Not a supporting role

My wedding day. It was supposed to be the happiest day of my life. Instead, it turned into a complete disaster, a scene straight out of a bad soap opera.

It all started with Jason's ex, Chloe. She’d “accidentally” spilled red wine on my dress at our college reunion a few weeks earlier. "I’m so sorry, I’ll pay for it," she’d stammered. Jason, ever the smooth operator, just smiled. "This dress is a vintage piece from last year's auction. It went for a cool million."

Chloe went white as a sheet. The room erupted. "A million bucks for a dress? Damn, Jason. Some people are gonna be regretting some life choices." The whispers were brutal. "Didn't she marry some rich guy after Jason? Doesn't she have a million?" Another chimed in, "More like 'debt' guy. She probably couldn't scrape together that kind of cash if she sold everything she owned."

I watched Chloe, a complicated mix of emotions swirling inside me. In the restroom earlier, she'd cornered me, smug and confident. "You know, if I wanted to, I could have him crawling back to me like a dog with a snap of my fingers." Now, her little wine-spilling stunt, clearly an attempt to get close to Jason, had backfired spectacularly.

Jason, now a tech mogul plastered all over Forbes, was a far cry from the struggling entrepreneur he'd been when Chloe dumped him. I felt a pang of anger for him. He draped his jacket over me, looking down at Chloe. "If you're struggling, maybe you could ask your incarcerated ex-husband for help."

Chloe's lips trembled. "I'll pay." Jason just laughed. "Don't make promises you can't keep, Chloe. You haven't changed a bit." His tone was cold, but I noticed his eyes never left her.

I’d never understood their history until a month earlier. Back in Jason's hometown, I’d found a faded photo of a beaming Chloe in his old wallet. Jason, usually so stoic, looked lost, a flicker of sadness in his eyes. "Your ex?" I asked, trying to sound casual. "Yeah." He ripped the photo to shreds, but later, I saw him painstakingly taping it back together.

Back to the reunion. Someone suggested a whip-round for Chloe. The room buzzed with fake generosity. Five bucks here, twenty there. It was humiliating. Chloe accepted the hundred dollars they collected, walked over to Jason, and said, "This is a hundred dollars, Mr. Reed. Can you give me some more time for the rest?"

The room went silent. Jason just stared at her. I saw the conflict in his eyes. He wanted her humbled, but her acceptance of charity seemed to unsettle him. Was it discomfort, or was it something else?

Suddenly, someone yelled, "Look out! The chandelier!" It was falling, right above us. Instinctively, Jason threw himself over Chloe. I was pulled to safety by another classmate just as the chandelier crashed down, showering us with debris. I felt a sharp pain in my leg – a long gash near my ankle.

But the physical pain was nothing compared to the ache in my chest as I saw Jason and Chloe huddled together. A classmate helped me up....