Carter found me too clingy, so he tossed me to his roommate. Because of that, every message I sent was answered by his roommate. Every anniversary gift I received was carefully picked out by his roommate. I was completely in the dark, eagerly counting down the days until our three-year anniversary meet-up. When we finally met in person, my boyfriend was tall, gorgeous, loved holding hands, and got shy incredibly easily. I couldn't stop looking at him; I was beyond satisfied. The only thing was that he didn't like to talk much, and he guarded me against other guys like they were trying to steal his wallet. I used to laugh and tell him he was making a big deal out of nothing—it wasn't like I was some highly sought-after prize. That was until one day, an arrogant guy blocked our path on campus. His eyes were dark and furious, glaring dead at the person standing beside me. "Ethan, where the hell did you get a girlfriend?" 1 I had noticed that "Carter" had been acting a bit different over the past year. Before, when we chatted on Instagram, he didn't talk much, but every sentence felt alive. But over this last year, his tone became stiff. Sometimes, the words popped up one by one, feeling almost forced. It was a bit like... I thought about it, a bit like the cold, unfamiliar feeling of a robot executing a command. I tentatively asked him once: "Do you... not like me anymore?" The reply came back fast, anxious and urgent. "No!" "I like you!" Before I could even respond, he started typing again. The typing bubble stayed on the screen for a long time. "Very busy today. Basketball game. Not ignoring your messages." I shook my head, smiling as I typed back: "Okay, babe. I was wrong for doubting you. My bad." But you couldn't really blame me for overthinking. Online dating just lacked that sense of security. I hummed to myself, suddenly remembering something. I sent a few happy puppy emojis and followed up. "Do you still remember our promise? We get to meet in a few days." The typing indicator popped up again. He was typing... and typing... and typing... I waited patiently at first, but my patience eventually ran out. "What is this supposed to mean? If you want to break up, just say it. If you don't want to meet, just block me." Carter seemed to panic. His message popped up instantly. "We can. Meet!" I smiled triumphantly. That was more like it. Immediately after, he transferred $15,000 to me via Apple Pay. I sent a question mark: "?" "Buy," he replied quickly, adding two more words a second later: "Flight tickets." Speaking of which, apart from talking less, the other big change in Carter over the past year was his love for sending me money. He used to send small gifts for holidays or my birthday, but this past year, the transfers came at all hours of the day and night. Sometimes, I'd just send him a random photo I took on my walk, and if there happened to be a pretty flower in the frame, he’d spot it and immediately send a few thousand dollars with the note: "Buy flowers. Pretty." It gave me the impression that, in his own clumsy way, he couldn't think of any other way to make me happy besides spending money. I didn't accept the transfer. Instead, I snapped a selfie and sent it to him. "I already got approved for a one-year exchange program at Boston University!" I typed excitedly. "Carter, I can come find you at your campus. Are you happy?" I loved the ocean, so when we originally promised to meet, we agreed our first meeting would be in Miami. I went to the University of Miami, and he went to BU—two top-tier schools on opposite ends of the East Coast. The two universities had a long history of academic exchange, and students with top GPAs could apply for a semester or a year. It took Carter a long time to reply. I was clutching my phone, almost falling asleep, when his message finally came through. Just one word. "Happy." 2 The moment I landed in Boston, my mom's phone call chased me down. "I set up a meeting for you. Just treat it as making a new friend, and remember to visit old Mrs. Vance to pay your respects. Don't be rude." I hadn't dared to tell my mom that I had an online boyfriend. Because of that, she had been relentlessly reminding me that once I got to Boston, I absolutely had to visit the family we supposedly had a childhood "verbal betrothal" with. I figured it would be a good opportunity to clear the air face-to-face, so I didn't refuse. Plus, I heard the guy's last name was also Hayes. Because of Carter, I had a bit of a soft spot for that name. However, I waited at the agreed-upon coffee shop from the afternoon straight into the evening, and the guy never showed up. Honestly, I kind of expected it. My mom told me the Hayes family used to live in our small town in Florida when I was five, but later moved to Boston. Word was they had clung to the coattails of the incredibly wealthy and famous Vance family, and their social status had skyrocketed. Naturally, they probably looked down on a small-town girl like me. They were probably terrified I'd try to leech off them. My mom was a hot-tempered chatterbox. I was a mild-tempered chatterbox. We stayed on the phone for half an