My Fiancé Missed Our Courthouse Wedding for the Third Time—So I Canceled the Real One and Left
PART ONE
THE THIRD TIME HE LEFT ME WAITING
The third time I sat alone in the waiting area outside the Marriage Court in downtown Chicago, the digital clock on the wall changed to 4:57 p.m.
A few weeks earlier, Ethan Reed and I had gone together to the Cook County Clerk’s office and obtained our marriage license. All we had to do that afternoon was stand before a judge, say a few words, sign the necessary documents, and allow the court to certify our marriage.
The ceremony should have taken less than fifteen minutes.
Instead, I had spent nearly the entire day beneath the same humming fluorescent light, watching other couples arrive nervous and leave smiling.
The clerk at the front desk had already begun straightening her papers. The security officer near the elevator was putting on his coat. Outside the tall courthouse windows, the late-afternoon light had turned the buildings along Washington Street the color of cold steel.
A woman who had brought me water twice came around the counter and stopped beside my chair.
“Miss Bennett,” she said gently, “the judge is about to finish the final ceremony of the day.”
She hesitated before asking the question both of us already knew the answer to.
“Is Mr. Reed still coming?”
I looked down at my phone.
Ethan’s last message had arrived at 9:12 that morning.
Leaving the lab now. Twenty minutes away.
Our apartment in Lincoln Park was twenty minutes from the courthouse on a good day. Even with Chicago traffic, a construction delay, and every red light along Lake Shore Drive, it did not take nearly eight hours.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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