He proposed to me YEARS ago. Years. I was over the moon, said YES in a heartbeat! Every dream I ever had, every whispered wish, suddenly felt real. We celebrated, called everyone, started talking about venues and dresses. My world felt perfect. But almost right away, he started acting weird. He kept POSTPONING THE WEDDING. The first time, it was an “unexpected work project.” Okay, understandable. The second, “family issues.” A bit vague, but I trusted him. The third, “financial strain.” That hurt, but I offered to help. Each time, the dates shifted further, the excuses grew thinner, his eyes wouldn’t meet mine. He was always disappearing.
Where did he go? He’d say he was at the gym, or working late, or helping a friend. But he’d come home exhausted, distant, smelling faintly of sawdust or something I couldn’t place. Our intimacy faded to almost nothing. My heart ached constantly, a dull, throbbing pain beneath my ribs. Was he cheating? Was I not enough? Did he regret asking me? The doubt gnawed at me, stripping away my confidence, piece by agonizing piece.
I tried to talk to him. I begged, I pleaded, I reasoned. He’d just shut down, promising this new date, this one was real, and then slip away again. I became a shell of myself, holding onto a hope that felt like a tattered flag in a hurricane. Every time someone asked about the wedding, I’d offer a new, increasingly shaky explanation, feeling their pity, seeing their judgment. It was humiliating.
We were a week before the latest wedding date. I was a wreck. My dress hung in the closet, a beautiful, stark reminder of everything that hadn’t happened. My stomach was a knot of anxiety, hope, and despair. I knew, deep down, that if this date passed, I couldn’t do it anymore. I just couldn’t.
I woke up at night — the kind of sudden, jolting wake-up where you know something is wrong. He wasn’t there. My side of the bed was cold. Familiar dread washed over me. I tried to push it away. He probably just got up for water. But then I looked out the window.
The light was on in the garage.
My blood ran cold. He never used the garage at night. What was he doing in there? My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic drumbeat of terror. This was it. This was the night I found out. He was packing. He was leaving me. Or worse. A million scenarios, each one more devastating than the last, flashed through my mind.
I crept downstairs, the floorboards groaning under my cautious steps, each creak amplified in the silence of the house. My breath hitched in my throat. I reached the garage door. It was slightly ajar. A sliver of bright light spilled out, along with the faint, metallic scent of… something I couldn’t place.
I pushed the door open, slowly, bracing myself. I peered inside, my eyes scanning for the outline of another person, another woman, a packed suitcase.
And then I froze.
There was no other person.
The garage wasn’t just lit; it was a disaster zone. Our wedding decorations, the ones I’d picked out years ago, were everywhere. Strings of fairy lights tangled like fishing nets. Half-painted wooden signs with ‘Mr. & Mrs.’ barely legible. Piles of cheap fabric, cut unevenly. There were hundreds of plastic flowers, half-glued onto a crumbling arch made of PVC pipes. And him. He was slumped over a makeshift workbench, surrounded by glue guns, craft supplies, and broken bits of what looked like our wedding favors. His hands were stained with paint, his face streaked with dirt and tears.
And next to his head, nestled amidst the chaos, was a stack of legal documents. I picked one up, my hands trembling. It was a foreclosure notice. Another, a bankruptcy filing. His name. He’d lost everything in a bad investment years ago, an investment he’d tried to hide. He was ashamed. Too ashamed to tell me. Too ashamed to call off the wedding. And too ashamed to admit he couldn’t afford the beautiful day I deserved.
He hadn’t been cheating. He hadn’t fallen out of love. He had been trying, desperately, tragically, to BUILD OUR ENTIRE DREAM WEDDING with his own two broken hands, working secret jobs, learning forgotten crafts, all to make up for the fortune he’d lost. All the postponements weren’t because he didn’t want to marry me. They were because he needed more time. More time to make a beautiful lie believable. More time to piece together the shattered remnants of what he thought I wanted.
He finally stirred, looking up at me with red-rimmed eyes. A small, pathetic sob escaped his lips. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, his voice hoarse, cracking. “I just wanted to give you everything.”
My stomach lurched. My vision blurred. It wasn’t betrayal I felt. It was a suffocating, crushing wave of grief. For him, for me, for the years of pain, for the beautiful, impossible dream he was trying to build in the dark, all while I thought he didn’t love me. The wedding would never happen. Not like this. Not with our lives built on so many shattered pieces.
