Chapter 3

The next few weeks were a blur of quiet pain.

I avoided town events, changed my route to the library to avoid passing Mark' s house.

But this was a small town.

News traveled fast, carried on whispers and sympathetic glances.

I heard Mark was showering Tiffany with attention.

He drove her everywhere in his dad' s beat-up Ford, which he suddenly kept meticulously clean.

He bought her flowers, a small, silly teddy bear from the county fair.

Things he' d never done for me, not even in the early days of our first life.

Back then, our dates were walks by the river, sharing a coke at the diner.

He' d always said he wasn' t the "flowers and fancy stuff" kind of guy.

Apparently, for Tiffany, he was.

Mrs. Henderson from next door told Mom over the fence, her voice laced with pity, "That Mark, he' s like a new man with Tiffany. So attentive. He even fixed her porch swing!"

I remembered my own porch swing in our past life, sagging for years because Mark was always "too busy" or "too tired" to fix it.

It was another small stab, a confirmation of the ugly truth forming in my mind.

He wasn' t just choosing Tiffany in this life.

He was showing me, in a hundred tiny ways, how little I had truly meant in the last one.

One afternoon, I was at the diner where Mom worked, waiting for her shift to end.

I was sketching in my notebook, trying to lose myself in a new song.

The bell above the door jingled, and in walked Tiffany, followed by Mark.

My stomach clenched.

They didn' t see me, tucked away in a booth at the back.

They sat at the counter, laughing, Mark' s arm casually draped around Tiffany' s shoulders.

She ordered a strawberry milkshake, her favorite.

He ordered a black coffee, just like he always did.

Some things, it seemed, didn' t change.

Tiffany was talking animatedly about something, her hands gesturing.

She accidentally knocked her napkin holder, sending napkins fluttering to the floor.

"Oh, clumsy me!" she giggled.

Mark immediately bent down, picking them up, his smile indulgent.

"No problem, babe," he said.

Babe. He' d never called me babe. It was always Sarah, or sometimes, Sar.

Then, Tiffany leaned over to whisper something in his ear, and as she did, a little bit of her milkshake dripped from her straw onto Mark' s new polo shirt.

"Oh my gosh, Mark, I' m so sorry!" she exclaimed, dabbing at it with a napkin. "Your shirt!"

Mark just chuckled. "Don't worry about it, Tiff. It's just a shirt."

He looked at her with such open affection it made my chest ache.

Then his eyes flickered past her, towards the back of the diner, and for a split second, they met mine.

There was no recognition. No guilt. Just a brief, dismissive glance.

Then he turned back to Tiffany, all smiles again.

But a moment later, as Tiffany was in the restroom, Mark walked towards my booth.

My heart hammered. Was he going to say something? Acknowledge me?

He stopped at my table.

"Sarah," he said, his voice flat.

"Mark," I replied, trying to keep my own voice steady.

"I saw you looking," he said, his tone accusatory. "You got a problem with me and Tiffany?"

I was stunned. "What? No, I just..."

"Because if you do, you can keep it to yourself," he cut me off. "Tiffany' s a great girl. She doesn' t need any drama from you."

Drama from me? I hadn' t said a word.

"I wasn' t causing any drama, Mark," I said, my voice barely a whisper.

He sneered. "Right. Look, just stay out of our way, okay?"

Before I could respond, Tiffany returned, smiling.

"Ready to go, Mark?"

His face instantly softened. "Yeah, babe. Let's go."

He gave me one last hard look before turning his back and walking out with her, his arm once again possessively around her shoulders.

I sat there, trembling slightly, the encounter replaying in my mind.

He didn't just not love me. He actively disliked me, saw me as a threat.

The realization was like a cold stone in my stomach.

The Mark I knew, or thought I knew, was truly gone.

Or maybe, he was never really there at all.