I Fled My Wedding and Got into My Ex-Boyfriend's Car

[The story is very short and almost finished. I'll start updating once it reaches 300 favorites!]

A well-behaved girl who is great at running away x the good ex-boyfriend she left behind

Reunion with an old flame / road trip escape / bittersweet healing / parting and reunion

At her wedding, one second before saying "I do," Yu Jiayou suddenly regretted it.

After more than twenty years of being a well-behaved girl, she finally did the thing that would embarrass her parents most: she ran away from her own wedding.

The woman in the wedding dress dashed out of the hall and, in a panic, opened a car door and climbed inside.

Their eyes met.

Her driver was Li Mingyuan, her ex-boyfriend, whom she hadn't seen in years.

The student her parents had once dismissed as "from out of town, no house, no future" was now a university teacher.

Li Mingyuan looked at her without a word.

Yu Jiayou scratched her head. "What a coincidence. Fate sure works in mysterious ways."

Li Mingyuan: "It's not a coincidence. It's the navigation system."

Yu Jiayou: "You're still just as much of a buzzkill. Would it kill you to be romantic?"

Li Mingyuan: "You run away from your wedding and climb into your ex's car, and you want romance?"

She had no answer.

A moment later, she said quietly, "Can you take me away? Please. Anywhere is fine."

Li Mingyuan looked at her for a long time, then pointed to the black bag in the back seat:

"I'm driving back to my hometown. Five hundred kilometers."

"No problem. I'll go too."

"There's an urn in the car."

Yu Jiayou's face went pale.

"My mother's ashes."

The car fell silent for a moment.

At last, Yu Jiayou fastened her seat belt and said softly:

"Let's go. It's not like I have anywhere else to go..."

And so, Li Mingyuan's car, carrying his mother's ashes and a woman in a wedding dress, drove out of the city.

Before they left, he told her:

"Yu Jiayou, if you don't want to marry him, I'll help you this once."

"But if you just remembered me, that's not fair."

*

For the five-hundred-kilometer drive, Yu Jiayou sat in the passenger seat of Li Mingyuan's car, still wearing her wedding dress.

Her phone vibrated nonstop the whole way. He didn't curse anyone out on her behalf or urge her to turn back. He just drove on in silence.

It wasn't until the day she saw his mother laid to rest that Yu Jiayou learned the truth.

The year they broke up, Li Mingyuan had lost his mother, too.

That night, he drank too much and, for the first time in front of her, his eyes reddened.

"When my mom was sick, she kept asking why you hadn't come."

He smiled.

"I told her you were busy."

"But I already knew then that you weren't coming."

*

It was a long time later that Yu Jiayou learned the truth.

He'd lied when he said he was just passing through.

Li Mingyuan hadn't planned to stop the wedding, and he never meant to make her turn back.

He only wanted to see what she looked like in a wedding dress.

To see whether she was happy after choosing the path everyone approved of.

If she was, he would leave,

never looking back.

Theme: Companionship is the longest-lasting declaration of love