I loved Beckett through countless springs and summers. I loved him with such quiet, reckless devotion that everyone who knew us assumed I had no other path in this life. They thought my world began and ended with him. Then, we broke up. On the first day, the campus seemed to hold its collective breath, waiting for the punchline, waiting for me to fall apart in public. By the seventh day, the whispers in the dining hall and the group chats had shifted to a betting pool: how long before I swallowed my pride, showed up on his doorstep, and begged him to take me back? Two months in, Beckett stood on the rain-slicked pavement beneath my dorm window, his frame hollowed out, knees slightly bent as if under the weight of something he couldn’t name, his hazel eyes bloodshot and raw. What he never understood—what none of them understood—was that this separation wasn’t an impulse. It wasn’t a tantrum born of heartbreak. It was a meticulous, slow-burning exit strategy. Because in this life, nobody is born loving the waiting. 01 The moment the words “We’re done” left my mouth, I moved with cold efficiency. I deleted his number, blocked him on iMessage, and severed every digital thread tying us together across Instagram and Snapchat. Yet sitting on the edge of my mattress, staring at the blank screen, it didn’t feel complete. Five minutes later, I opened my feed and posted a passage so shamelessly melodramatic, so steeped in bruised-ego teen poetry, it bordered on parody: “Every girl wants to be chosen, without hesitation, without an asterisk. Every girl deserves roses delivered for no reason, deserves someone who stands fiercely on her side of the line when the world gets loud. Every girl deserves someone who crosses an ocean just to see her. Nobody is born loving the waiting.” It was dramatic. It was intensely uncool. My roommate, Ruby, looked over from her desk, took in my devastated, funeral-ready expression, and practically stopped breathing. Terrified that a single word might shatter me, she quietly scooped up her biology binder and slipped out the door on tiptoe. I skipped evening lecture, pulled the heavy duvet over my head, and fell into a dark, dreamless sleep. When I finally dragged myself awake the next morning, my phone buzzed non-stop on the nightstand for five solid minutes before falling silent. It was the expected barrage: old high school friends digging for gossip, mutuals from our campus leadership board, casual acquaintances offering faux-sympathetic check-ins. I fired off three brief, evasive replies to the few people I actually cared about. I was just about to clear the notifications when a text from an unsaved number caught my eye. 02 “Patricia, there’s really nothing between Beckett and me. Please don’t take your anger out on him. If this is because of me, I truly feel awful.” No sign-off. But I didn’t need one. Who else could type with such pristine, performative guilt? Using his nickname with familiar ease while playing the wide-eyed innocent caught in the crossfire of another couple’s tragedy. It had been her signature move since sophomore year of high school: the damsel who accidentally ruins everything while clutching her pearls. Cora. First full day of freedom, and I get a condolence note from the girl who lived inside my boyfriend’s blind spots. My finger didn’t hesitate. “Block.” By noon, Ruby was hovering near the foot of my bed, stepping lightly as if traversing a minefield. “Patricia… do you want to hit the dining hall with me? They have the sweet-and-sour glazed ribs today. The good batch.” I peered out from under the covers. The smell of grief wasn’t going to feed me, and my stomach had been empty since yesterday afternoon. I threw off the blanket and swung my legs over the edge. “Let’s go.” A broken heart is an inconvenience; lunch is an imperative. 03 Wednesday at the student commons was sheer chaos. Ruby and I managed to snag two trays of glazed ribs, but finding an empty table was another story. We circled the perimeter twice, balancing our plastic trays, until we spotted a long six-top booth near the back with two open seats at the end. I took three steps closer, and my stomach dropped. Small world. Cruel world. Sitting in the booth were four people: Beckett, my ex. Cora, the golden phantom he had spent half our adolescence pining over. Drew, Beckett’s fraternity brother. And a fourth guy I’d never seen before. He had his back turned to the walkway, broad-shouldered and sitting with an easy, straight-spined elegance. Even from behind, his posture radiated an effortless calm that stood out in a noisy dining hall. Just my luck. 04 Ruby froze mid-stride, glancing between our trays and the crowd, caught in that terrible purgatory between retreat and humiliation. “Patricia… there’s literally nowhere else.” I turned, intending to brave the patio despite the autumn chill, but Cora had already spotted us. She was on her feet before I could pivot. “Patricia! It’s you! Come sit with us, there’s plenty of room!” She spoke with that seamless, breezy warmth that made saying no feel like an act of aggression. Before I could decline, her arm was linked through mine, steering me toward the booth with practiced familiarity. Beckett didn’t say a word. From the second my sneakers squeaked against the linoleum to the moment I slid into the vinyl seat, his eyes were locked on my face, searching for something he couldn’t find. Once seated, I casually brushed off the shoulder where Cora’s manicured fingers had rested. Contaminated. 