Not You, at the End of the Lawn

On our fifth anniversary, our friends threw a murder mystery party and deliberately tried to give Nolan and me the roles of a couple. Nolan refused. "Whoever draws it gets it." In the end, he was paired with Vivian, the one who had just come back from overseas—and the woman he'd never quite gotten over. I drew the homewrecker who came between them. During the proposal scene, Nolan dropped to one knee and took Vivian's hand. "I didn't have the courage back then. That's why I lost you." "But from now on, I'm never letting go of your hand again." Neither line was in the script. He said them with such sincerity, his eyes filled with years of belated regret. Even our mutual friends couldn't help commenting. "They were so close to having their perfect ending." "If Vivian hadn't suddenly left back then, no one else would've ever had a chance." Amid the cheers and teasing, Nolan and Vivian kissed. I didn't cry or make a scene. I stayed quiet, like background scenery. Just like back in college. Nolan and Vivian had been considered the perfect couple in our department. And I was just the girl who had stood beside Nolan for years and still wasn't important enough for anyone to remember her name. In the end, no one even noticed when I left the party and got into another car that had been waiting by the curb. I watched the night blur past the window and quietly asked the man sitting beside me, a man who looked strikingly like Nolan. "Do you regret what happened between us?" … As soon as I got home, my best friend Mia called. "Vivian absolutely did that on purpose. That murder mystery is all over the internet. One search tells you exactly which characters are paired together." "She saw Nolan draw the male lead, so she deliberately took the matching role." I held my phone in silence for a long moment. "It doesn't matter what she chose." "If Nolan knew where the line was, he would've kept his distance." Mia cursed under her breath, so angry her voice trembled. "We're never going to one of these things again. If they're so desperate to make up for their unfinished love story, they can do it without us." A faint ache spread through my chest. Mia had already swallowed her anger for my sake all night. I was the one who had been humiliated, yet somehow she was angrier than I was. "They're not the only ones with regrets. Back then, you and—" My fingers tightened. I cut her off softly. "I know you're upset because you care about me." "If he isn't worth it, I'll walk away." "You matter to me. I don't want you losing sleep over this." "So stop being upset for me and get some sleep." Mia reminded me to take care of myself a few more times before reluctantly hanging up. I set my phone aside and sank into the couch. But when I closed my eyes, I still saw Nolan holding Vivian's hand and promising never to let go. And that kiss. When Vivian leaned toward him, he'd had plenty of time to move away. He'd only hesitated for a second. At one in the morning, I finally heard the lock turn. Nolan came inside smelling of alcohol, with an unfamiliar perfume lingering on his jacket. "Why are you still awake?" He bent down, touched my forehead, then pulled the blanket that had slipped off me back into place. His movements were as gentle and natural as ever. As if he hadn't been kissing another woman a few hours earlier. "Vivian was having a rough night, so I stayed and talked to her for a while." He said it openly. As though spending the middle of the night alone with her reminiscing about their past was something his girlfriend should naturally accept. "Tonight was just a game." He sat beside me and tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. "My character was supposed to have regrets. Those two lines were just me staying in character." "You're not mad, are you?" Something pricked my heart like a fine needle. It wasn't sharp. Just a thousand tiny stings spreading beneath my skin. I shook my head. "No." Nolan stared at me, his brows slowly drawing together. My calm seemed to disappoint him more than an interrogation would have. "You're pretty generous." He paused, his eyes fixed on my face. "If you'd been paired with your first love tonight, would you have taken the act that far too?" "That hypothetical doesn't work." He fell silent for two seconds, then suddenly laughed. "Right." The smile was faint. It never reached his eyes. Nolan knew that ever since we'd gotten together, I had always kept my distance from other men. Even when someone simply asked for my contact information, I politely turned them down. The phone on the coffee table suddenly started vibrating nonstop. Messages were pouring into the party group chat. Someone had posted a picture of Nolan and Vivian kissing. "You two look perfect together. If Vivian hadn't moved overseas, your kids would probably be playing Little League by now."

