So, I hired someone to sit in my lecture for me. Minor problem: I accidentally hired a guy. When the professor called my name, "Chloe Reed?" a dude’s voice boomed from the back, "Here!" The professor squinted. "Chloe Reed... grew a beard?" The guy froze for a second, then his brain kicked into high gear. "Actually," he said smoothly, "I'm her boyfriend. She's sick, so she asked me to record the lecture for her. She's super dedicated, didn't want to fall behind." The whole lecture hall buzzed. Then, from the front row, Dylan Sterling stood up. He gave the guy a polite, tight-lipped smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Sorry, but *I'm* Chloe Reed's boyfriend," he said, his voice dripping with ice. "Who are you?" Here's the thing about Dylan: he's the golden boy of the Computer Science department. A campus legend. And me? I'm the ghost hovering on the edge of failing. We hadn't seen each other in a month. His first words to me weren't "I miss you." They were: "Chloe, if you don't get serious, you're just going to end up as a burnout, stuck in the mud." He checked his watch three times while saying it. Like every second spent with me was a waste of his precious, billable hours. I just nodded, my voice surprisingly calm. "You're right. I'm a burnout. I don't deserve you. Let's break up." To finally get away from him, I’d asked the class-sitter to pretend to be my new boyfriend. After Dylan stormed off and the breakup was official, my fake boyfriend’s eyes lit up. "Awesome! So... does this mean the boyfriend position is officially open?" * 1 My phone buzzed while I was in the art studio, where I’d been parked for a solid ten hours, lost in a painting. It was my roommate, Sarah. "Chloe, you have to check the campus gossip blog! You're famous!" she shrieked. "And maybe you should, like, call Dylan and explain?" I flexed my stiff, paint-splattered fingers and pulled up the site. The top post was a video. There it was: the professor calling my name, the random guy answering, the professor's confusion, and his "brilliant" ad-lib about being my devoted boyfriend. Followed, of course, by my *actual* boyfriend doing a live fact-check. The comments were a dumpster fire of hilarity. > *【Did the CS golden boy just get played? LMAO】* > *【Dude was 100% a hired gun from ClassPal. Epic fail.】* > *【A for effort, F for execution. Didn't count on the real BF being in the same class. Ouch.】* I buried my face in my hands and pulled up the chat with the guy I'd hired. Me: You might have mentioned you were a GUY. The plan was simple. I’d hire a girl from the app, she'd wear a mask, sit in the back, and the professor, who knew our faces but not our souls, would be none the wiser. The profile on the app said female, so I didn't think twice. He replied instantly. Him: Omg I am SO sorry! It was my first time doing this, I totally messed up the process. ? Him: I just panicked! I had no idea your boyfriend was in there! ?? Him: I explained it to him after, I don't think he's mad anymore? No drama caused, I promise! ? Him: Seriously, I feel terrible. Let me buy you dinner or something to make up for it? ? I clicked off the screen and sighed. This was bad. Now Dylan was going to be furious about me skipping class again. It's what started the massive fight a month ago that led to us giving each other the silent treatment. 2 Dylan and I grew up across the street from each other. He was always the intense, self-disciplined kid, while I was... not. When other kids were playing tag, he was dragging me inside to do my homework. He’d stand over me, his face dead serious. "You got this wrong. Write it out ten times." It was torture. In high school, he engineered it so we were lab partners and sat together in every class, constantly pushing me. "You have to work hard, Chloe. We'll go to Blackwood University *together*." He'd always say that, his ears turning a little red on the "together" part, this tiny crack in his usual cool, calm facade. For that one word, "together," I studied like my life depended on it. And we did it. We both got into Blackwood's top-ranked Computer Science program. My parents practically cried with joy. They said Dylan was a godsend, the only reason I hadn't "veered off track and ruined my future." The day I got my acceptance letter, everyone was celebrating. But on that sunny July afternoon, I felt like I'd been plunged into an icy lake. I was shaking uncontrollably. Because in the list of majors I had painstakingly submitted on my application, Computer Science was nowhere to be found. And my scores were way too high to have been auto-assigned. Someone had changed my application. 3 Day one of college, I knew I hated coding. The rigid logic, the endless rules—it felt like a cage. So I started skipping. A lot. I found the campus art studio and secretly started teaching myself how to paint. I couldn't let Dylan know. But you can't hide something like that forever. When he found out I was ditching Data Structures for charcoal sketches, he just frowned, his voice clipped. "That's a waste of time." He sounded exactly like my parents. The big blow-up last month happened because I'd officially filed the paperwork to transfer my major to Fine Arts. Dylan was livid. He said I was being impulsive, throwing my future away. In that moment, I just felt exhausted. I didn't have the energy to try to make him understand anymore. 4 I stared at Dylan's name in my contact list. Our last texts were from a month ago. I took a deep breath and started typing. Me: Hey Dyl, guess what today is! ✨ No response. Me: If you don't guess right, the penalty is one kiss. ? An hour passed. Me: Okay, okay, I know you're just pretending not to know so you can get that kiss. ? Me: It's World Oceans Day! We should get dinner to celebrate! Me: Where are you? I can come find youuuu. I felt a familiar frustration bubbling up. I was practically waving a white flag, and he couldn't even be bothered to text back. I sat in the dining hall, eating with one hand and refreshing my phone with the other, just in case the bad campus Wi-Fi was delaying his reply. I dragged out my meal for over an hour. Crickets. 