05 The geography of the booth was pure emotional warfare. To my right sat Cora, with Ruby tucked beside her on the end. Across from Ruby was Drew. To Drew’s right sat Beckett. And directly across from me, sitting to Beckett’s right, was the stranger. Up close, the stranger’s face was even more striking than his silhouette. Clean-cut jaw, straight nose, eyes the color of dark espresso with a subtle upward tilt at the corners that gave him an air of quiet, observant detachment. He looked like the kind of boy who belonged in an indie arthouse film, not eating cheap campus food. The kind of boy who made you immediately aware of how little concealer you were wearing. 06 The silence at the table was thick enough to choke on—a classic, textbook standoff. Naturally, Cora couldn’t let quiet air linger. “Patricia,” she murmured, leaning in close, her eyes wide beneath layers of mascara, “can I steal one of your glazed ribs? The line was so long when I went up.” She leaned closer still, perfumed in expensive vanilla, pressing her shoulder against mine with an intimacy we had never earned. I stared down at my tray and didn’t utter a syllable. The air thinned. Beckett looked like he was about to step in, clearing his throat and murmuring, “Patricia—” but Cora silenced him with a single, delicate flick of her gaze. I had to hand it to her; her social choreography was an art form. Three men at the table, and she managed to flirt with one, hold the unspoken attention of another, and keep the third within casting distance, all without muddying the waters. She kept an entire aquarium well-stocked, and the glass never once fogged up. Finding no reaction from me, Cora slowly withdrew, sitting back against the booth. She waited precisely twenty seconds before speaking again, her tone soft enough to bruise. “Patricia… are you still upset with me? Did I do something wrong?” 07 “There’s no misunderstanding, Cora,” I said, meeting her gaze dead-on. “I just think you’ve been sleeping with Beckett.” The table seemed to drop ten degrees. Cora’s rehearsed serenity cracked instantly, a flash of pure panic darting across her features. What fascinated me, though, wasn’t her fear—it was where her eyes went first. Not to Beckett. She looked diagonally across the table, toward the stranger sitting opposite me. Even in her little pond, there was a hierarchy of fish. I wondered if Beckett realized he wasn’t the biggest catch on the line anymore. Cora recovered, pressing her lips together until the pink faded. “Patricia, that’s… that’s completely unfair. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable, but Beckett and I are just friends. We’ve always been just friends.” Her voice trembled with wounded dignity, but her eyes flicked back toward the stranger once more. “You don’t need to explain anything to me,” I said, letting a faint, breezy smile touch my lips as I glanced between her and Beckett. “Hasn’t he told you? We broke up.” Beckett flinched, his jaw tightening as he started, “Patricia, look, can we just—” “I’m finished,” I interrupted, setting my chopsticks down. He stared at me, his lips pressed into a grim line, processing the scene for ten excruciating seconds before retreating into the safe, structured persona he always hid behind. “Don’t forget the committee meeting tonight. Six sharp.” I rose without answering, leaving him with the cold comfort of my empty seat. 08 I had known Beckett for twelve years. I had cataloged every micro-expression, every nervous tic, every protective mask he wore. He was still steady, still operating under the assumption that this was a seasonal storm. In his mind, my rebellion was an inconvenience—a temporary tantrum that would run its course until I naturally gravitated back to his orbit. Because I always did. Because without him, who was I? When I was nine, my parents went through a bitter, scorched-earth divorce. My mother packed our lives into cardboard boxes and dragged me back to her sleepy hometown, moving into an aging brick apartment complex. Beckett’s family lived on the third floor; we were on the second. I was the new kid who couldn’t keep up with the local curriculum, falling from an honor-roll student to the bottom of the class within two marking periods. Beckett was the golden boy who took top honors every single term. His mother, feeling sorry for the quiet girl downstairs, began inviting me over for dinner, instructing Beckett to help me with my homework. Slowly, our lives intertwined. I