1 At the welcome-back party after my two-year exchange in London, the drinking game landed on a trivia card about Garrett Davies. The living room erupted into loud, whiskey-fueled cheers. Someone shoved the dry-erase board into my hands, grinning. "Come on, Sloane! Height, weight, favorite sport… exact size… and his personal record for stamina?" I didn't blink. I wrote the answers out, clean and sharp, one by one. Six-foot-one. One hundred and sixty pounds. Basketball. Seven inches. I paused, tapping the cap of the marker against the coffee table, before adding the last line without a tremor in my voice. Eighty-six minutes. Fifty questions about Garrett Davies. I scored a perfect fifty. Gemma Finch rested her chin in her hands, tilting her head with a fragile, wide-eyed smile. "Wait… are you two together? Are you Garrett's girlfriend?" Someone across the sectional laughed, beer sloshing over their knuckles. "Oh, come on, Gemma, you know the lore. Sloane threw a massive fit two years ago because Garrett gave the deciding vote for the Oxford fellowship to you instead of her. She packed her bags and fled the country just to prove a point!" "Five whole years of playing the devoted shadow," another guy chimed in, "and she couldn't even get him to change his relationship status on Facebook." Garrett leaned deep into the leather sofa, holding a tumbler of bourbon. His tone was smooth, perfectly indifferent. "No. We're just neighbors. Grew up on the same street." I lifted my glass of cranberry juice and took a small, measured sip. "And we never will be anything more." Garrett let out a dry, mocking chuckle, his eyes narrowing through the dim bar lighting. "What's the matter, Sloane? Tired of chasing?" I looked directly at him. For the first time in seven years, there was no knot in my throat, no spike of adrenaline, no dull ache behind my ribs. I wasn't heartbroken. I had simply reached the quiet, unceremonious realization that I hadn't lost a prize. I just didn't love Garrett Davies anymore. Halfway through the night, the noise in the lounge only grew louder. One of Garrett’s fraternity brothers leaned over the back of my chair. "Hey, Sloane, be honest—did you completely disconnect from campus life while you were in the UK?" "I was busy," I said evenly. "So you really didn't know Garrett and Gemma have been practically joined at the hip for the last two years?" He drew out his words, looking around for an audience. "Same biochemistry lab, every single meal, every departmental gala. They’re ranked number one on the university’s anonymous confession page for 'Couple Most Likely to Get Married.' You telling us that doesn't count as official?" Gemma sat right next to Garrett, a soft, rose-colored flush spreading across her cheeks. "Stop it, you guys," she protested softly. "Don't say things like that." Yet, as she spoke, she leaned back, settling comfortably into the curve of Garrett’s arm where his hand rested against her waist. The room dissolved into knowing laughter. "Just friends, huh? With his fingers tucked into your belt loops?" "Yeah, pure platonic friction, right?" Garrett didn't deny it. Instead, his fingers tightened subtly against Gemma’s waist, pulling her a fraction closer. I looked down at the ice melting in my glass. The surface was dead calm. Two years ago, a single photograph of them sharing a booth at an off-campus diner would have kept me awake until dawn, staring at the ceiling until my eyes burned. I would have dissected his text messages, tortured myself wondering why he drove two hours to pick her up from the airport, why he shielded her from every slight, and why he refused to utter the words she's my girlfriend whenever someone asked about me. Looking at them now, it just looked like bad theater. Gemma suddenly stood up, smoothing down her pleated skirt. She picked up her wine glass and walked around the table until she was standing directly in front of me. "Sloane, let me toast you," she said, her voice dripping with careful sweetness. "About the Oxford fellowship back then… I honestly never meant to take that opportunity from you. I hope there are no hard feelings." My eyes fell on her left hand. On her ring finger sat a plain, hand-forged silver band. A memory hit me like cold water—the sweltering summer after high school graduation. Garrett had dragged me to an artisan metal shop in the arts district. He spent four hours hunched over a workbench, his knuckles scraped red and raw from the polishing wheel, sweating through his gray t-shirt. When I asked him what he was making, he wiped his brow and muttered, Matching bands. Who said I wanted to wear a matching ring with you? I had teased. Fine, don't, he’d said with a smirk. But when he quenched the metal, he took my left hand and slid the cool band onto my finger. It fit perfectly. That was the first time he had ever held my hand in public. The first time he had unofficially