hour, taking turns roasting the Hayes family. Finally, my dad's slow, calm voice chimed in from the background. "Honey, don't swear in front of the kid. You'll teach her bad habits." I laughed, suddenly remembering something. I grabbed my phone and snapped a picture of the Boston skyline. I opened my Instagram DMs with Carter, tossed the photo into the chat, and rapidly typed a few words. "I'm here! Countdown to meeting: 1 day!" 3 Meanwhile, outside the Computer Science dorms at BU. A group of guys were walking back from the athletic fields when one of them let out a surprised shout. "Whoa, isn't that the Vance family's car? Ethan Vance? What is he doing on campus?" Carter Hayes, wearing simple grey sweatpants and a white tee, holding a basketball, looked over at the sound. A low-profile, custom black Bentley was parked not too far away, one of the rear doors wide open. From his angle, Carter could only see a pale, distinctly knuckled hand gripping the door frame so tightly the veins were popping out. Carter knew that look. It was a look of absolute, paralyzing terror and a deep-seated aversion to stepping into a crowd. Ethan... Carter frowned. He couldn't fathom why Ethan would try coming to campus again, especially since he had failed so miserably the last time. His roommate, Jake, looked confused too. "Doesn't he have crippling social anxiety? Last year he came to our dorm saying he wanted to 'overcome' it. The rich kid lasted exactly two days as our roommate before he cracked." "It's getting late, and they drove him all the way out here. Don't tell me they expect you to play babysitter again, Carter," Jake said carelessly, before catching the look on Carter's face. He quickly backpedaled. "I mean, who cares if he's the sole heir to a billion-dollar empire? The guy can barely string a sentence together. How's he supposed to run the Vance Corporation?" "No wonder old Mrs. Vance values you so much, Carter. When she kicks the bucket, that grandson of hers is going to have to rely entirely on you." Carter didn't say a word. He pulled his gaze away from the Bentley and walked away, acting like he didn't care. Inside the car, Ethan pressed his lips together. His stunning, aristocratic face was pale, his porcelain skin dotted with cold sweat. His hand was still locked onto the door frame. It took him a long time before he finally whispered, "Will she... think I'm a freak?" Arthur, the family's silver-haired butler, felt a pang of heartache. But he didn't dare comfort him with the same confident reassurances he used to offer: Our young master is brilliant and handsome, who would ever think you're a freak? When Ethan was little, he had a playmate who acted incredibly fond of him to his face. But behind his back, the boy called Ethan a "freak" and an "idiot." Young Ethan had been hiding behind a door and heard every word. Since that day, he had completely shut down and refused to make friends. Thankfully, over the last few years, he had Carter Hayes around. Arthur didn't know what kind of method Carter was using, but over this past year, Ethan had become so much more alive. He was always on his phone, he'd sometimes smile to himself as if no one else was in the room, and now he had actually volunteered to attend classes on campus. Because of this progress, the Vance family had poured massive resources into the Hayes family over the last few years, elevating their status immensely. As for this "she" Ethan was talking about, Arthur had no idea who it was, assuming it was just the anxiety talking. Arthur gently tried to change the subject. "Why don't we head back home for tonight? We can try again another..." Ethan looked up, his eyes gorgeous and resolute. He shook his head. "Have to meet her." 4 The Sociology 101 lecture hall at BU was packed. By the time I rushed in with my textbooks, there were only a handful of empty seats left. My eyes swept over the room and landed on a specific spot. In the third-to-last row by the window, a single person was sitting all alone. The seats in a full circle around him were completely empty, as if someone had drawn a quarantine line that no one dared to cross. The guy sitting there had a perfectly straight posture, almost rigidly so. He wore a simple white button-down, the sleeves rolled up to reveal pale wrists. The lecture hall was loud and chaotic, but he kept his head down, his long eyelashes casting small shadows under his eyes. He was so quiet it felt like someone had hit the pause button on him. I took a deep breath. I was almost entirely certain. As I walked toward him, a nervous-looking guy tried to intercept me. "Hey, you can sit over here. No one's allowed to sit next to him." Perhaps hearing the exchange, the guy at the window snapped his head up. The moment our eyes met, he froze completely. His light brown eyes flickered with shattered, nervous energy. I gently shook my head at the guy who stopped me and whispered, "Thanks, but I'm looking for him." I plopped down into the seat right next to him. For a split second, the noisy area around us went dead silent. I didn't care. I tilted my head, looked at him, and softened my voice. "Carter?" He