

The invitations had gone out. The venue hotel was booked. My dress was hanging in the closet. Everything was ready.

With shaking hands, I tried calling Everett.

Once. Twice. Three times.

No answer.

I sat there blankly for a long time. Then, like I was possessed, I called Brynn.

The same endless ringing.

My heart sank.

I couldn’t understand it. When they were sneaking around behind my back, did they ever feel even a little guilty?

Or was the secrecy part of the thrill?

I knew Brynn was a travel blogger. She filmed everywhere she went and had accounts on every major platform.

I also knew content creators always had alt accounts.

I searched the venue hotel name and combed through nearby-location posts one by one.

Finally, on an account called StolenMomentsDiary, I found a photo.

In it, a man’s long fingers were opening a bottle of champagne. On his wrist was the watch I had given Everett for his birthday last year.

It was him.

The caption was only one line.

[Stolen time. Every second is a countdown.]

There were already plenty of comments. Some cheered for “true love,” while others called her out for knowingly being the other woman.

With trembling hands, I opened the profile and realized it was completely different from the warm couples account.

This one had barely two hundred followers, mostly bots and a handful of private accounts. It had been registered much earlier.

On this account, Brynn had documented the story of the three of us.

The first post was already throwing shade at me.

[If I’d known the golden boy was that easy, I would’ve gone for him too. Can’t believe my bestie actually landed him.]

[Also, she couldn’t warn me she was on a date? She really let me show up barefaced in a hoodie so I could make her look better. Unreal.]

Someone in the comments joked that the friendship looked fake.

She replied with a smirking emoji.

Later, when I had a fever and Everett came over to take care of me, she wrote:

[Somebody is so high-maintenance. A fever and she needs a full-time servant.]

[But every cloud has a silver lining. I got time alone with him. She sure knows how to create opportunities for us.]

In corners I couldn’t see, they had been gravitating toward each other for a long time.

Brynn wrote:

[We both added each other from alt accounts without planning it. Is that fate?]

Attached were long screenshots of conversations with the names blurred.

They talked about music and dreams and everything Everett believed I didn’t understand.

Brynn always knew exactly how to respond. Everett told her talking to her felt easy.

On Valentine’s Day, Brynn baked a batch of brownies and sent them to his office, but refused to accept a gift from him because she “didn’t want him to waste money.”

Everett was touched. He said she was the most special girl he’d ever met.

They maintained their affair carefully. Every post joked about how my obliviousness had paved the way for them.

He gave her gifts to thank her for taking care of me.

He took her to dinner to help me test menu options.

In her version of the story, I was spoiled, dramatic, and childish.

Behind that self-serving facade, they enjoyed every second of the betrayal.