It’s Not That I Didn’t Wait, It’s That You Never Chose Me Chapter 03

It’s Not That I Didn’t Wait, It’s That You Never Chose Me Chapter 03

I shoved through the crowd like I’d lost my mind.

My father was huddled in the corner, his face white as paper.

The second he saw me, he panicked and frantically tried to hide his notebook behind his back.

“Elaina? What are you doing here…” he said, forcing out a smile so strained it looked worse than crying. “I’m old. My eyesight’s shot. I mistook somebody else for Adrian and made a fool of myself.”

I bit down so hard on my lip I tasted blood.

“Dad, let’s go,” I said, taking his rough hand in mine.

I brought him to a little diner outside the campus gates.

He ordered the cheapest bowl of plain broth noodles on the menu and wouldn’t even add the fried egg.

While he was eating, he reached into the inner pocket of his undershirt and pulled out an old savings passbook wrapped tightly in layers of plastic sheet.

Then he carefully pushed it across the table toward me.

“Elaina, this is the thirty thousand I’ve saved over the last two years,” he said. “Take it and use it for my sister’s tuition.”

He paused, lowering his voice even more.

“And from now on… don’t ask your husband for money anymore. He is a professor in the city. A man like that cares about appearances. We’re just folks from the sticks. We shouldn’t be a burden.”

That was when I finally broke.

Tears hit the laminate tabletop, splattering against the wood.

Last month, my father’s old delivery trike had broken down.

That thing was his only way of making a living.

Fixing it would’ve cost five thousand dollars.

When I asked Adrian for the money, he’d been sitting on the couch and hadn’t even bothered to lift his eyes.

“Elaina, all my money’s tied up in a high-yield CD. I can’t pull it out.”

Then he’d added, flat and cold, “Your dad’s old. He should be resting back in Pine Creek, not expecting us to keep bailing him out.”

But just the day before, I had seen the online banking portal left open on his screen.

Two hundred thousand dollars.

Transferred straight into Vanessa’s account.

The memo read: Bryce arts training sponsorship fee..

I put my father on the bus back home.

Standing outside the window, watching his hunched silhouette dwindled into the distance, I felt something inside me die for good.

By the time I got back, Adrian was already home.

He was in the home office organizing Bryce’s interview materials, his attention fully absorbed.

I walked in, laid a printed screenshot of the transfer record on his keyboard, and said, “So this is the investment you couldn’t touch?”

My voice came out eerily calm.

His fingers stopped over the keys.

He picked up the page, glanced at it, and didn’t look rattled in the slightest.

“Bryce is fast-tracking his admission through the arts program. That two hundred grand is the price of entry if he wants a shot at the advanced cohort. Vanessa’s short on cash right now, so I loaned it to her. Consider it an investment.”

“An investment?” I gave a short, humorless laugh. “What about the five thousand my dad needed to fix his trike?”

Adrian frowned, impatience bleeding openly into his face. “Elaina, can you try being reasonable for once?”

He tossed the paper back down.

“That beat-up trike of your dad’s is a money pit. Even if you fix it, what’s the return? Bryce is different. Once he gets into our university, his future opens up. That’s called maximizing resource allocation.”

I stared at the man I had shared a bed with for three years.

The absurdity of him was almost beyond belief.

“Adrian,” I said, speaking his name slowly. “Why did you pretend not to know my father today in the arena?”

His face darkened.

“That was a official function. Your father showed up dressed like that and started calling me his son-in-law in front of the dean. How exactly was I supposed to explain that?”

He stood, up, looking down at me with supreme condescension.

“Elaina, if you insist on throwing a tantrum over something this minor, then I have nothing else to say.”