claimed me. During our final, screaming argument two years ago, I pulled that ring off and threw it straight at his chest. I thought he would throw it in the gutter, or tuck it away in a drawer out of spite. I never imagined he would simply hand it to Gemma. The circle around us started clapping. "Drink up, Sloane! Gemma’s offering an olive branch!" "Don't tell me two years in Europe turned you into a lightweight!" I lifted my juice glass and lightly tapped the rim of hers. "I don't drink alcohol." The polite smile on Gemma’s face thinned. "You haven't changed at all, have you?" She lowered her eyelashes, adding under her breath, "Always so good at killing the mood." A couple of guys chuckled. Right then, Dylan—Garrett's closest friend—slammed a full shot of tequila onto the table in front of me. "Here’s to the ultimate team mascot," Dylan barked, his voice carrying over the entire room. "Five whole years of fetching his coffee, proofreading his papers, and playing the devoted little groupie, only to step aside and roll out the red carpet for the real dream girl! Sloane, you really committed to the bit!" Before the laughter could subside, Garrett picked up his glass, leaned forward, and clinked it against Dylan's. "Amen to that," Garrett said. The heavy clink of crystal cut through the air. I watched him take a slow swallow of liquor, and a memory from that rainy night before I left surfaced in my mind. I had stood in his driveway, tears blurring the headlights of his car, asking, Garrett, I just want you to stand in front of our friends and say I’m your girlfriend. Is that really so much to ask? He had looked at me with cold exhaustion. It’s completely pointless, Sloane. Sitting here now, listening to the room laugh at my expense, I realized he was right. It was pointless. Chasing an answer from someone who never intended to give it was the purest waste of human life. I just had to hit the wall at full speed before my brain finally registered the damage. When the party broke up around midnight, a cold autumn drizzle was falling over the pavement. Garrett stood at the bottom of the brick steps outside the bar, hands shoved into his jacket pockets. "I'll drive you back to your apartment." "No, thank you." "Sloane." His voice dropped into that familiar, warning register. "You ran away to London for two years on a tantrum. What are you hiding from now? Afraid you can't keep up the indifferent act?" My face didn't move. I raised my hand and flagged an approaching yellow cab. The window rolled up, sealing his sharp, handsome jaw behind a sheet of rainy glass. He didn't chase the car. He never had. For seven years, Garrett Davies only ever stood in place, confident that if he waited long enough, I would crawl back on my own. Except this time, I didn't look back. At two in the morning, the stomach cramps woke me with violent precision. Acute gastroenteritis hits fast and dirty. I dragged myself to the urgent care clinic down the street, shivering beneath my coat. When the triage nurse pulled the IV needle from the sterile wrapper, I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing myself against the bite of the plastic catheter. A phantom memory flared behind my eyelids—seventeen years old in the high school nurse's office, a warm, calloused palm covering my eyes, a low voice murmuring: Don't look, Miller. If you don't look, it won't hurt. I opened my eyes. Garrett was standing ten feet away in the hallway, his face rigid with tension. My voice came out raspy, completely unbidden. "Garrett?" Before the word could settle, a softer voice cut across the room. "Garrett... I'm okay. I'm just really cold." Gemma was curled in an armchair by the triage desk, clutching a paper cup of water. Garrett didn't spare me another second. He instantly peeled off his heavy wool coat and wrapped it securely around Gemma’s shoulders. "Keep it on," he murmured, his fingers deftly tucking the collar beneath her chin with a tenderness so practiced it made my stomach churn. The haze in my mind vanished. The boy who covered my eyes at seventeen was dead. The man standing here was a stranger holding someone else's coat. A bitter metallic taste rose in my throat. Garrett turned, his eyes finally scanning my pale face and the saline drip hanging above my head. His brows knit together in irritation. "What are you doing here?" I stared at him. "People usually come to a clinic because they're sick." "Are you actually sick, or is this another setup?" A dry, hollow laugh scraped out of my chest. I wasn't the nineteen-year-old Sloane Miller who took cold showers in the dead of winter just to give herself a fever so he would visit my dorm. "Garrett," Gemma whined softly from the chair, "my head hurts." Garrett's gaze lingered on my face for less than a second before he turned on his heel. When he brushed past me, he brought with him the faint scent of cedarwood and