CHAPTER
SEVEN: The Second Meeting (Four Months Before the Wedding)
Maya met Rachel again the following week.
This time, Rachel suggested a walk in the park
near her office. It was a crisp autumn day, leaves crunching under their feet,
the sky a perfect, cloudless blue.
"I've
been thinking about what you said," Rachel began, glancing at Maya.
"About your work. About how you help people celebrate their happiest
moments. It must be strange, being surrounded by love all the time. Watching
other people find their happiness while you're just... facilitating."
"It can
be lonely, actually," Maya admitted. "You're helping other people
find their happiness, and sometimes you forget to look for your own. You spend
so much time making other people's dreams come true that you stop dreaming for
yourself."
Rachel nodded slowly.
"I know that feeling. I was so focused on my career for so
long that I didn't realize I was lonely until I met someone who made me feel
less alone. Someone who made me feel seen."
Maya's heart
raced. "Someone special?"
"His
name was Leo." Rachel smiled, but it was a sad smile. "We were
engaged. I thought he was the one. But..." She paused, kicking a leaf off
the path. "He had a lot of walls up. He wouldn't let me in. He kept me at
arm's length, always. And I got tired of trying to break them down. I got tired
of fighting for someone who wouldn't fight for himself."
Maya forced
herself to ask the question she'd been dying to ask. "Do you still think
about him?"
Rachel
stopped walking. She looked at Maya with an expression that was difficult to
read—curious, almost suspicious.
"Sometimes,"
Rachel admitted. "But not because I still love him. Because I wonder if he
ever learned to be honest. I wonder if he ever found someone who made him feel
safe enough to take the walls down. I wonder if he ever grew up."
Maya's
throat tightened. "Do you think he did?"
Rachel
studied her for a long moment. Then she said, softly, "I don't know. But I
hope so. Everyone deserves that—a second chance, a real chance, at love. Even
Leo."
They walked
in silence for a while. Maya's mind was racing. Rachel didn't still love Leo.
She wasn't a threat. She was just a woman who had been hurt and had moved on. A
woman who had healed.
*But Leo
hadn't moved on,* Maya realized. *He was still hiding. Still scared. Still
carrying the guilt of losing her. Still stuck in the same patterns that had
cost him Rachel.*
And Maya was
carrying the weight of knowing all of it.
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