You Chose Another, Now Forget Me novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Toast
At their fifth-anniversary dinner Valeria turns down every glass of wine, leaves mid-toast when a message from Iván lights her phone, and Rodrigo watches her kiss him in a hospital car park; at dawn he tells Emilio to draft the divorce and Emilio says she called at five to say he would come.
Valeria stood up in the middle of my best friend's toast and said she had to go to the hospital.
The whole room turned to look at her.
I had booked the back room of her favorite restaurant three weeks ago, for our fifth anniversary.
There were candles down the table, a cake she would not eat, and every friend we had in two long rows.
He had his glass in the air. "To Rodrigo and Valeria. Those two will be sitting on the same porch when they're ninety."
Everyone laughed and drank.
Valeria did not drink.
She had turned down the wine all night, covering her glass with her hand every time a waiter came by. "I'm on call," she kept saying.
Now her phone lit up beside her plate, face up, a hand's width from mine.
The name on it was Iván.
Under it, one line: "Now. Please."
I looked at Emilio, across the table.
He had read it too.
He looked down at his glass.
Valeria turned the phone over and put her hand on my shoulder. "A patient, mi amor. I'm so sorry."
She kissed my cheek and was gone before the applause for the toast had finished.
"She saves lives, Rodri," Emilio said, too quickly. "Sit down. We'll keep her cake."
I sat down.
I stayed through the cake, the coffee and a second round of the toast.
Twenty-two people were watching me, so I smiled until my face hurt.
Then I asked the waiter to box her lamb.
It was the dish she had ordered and never touched.
I drove to Hospital del Valle with the box on the passenger seat. I told myself she would be hungry after surgery.
At the surgical desk, a nurse I knew looked up and smiled. "Dr. Quiroga? She isn't on call tonight, Rodrigo. The whole floor is quiet."
"Did anyone call her in?"
"Nobody called anyone. Is something wrong?"
"No," I said. "Thank you."
I went down to the car park.
Her gray car was in its reserved space on level two, with the engine still ticking.
Beside it stood a charcoal sedan.
Iván Lozano was leaning against it in his suit, the head of cardiac surgery, the man she had been engaged to before she met me.
She had told me for five years that he was ancient history.
Valeria walked straight to him.
He took her face in both hands and she kissed him.
It was not a polite kiss. It was the kind that had been practiced a hundred times.
She was smiling when she pulled back, a smile I had not been given since the spring.
I stood between two concrete pillars with a box of cold lamb in my hands.
I did not shout. I did not film it. I did not walk over.
I set the box on the roof of her car, where she would find it, and I walked out.
I had given up my firm for her, my name on the door, a fellowship in Barcelona. I had given up the chance to be a father.
I had given her all of it before she asked, and she had never once asked what it cost.
So I decided.
At home, the mail was still on the kitchen counter where I had left it that morning.
Among the bills was a postcard from the urology clinic, the same yearly reminder that came every autumn.
I dropped it in the bin without reading it, the way I always did.
Valeria came in after three.
I lay in the dark with my eyes shut.
She kissed my forehead and whispered, "A long surgery, mi amor."
I said nothing at all.
At six I called Emilio and told him I was coming.
At eight I was sitting in his office with my coat still on.
He had dark rings under his glasses, and I could tell he had not slept either.
"Draft the divorce agreement," I said. "The sooner the better."
Emilio took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes.
"Rodri, are you sure? You turned down Barcelona to marry her."
He leaned across the desk.
"You turned down every offer in this city. Now you want to end it the morning after your anniversary?"
"I watched her kiss Iván in the hospital car park last night."
He didn't say, "That can't be true."
He didn't say anything for a long time.
Then he put his glasses back on and looked at the door.
"Valeria called me at five this morning," he said quietly.
He met my eyes.
"She said you'd be here by eight, and I wasn't to write a single thing."
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend