On the eve of our honeymoon, Garrett suddenly canceled our flights to Svalbard and rebooked everything for Egypt. I was standing in the middle of an outdoor gear store, holding a heavy down parka, when the automated confirmation text flashed on my phone screen. Before I could even process the notification, Garrett’s call came through. His voice carried that familiar, detached composure. “Mallory said she wants sunshine,” he said smoothly. “The Arctic is too cold for her.” I looked down at the receipt in my hand. The transaction for the cold-weather jacket had just gone through. A heavy silence settled between us. Mallory was my cousin. She was also Garrett’s first love. “Cass,” Garrett said, his tone softening in a rare effort to soothe me. “Mallory saved my life back in the day. If it weren’t for her, I might not even be standing here. Be reasonable. I’ll take you to the Arctic next time.” A bitter taste spread across my tongue. Three years ago, Mallory had casually handed him a packet of over-the-counter cold medicine when he was running a fever—a gesture Garrett had managed to canonize into an insurmountable life debt. Meanwhile, I had spent three months pleading with him just to secure this honeymoon, only for him to alter our destination at a single word from her. A sudden, dull exhaustion washed over me. “Okay,” I whispered. I hung up, turned around, and placed the down jacket back on the display rack. “Ma’am?” the cashier called out, looking at me in confusion. “Are you not taking the jacket?” I offered a small, polite smile and shook my head. “No. I don’t need it anymore.” I didn’t need the jacket. And I didn’t need Garrett anymore, either. … The moment I stepped out of the shopping center, a light rain began to fall from the overcast sky. The damp, chilly air made me exhale in subconscious relief. But as soon as I caught myself feeling grateful for the gloom, my steps faltered. There was a time when I loved the sun, too. Five years ago, to help Garrett gather field research data for his breakthrough biology dissertation, I spent six months tracking desert lizards under the unforgiving sun of the Mojave. That half-year left me with severe photodermatitis and irreversible skin damage. Since then, direct sunlight had become my body’s worst enemy. I remembered how Garrett—always so controlled, so emotionally distant—had touched my peeling, raw skin with trembling fingers, his eyes red with unspoken anguish. “Cass,” he had whispered, his voice thick with emotion. “I swear on my life, I will never let you down.” In the five years we had been together, that was the first time Garrett had ever expressed such fierce, undivided affection. I was so overwhelmed with joy that I completely brushed off the dermatologist’s somber warning that I could never stand under a clear sky again. Back then, in my foolishness, I wore those permanent scars like a badge of honor—proof of my love. Now, standing in ninety-degree summer heat wrapped head-to-toe in heavy, UV-protective layers, I felt utterly pathetic. Garrett had probably forgotten all about it. That was why he had so carelessly allowed Mallory to pick Egypt—a place where the ultraviolet radiation would effectively trap me indoors. Ten years of devotion, reduced to nothing against Mallory’s simple preference. The rain began to fall heavier. I hadn’t brought an umbrella, so I waited under the awning for a ride-share. Half an hour passed, but no drivers accepted the request. My phone screen remained parked on Garrett’s contact page, but I never pressed call. It wasn’t pettiness. It was simply that over all these years, Garrett almost never picked up my calls anyway. His phone was permanently set to Silent, except for a custom alert list that bypassed his settings. And the only person on that priority list was Mallory. I used to cry about it. I used to confront him. But he would only knit his brows in irritation and say, “Cass, you know the nature of my research. It’s inconvenient to take calls. Just leave a text on messaging, and I’ll reply when I see it.” My grievances were always buried beneath his dismissive, logical tone. On our anniversary two years ago, a sudden bout of acute gastroenteritis had left me curled on the floor in unbearable pain. I had instinctively dialed his number, only to be met with his cold, automated voicemail. By the time a kind neighbor found me and rushed me to the emergency room, I woke up in a hospital bed to a text from him: “Didn’t I tell you not to call? Leave a message if it’s important.” So, I slowly learned to stop calling. I learned to eat alone, sleep alone, and navigate hospital hallways alone. Even our wedding photos had to be digitally composited by the photographer because Garrett missed the appointment due to a last-minute lab emergency. A sharp honk pulled me back from my thoughts. I looked up and saw a familiar