I spent years defending my blind fiancé from people who thought he was a burden. I believed love meant loyalty, no matter the cost. The morning of our wedding, I walked into his hotel room and discovered I’d been protecting a lie.
I met my fiancé during my first year of university.
The lecture hall was always loud before class started.
Chairs scraping against linoleum, and people shouted to friends three rows back like they were at a concert instead of Statistics 101.
But Chris was never part of that.
He was the quiet one who sat three seats away from everyone else and wore sunglasses indoors.
People naturally avoided the space around him like there was an invisible barrier nobody wanted to cross.
That’s why I noticed him, oddly enough. He was never the center of attention, and that stood out to me.
It sparked my curiosity, I guess, and that was my downfall.
People talked around him, never to him, and he seemed fine with that. He never looked around the class to see what everyone was up to.
Every day, he took the same seat, facing forward, head tilted slightly, like he was listening harder than everyone else in that room.
After class one day, I found him walking slowly down the corridor, back straight, measured steps.
“Hey,” I said.
He stopped immediately and turned toward me. “Hi?”
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly.
“I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“You didn’t.” His voice was easy. Warm. “I heard you coming.”
“Heard me coming?
Okay…”
He smiled. “I’m blind.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. I was born this way.
If I suddenly got to see tomorrow, I’d probably panic.”
I laughed, then I felt bad for laughing, and apologized again. Not a great introduction, but it turned out that it didn’t matter to him.
We walked out together that day, and every day afterward.
We got to know each other over coffee at the cute coffee shop near campus and lunches in the cafeteria.
Never in all that time did I suspect he was lying through his teeth.
“What are your plans for spring break?” I asked one day. “Are you going back home?”
He smiled like I’d asked something amusing.
“What?”
I thought that was another of his jokes, but it wasn’t.
He sighed.
“My parents didn’t stick around once they found out I was blind.”
He said it the way someone might say they missed a bus. I got the uneasy feeling he’d told this story hundreds of times and figured out exactly how to make it hurt less.
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