couldn't speak for a long time. Finally, he let out a tiny, barely-there "Yeah." His voice was low, slightly raspy. I happily reached out and hooked my pinky finger around his, whispering, "I knew it was you. I recognized you instantly. Aren't I amazing?" He didn't speak, but the tips of his ears turned a violent shade of red that visibly spread down to his cheeks. I was stunned. Afraid he might spontaneously combust from embarrassment, I quickly let go of his hand. But a second later, he looked at me with wide, shocked eyes, looking exactly like an abandoned puppy. So, I slipped my hand back into his and asked casually, "By the way, what's your real name? You said when we finally met, you'd tell me." When we chatted online, neither of us used our real names. It started because I was going through an abstract internet phase and insisted on using weird screen names, and eventually, we just got used to it. Hearing this, he pressed his lips together, his expression suddenly very serious. "Ethan. My name is Ethan Vance." I swung his hand lightly, smiling until my eyes were half-moons. "Hi Ethan. It is so incredibly nice to meet you." 5 Ethan's condition was a bit worse than I had imagined. When I first matched with "Carter" on the app, the system showed our compatibility at 98%. His tags were: Withdrawn, Aloof, Fearful. From the very beginning of our chats, I knew Ethan had a condition—a severe form of social anxiety and trauma that didn't have a simple name. Because of severe emotional trauma when he was young, he was terrified of face-to-face interactions and crowds. He couldn't live normally in the real world, couldn't speak to strangers, couldn't make friends. So, he hid himself away on the internet. Honestly, at first, I just felt a bit of pity for him. It was like seeing a stray cat shivering in an alley during a rainstorm; the natural instinct is to hold an umbrella over it. But unexpectedly, we clicked. It was a deep, soul-level alignment. We read the same books, watched the same obscure movies, listened to the same instrumental music. He always managed to catch the unspoken emotions behind my words perfectly. My roommate, Mia, used to lean over my desk, looking at me in the mirror with utter confusion. "Why are you doing the online dating thing? With your looks, you could stand in the quad for five minutes and have eighty guys begging for your number." I thought about it for a long time, but my answer sounded like a textbook hopeless romantic. "He's different." Everyone in my family was ridiculously good-looking, which meant I had a built-in immunity to pretty faces. To me, the cookie-cutter standard of attractiveness was nowhere near as precious as a brilliant, fascinating mind. And Ethan was brilliant. Almost terrifyingly so. During my senior year of high school, when the pressure of AP classes was crushing me, he practically became my tutor. No matter how impossible the calculus problem, he could break it down perfectly through a screen, typing out thousands of words of step-by-step logic just to help me grasp a weak subject. I looked down. Ethan was holding my hand. He was gripping it very, very tightly. I smiled, giving his hand a reassuring squeeze. "Relax, babe. I'm not going to run away." He pressed his lips together, switched hands, and held on even tighter. I sat next to him, happily chattering away about everything under the sun. I talk a lot, and unlike most people, I love adding dramatic, colorful details. A story about someone stepping on the back of my shoe at the airport could be a one-sentence anecdote for a normal person; I could stretch it into a ten-minute comedy routine. After talking so much, I unconsciously swallowed, my throat feeling dry. The next second, a pale, elegant hand appeared in my vision, holding an opened, flawlessly clean thermos. My eyes lit up. I took it and drank a huge gulp. The water wasn't too hot or too cold—it was the perfect temperature, and it even had a faint, soothing hint of lemon and mint. "Babe, you are way too sweet!" I teased, looking at him with a grin. "Thanks, boyfriend." The tips of Ethan's ears went bright red again. He stammered, "Y-you're welcome." I smiled and reached up to smooth his dark hair. It was soft, like silk. It doesn't matter if you don't like to talk, I thought. I talk enough for the both of us. 6 "I heard Ethan Vance is back on campus." "You should buddy up to him. Keep a close eye on him. If you can get that kid to say even a single word when he goes back home, the Vance family will owe you big time." "You hearing me, Carter?" Carter Hayes let out a scoffing laugh and hung up the phone. His roommate, Jake, noticed he looked annoyed and tried to think of something entertaining. His eyes lit up. "Hey, did you hear? We got a new exchange student in the CS department. Holy crap, bro, she is stunning." "She walked past the courts this afternoon and someone snapped a pic for the campus confession page. Half the comments are already shipping you two." "Look, the comments are crazy... 