bergamot. Two years ago, that cologne felt like home. Tonight, it smelled like stale chemicals. When Gemma's IV was finished, Garrett helped her stand and walked over to my cubicle. "Give me your umbrella." I looked up from my chair. "Why would I do that?" Impatience flashed across his features. "Gemma has a chest cold. She can't get soaked in this rain. She needs it more than you do." Before I could answer, his hand shot out and ripped the umbrella from my grip. The sudden yank pulled against the tape on the back of my hand, tearing the catheter loose. A bright bead of dark red blood welled up from the puncture site. Garrett didn't even notice. He popped the umbrella open with a sharp snap and guided Gemma out into the downpour, shielding her body with his own. I watched their silhouettes dissolve into the gray fog. He was always like this. Decisive. Brutal. Just like the afternoon of the fellowship vote. The department committee had been deadlocked. The final vote belonged to Garrett as the senior student representative. He gave it to Gemma. I waited until the conference room emptied out, until the hum of the fluorescent lights was the only sound left, and asked him, Why? You know how many months I poured into this research proposal. You know my metrics are higher than hers. Garrett had leaned against the mahogany table, smiling coldly. Sloane, you're ridiculous. The vote was my prerogative, not yours. I held back my tears until my throat burned. Either you tell everyone we're together right now, or we're finished. Pick one. He looked at me like I was a hysterical stranger making a scene in public. If you insist on suffocating yourself in this dynamic, that's on you. Stop acting like the world owes you an apology. That night, Gemma boarded a flight to London. And at three in the morning, my phone lit up with a call from the hospital. My mother had gone into cardiac arrest. I dialed Garrett’s number fifty times. Fifty times, the line clicked and went dead. On the fifty-first attempt, the call connected. But it wasn't Garrett. Hello? Sloane? Is something wrong? Gemma’s whisper came through the receiver, soft and sleepy. I stood in the fluorescent glare of the hospital corridor, my entire body shaking with cold. In the background, I heard the faint rustle of bedsheets, followed by Garrett’s deep, groggy rasp: Who is it? It's Sloane. Hang up on her. The line went dead. That week, I buried my mother. And I buried whatever was left of Garrett Davies. The sound of rain hitting the clinic's glass doors snapped me back to the present. When I finally walked outside into the chill, pressing a cotton ball to my bruised hand, Garrett was standing beside the brick pillars, holding a newly purchased convenience-store umbrella. "Get in the car," he said, nodding toward his sedan idling at the curb. "You look like a corpse. Stop being stubborn." I didn't move. "Are you seriously still throwing a tantrum over that fellowship?" he asked, his tone laced with exasperation. "I gave it to Gemma because she needed the grant money. Her parents died when she was a kid; she works three part-time jobs just to cover tuition. You had your mother. You had me." I looked into his eyes and spoke very quietly. "So asking my boyfriend of five years to back me up—without breaking a single rule—was an unforgivable sin?" Garrett scoffed. "You always make everything so dramatic. You put way too much weight on feelings." "And you never placed a single ounce of value on mine." "Sloane, it’s pointless." There they were again. Those three words. The exhaustion settled deep into my bones. "Give me back the prayer bracelet." It was a strand of polished sandalwood beads my mother had bought and had blessed at a chapel retreat when she first found out we were seeing each other. Garrett had worn it around his left wrist for years. I used to think it was his silent way of keeping a piece of my family close. Garrett’s jaw hardened. "What? You really want to play the stranger card?" I held out my hand. With a sudden, violent jerk, Garrett snapped the elastic cord from his wrist and threw the beads straight at my chest. "Sloane, are you ever going to grow the hell up?!" The wooden beads slammed against my collarbone, the sharp impact knocking the breath out of my lungs, before scattering across the wet concrete. Garrett spun around and stormed toward his car. I dropped to my knees in the cold mud, the rain soaking through the knees of my jeans, and picked up the beads one by one. The dirty runoff threatened to wash them into the storm drain. It felt as though the very last trace of warmth my mother had left in this world was slipping through my fingers. The next morning, I went to the campus biochemistry lab. Before leaving for London, I had left a hardbound black research ledger in my assigned locker. It contained two years of raw experimental data, failed trials, and formulas that Garrett had