Axel
(THREE HOURS AGO)
Today, I was going to watch the woman I loved marry another man.
I'd been practicing the smile for months—the one that said I was happy for them, that this was fine, that watching Delia Santoro walk down the aisle toward someone else didn't feel like swallowing glass.
I perfected it in mirrors, tested it at work meetings, deployed it at the engagement party where Jake stood with his arm around her waist, thanking everyone for coming.
The smile held. It always did.
I sat in the third row, far enough back to observe without being obvious, close enough that leaving early would be noticed.
The church was full. Three hundred people were here to witness what should have been the happiest day of her life.
White flowers everywhere. A string quartet playing something classical and romantic.
Light streaming through stained glass windows like the universe itself was celebrating.
I’d learned about the engagement six months ago.
The gala had been one of those industry events where successful people networked and pretended to enjoy each other's company. A tech founder I vaguely knew from conferences had cornered me—charming in that way entrepreneurs learn early, friendly but never genuine.
Jake Foxx. I recognized the name from articles, from the startup that had gone viral, from the kind of success story everyone in tech talks about. But mostly, I knew him as Delia's boyfriend. He wouldn't know me.
“So I’m making a big decision.” Champagne in hand, that confident smile in place. “I’m going to propose to my girlfriend next week. Got the ring and everything.”
Before his next sentence, my world fractured.
“Her name’s Delia Santoro,” he’d continued. I already knew. He didn't have to tell me.
I must have paused too long. His expression sharpened with interest. “You know her?”
“Family friend,” I managed. “Good person.”
“The best.” His smile was so sure, certain. “We’ve been together five years now.”
Five years.
I congratulated him again, shook his hand, and went home.
I didn't sleep for three days.
Because five years ago, I'd stopped going to Sunday dinners.
Five years ago, I'd been sitting at the Santoro table—something I did once every few months when Daniel's guilt trips became unbearable. Their mother Elena had made her famous lasagna. Daniel was complaining about hospital politics.
And Delia mentioned, casually, like it didn't matter, that she was seeing someone.
“It’s new,” she’d said, pushing pasta around her plate. “Really new. But I like him. He’s ambitious. Smart. Building something exciting.”
I kept my face neutral. Continued eating like my chest hadn't just caved in.
“What’s his name?” Elena asked.
“Jake. Jake Foxx. He’s in tech.”
Daniel asked questions. I sat there, fork in hand, watching Delia's face light up talking about someone else. Watching her be happy about someone who wasn’t me.
I stopped going to Sunday dinners after that.
Made excuses. Work. Travel. Board meetings. Museum openings. Anything to stay away from that table, from watching Delia fall in love with someone else in real time.
Daniel never pushed. He'd always known why I kept my distance.
And now, five years later, I sat in a church watching that relationship culminate in marriage.
My parents died when I was twelve.
My father went first. A car accident on a wet road, instant and absolute. One moment he existed, the next he didn’t. The funeral was small. My father was an only child. My mother too. Just the three of us, and then suddenly just two.
My mother lasted three months before I was completely orphaned.
The doctors said it was an accident. She'd been confused about her medication, taken too many pills without realizing. Depression and grief, they told the social worker. A terrible mistake.
But I’d watched her those three months. Watched her forget she had a son who needed her. Watched her look at me like I was a stranger, some boy who’d appeared in her house without explanation. She stopped cooking, stopped talking, stopped existing in any meaningful way.
The morning I found her, the pill bottle was empty on her nightstand. Deliberate and not a mistake.
She'd chosen to leave. Preferred the absence of pain over the presence of me.
Social services wanted to send me to a group home. No family, no guardian, no place to go. I was twelve years old and completely alone in a way that felt permanent. Final. Like the rest of my life had already been decided.
Then Miguel Santoro appeared.
He'd been my father's friend. Not close, but friendly enough to come to the funeral and check in afterward. When he found out about my situation, he didn't hesitate. Told the social worker he and his wife would take me in. That I'd have a home for as long as I needed one.
Elena welcomed me like I'd always belonged there. Gave me a room, enrolled me in school, treated me like a third child—even though I was a stranger carrying more grief than any twelve-year-old should.
