I Stopped Waiting For You

For Founders' Day, Julian Whitmore said he was finally taking me home to meet his family. I spent three months preparing. Then I waited an hour outside his front door. By the time I made it inside, his mother was already holding the hand of a girl in a fitted red dress. "This is Camille," she announced to the room, beaming. "Julian's fiancée. The wedding's set for Thanksgiving." I looked at Julian. He kept his head down. He didn't deny it. All through dinner, he and Camille Sinclair accepted toast after toast of congratulations, while the butler led me in through the side door and sat me at a table in the corner — without so much as a place setting. Three rounds of drinks in, he texted me: [Wait for me. I'll fix this.] I sent back three words: [Congratulations to you.] Chapter 1 The car pulled up outside the Whitmore estate, and Julian Whitmore unbuckled his seatbelt. "Give me five minutes. I need to go tell my mom you're here." Five minutes came and went. He texted that it wouldn't be long. At ten minutes, he said he was almost done. At forty minutes, he said to wait a little longer. I stopped replying. Through the car window, I watched Eleanor Whitmore personally come out to greet a girl in a fitted red dress. The girl stepped out of her car, walked straight to Julian, and looped her arm through his. He didn't pull away. The three of them walked inside together, laughing, and the front door swung shut in front of me. My phone screen was still lit, the last message still reading: [Wait a little longer.] Twenty minutes later, the butler knocked on the car window. "You're Vera Hart, aren't you? Mrs. Whitmore would like you to come in and help — the kitchen's short-handed." "How does Mrs. Whitmore even know who I am?" "The young master mentioned you. He said you'd just be sitting out here waiting anyway." I followed him in through the side door, into the kitchen. He shoved a stack of plates and bowls into my hands and pointed toward a table in the corner. "That table's short a place setting. Once you've set it, come back to the kitchen and help carry out the food." I carried the dishes toward the banquet hall and passed a mirror on the way. I caught my own reflection — standing there in that dress, in the dim hallway, looking completely out of place. Waves of laughter kept drifting out from the banquet hall. I set the dishes down at the corner table and looked up. Eleanor was standing beside the head table, holding Camille Sinclair's hand. "Since we're all celebrating today, I have happy news to share. Camille and Julian's wedding is set for Thanksgiving." The room broke into applause, and someone shouted for them to kiss. Camille rose on her toes and pressed a kiss to Julian's cheek. He didn't pull away — just stood there with a faint smile. I stood in the corner. Not once did he look my way. I set down the cutlery and slipped out through the side door. I'd barely stepped into the courtyard when Eleanor came out after me. She stood on the steps and looked me over, head to toe. "So you're Vera Hart. Julian's mentioned you before — said you were a sensible girl, one who would never make a scene." She smiled and stepped closer, patting the back of my hand. "You saw what happened tonight. Camille is going to be this family's daughter-in-law. Julian's too soft-hearted to say it to your face, so I'll say it for him. Go on home. Don't come back after tonight." With that, she turned and went back inside. I walked out to the front gate, and my phone lit up. Julian: [Wait for me. I'll fix this.] I texted back: [Congratulations to you.] Then, I called a car. As it turned out of the alley, I glanced in the rearview mirror at the second-floor window of the Whitmore estate. Camille was standing there with a glass of wine, raising it slightly in my direction. Then a photo came in from an unknown number. It was Julian and Camille together, her leaning against his shoulder, him smiling at the camera. Underneath it, a single line: [He told everyone you're just his assistant.] I stared at that photo for a long time, then flipped my phone face-down on my lap. I suddenly remembered my mother, holding my hand on her deathbed. "Vera, don't waste your life on someone who makes you wait. Your father made me wait ten years, and in the end he left with that other woman. I don't want that for you." I'd held her hand and promised I wouldn't. But now I was sitting in the back of a cab, and I didn't even know where I was going. Back home, I opened the closet. The first dress Julian ever bought me was still hanging there. I'd worn it for three years and never had the heart to throw it away. I folded it and stuffed it into a bag, then dug the pearl earrings out of my dresser drawer. He'd bought them with his first bonus and promised he'd get me something new every anniversary after that. Three anniversaries had come and gone since. That pair of earrings was still the only gift I'd ever gotten. Chapter 2 Three days later, Julian showed up at my door with cream puffs from my favorite place. He set the bag down on the coffee table and sat across from me. "My mom made that call on the spot that day. I had no idea she was going to announce it in front of everyone." "Except your mother told me it was you who couldn't bring yourself to say it, and she was just speaking for you. Was that on the spot too?" He froze. "My mom talked to you?" I nodded, holding his gaze. "She told me to go find someone decent and get married, not waste my life. So how much longer do you need me to wait?" He went quiet for a moment. "Just give me a little more time." "How much time? Would three years be enough?" He looked up at me, a pleading look in his eyes. "Camille's family's business is tied up with ours in too many ways. I can't just cut ties overnight. I need you to hang on a little longer." In the end, I didn't say anything at all. The next day, as if nothing had happened, he asked me to come along to a dinner with an important client. It was work, after all. I didn't bring up the day before. But when we got to the private room, Camille was already there, sitting right beside him. He introduced me to