'Help! They don't even know each other but I've already written a 100k-word college romance in my head!'" "Nothing else matters, just based on their faces, I'm fully on board!" Jake pulled up the photo and slapped his thigh. "Dude, Carter, this girl is exactly your type!" He looked up and realized Carter wasn't listening at all, his eyes glued to the game on his monitor. Jake scratched his head. "Oh, right, I forgot. You have that online girlfriend visiting. When are you guys finally meeting up?" Carter didn't even look away from the screen. "She was just something to kill time when I was bored. Who said she's my girlfriend?" "Besides, with the way she looks..." Carter thought back, almost forgetting why he had started talking to her in the first place. He had accidentally hit the video call button once and caught a glimpse of her face from a terrible angle—a round, puffy face with tiny eyes. Definitely not attractive. At the time, he could have just ghosted her. But then he looked over at Ethan. His online girlfriend needed someone to reply to her messages 24/7. Ethan needed an excuse to never open his mouth 24/7. So he tossed the girl he was annoyed by to the guy he despised. A chatterbox and a mute. A cold smirk touched the corner of Carter's lips. A match made in heaven. He had specifically warned Ethan—he could chat with her, but he was strictly forbidden from meeting her in person. Carter didn't want the hassle of dealing with the fallout. After all, Ethan was just a fake stand-in; he definitely didn't have the guts to show up to a real-life date. The very next day, Carter and his crew were hanging out near the basketball courts when a girl walked toward them. The afternoon sun hit her perfectly. Her skin was luminous, her features striking and bright, and she carried herself with tall, confident grace. There was no one this gorgeous at BU. This had to be the transfer student Jake was raving about. Carter's throat bobbed, and he smiled to himself. Jake really did know his type. Used to being the center of attention, he was always the one being approached. For the first time in his life, he took the initiative and walked up to someone. "Hey. I'm Carter Hayes. Mind if we be friends?" 7 I froze for a second, looking up at him. The guy standing in front of me was undeniably handsome in a very sharp, aggressive way. He had an arrogant, careless energy about him. If Ethan's beauty was like fragile, cold porcelain, the guy in front of me was like a drawn sword—sharp and full of himself. He's also named Carter Hayes? What a coincidence. Ethan probably never imagined that the random fake name he picked would belong to a real guy on his campus. I snapped out of it and smoothly handled the approach. "Hi, I'm Chloe. Nice to meet you, friend." Remembering that Ethan was waiting for me, I gave him a polite nod and kept walking toward the campus exit. Behind me, Jake and the other guys started howling and teasing him. "Oh man, she ran away! She's totally blushing!" "Carter, you've still got it. There isn't a girl alive you can't charm!" Carter just shoved his hands in his pockets and smiled like it was an everyday occurrence. Ethan still couldn't adapt to the dorms, so he had only stayed on campus for one day before returning to the Vance estate. I had a few afternoon classes today, and his car was already waiting at the campus gates. "You didn't have to get here so early," I said as I climbed in, reaching out with both hands to squish his cheeks. "It's so boring waiting out here." He sat perfectly still, letting me squish his face. "Not boring. Not seeing you... is boring." I pouted slightly, amazed that this little introvert was actually so good at sweet-talking. The car pulled into a luxury high-rise building not far from BU. Ethan led me into a massive penthouse apartment. I turned to look at him, confused. "For you," he said, pulling a property deed seemingly out of nowhere. "For school." I panicked and waved my hands frantically. "No way, absolutely not." An apartment in this building had to be worth millions. There was no way I was accepting that. I spoke quickly: "I'm totally fine living in the dorms, it's super convenient." I had seen the BU dorms. They were standard four-person suites, nice enough, with decent space. "Plus, I'm only here for a year, it's not like I'm staying forever—" Before I could finish, the light in Ethan's eyes dimmed. I quickly backpedaled. "Ah! I just mean, who buys someone an apartment the second time they meet? No, no, no. Even boyfriends don't do that." "Dorms are bad," he insisted softly. He paused, looking like his brain was running a desperate search algorithm for a logical argument. Finally, he added, "The bathrooms aren't big enough." ...I literally could not argue with that. Ethan didn't push it. He just stood there, looking down at me. His long eyelashes hid most of his eyes, making him look quiet and wronged, like a giant dog that had been left in the rain. I had no defense against that look. I poked him in the nose with my index finger and huffed. "Fine. I will live here temporarily, but I am absolutely not taking this deed." Ethan pressed his lips together, but the corners of his mouth curved up ever so slightly.
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