Calling Off the Wedding and Finding Myself

Tristan's POV

When I got back to the office, my boss, Marcus Grant, was still there working late.

He looked at me in surprise around a mouthful of bread.

"Done looking at the apartment already?"

I forced an awkward smile and asked him, feeling out of place.

"Mr. Grant, that thing you mentioned before, about taking me to headquarters — does the offer still stand?"

Before I'd even finished, his eyes lit up.

"Finally came around, did you? Good. You leave next month."

I nodded, and for the first time since the wedding date had been set, the knot in my chest loosened.

My phone kept buzzing. Serena Dupree's texts poured in one after another.

Serena: [Knew you'd be late. Tristan, tell me, what would you even do without me and Ryan?]

Serena: [Thank god for me and Ryan, or nothing would've gotten decided today.]

Serena: [Oh, and do you have any thoughts on the renovation?]

My fingers trembled. Before I could type a reply, the next message had already popped up.

Serena: [Never mind, no point asking you. Ryan and I will handle it.]

That line burned behind my eyes, sharp enough to catch my breath.

There it was again. Never mind.

I doubted even Serena herself could count how many times she'd said those words to me.

After our high school final exams, she'd looped her arm through mine and asked which city I wanted to go to.

My eyes had lit up. I'd been about to say I wanted somewhere by the ocean.

But before I could get the words out, she'd already said, "Never mind, no point asking you. Ryan and I already picked out the college and the major you're capable of getting into. We spent three whole days researching it, just for you."

I swallowed back what I'd wanted to say and just felt the loss settle in.

After that, every date, every trip — I never got a word in over her and Ryan's decisions.

Enough time passed that I started believing those choices had been what I wanted all along.

It wasn't until today, watching her and Ryan cheerfully hash out the renovation for my own home, that I finally tasted something bitter on my tongue.

This was supposedly the place I'd live in for decades. Instead, it looked exactly like Serena and Ryan's newlywed home.

I sat at my desk without moving.

My phone lit up again.

This time it was Ryan, and he'd sent a voice message.

"Tristan, do something about Serena, she's picking a fight with me again! She wants an old-fashioned TV in the bedroom. Who even watches TV anymore?"

The voice messages that followed were nothing but the sound of Serena and Ryan bickering back and forth.

I killed the screen and flipped the phone face-down on the desk, my breath unsteady.

It kept buzzing against my palm, lighting up with all that noise on the other end.

The two of them argued like the whole world hinged on it.

But neither one ever thought to ask the one question that actually mattered — whether the person who'd actually be sleeping in that bedroom wanted a television in it at all.

I loved watching TV. I had, ever since I was little.

Every weekend night, my parents would watch TV in the living room, and I'd drag over a little stool and sit beside them, eyes glued to the screen, unblinking.

Later, when I used to go over to Serena's place, her family's TV was bigger than ours.

Ryan used to tease me, "Tristan's a total TV junkie. He'll sit through anything, no matter how bad."

Serena would laugh along and promise that someday she'd buy me a huge TV, mount it right on our bedroom wall, and let me watch to my heart's content.

But she must have forgotten all about it by now.

The same way she'd forgotten I was afraid of the dark, yet always went along with whatever midnight showing fit Ryan's schedule.

Forgotten that I'd once wanted to live somewhere by the ocean, that I'd wanted to major in literature, that on our first trip together I'd wanted to head south.

I picked up my phone, typed a few words, deleted them, typed again. Over and over.

In the end, I didn't send anything at all.

Some small, spiteful part of me wanted them to wait on my word, just once — the way I'd always waited on theirs.

And after that, I would vanish far from their world.