black sedan idling near the curb. It was Garrett’s car. And sitting in the passenger seat was Mallory. “Cass!” Mallory rolled down her window, waving enthusiastically at me before playfully nudging Garrett’s shoulder. “See? I told you she was still here! You insisted she’d already left. If I hadn’t made you drive over, she would’ve gotten completely soaked!” She turned to Garrett, teasing, “Go get my sister! Do you want me to beat you up?” Garrett let out a soft laugh, reaching over to fondle Mallory’s hair with fond indulgence. But when his gaze shifted toward me through the rain, his brow immediately furrowed. “The rain’s getting heavy,” he called out through the open window, his tone clipped. “Just run over.” Mallory frowned at him. “What are you doing? She’ll get drenched!” “She’s wearing enough layers,” Garrett replied indifferently. “She’ll be fine.” I stood silently under the awning, watching the cozy, comfortable chemistry between them inside the dry vehicle. A young woman standing beside me, also waiting out the storm, sighed in quiet envy. “Your sister is so sweet,” she murmured to me. “Having her boyfriend come pick you up in the rain like that.” A sharp, suffocating ache twisted in my chest. The humiliation was so acute I wanted to turn and run, but my feet felt glued to the pavement. “She’s sweet, alright,” I said softly, not looking at the stranger’s startled face. “Except the man in the driver’s seat is my husband.” Without waiting for her reaction, I stepped out into the pouring rain. Throughout the drive, Mallory chattered endlessly about her travels. As a moderately successful travel blogger, she was adept at uncovering off-the-beaten-path destinations. Early on, she used to invite me along, but my demanding corporate job made it difficult to take spontaneous time off. After I declined a few times, she stopped asking. Then, a week later, Garrett began appearing in her travel photos. That was the first time I had ever truly fought with Garrett. “Why does your mind always have to be so filthy?” he had snapped, his eyes flashing with disgust. “Mallory is your cousin. Do you honestly think something is going on between us? Cass, stop making a scene. You are exhausting me.” The look of profound irritation on his face back then had cut me to the bone, making all my valid questions feel absurd. I couldn’t understand why, in all our years together, Garrett had never once taken a vacation with me. Every time I eagerly took leave and planned an itinerary, he would cancel at the last minute citing lab priorities. I had complained, but I had always forced myself to be understanding of his career. Yet, Mallory was always the exception. “Cass, why aren’t you saying anything?” Mallory’s playful voice brought me back to the present. I looked out the window and realized the car had pulled up in front of a high-end luxury boutique. “Cass, what is wrong with you now?” Garrett’s scolding voice broke in, sharp with displeasure. “Mallory is talking to you. Can’t you hear her?” “Garrett, don’t,” Mallory chimed in softly. “Cass is probably just tired.” She turned back toward me, offering a sweet smile. “Cass, Garrett said my top got a little wet from the rain, so he wants to take me inside to pick out a new shirt. Do you want to come in with us?” She dabbed at a few imperceptible drops of water on her collar, her tone dripping with subtle coyness. “Don’t bother with her,” Garrett said, shooting me a cold, dismissive glance in the rearview mirror. “She’s throwing another one of her princess tantrums, expecting everyone to cater to her.” He pulled a soft tissue from the box and carefully dabbed at the faint dampness on Mallory’s hairline, his touch remarkably tender. “If we hadn’t stopped to pick her up, you wouldn’t have gotten wet in the first place. Let’s go get you changed before you catch a cold.” Mallory gave an embarrassed giggle. “Well… alright. Cass, if you change your mind, come inside. Garrett and I will be waiting.” They got out, and the engine cut off. I sat alone in the backseat, wearing my damp, heavy clothes, watching them walk into the boutique arm in arm. With the engine off, the air conditioning quickly died. The sweltering nineties heat outside, combined with the humid rain, rapidly turned the interior of the car into a suffocating sauna. Within minutes, sweat drenched my skin all over again, mixing painfully with the damp fabric of my clothes. I reached for the door handle to get out, only to find that Garrett had locked the doors from the outside. I pulled out my phone and sent Garrett a message: “When are you coming back?” Ten minutes passed. No reply. I sent another text. Still, silence. After thirty minutes of suffocating in the trapped heat, my pulse began to race with heat exhaustion. I dialed emergency services. When the police officer managed to unlock the car and pull me