Chapter 2: The Anniversary That Wasn't Mine

Following the location Jared shared on his social media, I took a cab to a seaside hotel.

After getting in the car, I received a notification from our shared bank account.

Jared had spent a five-figure amount, and the merchant was a jewelry store.

At the same time, he updated his feed again. The woman had her hand held out, a diamond bracelet shining around her wrist.

The caption read, "A woman should be treated like a princess."

I looked down at my wrist. There was a faint scar on it.

Last winter, Jared had a stomachache. I got up in the middle of the night to make him chicken soup and accidentally burned myself on the edge of the pot.

He felt terrible seeing me hurt. Holding my hand, he gently blew on it for a long time.

He had said, "Tasha, I'll handle things like this from now on."

Later, he really did learn how to make chicken soup.

But it wasn't for me.

On his social media, there was a photo of him sitting by that woman's bedside when she was sick. He fed her chicken soup himself.

The tenderness I thought I had lost never actually disappeared. It had just been given to someone else.

Right after I got out of the cab, Jared sent me a photo of a teddy bear.

He wrote, "Babe, isn't this cute? I'll get it for you."

I opened the picture.

In the glass display beside the teddy bear, half of the woman's face was reflected. She was leaning against Jared's shoulder. Her hair blew in the wind as she smiled sweetly.

I put away my phone and walked into the hotel.

A private party was being held in the hotel ballroom, with white roses and champagne towers arranged at the entrance.

A banner read, "Happy Third Anniversary to Mr. Jared Jackman and Ms. Yvette Lane."

A screen displayed photos of Jared and that woman on repeat. In every one of them, he was smiling happily.

I stood frozen at the entrance. I felt like an intruder who had stumbled into someone else's happiness.

I suddenly remembered that last month, I had asked him to do a couple's photoshoot with me.

"Babe, I don't like having my picture taken," he had said.

But now, every photo on the screen showed him smiling directly at the camera.

Just then, a woman in a white dress burst out of the elevator, with Jared right behind her.

She held a crooked birthday crown in her hand and laughed as she dodged him. "Don't come any closer! You'll ruin my makeup."

Jared caught up to her and fixed the crown with practiced ease.

"Jared."

My trembling voice carried across the ballroom with the sea breeze.

The moment Jared saw me, panic flashed across his face. He immediately dropped Yvette's hand.

Yvette glanced at me and asked, "Jared, who is she?"

She spoke softly, sounding almost frightened.

Jared looked down in an instant to comfort her.

"She's just a friend," he said.

We had spent seven years together—sharing more than 3,000 days and nights filled with countless arguments and moments of finding our way back to each other.

Yet in the end, all I was to him was a friend.

I thought I would cry. But strangely, not a single tear fell.

Maybe when the pain became too much to bear, people didn't even have the strength to make a sound.

I took out my phone and opened my camera roll.

"I'm Jared's girlfriend of seven years," I said, holding up the screen.

The first photo was from our college orientation. Jared stood on stage playing the guitar, and the moment he finished singing, he confessed his feelings to me in front of everyone.

The second was from the year we graduated, when he spent his entire first paycheck on a necklace for me. He had fumbled as he put it on me and promised me he would give me the life I deserved.

The third was when I had a 104-degree fever. He carried me on his back to the hospital, looking frantic with worry.

The fourth was last New Year's Eve. He stood in my family's kitchen helping prepare dinner, his hands covered in flour. He told my parents, "Don't worry. I'll take good care of her for the rest of my life."

The videos played one after another, and Jared's face grew paler and paler.

Yvette was stunned too. She looked at the younger Jared on my phone with tears streaming down her face.

"Didn't you say you broke up a long time ago?" she asked Jared.

He swallowed hard, unable to say anything for the longest time.

Someone nearby finally reacted and awkwardly tried to smooth things over. "Miss, relationships aren't just about who came first."

"That's right. Jared and Yvette haven't had it easy these past three years. What they have is true love," another person added.

"If you really love Jared, you should let him be happy," someone else chimed in. "So what if you've been together for seven years? The person he never made public is the third party, right?"