Daniel was fourteen—quiet, serious, already focused on becoming a doctor like their father. He didn’t know what to do with me at first—this silent kid who’d landed in his house overnight. But he tried. Invited me to play basketball, showed me how things worked, made space for me in his life.
I was nonverbal in those early months. Not because I couldn’t speak, but because words felt impossible, pointless.
What was there to say? My parents were dead.
My mother had chosen pills over me, and there was no language big enough to hold that.
No combination of words could fix that or make it make sense.
Other kids tried at first. Classmates, neighbors, Daniel’s friends. They’d ask questions, try to include me, wait for responses that never came. Eventually they gave up. Decided I was weird, damaged, not worth the effort.
Everyone except Delia.
She was ten years old and could talk enough to fill a whole mountain range.
She’d follow me around the house, chattering about her day, her art projects, the book she was reading, the injustice of bedtimes.
She asked questions she knew I wouldn’t answer.
Told jokes that weren’t funny. Invented games that required no participation from me whatsoever.
Most people would have gotten frustrated, taken my silence as rejection.
Not Delia.
She was stubborn in a way that should have been annoying but somehow wasn’t.
She’d sit beside me while I did homework and narrate her thoughts about absolutely nothing.
She’d draw pictures and explain them in elaborate detail even though I never asked.
She’d deliberately say things engineered to provoke a response—wrong facts she knew I’d catch, outrageous statements, questions so ridiculous they practically begged for correction.
“The sky is green,” she’d announce.
I’d look at her.
“What? It is. Everyone knows that.”
I’d shake my head.
“So you’re saying it’s not green?”
I’d shake my head again.
“Then what color is it? Oh wait, you have to actually use words to tell me.”
I lasted another three days before finally saying, “Blue.”
She’d grinned like she’d won the lottery. “I know. Just wanted to hear you say it.”
I should have been annoyed. Should have found her exhausting, invasive, too much.
But I wasn’t. Even then, even as a grief-broken twelve-year-old who wanted nothing more than to disappear, I’d been fascinated by her.
By the way she refused to let me hide, refused to accept my silence as permanent, refused to give up on pulling me back into the world.
She made me exist again at a time when existing felt impossible.
It wasn’t until I was fourteen that I understood what that fascination actually was.
Love.
Inconvenient, impossible, wildly inappropriate love for the daughter of the family who’d saved me. For Daniel’s little sister. For someone so far out of reach she might as well have lived on another planet.
I handled it the only way I knew how: distance.
I left for college across the country. Came home for holidays but kept visits short. Built my career—my empire of galleries and museums—and crafted an entire life that kept me away from the Santoro house and the complications I couldn’t afford.
I watched Delia grow up from a distance—college graduation, art shows, relationships that never quite worked out. I told myself I was being responsible. Honorable. Doing the right thing by staying away.
Really, I was just a coward.
The music changed, pulling me back to the present. The wedding march. Everyone stood, turned toward the doors at the back of the church.
I stood with them, preparing myself to watch Delia walk down this aisle toward Jake. Preparing for the moment when she’d say yes and every possibility I’d never let myself imagine would close permanently.
But the doors didn’t open.
The music played. People waited. The officiant kept glancing toward the entrance, expression growing increasingly strained.
Something was wrong.
Whispers started rippling through the crowd. Phones buzzed. The woman next to me leaned toward her companion, speculating in urgent whispers about delays and cold feet.
I watched Daniel, standing at the front near the altar. His expression had gone grave. The officiant leaned toward him, whispered something urgent.
Daniel’s entire body went rigid.
Then he turned and walked quickly toward the back of the church, disappearing through a side door.
The music stopped.
The whispers got louder.
I stood there, caught between sitting back down and following the instinct screaming that something had gone catastrophically wrong. Around me, three hundred people were making the same calculation, some sitting, others remaining standing, all of them confused.
I made it to the side door Daniel had used, pushed through into a hallway that led to the bridal suite and vestibule. Voices came from somewhere ahead—Daniel’s, sharp with command, and Sarah’s, thick with tears.
Then I saw them.