1 While my boyfriend was asleep, I noticed his phone screen lighting up with a relentless stream of notifications. Curiosity got the better of me. When I tapped the screen, I saw he was replying to a popular prompt on a local Q&A forum: How far can a person go for someone they can't have? "I've loved my childhood best friend for twelve years," his response read, "but I'm currently dating a girl I don't love at all." "My childhood friend is in love with someone else, her own personal 'one that got away.' To help her secure her happy ending, I went out of my way to pursue his crush, who happens to be my current girlfriend. I did it to clear the competition for her." "Now, my childhood friend is practically engaged to her dream guy. As for me? Well, since I can't have the girl of my dreams, it doesn't really matter who I'm with. It's all the same to me." My hands began to shake. The realization hit me like a physical blow: I was the unloved girlfriend. The phone slipped from my trembling fingers, landing softly on the mattress. Ashton didn't wake up, but he instinctively rolled closer to me, his arm draping over my waist. "Rowan..." he muttered in his sleep, his voice thick and affectionate. If this had happened yesterday, I would have found his sleeping gesture incredibly sweet, a sign of his deep devotion. Now, it felt sickeningly absurd. I knew exactly who his childhood friend was. Gemma. She was currently dating Wesley, a popular senior from our university. I had met Gemma once or twice. Whenever Ashton spoke of her, he insisted she was just a dear friend from his neighborhood. Asfor Wesley, he had actually confessed his feelings to me back in college. I barely knew him, so I had politely declined. When Gemma and Wesley eventually got together, I assumed it was a sweet stroke of fate. I had even sent them my warmest congratulations. But there was no fate. It was a calculated game designed by Ashton, and I was just an insignificant pawn on his chessboard. Taking a shaky breath, I unlocked his phone again and kept scrolling through the post. It was a detailed, public diary of his unrequited love for Gemma. "I've known I loved her since I was ten, but her eyes were always fixed on someone else." "Of course, it killed me to see her with another guy. But I couldn't bear to see her unhappy either, so I chose to make her dreams come true." "When she confessed to Wesley and got rejected, she locked herself in her room and cried for three straight days. I was absolutely furious. I hated Wesley for rejecting her, but more than that, I hated my current girlfriend. Why did she get to effortlessly capture the attention of the guy Gemma wanted?" "So, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I targeted my current girlfriend, planned to date her for a year, and then dump her." The strange, unreadable looks Ashton used to give me suddenly made sense. Yet, he had treated me so well, with such tender care, that I never had a reason to doubt him. Our one-year anniversary was next week. I had spent the last month excitedly planning a special weekend for us, hoping to surprise him. I never could have imagined our entire relationship was a lie. A calculated act of revenge. The comment section of his post was a battleground. "Have some self-respect. How could you possibly post this publicly?" "What did your girlfriend do to deserve a toxic jerk like you? Let her go." But a few took his side. "He hasn't cheated on her, and he treats her well. Why is everyone calling him toxic?" "Am I the only one wondering how he managed to sweep his girlfriend off her feet so easily, while failing with his childhood friend for twelve years?" Ashton had replied to that comment: "You have to walk on eggshells around the person you actually love, terrified of saying the wrong thing. But with my girlfriend? She's just a game where I calculated her stats. A few carefully placed strategies, and she was mine. It was incredibly easy." 2 "If anyone's curious, I can share some of the specific tactics I used." The comments section practically begged for details. Ashton obliged, typing out his next response: "It's simple. You just have to figure out what she's lacking most." "Before I made my move, I spent weeks researching her background. My girlfriend was raised by a single mother in a low-income household. She's desperately insecure." "She had plenty of guys pursuing her at school, but most of them looked down on her because of her financial situation. They acted entitled, which built a wall around her heart." "So, I made sure to appear in a space she felt safe in. Naturally, she let her guard down." My mind flashed back to how we met. It was at the after-school tutoring center where I worked part-time. Coming from a poor family, I knew how hard my mother worked to raise me. Once I got to university, I took on multiple jobs to ease her financial burden. That was where I met Ashton, who had also signed up as a part-time tutor. After we started dating, I discovered his family was actually quite wealthy. When I asked why he had taken a tutoring job, he had smiled warmly. "My parents always taught me the value of a dollar," he had said, brushing a stray hair from my face. "I wanted to experience making my own way." Now, his post laid bare the truth: "Who would actually work a miserable tutoring job if they didn't have to? But she bought the story hook, line, and sinker. So naive." "But a job wasn't enough. To truly win over someone insecure, you have to save them when they're most vulnerable." "My girlfriend had decent grades, but she was right on the cusp of losing the fast-track master's fellowship. Her best friend was ranked just one spot ahead of her, holding the final slot." "I happened to find out that her best friend had hired a proxy to run her mandatory fitness assessment varsity test. So, I submitted an anonymous tip to the dean. The friend was disqualified, and my girlfriend automatically got the fellowship." "Even though the report was anonymous, my girlfriend was the direct beneficiary. Naturally, everyone assumed she was the whistleblower." "I played dumb, but during casual conversations with classmates, I casually mentioned that my girlfriend was no longer looking for jobs because she had 'new plans.' That sealed it. Everyone was convinced she had betrayed her best friend." The comments flared up again. "This is disgusting. How do you sleep at night?" "Honestly, I don't see the issue. The girlfriend got the fellowship, didn't she? Who cares about a college friend? Besides, if the friend hadn't cheated on her test, she wouldn't have gotten reported." "I feel terrible for the friend. She lost her future over some guy's sick game." My chest tightened, a sharp, suffocating pain pressing down on my lungs. The memory of that semester was the most painful period of my college life. It had ruined any happy memories I had of university. My