out, Garrett was just strolling back toward the vehicle, holding an umbrella over Mallory. I was soaked through with sweat, my limbs trembling as the female officer supported my weight. “Cass, are you out of your mind?” Garrett’s voice was icy as he approached. Mallory looked at the broken window in shock. “Cass, if you wanted to come inside to buy clothes, you could have just texted Garrett! Why did you have to call the police on Garrett’s car? This is an official vehicle assigned by his research institute!” It took me a long moment to clear the dizziness from my vision. I raised my head and looked at Garrett, who was still instinctively sheltering Mallory under his umbrella. A hollow laugh escaped my lips. “Did you really think I didn’t text you?” Garrett’s expression froze. His hand tightened around his phone. He knew he had seen the notifications—he had simply chosen to ignore them. The female officer’s face darkened as she looked at them both. “Leaving someone locked inside a sealed vehicle in this heat can be fatal!” she scolded sharply. “As family, do you have no basic common sense?” Mallory’s face paled slightly, and she cast a nervous glance at Garrett. For the first time, a flicker of genuine guilt crossed Garrett’s eyes. He took a step toward me, reaching out a hand to wipe the sweat from my forehead. “Cass, I… I didn’t check my messages in time…” I pulled back, avoiding his touch entirely. I didn’t offer a single word of explanation to him. I simply thanked the officer softly and stepped into the back of the police cruiser. By the time I finished making my statement at the station and returned home, it was past eight in the evening. The house was pitch black. Garrett had likely gone back to the research institute. In our ten years together, aside from occasional visits to see our parents, he spent almost all his time in the lab. After taking a hot shower, I gathered my damp clothes to throw them into the washing machine. As I emptied the hamper, a pair of black lace underwear fell onto the floor. It wasn’t mine. Because of my severe skin sensitivities, I hadn’t been able to wear anything other than pure, un-dyed cotton for years. At that exact moment, voices echoed from the hallway outside the master bathroom. “Garrett, I think I left my underwear here last time? Did you see it?” “If you dropped it, it’s gone. I’ll buy you new ones…” “Stop it! You didn’t keep it, did you?” “Do I look like a pervert to you?” “Please, you were way more shameless than that when we were in bed…” I froze, my hand clutching the wet clothes so tightly my knuckles turned white. My gaze locked onto the sliver of light beneath the bathroom door. My heart felt as though it were being crushed under a heavy weight, making it impossible to breathe. “Enough, Mallory,” Garrett’s voice came through, laced with a clear cough. “Stop playing around. We broke up years ago. Cass is my wife now.” His words sparked a faint, treacherous flicker of hope in my chest. Did he still care about me? Was I still his priority? But Mallory’s tone instantly dropped into a cold, sharp blade. “You only got close to Cass in the first place to make me jealous and force me back to you, didn’t you? Professor Mercer, don’t tell me you actually fell in love with her?” The blood drained from my face. Memories flooded back—specifically, the night Garrett had confessed to me in college. We had attended the same university. I was an English major, while he was the celebrated prodigy of the Department of Biological Sciences. With his striking looks and brilliant academic record, he was the quiet obsession of half the women on campus. I had been one of them, though I never entertained the foolish dream that our paths would cross. Until one night during my sophomore year, when I found him stumbling drunk near an off-campus bar district. Driven by a quiet, hidden devotion, I had managed to pull him into a nearby hotel, staying by his bedside through the night to make sure he didn’t choke. When he woke up the next morning, he looked at my exhausted, anxious eyes and suddenly smiled. He was breathtaking when he smiled. I had been so spellbound that I barely heard the words coming out of his mouth. I just nodded blankly. It wasn’t until he leaned in and kissed my forehead that I snapped out of my trance, pushing him back with a bright red face. “What’s wrong?” he had murmured softly. “My little girlfriend?” That was how it started. I should have asked questions; I should have been confused. But my heart was so full of naive joy that I simply buried my head and accepted it. It wasn’t until much later that I learned the truth: he had officially broken up with his first love—Mallory—that very afternoon. His heartbreak, his rare display of vulnerability—it had all been because of Mallory. He had approached me, asked me out, solely because my facial structure bore