Chapter 28:

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Three months after the divorce, Clara started dating again.

His name was David. He was an architect. Boring in the best possible way—showed up when he said he would, called when he said he’d call, didn’t have any secret obsessions with Instagram influencers.

“He’s normal,” Clara said, like she couldn’t quite believe it.

“That’s a low bar,” I pointed out.

“After Marcos, it’s exactly the right bar.”

Six months later, they were engaged.

I was happy for her. Genuinely. She deserved someone who saw her as a priority, not an obligation.

The wedding was small. Just family and close friends. I was maid of honor. Wore a dress that didn’t make me want to die. Gave a speech that made Clara cry in a good way.

Marcos showed up uninvited.

Of course he did. He’d been drinking—I could smell it from across the venue—and he made a scene trying to get Clara to talk to him.

“When did you get a boyfriend?” he slurred. “And why are you getting married so suddenly?”

Clara gave him a cold look. “Why do you care?”

“I get it now, Clara. You’re getting married just to make me jealous, right? I admit it, I never forgot you. I dated those girls just to see if you’d get jealous.”

The narcissism was almost impressive.

Clara rolled her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not immature enough to play those games. I’m getting married for one reason: I love him.”

David—six-foot-two, former college football player, deeply protective of his fiancée—stepped forward. “You need to leave.”

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Marcos looked at him. At Clara. Back at him.

“This is a mistake,” he said. “You’ll regret it.”

“The only thing I regret,” Clara said, “is wasting five years on you. Now get out before I have security remove you.”

He left. Finally. Muttering about how she’d come crawling back.

She didn’t.

At the reception, Marcos got so drunk he ended up crying in the parking lot. Someone called Julian to come get him.

I saw them through the window—Marcos leaning on Julian, both of them looking pathetic and lost.

“Should we do something?” Clara’s new sister-in-law asked.

“No,” I said. “Let them figure it out themselves.”

We went back to the party.

Clara threw her bouquet directly at me. It wasn’t subtle. She literally turned around and launched it like a missile.

I caught it more out of reflex than anything else.

“Really?” I said.

“What? Diego’s been pining after you for months. Throw him a bone.”

Diego—my boss at Tradition Design Studio, who’d been not-so-secretly in love with me since I started—was standing right there. Grinning like an idiot.

“You going to marry me or what?” he asked.

“That’s not how proposals work.”

“Says who?”

He pulled me in for photos. Posted them on his Instagram with the caption: SHE SAID YES (eventually she will, right?)

I didn’t have the heart to tell him I hadn’t said anything.

But I posted my own version. Added a teasing caption: “Oh, how did you guess this is my future husband?”

Diego called me immediately. “Does this mean—”

“It means you can stop asking me three hundred times a day if I really love you.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only answer you’re getting tonight.”

He showed up at my apartment the next day with breakfast and another marriage proposal.

I said maybe.

He took it as encouragement.

My phone rang that evening. Unknown number.

I almost didn’t answer. But something made me pick up.

“Adriana.” Julian’s voice. Choked. Broken. “Are you really going to marry him?”

“How did you get this number?”

“Are you?”

I thought about lying. About telling him it was none of his business. About hanging up and blocking this number too.

Instead, I told the truth.

“Yes.”

Silence on the other end. Long enough that I thought he’d hung up.

Then: “I thought… I thought I still had a chance.”

“That chance died the day I buried our son,” I said quietly.

More silence. I could hear him breathing. Could imagine him trying to find words that would change my mind.

There weren’t any.

“Goodbye, Julian.”

I hung up. Blocked the number. Deleted it from my call history.

Diego was jealous—irrationally so, but given what I’d been through with Julian, I understood. He hated even the mention of my ex-husband.

I didn’t want Diego to go through what I had. Doubting. Wondering. Suffering every day.

With a relationship come boundaries.

Julian needed to understand that too.

And if he didn’t?

Well. That wasn’t my problem anymore.

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