best friend was Tess. We had been roommates, sharing meals, studying together, complaining about the dining hall food. We were inseparable. Tess always had slightly better grades, and I had never once begrudged her for it. When the fellowship nomination was handed to me, I thought it was a miracle. But that miracle quickly turned into a nightmare of whispers and cold shoulders. Tess's trust in me shattered under the weight of the rumors. Eventually, we stopped speaking entirely. I tried to explain myself countless times, but whenever we crossed paths on campus, she would walk right past me as if I were a ghost. When we graduated, I learned she had failed her graduate school entrance exams and went straight into a low-paying job. The guilt was so overwhelming that I had seriously contemplated dropping out of the master's program. And during that dark, lonely period, Ashton was the only one by my side. While everyone else pointed fingers, he looked me in the eye and told me he believed in me. He assured me I had done nothing wrong. Of course he knew I was innocent. He was the one who had orchestrated the entire thing. I had been so profoundly grateful back then. Our bond deepened, and I bared my soul to him, finding solace in his constant comfort. But his true thoughts were dripping with contempt: "Honestly, she should be thanking me for getting her that fellowship. Instead, she walked around looking like a martyr. Who was she trying to impress?" "If I hadn't helped her, what would she be doing now? Struggling to find a job and relying on me to feed her?" 3 One commenter asked: "But what does that have to do with making her fall for you? She didn't fall in love with you just because her friend hated her." Ashton replied: "You're right. She was so consumed by guilt that she didn't even realize I was pursuing her." "And more importantly, my main goal was to get Wesley to lose interest in her. But even with her reputation ruined, the guy still wouldn't let her go." "So, I had to try a different tactic." "Wesley's mistake was being too cautious. He was terrified of making a wrong move, just like I was with Gemma. But that's what happens when a guy actually cares about a girl." "He kept trying to send her anonymous gifts to cheer her up, but I made sure to intercept every single one of them." I had never received a single gift from Wesley. Ashton's post continued: "But intercepting packages wasn't enough. I needed Wesley to be utterly disgusted by her." "My girlfriend couldn't handle the silent treatment from her roommates anymore, so she decided to move off-campus. To afford rent, she took on a high-paying private tutoring gig." "The family she tutored for was incredibly wealthy. They loved her, and they even had their private chauffeur pick her up from the campus gates every evening." "I didn't have to do much. I just made sure to walk past the gates with my fraternity brothers whenever the luxury car arrived, letting everyone watch her climb inside." "A poor girl suddenly moving out of the dorms and getting picked up in a luxury sedan? It didn't take much for rumors to start." "That night, I posted anonymously on the campus forum. Within hours, the gossip caught fire. Everyone was saying she was some rich guy's sugar baby." "She already had a bad reputation from the whistleblower rumor, and now she was labeled a gold-digger. She was completely isolated." I gripped my phone so hard my knuckles turned white, fighting back the urge to throw up. As graduation approached, I had hoped to leave the whispers behind. Instead, the bullying only intensified. Everywhere I went, people stared and whispered. In the cafeteria, students would actively get up and move away if I sat near them. When it came time to form groups for our final capstone project, every single classmate avoided me. I was left standing alone, a pariah. Only Ashton stood by me. At first, I had tried to defend myself. I wrote post after post on the school forum, begging people to listen to the truth. But every single thread I created was deleted within minutes. I realize now that Ashton was one of the senior moderators of the campus forum. Controlling the narrative was child's play to him. The guys who had once pursued me turned on me instantly, posting vile, misogynistic slurs on the forum. They claimed I was a tease, a fraud, and that anyone could sleep with me if they had enough cash. A few days later, a new post went viral, titled: Stop Harassing My Girlfriend. It was written by Ashton. He claimed the luxury car belonged to his family, and that he was the one who had rented the off-campus apartment for me because we were dating. To me, he had presented himself as a savior, claiming he only wanted to protect me because he was deeply in love with me. In that state of terror and isolation, the psychological toll of the suspension bridge effect took hold. I fell completely, hopelessly in love with him. I believed he was my white knight. I had no idea he was the dragon who had set my world on fire. "And just like that," Ashton wrote boastfully, "I got the girl, and I successfully crushed any lingering feelings Wesley had for her. Easy as pie." "Wesley was devastated, which gave Gemma the perfect opportunity to comfort him. Now they're planning their honeymoon." The tone of the comments had shifted. The initial disgust was replaced by a twisted sense of admiration. "Honestly, the guy is a mastermind. He targeted her exact psychological weaknesses." "No wonder she fell for him. It's a bit toxic, but you have to admit, his execution was flawless." "But are you really that selfless? Doesn't it kill you to watch your childhood friend marry another guy?" Ashton replied: "As long as she's happy, it doesn't matter who she's with." "Our one-year anniversary is in a few days. She still doesn't suspect a thing. But I think this little game has run its course. It's time to end it." Outside, the rain began to patter against the windowpane, a slow, rhythmic drumming. Ashton slept peacefully beside me, his hand still holding mine. It was a habit of his; he loved physical touch, always clinging to me whenever we were together. Now, looking at his handsome, sleeping face, I couldn't tell which of his touches had been real and which had been part of his calculated script. I opened my own phone, clicking on an email from my academic advisor. "Rowan, the department has an open slot for a one-year exchange program at a prestigious university in London. The deadline is tomorrow. This is a life-changing opportunity for your research. Please consider it and let me know." I had drafted a polite refusal, worried about leaving Ashton behind, terrified of what a year of long-distance would do to our relationship. I deleted the draft. I typed a new, single sentence. "Professor, I want to go to London. Is the spot still open?"
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