"Why is he taking this long? We already agreed. Ten o'clock. Ten o'clock."
She whispered it under her breath like a quiet reprimand — not to anyone around her, just to the air, just to herself. Her fingers traced the face of her watch for what felt like the hundredth time. The hands hadn't moved in her favor. It was twelve minutes past noon, and Daniella Montenegro had been sitting on that hard wooden bench for two full hours.
Two hours of watching strangers live their happiest moments.
Couples drifted in and out of the Civil Registration Office like something out of a film she wasn't cast in. They walked through the glass doors clutching each other's hands, giddy with nerves and anticipation, and they walked back out transformed — laughing, crying, kissing, holding certificates like treasure maps. Even the ones who came in looking solemn and worn — the couples finalizing divorces — at least left with resolution. With something.
Daniella had nothing. Not yet.
She sat with her ankles crossed, her small hands folded neatly in her lap, painfully aware of how out of place she looked. Her dress was white — simple cotton, modest hemline falling just below the knee — paired with dark ankle boots she had polished herself the night before. No lace. No veil. No train trailing behind her like a declaration. Around her, women floated past in structured gowns with sweetheart necklines and satin gloves, their hair pinned and sprayed into perfection. Daniella had brushed hers out this morning and twisted a few strands back with a clip she found in her nightstand drawer.
She hadn't planned to look like a bride.
She had only planned to become a wife.
"Number twenty — Daniella Montenegro and Carlos Eduardo —"
The clerk's voice rang through the hall with the casual efficiency of someone announcing a bus departure, not a marriage. Daniella's head snapped up. Her heart lurched forward before her body did.
She stood. Smoothed the front of her dress. Looked toward the entrance.
No Carlos.
The glass doors were still. No familiar silhouette cutting through the afternoon light. No breathless apology. No sound of rushed footsteps. Nothing but the mechanical hum of air conditioning and the distant shuffle of other people's joy.
She reached into her bag and pulled out her phone — small and old, the screen scratched at one corner — and pressed his name. It rang once. Twice.
"The number you are trying to reach is currently busy. Please try again later."
She pulled the phone from her ear and stared at it. Busy. His phone was busy. Which meant he was somewhere, alive, conscious, and choosing not to answer.
Or — and her stomach turned at the thought — he had switched it off entirely.
Did he lie to her?
The question surfaced slowly, like something rising from dark water. She pushed it back down. She wasn't ready to look at it yet.
She tried again. Same response. The mechanical voice felt almost cruel in its cheerfulness — polite and unbothered, delivering devastation in the same flat tone it used for everything else.
"Number twenty —" The clerk called again, patient but firm.
Daniella walked to the front on steadier legs than she deserved. The clerk — a middle-aged woman with reading glasses perched low on her nose — looked up with mild curiosity. Something about Daniella's expression must have said everything, because the woman's eyes softened almost imperceptibly.