Years after graduation, Caleb Howard was a name everyone knew. At our high school reunion, someone decided to play matchmaker, nudging him towards me. "Caleb, my man! Remember the little shadow who used to follow you around everywhere?" he slurred, reeking of whiskey. "You're single, she's single... why not give it another shot?" Caleb slowly raised his left hand, a humorless smile on his lips. "I'm married." The table erupted in shocked whispers. Only I stayed silent, my head bowed. I couldn't understand why he was still wearing that ring. We'd been divorced for three years. 1 The reunion was in full swing when the class president burst through the door, his voice booming with excitement. "Everybody, look who's here!" I followed their collective gaze, and my breath caught in my throat. It was Caleb. Three years had carved a new maturity into his features. As he greeted old classmates, the corners of his eyes crinkled into a subtle, charming arc. He carried himself with the quiet confidence of a man who knew his own worth. I’d heard he was recently named the city’s “Outstanding Young Entrepreneur of the Year,” already a multimillionaire before thirty. While the others swarmed him with handshakes and back-pats, I ducked my head and pretended to be absorbed in my phone. From the corner of my eye, I saw him take the empty seat diagonally across from me. His gaze swept over me without a flicker of recognition, not lingering for even a second. But I noticed something he didn't. Against the dark fabric of his trench coat, I saw a dusting of crystalline flakes clinging to the shoulders. It was snowing outside. My phone buzzed again. The woman next to me, a former classmate whose voice had always been two decibels too loud, leaned in with a smirk. "Carol, is that your boyfriend? Someone's keeping you on a tight leash." My eyes instinctively shot toward Caleb. He was deep in conversation, his expression calm, as if he hadn't heard a thing. I forced a smile and shook my head. "No, it's just my mom. She's reminding me about the blind date she set up for next week." We were all in our late twenties. Some were married with kids, but most, like me, were fielding the relentless pressure from our parents. A few women at the table groaned in solidarity. "I swear, my mom's in such a rush, you'd think she was breeding prize livestock," one of them griped. "As long as it's the right gender and looks healthy, nothing else matters." "You've gotta be careful, Carol," another warned. "All the good ones get snapped up before they even hit the open market." Just then, a burly guy, flushed with alcohol, slammed his hand on the table and staggered to his feet. "Caleb, my man!" he bellowed. "Remember the little shadow who used to follow you around everywhere?" Caleb said nothing. The guy, assuming Caleb’s memory needed jogging, pressed on. "You know! The one who spammed you with, like, a dozen love letters and confessed to you in front of the whole damn school at the graduation party—Carol Vance!" It took me a moment to recognize him under the extra weight. It was Big Mike, our old football captain. His favorite pastime back then was stirring up drama, and apparently, some things never change. "You're single, she's single... why not give it another shot?" In an instant, every curious, gossiping eye in the room swiveled between Caleb and me. A decade hadn't been long enough for them to forget. They were all waiting, hungry for the next chapter of the story that had been the backdrop to their own teenage years, no matter how it ended. Caleb finally turned to look at me, his expression unreadable. Our eyes met. He slowly raised his left hand, a humorless smile playing on his lips. "I'm married." The words dropped like a bomb. "What? Caleb, when did you get married? You didn't even invite us to the wedding!" "Seriously, man, you kept that under wraps! We haven't even seen a picture of the lucky lady on your feed!" Only I stayed silent, my head bowed, staring into my lap. I couldn't understand it. Why was Caleb Howard still wearing that wedding ring? Except... we'd been divorced for three years. 