They Switched My Groom—So I Kept Him Chapter 01
I’ve had face blindness my whole life. I can’t remember people’s faces.
My best friend and my boyfriend had always loved teasing me about it.
At a get-together with old classmates, Ethan once had someone dress exactly like him and made me guess which one was really him. When Sophie and I went shopping, she and Ethan would sometimes duck into fitting rooms while I wasn’t looking, swap clothes with strangers, and make me find them.
Every time, I would end up standing there helplessly, crying and begging them to stop messing with me.
Until my wedding day, just before the wedding party was supposed to leave for the hotel.
Ethan arranged for six fake grooms to show up dressed exactly like him and told me to pick out the real one.
This time, I didn’t cry.
I simply placed my hand in the palm of one of them.
They all looked the same to me anyway.
Whether I chose Ethan or someone else made no real difference.
……
I circled the six grooms once, then returned to where I’d started and placed my hand in the palm of the man standing closest to me.
Sophie, my best friend, stood off to the side in her bridesmaid dress and quietly let out a breath, as if relieved that their plan was already halfway successful.
The night before the wedding, I’d woken up in the middle of the night to get a glass of water and overheard my parents, Ethan, and Sophie holding what amounted to a family meeting in the living room.
They weren’t planning a surprise for me.
They were planning to use my wedding to give Sophie, who had always insisted she never wanted marriage or children, the grand wedding experience she’d always secretly dreamed of.
My mother had always been the one who called the shots in our family. She was the first to make a suggestion.
“Claire can’t recognize faces anyway. We can find someone built like Ethan to stand in for him during her ceremony.”
My father helped refine the idea.
“Claire’s naturally suspicious. If we make a game out of letting her choose the groom herself, swapping him out will seem perfectly natural. If she picks the wrong one, we can always blame it on her not recognizing her own husband.”
Ethan made the final decision.
“We’ll hold both weddings at the same time. When they’re over, I’ll make an excuse, switch back, and finish the official marriage paperwork with Claire. As long as the groomsman doesn’t talk, she won’t know the difference.”
Sophie didn’t object. She only asked one question.
“What if she actually picks you?”
Ethan took that seriously.
So, to make absolutely sure there was no chance of that happening, he had me choose from six groomsmen while he wasn’t even among them.
And now Sophie was lying to my face.
“Looks like the wedding planner really did pick the perfect day. Claire, your luck is incredible. You found Ethan on the first try!”
I smiled and ran my fingers over the hand I was holding.
His palm was broader than Ethan’s, and rougher too.
I had face blindness, not brain damage.
But I didn’t expose their pathetic lie.
Instead, I smiled and lightly squeezed the fake groom’s palm.
“What are you standing there for? Hurry up and carry me downstairs.”
He froze, then quickly crouched in front of me.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and settled against his broad back, waving at Sophie over his shoulder.
“We’ll head down first. You can follow us.”
When Ethan came back from the bathroom, all he saw was me being carried away on another man’s back.
His hand shot out instinctively, as if he wanted to yank me down.
Sophie grabbed his shoulder and held him back.
“Don’t forget what we planned last night.”
Ethan pulled his hand back and lowered his voice.
“The plan never said the guy she picked would carry Claire downstairs.”
Sophie released him, her face going pale.
“Then go stop her. Tell her yourself what a horrible best friend I am. Tell her I was selfish enough to steal her groom for my own wedding fantasy and leave her to marry some other man.”
Ethan sighed helplessly and wiped away her tears.
“That’s not what I meant.”
My mother immediately stepped in to smooth things over.
“All right, all right. Is something this small really worth fighting over?”
My father laughed and patted Ethan on the shoulder.
“Your mother and I love Sophie like a daughter. She’s the bride today. You shouldn’t be making her cry. If we leave now, we can still make it to Sophie’s reception hall in time.”