I married my best friend’s wealthy grandfather for financial security—and on our wedding night, he looked at me and said, “Now that you’re my wife… I can finally tell you the truth.” I was never the pretty one. Not at school. Not anywhere. The kind of girl people look at unless they’re laughing. An awkward smile, uncomfortable posture, always slightly out of place—too quiet or too much at the wrong moment. By high school, I had accepted it—no one was ever going to fall in lo …

I was always the type of girl that was overlooked unless someone needed a target to make fun of. As a kid, you develop a sense for recognizing cruel intentions. By the time I was sixteen, I could laugh off any insult thrown at me by giving the impression that it didn’t sting because I did so in the nick of time. I knew how to tune out the suffocating cloak of pity from the school faculty and fool myself into believing that my loneliness was a matter of choice and not necessity.

But then Violet appeared in the picture.

She sat beside me in my chemistry class sophomore year, a cyclone of fancy perfumes and pure sunshine. Everything she did, including being nice to others, was deliberate. She did not act out of pity or the idea of making over some “fixer-upper” project. Rather, she just happened to be beautifully breathtaking, moving through life as if it was made especially for her enjoyment.