the table. "This is Vera Hart, from my company. She handles copywriting and strategy." All through dinner, Camille kept serving him food and refilling his glass. He peeled shrimp for her without a second thought, the motion so easy it looked like he'd done it hundreds of times. Only then did he seem to remember I was there. He turned to me. "Vera, take notes on today's key points so I can send them to the departments when we're back." I pulled out my phone and opened a notes app. Camille murmured to him, "Ms. Hart is so dedicated — she doesn't even stop working to eat." He smiled. "That's just how she is. She's very thorough." Not once, the entire evening, did he call me his girlfriend. When dinner ended, Camille stood up, and Julian helped her into her coat. Then he turned to me. "Vera, go get the car started. I'll walk Camille to the door." I went and pulled the car around to the entrance. He and Camille stood talking on the steps, her hand tugging at his sleeve, her smile sweet as sugar. Someone walking past remarked, "Mr. Whitmore and his wife make such a lovely couple," and he laughed along with it. Only after Camille was gone did he get in the car. I sat gripping the wheel, engine off. "Why didn't you introduce me as your girlfriend back there?" "It wasn't the right setting. Camille was there." "So I played your secretary again." "That was just for tonight." I turned to look at him. "Julian, I've been at your side for three years. I went from your girlfriend to a waitress, from a waitress to a secretary. What's next?" He frowned and said nothing. Neither of us spoke the rest of the way. When I dropped him off at his building, he caught my hand before getting out. "Vera, you have to know — you're the only one in my heart. She's nothing more than a name on paper." I told him to get out, then drove off. In the rearview mirror, he stood at the entrance to his building. He didn't come after me. I suddenly remembered the winter we first got together — him running a fever, waiting for me outside my dorm with a cup of hot chocolate in his hands. The Julian from back then would never have made me wait forty minutes. Would never have sent me in through a side door. Would never have made me pretend to be just a coworker at a business dinner. I couldn't even remember when exactly he'd started to change. That weekend, I went to the mall by myself and spotted them at a restaurant on the fourth floor. A couples' set meal sat between them. Camille scooped up a spoonful of dessert and held it up to his mouth. He leaned in and took it, then laughed and dabbed at the corner of her lips with a napkin. I stood behind the railing, remembering how he'd told me last week he had to work overtime that weekend. So that was what "working overtime" meant. I didn't go over. I turned and stepped onto the escalator, riding it down one step at a time, my heart sinking right along with it. So he was perfectly capable of being tender with someone in public. That someone just wasn't me. Chapter 3 That night, I went alone to a dinner with a few of Julian's mutual friends. I asked, offhand, "Do you guys know Camille Sinclair?" The table went quiet. Nobody answered. Watching their faces, it hit me — everyone already knew he had a fiancée. Someone, oblivious to the tension, filled the silence. "Sure, Julian's fiancée." Another friend chimed in. "He told us you were his girlfriend, even with his family pushing this arrangement on him — we all thought that was pretty sweet, honestly." "Sweet?" "His family lined up a fiancée who checks every box, and he's still spending time on you? That takes something." My hands curled into fists. A cold feeling spread through me. "He has a fiancée, and he still let me be his girlfriend. That's called lying." Someone let out a scoffing laugh. "Camille doesn't even seem to mind you're around. What is there for you to fight for?" "Vera, you have to understand — she came first, and you came after. To put it bluntly, you're more like the—" The sentence cut off, and the table went silent. But I could still see it in their eyes — that flicker of pity mixed with the thrill of watching a scene unfold. "Vera, don't overthink it." I couldn't make out anything else that was said. By the time I came back to myself, I was already outside the diner. The next day was the anniversary of my mother's death, so I took the day off. I bought a bouquet of calla lilies — her favorite when she was alive — and went to the cemetery. When I got there, a bouquet was already sitting in front of the headstone. Calla lilies too, still fresh, the dew not even dried. A card was tucked into the flowers. I opened it and found it had been written by Camille. "Ma'am, I'm Julian's fiancée. I've heard you hated homewreckers more than anything. Don't worry — I'll make sure Vera stays on the right path from now on." My mother had hated homewreckers more than anything, her whole life. The year my father took up with another woman, she'd held me in the kitchen and cried through the entire night. The next morning, she wiped her eyes and said only one thing to me, "Vera, a person needs to have some backbone." She never forgave my father, not even on her deathbed. And now someone was standing at her grave, using her dying wish to humiliate her own daughter. "Mom, I'm not the other woman. They lied to me for three years." That night, I told Julian everything and asked, "How did she even know where my mother's grave is?" "I happened to be busy that day, so she went and paid her respects for me." "You sent her to my mother's grave? As what, exactly?" Something weary flickered across his face. "I didn't think it through." "Julian, you let another woman visit my mother's grave?" "She told my mother she's your fiancée. What do you think that makes my mom think?" He sighed and rubbed his temple with one hand — a gesture I'd seen a hundred times, always right before he lost patience with me. "Vera, it's always about her with you. Can we just not talk about her for once?" His voice had gone flat and heavy, like he was already sick of the whole conversation. I looked at him and, for the first time, he felt like a stranger. My