2 Looking back, our divorce felt inevitable. There was no proposal, no wedding ceremony, not even a single wedding photo. The year we graduated from college, his mother was diagnosed with cancer. I had just visited her in the hospital, my arms aching from a heavy basket of fruit. As I was leaving, Caleb grabbed my hand in the sterile hallway. "Carol," he said, his voice flat. "Let's get married." The words, completely out of the blue, were like a winning lottery ticket dropping into my lap. I was stunned. Terrified he might change his mind, I blurted out "yes" before he could take it back. We got our marriage license on a perfectly ordinary weekend. City Hall was quiet. The clerk motioned for us to get closer for the photo. "Okay, groom, a little closer to the bride. And groom, lose the poker face. Try to smile like she is. Good." That small, red-backed photo on our marriage certificate became our first picture together. After a brief, sterile ceremony, I’d skipped the role of girlfriend and gone straight to being Caleb's wife. He was in the grueling start-up phase of his company back then. To avoid a long-distance relationship, I turned down a good teaching position at a private school out of state. On his advice, I started studying for the state teaching certification exams instead. He must have known he was asking a lot of me. When we went to buy rings, he promised we’d have a real wedding once things settled down. Wanting to be the supportive, understanding wife, I picked out a simple, unadorned band that didn’t cost much. It was never about the money; it was about his heart. After we were married, we rented a tiny 400-square-foot apartment. It was small, but our life was sweet. We were like any other young couple, holding hands at the grocery store on weekends, losing ourselves in each other's arms late at night. A year later, his mother passed away. He held me and cried for the first time. "Carol," he whispered, his voice cracking, "I don't have a family anymore." His parents had divorced when he was young, and his mother, fiercely ambitious for him, had always been controlling. People saw Caleb as cold and distant, but I knew that deep down, he was just a man desperate to be loved. I held him tighter, murmuring again and again, "You have me. I'm your family now." To cope with his grief, Caleb threw himself into his work, spending every waking hour at the office. The long hours and irregular meals took their toll, and soon he was hospitalized with a stomach ulcer. From that day on, I started bringing him home-cooked meals at his office. And that was the first time I met Vivian Chen. 3 By then, Caleb's company was gaining traction. He'd recruited several talented alumni from our university, and Vivian, a brilliant programmer who had been a few years ahead of him, was his star hire. She had a decorated history of winning software design competitions and a wealth of project experience. Caleb was immensely grateful that she’d left a lucrative job at a tech giant to join his fledgling team. I stood outside his glass-walled office with the insulated lunchbox, listening in silence as they volleyed terms and concepts I couldn't begin to grasp. The energy between them was electric. Finally, their intense discussion ended. They’d reached a breakthrough. "That's it," Caleb said, his eyes shining with an admiration I’d never seen him direct at me. "We'll go with your plan." A hollow feeling opened in my chest. As I stood there, frozen, Vivian noticed me and gestured with her chin. "Caleb, your girlfriend's here." He glanced over, his expression shifting. "She's my wife," he corrected. "Oh, right. My mistake," she said with an easy laugh. "You just don't meet many guys who get married so young." I stepped inside, feeling clumsy and out of place as I set down the lunchbox. I was an intruder in their world. As I turned to leave, I heard Vivian ask, "Your wife doesn't seem like she's in tech. What does she do?" "She's a teacher." Caleb’s tone was clipped, as if he was reluctant to discuss his personal life at work. But Vivian was persistent. "I have friends who teach at the university. Maybe they know each other. Is she a high school teacher? Or college?" "She's still studying for her certification." "Oh, that explains it," Vivian said, her voice bright and cheerful. "No wonder she has time to bring you lunch. Don't worry, those exams are a breeze these days…" But what was a "breeze" for someone like Vivian was a hurricane for me. I failed. My old college advisor, hearing I was still unemployed, called with a job opportunity. But it was out of state, and Caleb was firmly against it. He picked up one of my discarded test-prep books, flipping through the pages. He chuckled, trying to be encouraging. "Carol, this stuff isn't that hard. Just focus a little more next time, and you'll nail it." I bit my lip, the words catching in my throat. He seemed to have forgotten that I wasn't born with a mind like his. Math problems that others understood after one try took me ten. My only real talent was my persistence—especially when it came to him. He was the genius, the valedictorian who aced every exam. I was the art student who scraped by at the bottom of the class. I had only gotten into the state college next to his prestigious university by spending countless agonizing hours in the art studio, practicing until my fingers were raw and blistered. When he said "it isn't that hard," whose standard was he using? It was painfully obvious. 