rode on the back pegs of his bicycle, wind whipping through my hair. I did my homework on his bedroom floor while he worked at his desk. I slipped folded notes across the aisle in class, and I learned the exact squeak of the stairs when he headed down for his morning run, timing my exit so we could “accidentally” run into each other. Whenever I nodded off during study hall, the cap of his pen would prod me in the shoulder. His replies to my scribbled notes always ended the exact same way: “Patricia, pay attention.” When I couldn’t solve a math proof for the third time, he would sigh, run a hand through his dark hair, and look at me with weary patience. “Patricia, were you daydreaming again? Fine. Last time. Listen carefully.” Of course, there was always one more “last time.” 09 Junior year, the school rearranged the cohorts. Cora transferred into our homeroom. Beckett sat directly behind her. Every time I looked up from my notebook, Cora was leaning back, her hair spilling over his desk, asking him to explain an equation she undoubtedly already understood. Soon, he was walking her home after track practice, and I trailed along behind them like an awkward, dutiful shadow, even though Cora’s house was a mile in the opposite direction from ours. Her presence stretched our tight duo into an unstable triangle. She complained about him constantly—calling him rigid, teasing him for being hopelessly serious. But I knew Beckett. He was only serious with the people who mattered enough to rattle him. I buried my feelings deep into my chest. I played the mediator, smoothing over their little fights, watching Beckett bend rules he had spent his life upholding, watching him say yes to things he had always hated, watching him transform into an unrecognizable stranger just to keep her smiling. Eventually, they drifted into a space so private, so self-contained, that even my presence felt like a trespass. I realized then that I had lost him. My best friend, the boy who had built my confidence back from dust. When we graduated, the reality set in like a cold rain: Beckett was in love with Cora. And I was rotting with jealousy. I walked that lonely, quiet road of unrequited longing for years. But a girl’s first love doesn’t vanish just because it hurts. I remained his satellite, orbiting him long after he had forgotten I was there. “It’s fine,” I told myself. “I can wait.” I still remember the late August evening he asked me out. We were sitting at an outdoor diner near the college strip, eating greasy burgers under buzzing neon lights. He looked at me and said, “Do you want to try being together?” His eyes were flat, calm, devoid of the trembling excitement or fear that should accompany a confession. He might as well have been asking if I wanted him to pass the ketchup. My chest ached with a sharp, hollow certainty that he wasn’t doing this out of love. He was doing it out of convenience, perhaps out of a lingering need to fill a void Cora had left behind. Yet my lips curved into a smile anyway. “Okay,” I heard myself whisper. “It’s fine,” I had lied to myself. “If I try harder, if I show up every day, maybe he’ll learn to love me.” So I couldn’t entirely blame him for his arrogance today. I had spent a decade teaching him that I would never leave. 10 The afternoon sun hit my face as we stepped out of the commons, crisp and brilliant. “Eyes forward, Patricia. The rest of your life is waiting.” Ruby clutched her stomach with a tragic groan. “Patricia, we need to hit the food carts on West Elm. I barely touched my lunch.” Neither had I. My bravado had come at the expense of my appetite. “Excuse me.” The voice behind us was smooth, clear, and pitched at a low, measured cadence. “Do either of you happen to know where the campus supply store is?” We turned. It was the stranger from the booth. Cora’s latest target. I generally maintained an instinctive wariness toward anyone who entered Cora’s gravitational pull, but if someone was remarkably handsome, the universe afforded them a small margin of grace. Ruby, naturally, abandoned all subtlety. “We’re actually walking down toward the bookstore and the food carts right now. It’s on the way, if you want to walk with us?” “That’d be great. Thank you.” He fell into step beside us. I stayed half a pace behind, watching Ruby chatter animatedly while the guy listened with polite attention. He carried himself with an innate, quiet confidence—sharp profile, unhurried stride. I had to give it to Cora: her radar for quality was terrifyingly accurate. Beckett had that clean-cut, reliable charm; this guy had something deeper, something polished and deliberate. Ruby’s mouth worked overtime, bouncing from midterm stress to the local coffee scene without missing a beat, until she abruptly paused, glanced back at me, and blurted, “So… what’s the deal between you and Cora?” My ears pricked up. “Cora?” he echoed, his voice indifferent. “Yeah. The girl at the table.” There was a three-second beat. I looked up just as his gaze shifted back toward me, catching mine in an unexpected, direct lock. His eyes were intensely dark, almost opaque, holding an unreadable stillness. “We take a lecture together,” he said evenly, his enunciation crisp. “We aren’t close.” Women are remarkably simple creatures when they want to be. Watching those lips dismiss Cora in five seconds flat instantly elevated him in my book. Refined taste. Plus ten points. 