hands curled into fists, and my voice came out hoarse. "I'm giving you one month. That's the last of it. Either you go public with our relationship, or I'm gone." He caught sight of my reddened eyes, went still for a second, then nodded. "Okay." For that whole month, he acted like we'd fallen right back into the honeymoon phase. He'd even hand me his phone on his own and say, "Look — nothing on here." Then one day, I got off work early and went to meet him at his office so we could get dinner together. His car was parked out front. Camille was just stepping out of the passenger seat. He reached over and wiped a tear from her cheek, then pulled her gently into his arms. I stood across the street and watched him rest his hand on her back, patting it softly, twice. That night, he came home with flowers. "Nothing much going on at work today, so I came to see you early." I didn't take them. "I went by your office this afternoon. I saw you hugging Camille." "She was upset. I was just comforting her." "Comforting her required hugging her?" "Vera, I'm working on sorting things out between us." "You've been sorting it out for three years. And what do we have to show for it?" The second I said it, he flung the flowers to the ground. "Do you have to make a scene every time? You think I'm not exhausted? I run back and forth between you two every single day, managing everyone. You think this is easy for me?" "So I'm just supposed to wait?" "You want an answer right now, is that it?" I nodded. His eyes darkened, his chest rising and falling. "Fine. I'll tell you right now. I can't give you one." The room went suddenly silent. Even he looked stunned by his own words. "Vera, that's not what I meant—" That night, I moved into the guest room. He didn't stop me. Lying there, I thought back to the first time I'd gone home with him, three years ago. Back then, I'd believed that if I just waited long enough, my turn would eventually come. Now I understood — some lines don't run on a first-come, first-served basis. And I was never even on the list to begin with. Chapter 4 Before my mother died, she left me the key to the old house. It was the only thing she'd left me — and my one permanent fallback if everything else fell apart. Three years ago, I'd given that key to Julian for safekeeping. I texted him asking for it back, and it took a long time before he finally called. "I used it for something. Don't be mad." "What did you do?" "Camille said she liked the location of the old house — wants to build a studio there. I gave her the key so she could take a look." "What gives you the right to send her to my mother's house?" "Just to look. If it works for her, she wants to buy it. She's offering a good price." I didn't say anything to him. I called Camille directly. "Give the key back." She laughed on the other end. "Vera, what's the rush? I only went to look. Julian said the house is just sitting there empty anyway, so I might as well buy it." "That's my house. Not his." "You gave him the key, though. Legally speaking, that's authorization. But don't worry, I'm not actually interested in your house. Since Julian and I both happen to be here right now, you're welcome to come get it." She hung up. I caught the last bus of the night back to my hometown. The door of the old house stood open when I arrived, every light on inside. I walked in and found the place in ruins. The walls had been torn open, the floorboards pried up, and the furniture dragged out into a heap in the courtyard. The art print my mother had pasted on the wall hung half-torn, dangling loose. The potted amaryllis I'd kept on the windowsill lay shattered on the floor, dirt scattered everywhere. It had been my mother's favorite plant — she'd made me promise to take care of it before she died. I crouched down and started picking up the broken pieces, one by one. Camille stood in the middle of the living room, Julian beside her. "What gives you the right to tear my house apart?" Camille leaned in closer to him. "Vera, this place is too run down. Julian and I talked it over — we're just helping you fix it up. "Besides, is this house even under your name yet? Your mother passed, and you never finished the transfer, did you?" She crouched down, pinched up a broken leaf of the amaryllis, and tossed it aside as she stood back up. "The flowers your mother grew are just like you — pretty to look at, and completely useless." I got to my feet, fury surging through me, and slapped her across the face before I could stop myself. She staggered back, hand pressed to her cheek, and bumped into Julian, tears springing to her eyes instantly. Julian shoved me away, hard. I stumbled and fell backward onto the concrete just outside the doorway. My palm scraped into a pile of loose gravel and started to bleed. My knee split open too. He stood over Camille, shielding her, and looked down at me, his voice cold. "What's wrong with you? Have you lost your mind? Why did you touch her? Take it out on me if you want. Camille cried behind him, hands over her face. I sat on the ground and looked up at him. My palm and knee throbbed, a fine, spreading pain that made my whole body shake. But watching him plant himself between me and Camille, I suddenly stopped feeling any of it. I got up off the ground, looked at him once, and turned to walk away. I bought a train ticket to a small town down south. As the train pulled out, the sky outside the window was just beginning to lighten. I leaned back against my seat and closed my eyes. All I could think of was my mother's hand in mine, on her deathbed, and the words she'd said. Don't waste your life on someone who makes you wait. The next day, when Julian showed up at my apartment, the door happened to be open, with the cleaning lady inside tidying up. He froze. "Where's the tenant who lived here?" "Moved out. Ended the lease yesterday." He stood in the doorway and realized the apartment was already empty. A bag sat on the coffee table, holding most of the things he'd ever given me. He reached for it and found a note pinned to it. Just three words. "Congratulations to you." He clutched the note, and his hand began to shake.