5 I ended up texting one of Dylan's roommates, who told me he was at the lab. When I got there, he was hunched over a monitor, debugging code, completely in his element. "Dylan!" I waved, trying to sound cheerful. His head snapped up. He glanced at me, then quickly looked away, trying to act casual. "What are you doing here?" I wrapped my arms around his from behind and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. "Hey, you. Let's not be mad anymore, okay? I'm sorry." The tips of his ears turned that faint shade of pink I knew so well. The icy wall he'd built up started to melt. "Okay," he mumbled. "Sorry for what?" "…Let's go get dinner," I said, dodging the question. "You have dark circles under your eyes. You pulled another all-nighter, didn't you? You probably haven't even eaten." Just as I was about to steer him out the door, his expression hardened again. "Excuse me, you two," a voice cut in. "He can't really leave for dinner yet." I turned. It was Mia, Dylan's go-to partner for every hackathon and competition. She gave me a smile that felt more like a baring of teeth. "There's a major competition deadline coming up. Dylan and I really have to grind this out. Sorry, but he can't go with you." She gestured to some takeout containers on a desk. "I already ordered food. It'll be here any minute. You're welcome to stay, if you want." There was an undercurrent of smugness in her tone that rubbed me the wrong way. But Dylan had told me how important this competition was. "Oh. Okay, then I won't bother you guys." I turned back to Dylan. "Well, text me when you're not so busy. We can get dinner then." All I got was a faint "Mm-hmm." Mia smiled. "Okay, see you around!" The last thing I saw before the lab door clicked shut was Dylan and Mia leaning in close together, pointing at the same screen, completely in sync. A sour knot formed in my stomach. 6 It turns out "not so busy" was a time that never came. Another month went by after that day at the lab. Not a single text from him. I heard from his roommate that he was basically living in the lab. Ever since we got to college, he was always *busy*. Too busy to text back. Way too busy to text first. This past month, I'd thrown myself into my painting and hadn't reached out to him either. The result? A month of absolute silence. It was hard to believe we were even in the same major, let alone the same city. We were living in two different universes. His was a world of GPAs, research, and competitions. Mine was a world of skipping class to mess with oil paints. He was collecting awards and becoming the CS department's golden boy. I was collecting warnings from my academic advisor and trying not to flunk out. When had we drifted so far apart? 7 I finally broke down and called him. While the phone was ringing, a notification popped up in my dorm's group chat. I tapped on it. It was a link to the university's newsletter. The headline was about Dylan and Mia winning first place in that big competition. The photo showed the two of them on stage, holding a trophy, beaming. They looked good together. Powerful. My roommate had tagged me: *【@Chloe Your BF is a freaking genius!】* Before I could even type a reply, another notification appeared—a recommended article from a news app. *【Power Couple of STEM: Blackwood's Finest Secure Early Admission to Prestigious Grad Program…】* I slammed the "dislike" button on the article, but a wave of sadness washed over me anyway. Suddenly, the call connected. Dylan's tired voice came through the line. "What's up?" My mind was still stuck on that headline. The words tumbled out, sounding more hurt than I intended. "Dylan, why haven't you talked to me? I just saw that you and—" "Busy," he cut me off. "…Okay. Well, can you make time for dinner with me?" "Where." "Just the dining hall. It'll be quick, I won't take up too much of your time. Five o'clock?" "Fine." "See you there?" "Yep." He hung up. 8 I stood outside the dining hall for an hour and twenty-one minutes. Dylan finally showed up as the sun was setting, casting long shadows across the quad. "Sorry," he said, not breaking his stride. "Something came up." I opened my mouth to ask, *Couldn't you have sent a text?* but I clamped it shut. I didn't want to start a fight. We were finally together. I got in line for the build-your-own noodle bowl station while he went to the grab-and-go section for a pre-packaged salad. It was his usual. No line, fast to eat. For a genius like him, even eating was a waste of time. By the time I sat down with my steaming bowl, he was already halfway done. He glanced at my food and frowned slightly but said nothing. My noodles were piping hot, so I carefully picked out the cilantro I hated. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dylan lift his wrist and check his watch. *One.* I started a silent count. It was a habit of his, something he started in high school—timing how long a meal took. When he finished his salad, he glanced at his watch again. *Two.* I pretended not to notice the impatient tapping of his foot. I tried to fill the silence, to connect with him. "Hey, so the school is having a student art show," I said, trying to sound excited. "And even though I'm not an art major or anything, one of my paintings got accepted! I was so—" He lifted his wrist. A third, pointed look at his watch. It was like every single second he had to spend with me, listening to my stupid little life, was an agony he had to endure. 9 "Chloe, if you don't get serious, you're just going to end up as a burnout, stuck in the mud." After a month of silence, that was the first real sentence he'd said to me. I slowly swallowed the noodles in my mouth. I looked up, meeting his cold, impatient gaze. "You're right," I said, my voice perfectly level. "I'm a burnout. And I don't deserve you." "Let's break up."
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