False Marriage, True Love

Holiday traffic on the highway is always a total mess. My name's Mike Collins. I'm heading home to marry Lydia Lynn, my fiancee of three years. When the car stopped at the rest area, Lydia said she wanted some hot water. "Wait in the car, I'll grab some hot water and be right back." I ruffled her hair and grabbed her thermos on my way out. "Hurry up, don't keep me waiting too long." She leaned back in her seat, her tone a little playful, like she was teasing me. The rest area was crowded, and the line for hot water took a while. I couldn't stop thinking about Lydia as I finally got the water and rushed back to the parking lot. But when I got to where the car had been parked, I just stood there, stunned. Our white car's gone. I thought I'd gotten lost in the wrong area, so I circled the parking lot twice, checked every corner, but still couldn't find it. I pulled out my phone to call Lydia Lynn, but all I got was an automated message saying, "The number you have dialed is temporarily unavailable." That uneasy feeling kept swelling—I called her over ten times straight, but still no answer. Just as I was about to head over to the rest area police station to report it, my phone suddenly rang. It was Lydia. "Lydia! Where are you? What happened to the car?" I almost shouted it. "Dylan and I are leaving first." Her voice was calm, not a trace of apology. Dylan Jones—her childhood friend. I'd always known he was there, and I wasn't shy about how pissed off I was about them being so close. "What did you say? Dylan Jones? Why are you leaving without me? Didn't we agree to go home and get married together?" My voice was trembling. "Mike, you're always knocking my relationship with Dylan. I'm sick of it." Her tone suddenly turned sharp, "You don't like him, right? Fine, then I'm leaving with him on purpose—this is my way of getting back at you." "Revenge?" I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "We're about to get married, and you're doing this to get back at me?" "So what? I don't want to marry you anymore." She said it and just hung up on me. I stood there in the busy rest area, holding my phone, feeling this chill run through me. Three years together, a wedding just around the corner, and to her, it was all just meaningless. Turns out, all her tenderness and hopes for me couldn't hold up against one word: 'revenge.' I took a deep breath and deleted the wedding planning checklist from my phone. I'm done with this relationship.