Zara was gone.

She took a taxi back to the house and by the time we got home she was nowhere to be found. She had said goodbye to my parents and left a letter for Harley, who kept on telling me that maybe it wasn't too late. Maybe she was still in the city. Maybe I could go and win her back as they did in the movies. But this wasn't a movie. This was real life, and I had already made my decision. And it was only now that she was gone that I feared I had made the wrong decision.

I couldn't sleep the whole night. Wondering where she was now. Wondering how she was doing and whether she was right about my feelings. I started questioning myself and my decisions. Was I really being a coward by not acknowledging my true feelings for Zara? But I didn't know if I had feelings for her, or maybe I was just afraid to admit that I did.

Because I did.

****

It was the wedding day.

I was dressed in a suit and tie, all made up in the men's room with Reed and my other groomsmen.

"You ready?" Reed asked me.

"Oh... yeah," I answered, but I was only halfway present. No matter how hard I tried to tell myself that I had made the right decision both my heart and my head told me otherwise.

When the ceremony was about to begin, I made my way to the large hall, walking down the aisle to stand and wait for my bride. The venue was magnificent, but I barely noticed. There were so many people, but I barely noticed that either. I barely noticed the dry tears marks on Harley's face or the solemn expressions on my parent's faces. Barely registered the disappointment on Reed's face and the way Bridget kept glancing around in the crowd as if waiting for someone to appear.

I barely noticed Jess emerge from the double doors and walk down the aisle as the classic 'here comes the bride' song played in the background. I was barely present when Mr Green handed me his daughter to take as my wife. I wasn't present for any of it. And even as the priest started speaking, all I could think about was Zara. Zara this, Zara that, and the way I wished that Zara was the one dressed in this white gown. I wished Zara was—

"Elliot?" Jess said, knocking me out of my thoughts.

"Huh?"

Jess looked at the priest, signalling for him to repeat what he had said, so he did.

"Elliot Fraid, do you take this woman to be your wife, to live together in holy matrimony, to love her, to honour her, to..."

The priests' words faded to nothing as my mind wandered to the first time I met Zara. The first time our eyes met, separated by the distance between our two vehicles, her hair whipping around in the wind. The first time we interacted and she started awkwardly rambling, saying weird yet amusing facts about herself. The time she had to hold on to me on the jet ski and the way I tried to ignore the way her proximity made me feel. It was like everything about her—her competitiveness, her awkwardness, her love for her friends—drew me closer to her. And once I was hooked she kept reeling me in, and now I realised that she had been the centre of my attention and my thoughts since the beginning.

Zara was fun to be around. She was smart and weird and funny. She was cute and different and crazy. She had the best laugh and she was perfect in the most imperfect way. She was herself, and I liked her like that... I loved her like that.

Before I met Zara, I didn't know what it was like to look at someone and smile for no reason. Even the dumb things she said and did made me smile. I was never in love with Jess, and I wouldn't have realised what true love felt like if I hadn't met Zara.

But I had let her go. I loved her, and I'd let her go.

"...for as long as you both shall live?" I heard the priest finish.

His attention was on me, as was Jess', as was the whole congregation's. But my attention and thoughts and heart belonged to Zara. They always had, and they always would.

"I...do not," I said, and the whole congregation gasped. There were so many people that their gasps echoed throughout the whole auditorium. "I'm sorry, but I'm in love with someone else."

"Yes!" Harley jumped from her seat and my parents immediately pulled her down, but I saw the slight smiles on their faces. My mom winked at me, and that was all the strength I needed.

"I'm sorry, Jess."

And with that, I released her hands and ran down the aisle. Hurriedly removing my phone from my pocket, I opened the tracking app and tracked the location of Zara's phone. I wasn't surprised to see that she was in her city.

I rushed into my car and didn't hesitate before speeding away.

Three hours. She was three hours away, but she was still here, and I was going to do whatever it took to win her back.

****

I parked my car outside the familiar parking lot before booking towards the door, knocking incessantly. Finally, a familiar blond-haired lady opened the door. Serena's mother.

"Elliot?" She asked.

"Zara, is she here?"

"Well, wouldn't you like to know?" demanded a red-haired lady. Ally's mother. "Our poor girl came here in tears telling us what had happened."

It broke me so hard to know that I had made her cry, that I had been the reason for that sadness.

Faizah's mother appeared then, "why are you here?"

"I made a mistake," I confessed.

"Of course, you made a mistake," Serena's mother shook her head. "You made a big mistake by breaking Zara's heart."

"I know, but please, I need to make things right."

"It's too late," Ally's mother said. "She's gone."

"Gone? But..." I looked down at my phone. "The GPS says she's right here."

"So that was how you found her the first time, you had put a tracker in her phone," Faizah's mother said. "I knew it."

"And Zara did too, which was why she left her phone here with us," Serena's mother said, taking Zara's phone out of her pocket and showing it to me. "She's gone, Elliot."

"Gone?" Panic started surging through me and I had to tell myself to breathe. This wasn't the end, this couldn't be the end. "Gone where?"

"She only came here for her belongings and to collect her ID and passport" Faizah's mother informed me.

"And Jeffrey," Serena's mother added on the side.

"She did, however, tell us that if you ever came looking for her, to tell you that she wishes you happiness with your marriage," Ally's mother told me. "But judging by the fact that you look like a runaway groom, her wishes aren't going to come true."

"No, they won't, because I can't be happy without her," I told them, blinking back the burning in my eyes and cursing myself for realising this so late.

I loved her. I loved Zara. I loved her so much that I could proclaim it on the rooftops. She had told me she loved me and I had just frozen, too afraid to tell her that I loved her too.

"So please, do you know where she is?"

"She's probably on the plane by now," Faizah's mother looked at her watch.

"Plane?!"

"She said that she couldn't trust herself living only three hours away from you," Serena's mother said. "And that she wanted to start a new life someplace else."

"Where?"

"That's the problem, Elliot," Serena's mother sighed. "She didn't tell us."

"She said she would visit us as often as she could. But she knew that if she told us where she was going we would hunt you down and force you to go to her," Faizah's mother told me. "And she wasn't wrong, we would have been the ones banging on your door if we had known where she was going."

"Maybe if you someone hadn't insisted that she go back and fight until her last breath for him, she would have told us where she was going," Ally's mother accused, looking pointedly at Serena's mother.

"She might be gone," Serena's mother said, ignoring Ally's mother's remark. "But she might not be. You can try to catch her at the airport."

"And you better not break her heart again, because I'm not afraid of going to jail," Ally's mother warned.

I thanked them before rushing to my car and plotting the only airport in the city into my GPS. It said it would take 15 minutes to get there.

15 minutes to get to Zara.