Chapter 1: Prologue

Here I am, surrounded by my closest friends, and they don't know me at all. They think they know me, but they have no idea who I am. If they knew my past, they might not want to be my friends any longer. After everything, I don't think I could live with that. These four girls are my life now, even if they don't know it. But I still don't know how much I can tell them – if I can tell, or if I should tell them.

They aren't stupid, so they must know something is wrong. But they have no idea how wrong it is. Every time they ask about Brad, I tell them he is working. We used to attend Tae Kwon Do classes together faithfully, so of course they were surprised when he stopped showing up. They had no reason to question me, except that now it's been almost a year since they have seen him.

Right now I am just concentrating on Natalie & Justin; although they are starting to look a little blurry. He is proposing to her right now in the middle of their Tae Kwon Do test, and it is so romantic. They really are perfect together.

"Natalie, you are everything to me. Will you marry me?" Justin just asked.

"Yes," Natalie replied, tears streaming down her face. I just realized that my vision is not going bad, I'm crying too. I didn't realize how emotional I would get when Justin told us he had the proposal all arranged with Master Lee.

I hope they grow old together - unlike Brad & me. But I am not going to think of that now. I am thinking happy thoughts. Even the recent confusion and panic between Natalie & Justin were nothing. Just a simple misunderstanding, which we will all be laughing about as soon as the test is over. We couldn't tell her that the reason he was sneaking around behind her back was to buy her ring.

Of course, my laughter will be short lived. Once I go back to my empty house, the joy will be over. Everything that could remind me of him is long since gone, except of course the things I can't remove…yet.

Hopefully my friends will forgive me when they learn the secret I have been keeping from them. I didn't want to tell them at first because I couldn't believe it myself. I kept thinking that there must be a way to fix this, but I know there is nothing to be done. It would be easy to give in, but things would never go back to normal. I couldn't live with myself if I let…

No, I must accept the fact that Brad is gone and he's not coming back. Not if I can prevent it.

_ Author's Note: An update may take a few days since I need to do some research to make sure the details of this story are in line with "A TKD Story", but please leave me a review if you are interested in reading this story so I know I should continue. Thanks!