I felt as if I were trapped inside a long, terrible dream.

I took the two-hour flight to Melbourne.

The city felt strange and familiar at the same time. Every street seemed to carry a memory of Jamie, yet none of those memories belonged to me anymore.

All the way to the venue, I kept trying to make myself brave.

It’s fine.

The bride is only a substitute.

He still loves me.

He is only angry.

He is only waiting for me to come.

But the moment I reached the wedding venue, the fragile shell I had built around myself shattered.

Regret seized me so suddenly that I almost could not breathe.

I saw several old university friends near the entrance. I was terrified they would notice me, so I lowered my head and slipped away, choosing a seat at a table full of the bride’s friends, far from the stage.

From there, I could see Jamie.

He was smiling as he greeted friends and relatives, dressed in a suit, looking handsome and happy.

Happy.

That word hurt more than I expected.

I could not believe I was really here, sitting at his wedding, waiting to watch the person I loved hold another woman’s hand and make vows to her.

I lowered my head and pretended to scroll through Twitter and Facebook.

But my eyelids kept twitching. Tears seemed ready to fall at any moment.

Only then did I finally realise something.

I should not have come.

This was a terrible mistake.

My fingers moved without thinking and opened Jamie’s old Facebook posts.

There it was.

Queenie, you are my love.

The tears finally fell.

The wedding began soon after.

The host stood on the stage, making jokes and telling the love story of the bride and groom. Everyone laughed. Everyone clapped. Everyone seemed happy.

I did not have the strength to look up.

At that moment, I finally understood that there was no possibility between Jamie and me anymore.

My stupid pride had pushed him towards another girl.

Maybe the bride looked like me.

Maybe she really was my substitute.

But so what?

She was the one he had chosen in the end.

She was the one he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

Then the host asked, “Does the groom have anything he would like to say to the bride?”

The guests began cheering.

No one paid any attention to me.

I kept my head lowered.

Then I heard Jamie’s voice.

“Queenie, you are the love of my life!”

I lifted my head in shock.

The room burst into applause.

On the stage, the bride smiled at him, radiant as an angel.

A woman beside me sighed with emotion. “Jamie really is the most romantic man, isn’t he? Who else could wait ten years for a girl?”

Another woman at the table nodded. “Exactly. If Queenie hadn’t moved to Paris with her parents back then, they probably would have been together since high school.”

My whole body went cold.

Queenie?

I took out my phone with trembling hands and opened the wedding invitation properly for the first time.

Before this, I had only glanced at the photos. I had avoided the details, afraid that one more look would break me completely.

Now, the words on the screen stabbed into my eyes.

Welcome to Jamie and Queenie’s Wedding.

Jamie.

And Queenie.

Not Jamie and me.

Not Jamie and his substitute.

Jamie and Queenie.

I heard my own voice ask, shaking, “When did Queenie move back?”

The woman beside me looked at me curiously.

“Around a year ago,” she said. “Jamie went to the airport and confessed to her right there. It was so romantic.”

Then she paused and studied my face.

“You know,” she said slowly, “from some angles, you look a little like Queenie.”

For a moment, all the sound in the room disappeared.

The applause.

The laughter.

The music.

Everything became distant.

So that was it.

The bride was not my substitute.

I was hers.

Jamie had never wanted someone who looked like me.

All these years, he had been looking at me and seeing someone else.

He had not found a woman like me to make do with for the rest of his life.

He had found me because I looked like her.

The real Queenie.

And I…

I was Sarah.