Love Fades With Bygone Days Chapter 01
Every year, our college friends get together.
The men drink at the bar.
The women gather around a table, playing a mean little game.
Someone suggested we all text our husbands or boyfriends.
Tell them we intend to purchase a $3,000 bag and check who gets the payment approved first.
As always, I was the first to get the Zelle notification.
“Esme, Tomas really spoils you.”
Everyone laughed, but the topic died quickly. No one pushed it.
Nobody noted Tomas DeLuca and I had eight years together yet no wedding.
No one mentioned his London MBA, leaving me the last to know.
That on the day I was driving to see him off, I got into a car accident.
And lost our first child.
After that, I was diagnosed with depression.
During my hospital stay, not he but my best friend Alessia kept me company.
I just smiled and said nothing.
Then I glanced at Alessia. She was gripping her phone, her knuckles white.
“I think I’ll sit this one out,” she said, looking uneasy. “He’s swamped with work. He never checks his phone.”
The table went quiet.
Everyone knew she’d been secretly married for three years and had a three-year-old son.
We just had never laid eyes on her spouse.
I didn’t want to watch them pressure her.
So I reached over, took her phone, and dialed the number myself.
The call connected almost instantly.
Then I heard Tomas’s voice.
“Baby, I’m just picking up our son from school.”
…
The words hung in the air, and the world went silent.
Alessia Bellini snatched the phone back and ended the call.
The color drained from her face, as if she had no idea how to explain.
A second later, her phone rang again.
FaceTime requests started flooding her screen, one after another.
Whoever was on the other end was clearly convinced something was wrong.
A chill washed over me. I looked up at her.
“Are you going to answer it, or should I?”
The others, finally realizing what was happening, rushed to smooth things over.
“This has to be a misunderstanding.”
“Alessia has always been so protective of you. She’d never do something like this.”
Alessia and I had grown up together.
For the longest time, I believed she was the closest person I had in the world.
A few years ago, our car was hit by a drunk driver.
At the last second, she’d wrenched the wheel, taking the brunt of the impact on her side.
Her leg was crushed. She spent half a year in the hospital.
Even now, she walked with a slight limp.
Back then, I cried every day, convinced I had ruined her life.
She just held me and said, “You’re my best friend. I’d never let anything happen to you.”
I used to think that bond was unbreakable.
But today, I finally understood.
It had been broken for a long time.
With everyone watching, Alessia had no choice but to answer the call.
Tomas’s voice, sharp with anxiety, crackled through the speaker.
“Baby, what happened?”
“Why did you hang up on me?”
“Where are you? I’ll come get you.”
No one at the table said a word in her defense.
I could feel their eyes on me, their pity a weight that made it impossible to breathe.
I stumbled out of the restaurant and threw up against the wall.
Tears streamed down my face. When I finally looked up, I saw the last person I wanted to see.
Tomas was standing right in front of me.
The same Tomas who was supposed to be in London for his MBA.
He froze when he saw me, his expression blank.
He looked right through me.
As if he didn’t know me at all.
Alessia had followed me out. She opened her mouth to speak, then stopped, taking in the scene.
“Why are you here?” she asked him.
Tomas took off his coat and draped it over her shoulders.
The gesture was so practiced, so natural. As if he’d done it a thousand times before.
“I was worried,” he said softly. “I tracked your phone.”
I looked at him and let out a laugh, entirely devoid of warmth.
The day of my car accident, the emergency system had automatically sent him my location, too.
He never came.
He just disappeared from my life, leaving me with a single sentence.
“We’ll get married when I get back with my degree.”
For the next three years, I cycled through psychiatrists and hospitals.
He never showed up once.
All he did was send money through Zelle every month.
Now I finally knew why.
It wasn’t that he didn’t have time during those three years.
He was just spending it with someone else.
And that someone was my best friend.
Every time her son, Leo, came over, he’d talk about his mom and dad.
He was too young to keep secrets.
“Daddy’s so good to Mommy. Mommy said she missed him, and he flew right back that night.”
“When Mommy was sick, Daddy stayed with her the whole time. I saw him cry.”
“Daddy takes me to preschool, too. He doesn’t want Mommy to wake up early.”
Every time I heard those stories, I was just envious.
I’d even told Leo, “Your mommy is so lucky to have someone by her side.”
Thinking about it now, the irony was crushing.
The friend who kept me company in the hospital during the day went home to sleep next to the man I loved at night.