once spent late nights helping me annotate. When I pushed the lab door open, Garrett was leaning over Gemma’s workstation, watching her adjust a pipette. "The temperature gradient is off. Do it again," he said, his voice smooth and infinitely patient. "Why are you always so clumsy with the centrifuge, Finch?" I ignored them, walked to my locker, and pulled the metal door open. It was empty. "Looking for this?" Gemma turned around, holding my black notebook in her hands. "Give it back." She flipped through a few pages with an innocent, apologetic smile. "I joined the project late and was having trouble catching up with the baseline modeling, so Garrett said I could use your old notes." The margins were ruined. Careless red ink was slashed across my calculations, and several critical data pages had been roughly torn in half. "Who gave you permission to touch my intellectual property?" I took a step forward. Gemma flinched, stepping backward directly into Garrett’s chest. Garrett caught her shoulders, his face darkening as he looked at me. "You’re scaring her. You’ve been abroad for two years; you don't even need those metrics anymore. Don't be so petty." "You gave away my work without asking me?" I asked, my voice tight. "Garrett, do you genuinely believe that anything Gemma wants automatically belongs to her?" He didn't speak. His silence was the only answer he ever gave. I reached out, snatched the notebook from Gemma's hands, and gripped the spine. During my sophomore year, when I barely knew how to run an assay, I had followed him around the lab like a stray, clutching this exact book. He used to sigh and call me an amateur, but he would sit beside me until midnight, redrawing my reaction pathways line by line. None of that mattered now. I tore the first chunk of pages down the middle. Garrett’s expression cracked. "What the hell are you doing?" "It’s mine. I decide what happens to it." I ripped the rest of the binding apart, shredded the pages into ribbons, and dropped the whole mess into the chemical waste bin. Gemma’s eyes instantly flooded with tears. "Garrett... did I do something wrong?" "It has nothing to do with you," Garrett said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, icy register as he stared at me. "Back when you were taking Plan B three times a month without a word of complaint, you weren't nearly this dramatic. What’s with the self-righteous act now?" The air was sucked out of the room. I stood frozen, the blood draining from my face. I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper, forcing the tears back down my throat. Without saying a single word, I turned and walked out. By eight that evening, a post reached the top of the university’s anonymous campus forum. [Title: The Five-Year Groupie Who Couldn't Take a Hint.] The author didn't use my real name, but my major, year, and exchange program were spelled out with vicious accuracy. ‘Some girl from high school followed our top biochemistry star to college, acting like she owned him for five years, completely delusional about her status.’ The comment section was an open sewer. —Five years without a hard launch? Take the hint, girl. —Honestly feel bad for the guy. Imagine having a stalker attached to your hip since freshman year. Ten minutes later, Dylan commented under his verified fraternity handle with a smirking emoji: Real ones know what’s up. Garrett didn't comment. He just liked Dylan’s reply. I sat in my dark bedroom, staring at the blue light of my laptop, my fingers completely numb. I pulled the server logs through the forum's public API connection. The original poster’s IP address matched Gemma’s dorm network. I took the screenshots, compiled the metadata, and posted the receipts directly into the thread. Within thirty seconds, my rebuttal was deleted by an admin. I posted it again. Deleted again. I grabbed my coat and found Garrett outside the science building. "Did you use your moderator privileges to scrub my post?" I demanded. "Gemma is interviewing for graduate programs next week," Garrett said, not even looking up from his phone. "Your post would ruin her background check and sabotage her departmental recommendations." "And what about me?" My voice finally cracked. "What about people cornering me in the hall? What about the slurs someone wrote on my dorm room door this afternoon? Does none of that matter to you?" A flicker of hesitation crossed Garrett's eyes, but it was gone before it could take root. "Nobody laid a hand on you, Sloane. Don't make this uglier than it needs to be." He turned and walked toward Gemma, who was waiting by the curb, resting a hand on the small of her back. "Don't worry," I heard him murmur softly to her. "I'm right here." I'm right here. In seven years, through every panic attack, through the week my mother died, through every room full of people laughing at my devotion, Garrett Davies had never once said