She's happy.

He loved her. He kept thinking it to himself over and over. “Holy shit, I really love this woman.” She was rambling on about getting cut off on the freeway yet again, and how LA is such a horrible city which she would never even think of moving away from. And while he was simultaneously thinking, “This is pretty much the most annoying conversation I’ve ever had in my life” along with “Since we’re in traffic, it wouldn’t hurt that bad to throw her out of the car would it?” He also thought, “My God, she is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”
He had wanted to tell her for years. Boyfriend after boyfriend, asshole after asshole, and he was there right beside her for all of it. But she would never see him that way. They were best friends, and she always reassured him that this meant more to her than any other relationship she had ever had or would ever have. He knew she loved him, there was no way that he couldn’t know that. But she didn’t love him the way he wanted, no needed, her to. He felt nervous every time she walked into a room, much less held him or lay with him on a couch when either one of them were feeling down. He ached every time he saw her with someone else or even heard of her being with someone else. And yet, he did nothing. After three years of torture, the inexorable aching within him did not abate. It became a pain that he had grown accustomed to, accepted, and almost felt comfortable with and insecure without. “She can never know” was also a constant thought in his mind. “It will just ruin everything” was another.
And so, he left. She did not want him and he knew it. She would never see him the way he always saw her. She would fall in love again, with someone else, and he could not take sitting back and watching her do so one more time. He let her go, and resolved that though he would be in constant anguish for the rest of his life, at least he knew that she’d be happy. He was gone merely one year, and upon his return, he was to attend her engagement party. A man named Jim, or John, or even Jacob for all he knew or cared to know.
She opened the door of her parents’ house in which the party would take place. He looked up at her. She had never looked at him that way before, it was a look he was not familiar with, and he was certain he had not forgotten a single one of her faces that he constantly thought about. A tear streamed down her right cheek, she gave a half smile, and fell into his arms sobbing. He held her close, smelling her neck, stroking her hair, becoming intoxicated with everything about her. She whispered in his ear, “It should be you I’m marrying,” wiped her eyes and led him into the house with a smile. A million thoughts ran through his head, had she always known? Did she love him too? Why would she say such a thing? Does she even love this Jim John Jacob man?
But inside the house stood the Jim John Jacob man, who’s name was actually Dean. Dean kissed the love both their lives, and just like that the hope that she had placed in his heart was struck down by the familiar aching within him. “She looks happy” he thought, “just like I knew she would.”