It was only a few weeks from now. The wedding was planned; the venue was booked; the dress was made. It seemed all was perfect. Eager and waiting for the so-called best day of her life, she was grinning at pictures of her fiancè. 

 

She skipped down to his room, and saw him on his phone.

“What are you doing?” she inquired, curious and excited.

 

Her fiancé trembled and turned off his phone, his hand shaking, subtly.

“Nothing much,” his voice wavered unsteadily.

She could tell that something was wrong, but the wedding was so near that she decided to ignore it.

“Breakfast's ready,” she beamed, “come down soon!”

She stood outside his door, away from his view. She watched as he turned on his phone once again, and typed.

'He's probably busy with work, maybe he's texting his colleagues,' she thought to herself.

 

But she continued to watch.

‘He's smiling. Maybe something good has happened. He's blushing. It must be a very good situation.’ she chuckled, happy, blinded by love.

She didn’t know what was coming.

***

 

It all came at once, a week prior to the wedding. It was a Tuesday. 

She had just resigned yesterday, hoping she wouldn’t regret this, just after her fiancé had convinced her to do so, as he promised her he would make enough money to take care of her. 

 

It happened in the evening. A text from him popped up, telling her to meet him at the first place they had a date.

'Such a romantic!' Her cheeks flushed up as she called a taxi to go to the ferris wheel. 

Yet when she arrived, he was nowhere to be seen.

 

The bushes behind her rustled. 

She turned behind, and there he was. Oddly, he had a solemn face on.

'Something bad must have happened at work.' 

 

“Flowers for you,” he brought out a bouquet of a dozen red roses from behind him, “I’m… sorry.”

 

“What is it about?” she was giddy with love, yet nervous.

“I… I love someone else.” he muttered, “It’s Jermaine.”

She was in disbelief. Her best friend… 

There was this feeling of betrayal, the warmth she felt had somehow shattered into pieces, but the whole story hadn’t been revealed. She felt a punch in her gut, and she fell to her knees.

***

 

The wedding was cancelled. Obviously.

She sat on the floor in her room, alone, feeling as if the world had decided to pour ten years worth of rain on her all at once. The blood that fell from her hands from ripping the roses apart didn’t hurt as much as the pain inside her chest.

Her ex-fiancé had decided to not give her any money whatsoever, even after telling her to quit her job and then proceeding to cancel their marriage. 

 

‘The audacity!’ she pricked herself on a thorn of one of the rose’s stems.

There was a thirst in her soul, to unravel the whole situation. It wasn’t of revenge, but rather just of curiosity, and justice. Why did Jermaine do this? Or did she even do anything? But this wish was never fulfilled.

 

Everyone in her life had vanished. The last person she could hold on to… had left her. At least, that was what she had believed, in the mess her mind was at the time. She was alone, all alone, once again.

***

 

She picked herself up from the fragments remaining of herself that were scattered on the floor amongst the roses. As she wiped her tears dry, she stood up, got a broom, and swept the red mess away. 

 

Revising her résumé, she stared at the blindingly bright computer screen. 

She had worked as a romance fantasy author, contracted with a publishing company. Her books were famous, selling extremely well in bookstores. 

 

It was ironic that most of her stories tended to have happy endings, while her own didn’t, not for now. She laughed, in a sense of sarcasm, while gazing at her pen name on the screen: ‘Laetafinis’, which was ‘Happy Ending’ in Latin, but the two words joined together.

The weeks passed by as she waited from a reply of a new publishing company she requested an interview with. 

 

‘Ding!’ went her phone one day, as she was walking home.

“Please come to our headquarters for the interview,” the email read.