There's something to be said for the other man.
Not the "other man" who she sees when her husband is busy, or the "other man" whose name makes her flush. No, as far as her affections were concerned, that would never be him.
He was the other man because that was all he could be. A false lead. A blind alley. A brief distraction. A relationship seen as doomed by all but her and… the first man.
The leading man. The frontrunner. During their relationship, he had been "the other man," except that he wasn't… there was nothing "other" about him.
Why? Certainly not compatibility - they had had plenty of that. Not for a lack of class - he and his rival had been at a similar disadvantage in that regard. Not love - he had loved her, had only wanted to make her happy, to make her his.
He saw the stares. The whispers. The furtive attempts to get them to "see the light" - to realize that as perfect as what they had was, they wanted more.
And he would never be "more." He would always be the shadow. The substitute. Destined to fail. The other man.
Upon reflection, he would admit that he had acted brashly, perhaps even cruelly. But how could he explain why? It felt as though the universe had closed in on him, a vast conspiracy thwarting him at every turn. Everyone had hated him - from her proper family to her loyal servants. They had worked against him, and even when they hadn't told her outright that she was making a mistake, he could see it in their eyes. Disapproval. Disappointment. 'Facsimile,' their eyes had said. 'Replica. Stillborn.'
He wasn't… charming enough. He wasn't perfect enough. He didn't have precedence. He wasn't there first. He was the other man.
So he had been worried, and his paranoia had helped to drive her away. He had thought her in love with another, and she was, and somehow it became his fault. He had loved her, and he had meant nothing to her.
And now he was alone. Bereft. Perhaps he would find another - but even if he did, how could he trust her? Wouldn't she just leave him too? And even if she didn't, even if she was loyal and trusting and understanding in spite of him, wouldn't that put all the affection on her side? Wouldn't that make her a substitute for the woman he loved? The other woman?
That was what had happened with his fiancée. She had loved a man who was well-liked, and charming, and perfect. He had left her, so she had looked for another. She had found him. He wished she hadn't found him. He was glad she had found him.
Of course, this was far more than he could ever put into words. Ironic, really. A newspaperman, a businessman, a man of words, incapable of expressing himself. It had been the same when he had proposed. He could've promised her the moon, but he didn't. He had felt as though he had to be direct with her. That was part of what made her perfect. She would take a straightforward proposal. She hadn't minded that he couldn't be a romantic. Or at least, that was what he'd thought.
So when he left, he tried to make himself clear. He tried to say what he felt. It came out… wrong, somehow. Everything he did around her seemed to come out wrong. Perhaps that should have indicated, more than anything else, what he felt. But he said it anyway. Because it had to be said. "I loved you, you know. More than you knew. And much much more than you loved me." It was true. That was the impossible part. Because he knew that that didn't make him a martyr. It didn't make him the hero of the piece. All it made him was a cast-aside, a detour, a scene from her life to be deleted or perhaps recalled with a pleasant laugh at youth's folly.
The other man.