Nolan was sitting right beside me, so of course he saw it too. He didn't respond. But he didn't tell anyone to stop, either. Then someone tagged me. "Camille, you sure disappeared fast. You didn't even pay your share. Were you expecting someone else to cover you?" Nolan glanced at the message as though he had only just remembered the bill. "I was busy taking Vivian home. I forgot." He picked up his phone casually. "I'll pay yours." "No." I opened the payment app and sent my share. "I've got it." Then I left the group chat. Not one person asked why I had left early. I had been gone for hours, yet they hadn't remembered I existed until it was time to split the bill. College had been the same. At a department event, Nolan would stand onstage giving a speech while Vivian, dressed for the occasion, hosted beside him. People in the audience would secretly take pictures and say that even their silhouettes looked like a couple. Meanwhile, I sat in the back row sorting scattered programs for the student committee. The spotlight never landed on me. Nolan's friends had met me countless times, but whenever they addressed me, they always hesitated before barely managing to remember my name. When Nolan and I eventually got together, none of them bothered hiding their surprise. One of them even said right in front of me, "I thought if you couldn't have Vivian, you'd stay single forever. Never thought you'd end up with her." Nolan wrapped an arm around me and glanced down. "Love isn't about who looks better together." "Camille and I work. We're going to be together for the rest of our lives." A lifetime was a long time. But we work didn't sound like love. It sounded more like Vivian had left an empty spot, and I happened to fit into it. Still, Nolan really had treated me well. He remembered everything I liked and would drive across town to buy my favorite dessert. He waited outside my office on rainy days. When I was sick, he stayed beside me all night. Over the years, I had noticed more than once that he got too close to other women. But every time, he had a perfectly reasonable explanation. "The new intern doesn't know the project yet. I was just helping her out." "I didn't know the client was bringing his female assistant. It was just business." After Vivian came back from overseas, he told me, "She just got back and doesn't have many friends here. I'm only helping her get settled." He always sounded so open about it. Afterward, he would bring me gifts to cheer me up, as though that should have been enough to make me feel secure. So time after time, I convinced myself that relationships required trust. He hadn't cheated. He hadn't shut me out. But that night, every tiny detail and every old thorn buried in my memories surged back at once, like a bucket of ice water dumped over my head. After that, everything inside me went cold. Nolan leaned back against the couch, his expression already relaxed again. To him, the night was over. My gaze moved past him to our graduation photo on the cabinet. In it, we stood outside the chapel with his hand wrapped around mine and the campus lawn behind us. I stared at it for a long time before asking softly, "Do you remember what the president said at graduation? That someday, we should come back with the people we loved and get married on the campus lawn?" "I remember." He answered immediately. After the crowd had dispersed that day, he'd taken my hand and walked me from the commencement chapel to the middle of the lawn. He'd said that when we got married, we would walk that same path again. From the chapel all the way to our wedding. I had blushed and said yes. I looked back at him. "What if I still want to get married there?" Nolan froze for a second, then laughed. "A wedding doesn't have to be tied to some old idea." "The campus lawn is too ordinary, and the setup would be a pain. Instead of going through all that trouble, we could have a destination wedding overseas someday." Someday. Always someday. He still remembered his promise. He just no longer intended to keep it. I lowered my eyes and happened to see Vivian's latest post. Nine photos. Every one of them was from tonight's party. A white veil. A proposal ring. A photo-booth picture of her shoulder pressed against Nolan's. And in the final picture, Nolan was kneeling in front of her. Vivian looked down at him with red-rimmed eyes, the prop ring on her finger. Her caption was only one sentence. "Love crosses every distance. Even if our story still ends in regret, at least tonight, he put a ring on my finger with his own hands."

I stared at that prop ring for a long time. In five years together, Nolan had never proposed to me. Whenever I brought it up, he only ruffled my hair. "What's the rush? Someday, I'll give you the best." I had waited five years for a proposal that never came. Vivian got one first. To everyone else, they were simply giving their younger selves the happy ending they had missed. If I objected, I would look exactly like the homewrecker in the game—the third person who had barged between two lovers and refused to take the hint and leave. After all these years, I realized I had never really escaped that forgotten corner. Looking at their picture reminded me that Nolan and I had once taken couples photos too. A couple next to us had been taking engagement pictures. The woman had nestled against her boyfriend and happily told us they'd been together since college. Seven years of dating, and they were finally getting married. I had been so envious. Nolan hugged me from behind and rested his chin on my shoulder. "Stop staring. We'll have that someday too." I believed him. So I willingly waited. Year after year. Those couples photos were still buried at the bottom of a drawer. But we had never managed to replace them with real wedding pictures. Sometimes, no matter how long a relationship lasted, it still went nowhere. I turned off my phone and looked at him. "Nolan." "Hmm?" "Let's break up." Nolan stared at me for several seconds. Then he chuckled and reached for my hand. "Camille, are you trying to say we should stop being boyfriend and girlfriend and finally become husband and wife?" His expression relaxed, amusement entering his voice. "You want to get married, don't you?" As if let's break up had merely been my roundabout way of pushing him to propose. I moved my hand away and looked calmly at him. "Yes." "I'm getting married." "You're getting married?" The smile slowly disappeared from Nolan's face. "Camille, there's a limit to how far you can take this. Our families haven't even formally met, and now you're talking about marriage?" "I already talked to my family. They agreed." His expression darkened completely. "Something this important, and you told your family without discussing it with me first?" My voice remained calm. "There was nothing to discuss." He struggled to contain his temper, but the patience from moments ago was gone. "Meeting the families, getting engaged, planning the wedding—every one of those things takes time. You say you want to get married, and I'm supposed to immediately agree?" I said nothing. My silence only irritated him more. "I know you've never had much of a sense of security because of the way you grew up, but you can't demand that I constantly prove I'm not going to leave just because your family never gave you that reassurance." "You're threatening to break up over something this small and using marriage to pressure me." "Is there anything I could ever do that would fill that hole inside you?" The living room went completely silent. In the past, those words probably would have hurt so much I wouldn't have been able to speak. But at that moment, I barely felt anything. He had crossed my boundaries again and again, then wrapped every offense in such reasonable explanations that I ended up wondering whether I was too sensitive. And now he was blaming everything on my insecurity. It was true. I was terrified of being abandoned. That was why I had forgiven him again and again. But my tolerance hadn't made him cherish me. It had only taught him that there would never be consequences. I looked at him and nodded. "You're right." "I've always needed certainty when I make a decision. So this wedding is happening." Then I walked straight toward the door. Just before it closed behind me, Nolan's cold voice came from behind. "Camille, once you walk out that door, don't expect me to coax you back like I always do." My hand paused on the doorknob. Over the years, he had coaxed me back plenty of times. But this time, I didn't need him to. I opened the door and walked away without looking back. Early the next morning, Nolan went to work in a foul mood. Vivian texted him. "Did my post last night make Camille misunderstand? Should I delete it?" He tugged irritably at his tie. "It was only a game. Don't overthink it." After replying, he opened our chat. "When you're done throwing a fit, come home. We need to talk." A glaring red exclamation mark appeared beside the message. I had blocked him.