a thirty percent resemblance to hers. And his subsequent coldness over the years was simply because my personality was nothing like hers. Mallory was vibrant, demanding, and dramatic. I was quiet, steady, and mundane. I was never her. “If you’ve really fallen for her, I’ll leave right now,” Mallory’s voice snapped, sharp with anger at Garrett’s sudden silence. “I’ll disappear from your life forever!” A sharp slap echoed through the hallway, followed by her furious tone. “In that case, I wish you and my sister a long and happy marriage!” She turned to leave. Garrett instinctively grabbed her wrist, his voice taking on a desperate, pleading note. “Mallory, you know that’s not…” Through the gap in the doorway, I watched Garrett—a man who had always been so proud, so emotionally distant in front of me—bow his head, carefully soothing Mallory with frantic humility. And I, his newly wedded wife, was hiding in the shadows like a trespasser in my own home. What had I been to him all these years? A wave of bitter humiliation washed over me, urging me to burst out and confront them both. But cold, harsh logic pulled me back. What would confronting them achieve? It would only be another opportunity for them to humiliate me. I pulled out my phone and composed a text to a family law attorney: “Hello. I need your assistance in drafting a divorce agreement.” I had finally seen the truth. Ten years of my life, wasted on a shadow. By early the next morning, the attorney sent over the draft. “Ms. Callahan, given that your spouse has been unfaithful during the marriage, you are legally entitled to claim a significantly larger share of the marital assets. Are you sure you only want a fifty-percent split?” “I’m sure,” I replied. To give Garrett credit, he had never been stingy with money. Outside of his endless hours at the research institute, he appeared to be an ideal partner on paper. Gift boxes arrived predictably on every major holiday, and whenever my parents fell ill, he would send high-end wellness supplements to their house. He maintained a squeamish distance from other women at work, even bluntly turning down a junior researcher who had confessed to him at the lab. To an outsider, he was a flawless partner. But I knew the truth now. The holiday gifts were managed through an automated store subscription he had set up years ago—always flowers and the exact same silver necklace. I had received nearly twenty identical necklaces over the years. And his “attentiveness” toward my parents only occurred because their town happened to be on the driving route to the resorts he visited with Mallory. I had known all of it deep down. I had tried to walk away before, but every time I pulled back, he would offer a sudden, fleeting glimpse of tenderness that re-ignited my foolish hopes. Now, my hope was entirely exhausted. The day before our scheduled departure for Egypt, I texted Garrett, asking to meet at a quiet coffee shop near our old campus. For the first time in ten years, he replied instantly with a single word: “Okay.” A small, stupid ripple went through my heart, only to be crushed when I sat alone in that coffee shop for seven hours, leaving only when the barista politely informed me they were closing for the night. The signed divorce agreement remained in my bag, undelivered. That night, I hired a moving crew to clear out every single item I owned from the apartment. Two years ago, my company had established an overseas division in London and had repeatedly offered me a transfer to lead the team there. I had turned it down time and again because I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Garrett. Last week, I submitted my application. Given my credentials, the paperwork was approved in less than seven days. My departure date was set for the exact day Garrett and I were originally supposed to fly out for our honeymoon. I placed the signed divorce agreement alongside the black lace underwear on the master bedroom nightstand. Then, I turned to look at the apartment I had lived in for years. It was empty, looking as though no one had ever inhabited it. The heavy knot that had lingered in my chest for years suddenly loosened. My phone chimed with a text notification. It was from Garrett: “Why are you taking so long? The flight is boarding. Mallory and I are boarding first. Book the next flight and come over yourself.” I pulled up social media. Ten minutes ago, Mallory had posted an update: “【So excited for Egypt! Someone once told me that no sun in the world shines hotter than I do】” I pressed the like button on her post. Then, I replied to Garrett’s text: “I’m not coming. Have a great trip.” After hitting send, I removed the SIM card from my phone, snapped it in half, and tossed it into the trash can alongside the wreckage of our ten-year relationship.
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