those words to me. I stood under the streetlamp, the cold wind cutting through my sweater, and the final piece of the puzzle clicked into place. I hadn't lost some grand competition. Garrett had simply never chosen me. Not once. The evening before the university’s senior commencement gala, the theater department notified us of the final rehearsal schedule. Garrett and I had been selected as the co-hosts back in our junior year before I left. In the backstage dressing room, Garrett cornered me. "We need to talk." I kept my eyes on my cue cards. "We have nothing to discuss." Without warning, Garrett seized my wrist, hauled me down the maintenance corridor, and shoved me into an empty audiovisual storage room. "Garrett! Let me go!" The heavy deadbolt clicked shut from the outside. I grabbed the brass knob and rattled it furiously. "Open the door!" "I'll unlock it the second the ceremony is over," Garrett’s muffled voice came through the heavy oak. "Gemma has wanted to host a major stage event since her freshman year. I promised her I'd make it happen before we graduated." "This was my assignment!" "You've hosted dozens of panels, Sloane. Sitting out one gala won't kill you." My chest seized, the air turning thin and suffocating. "To you, everything that matters to me is a minor inconvenience!" I slammed my fists against the door panel. "The fellowship was minor! Making our relationship public was minor! Watching your friends humiliate me was minor!" Silence hung in the hallway. Then, his quiet, dismissive reply: "Stop making a scene." His footsteps faded down the hall. I slid down the cold wood of the door until my knees hit the floor. A few minutes later, the distant audio feed crackled to life over the backstage monitors. Gemma’s sweet, polished voice echoed through the auditorium, followed by Garrett’s resonant, confident baritone. The crowd erupted into thunderous applause. I buried my face in my hands, and the tears finally came. All those years, I had waited for him to take my hand, walk into a crowded room, and simply say, This is Sloane. She’s the one I love. Instead, I got locked in a closet so another girl could wear my badge. When the auditorium lights were finally cut, the deadbolt turned. Garrett stood in the doorway, holding a bouquet of white lilies, his eyes dropping to my swollen, red-rimmed eyes. "Don't cry," he said, reaching out. "It's over." I ducked beneath his arm and walked straight past him. He grabbed my elbow. "Sloane, listen to me—" His phone vibrated violently against his hip. The screen flashed: Gemma. Garrett released my arm without a second thought. "Hello?" His expression shifted instantly. "Hey, breathe. Don't cry. Where are you? I'm coming right now." He hung up, looking back at me with hurried impatience. "She's overwhelmed by the crowd. Listen, I took next weekend off. It’s your mom’s birthday, right? I'll drive down to your hometown with you. We'll celebrate her birthday, and then we'll tell everyone about us. We'll make it official. Just stop being angry, okay?" My fingers went completely still. I had waited four agonizing years to hear those words. I had prayed for them until my faith eroded into dust. Hearing them now, they sounded like a terrible joke. "You really still believe I went to London just to throw a tantrum?" I asked softly. Garrett sighed, a flash of annoyance crossing his forehead. "What else was it?" I looked at him, my heart utterly still. "Forget it, Garrett. My mother doesn't need you to celebrate her birthday anymore." His temper finally flared, his voice rising sharply in the empty corridor. "You were the one who ran away! You disappeared for two years, pushed me away, and now you want to play the martyr? Sloane, do you even have a heart?!" His phone rang again. This time, he didn't even look at me. He turned and broke into a jog down the hall. "Gemma, hang on, I'm right outside." The familiar nickname echoed off the linoleum floor. It barely even stung. After my final thesis defense, I packed two suitcases and signed a contract with a research institute in Minneapolis. While waiting at the gate at the airport, I opened the university forum. I uploaded an album of photos spanning seven years. From seventeen to twenty-two. From high school track meets to college lab benches. I titled the post with one single sentence: [A Clear Record: Garrett Davies and Sloane Miller.] Below it, I attached the security footage of Garrett locking me into the storage room, along with the IP logs of the defamatory threads and his admin deletion history. I forwarded the entire file directly to the dean of student affairs and the academic ethics committee. My phone buzzed in my hand. Garrett: Where are you? I'm standing outside your apartment. I powered the phone down, handed my boarding pass to the gate agent, and walked down the jet bridge into the sky.
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