11 The student council committee met at six. I showed up twenty minutes early. Beckett was already there, seated at the end of the long mahogany table alongside the two associate chairs, Lauren and Susie. “Hey, Patricia,” Lauren said, looking up from her tablet. “Hey.” I offered a small nod, then walked directly over to Beckett’s chair. “Do you have five minutes? I need to talk to you in private.” He followed me into the adjoining supply room, letting the heavy door swing shut behind us. “I’m submitting my resignation from the council,” I said, keeping my gaze fixed on the scuffed toe of my boot. The small room was dead quiet. I heard the sharp intake of his breath. “Patricia, stop this,” he said, exasperation creeping into the edges of his voice. “I don’t understand. First you end things out of nowhere, you block my number without giving me a chance to speak, and now you’re walking away from the executive board? Can’t we just talk about this like adults?” “Out of nowhere.” The sheer audacity of the phrase made my skin prickle. It wasn’t out of nowhere; it was the quiet, deliberate collapse that happens when you finally stop holding up the walls alone. He thought he had played his hand so carefully, hiding his compromises, forgetting that the only reason a woman appears blind is because she is still choosing to look away out of love. I pulled out my phone, found the screenshot from the night of September sixth, and held it to his face. It was Cora’s Instagram post: “So grateful for the late-night steak dinner with my favorite boy. Best company ever.” Candlelight. Two ribeyes. A bottle of vintage cabernet. And in the corner of the frame, resting beside her wine glass, was a masculine wrist wearing the silver chronograph I had spent six months of tutoring wages to buy him for his twentieth birthday. “September sixth, Beckett. It was my birthday,” I said softly. “If you were going to be sloppy, you should have at least asked her not to tag the restaurant. If you had kept it hidden, I might have kept lying to myself. But why couldn’t you even be bothered to be careful?” 12 His face paled as he stared at the screen. He stepped forward, reaching out to catch my arm, but I twisted away before his fingers could graze my jacket. “Patricia, I messed up. I know that,” he pleaded, his voice tightening. “But I swear to you, it wasn’t what it looked like. Nothing happened. You have to believe me.” “It doesn’t matter anymore,” I said, taking another step back until the utility shelves pressed against my spine. “I’m leaving the board.” He stared at me, visibly scrambling, shifting gears to the persuasive, measured tone he used during senate debates. “Patricia, you’ve been on this council for three years. Even if you’re angry with me, you care about the work. We can figure out our personal issues outside of this, but don’t blow up your résumé over an argument. Think about the department. The Fall Music Gala is in two weeks—the logistics team can’t function without you.” I hadn’t realized I was so indispensable. Lauren was more than capable of running logistics without me. As for Susie… please. “Susie has spent the last year rolling her eyes every time I speak and sliding petty digs into meeting minutes because she’s in love with you,” I said flatly. “Did you really not notice? Or did you just like having an audience?” Beckett’s lips pressed into a tight line—his tell. The involuntary habit he leaned on whenever he lost control of a conversation. “Patricia, Susie is irrelevant. She doesn’t mean anything to me.” It had taken me months of silent agony to detox from loving this man, but looking at him now, the clarity was absolute. “I’m done, Beckett. You know as well as I do that the only reason I joined this council was to steal an extra hour or two with you between classes. Now that we’re over, sitting in these meetings just feels like slowly suffocating.” I looked right into his eyes, watching the panic begin to break through his careful composure. “I built an entire lifetime of plans around you,” I said, my voice steady, stripped of all theatrics. “It never occurred to me that this was how the story would end.” I reached for the doorknob. “Goodbye, Beckett.” He stood frozen in the center of the cramped room, the rims of his eyes turning a faint, helpless red, but his feet remained rooted to the floor. He didn’t reach out again. I pulled the door open. Susie was standing right outside, her face white as chalk. As I brushed past her, she threw me a look sharp enough to cut glass.
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