4 The dreams started. Night after night, I saw him standing beside someone else. Not me, but Vivian—someone who was his intellectual equal, who understood him in a way I never could. In my dreams, I was always running, but I could never catch up to him. I’d call his name, but he would never turn around... He must have noticed my spiraling mood. One night, after we made love, he pulled me close, his arms wrapping around me. "Honey," he whispered, "work has slowed down a bit. How about we finally plan that wedding?" He traced a line down my spine. "I can take a couple of weeks off. We can go on a proper honeymoon, get away from everything. How does that sound?" Just like that, with a few soft words, he reeled me back in. But planning a wedding was far more complicated than I’d ever imagined. Even with a wedding planner, I obsessed over every detail: the venue, the menu, the flowers. This was my one and only wedding, and it had to be perfect. Just designing the wedding favor boxes had me pulling all-nighters, pouring more of myself into it than I ever did for my final thesis. That evening, I excitedly showed Caleb the final designs. He was on his laptop, but he glanced up for a fraction of a second. "Yeah, looks good. They’re fine." I hesitated, chewing on my lip. "I can't decide between these two. This one holds more, but this one is more elegant... what do you think?" He was typing a message to someone, a faint smile on his face, but he remembered to answer me. "Either one is fine." Suddenly, I had nothing left to say. Sensing my silence, he closed his laptop and pulled me onto his lap. "Honey, what were you saying?" I forced a smile. "It's nothing. Go on, finish your work. It's not important." A week before the wedding, I dropped off his lunch as usual. I had just gotten home when the wedding planner called. There was a last-minute change to a crucial part of the ceremony, and I had to choose between two options immediately. I couldn't decide, and Caleb wasn't answering his phone. Panicked, I rushed back to his office. But as I reached the entrance, I froze. I saw Caleb, his face a mask of indifference, scraping the meal I’d made for him into the trash. Vivian was leaning against the wall nearby, arms crossed. "You really don't know how good you have it, do you?" she teased. "Your wife treats you like a king, and you're still not satisfied?" Her words were playful, but his reply was dead serious. "Do you think I wanted to waste it? We got so caught up in the project review that it was ice-cold by the time I got to it." "Alright, alright, I get it," she said, laughing. "My treat today. What are you in the mood for?" Caleb set the now-empty lunchbox aside, his movements clean and practiced, as if he’d done this a thousand times before. He sighed, a strange look on his face. "Sometimes... she's just too good to me. It's so much that it... it feels like pressure." In that moment, the sour, rotten stench of discarded food seemed to rise from the bin. A wave of nausea hit me, and I fled. 5 Caleb called me again and again. Before, I would have answered on the first ring, no matter where I was or what I was doing. This time, I turned my phone off. When he finally rushed home, he found me sitting on the living room floor, my eyes swollen and red, surrounded by a mountain of shredded paper. They were the love letters I’d written him in high school. Eighteen of them. Each one filled with every ounce of love I had. He recognized the scraps immediately and lunged forward to stop me. "Carol, what are you doing?!" he demanded. "And what the hell was that call from the wedding planner? Why did you cancel everything?" I fought him off, my strength fueled by a cold rage. I snatched up one of the few intact letters and, looking him straight in the eye, ripped it in two. A perfect metaphor for us—a relationship that looked whole but was already torn to shreds. "Maybe, in your eyes, I’m no different than a stray cat," I said, my voice dangerously quiet. "You pet me when you're in the mood, and when you're not, you just push me away. You never bothered to put any real thought into me. What I think doesn't matter. What I feel doesn't matter." My voice rose with every word. "Caleb, do you see marrying me as some kind of noble charity on your part?" His hand clamped around my wrist, his grip like iron. "Is this about Vivian? Someone saw you at the office this afternoon..." I just shook my head. It wasn't about Vivian. If it wasn't her, it would have been someone else. A Sarah, a Jessica... He didn't believe me. He tried to explain, his voice strained with forced patience. "I told you, we're just colleagues. We have never been alone together outside of work. You can check my phone, my messages, anything you want." I kept shaking my head, and his patience finally snapped. "Carol, why can't you just trust me? Are you really going to throw everything away over something so small?" Suddenly, a strange calm washed over me. "You see? Even now, you think I'm just being hysterical." "Sometimes," I continued, my voice hollow, "I think we were never right for each other. It was always just me, forcing it." "I'll never understand your algorithms and your technical jargon, and you have zero interest in the comics and movies I love. You hate it when I touch your things, and you never share anything about your work with me. If I talk for more than a minute to one of your male friends, you give me the silent treatment all night." "My heart is made of flesh and blood, Caleb. It can be hurt. It can break." "And even with all that, I tried my best to be good to you, because you said I was the only family you had left in the world." My nose stung, and tears began to stream down my face. "But I've walked ninety-nine steps toward you, and you won't even take that final one. In fact, you're backing away." "Caleb," I choked out, the words tearing through me. "I'm so tired." All these years, I had chased after him with everything I had. He was the one who reached out his hand. He was the one who said he wanted to spend his life with me. And I believed him. I gave him my whole heart, without reservation. But my devotion was like throwing stones into the ocean—no echo, no ripple, just a deep, despairing silence. I had become lost, insecure. Jealous and ugly. I didn't even recognize myself anymore. I didn't see the point of a marriage like this. As he stared at me, his eyes wide with a dawning horror, I slowly slid the simple band from my finger. It took all the strength I had left to force out the final words. "Caleb, let's get a divorce." His eyes reddened, and his voice trembled when he spoke. "Are you sure?" He was such a proud man. He would never beg, never ask me to stay. I knew that. I watched as the warmth in his eyes froze over, replaced by a glacial cold. "Fine," he bit out. "You said it. Carol, if you want a divorce, you'd better not live to regret it." 6 The reunion party was winding down when a blizzard swept in, trapping us at the mountain lodge. My plan to drive home was shot. I’d have to stay the night with everyone else and wait for the snow to let up in the morning. Later, soaking in the hot springs, the women chatted lazily. "I had the biggest crush on Big Mike in high school," one sighed. "Now... well, time is a cruel, cruel thing." "I know, right? And the class clown is a dad now, so responsible. Caleb's the only one who hasn't really changed, married or not." "Speaking of Caleb," another chimed in, "he wasn't even on the original guest list. The class president told me he canceled a huge project launch meeting just to be here tonight." "That's so weird. Caleb was always such a loner back then. I can't think of anyone he was close enough with to go to all that trouble for..." On impulse, my fingers found his number in my contacts. In the three years since our divorce, Caleb had texted me exactly three times. The first was a month after we separated. You left some clothes in my closet. Want to pick them up this weekend? The second was on Christmas the following year. I brought some gifts for your parents. I'm downstairs. The third message, sent sometime last year, contained only two words. Carol Vance. He must have regretted sending it instantly, because nothing followed. I never replied to any of them. The moment the clerk stamped our divorce papers, I had resolved to sever every last emotional tie to him. If it hadn't been for this reunion, we probably would have gone the rest of our lives without ever seeing each other again. After the hot springs, I said my goodnights in the main lobby. The others were heading off for more drinks and games, but I was ready for bed. As I walked down the long, quiet hallway, I saw him. Caleb was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, as if waiting for someone. I kept my eyes fixed straight ahead, pretending not to see him as I walked past. "Carol." I ignored him, fumbling with my key card. But just as I inserted it into the lock, a hand clamped down on the door handle, holding it shut. "Carol," he said, his voice finally losing its composure, his tone sharp and demanding. "Tell me something. What's this about a blind date?"
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