Team NYU? Cute… They All Secretly Joined Team Delilah Chapter 09

Team NYU? Cute… They All Secretly Joined Team Delilah Chapter 09

I set my phone aside and continued organizing the materials for my presentation that afternoon.

When Evelyn woke up and saw me still sitting at my desk, she jumped.

“You didn’t sleep all night?”

I shook my head.

“I slept for a little while.”

She looked at the shadows under my eyes but did not call me out.

“Your project presentation is today. Are you sure you can do this?”

I slid the final page into my folder.

“I can.”

No one could stay trapped forever in one rainy night.

That morning, I went to the library to revise my presentation.

I had barely sat down when someone pulled out the chair across from me.

I looked up and saw Nicolas.

He looked much more exhausted than he had the last time I saw him outside campus, and he was holding a carton of warm milk.

It was something he used to bring me all the time.

During my senior year, my stomach had often bothered me, and after late study sessions he would

wait for me outside school.

He would push a warm carton of milk into my hands, complain that I was a hassle, and still keep his own hands around it until the last second to keep it warm for me.

I looked at the milk but did not take it.

Nicolas’s hand remained frozen in midair.

After a long silence, he said quietly, “Jade, I want to talk to you.”

I closed my laptop.

“If you’re here for Andrew or Delilah, you don’t need to say anything.”

“I’m not.”

He denied it immediately.

“I’m here for myself.”

The library was quiet.

“What I said before the SAT wasn’t a joke.”

I looked at him.

He lowered his eyes, his voice barely above a whisper.

“When I said I’d ask you out once we got into NYU, I meant it.”

I said nothing.

He looked up at me, belated panic in his eyes.

“I’ve always liked you. We’ve known each other for so long that I kept thinking there would always

be more time.”

I asked, “So when you carried her to the hospital, you still thought I’d come back?”

“When you told me to apologize to her, you still thought I’d come back?”

His lips moved, but no sound came out.

That rainy night, all he would have had to do was look back once, and he would have seen me standing alone in the rain.

But he never did.

He walked away with Delilah in his arms.

Nicolas’s eyes slowly turned red.

“I’m sorry.”

“Jade, I really know I was wrong. Can you give me one more chance?”

I put my laptop into my bag and stood up.

“Nicolas White, applications are closed.”

He stared at me blankly.

I said calmly, “So are my feelings for you.”

Then I walked away without looking back.

When I stepped out of the library, Sue was standing at the bottom of the stairs.

The moment she saw me, tears began falling.

“Jade, I really regret it.”

She spoke through her sobs.

“I never should have told Delilah our private things. I never should have worn matching clothes with her. And I never should have taken her side when you were hurting the most.

I looked at her.

Memories from the past flashed through my

mind.

On our first day of high school, she had grabbed my hand and said we would be best friends forever.

At a school sports event the next year, she fell and hurt herself, and I carried her all the way to the nurse’s office on my back.

During senior year, we had huddled under the same blanket late at night, planning our graduation trip and talking about going to college in the same city.

It turned out that even so much sincerity could eventually be worn down until it became unrecognizable.

I said, “Sue Scott, let the past stay in the past.”

Her face went pale.

I walked around her and continued forward.

She cried after me from behind.

“Can we ever be friends again?”

“No.”

That afternoon, the auditorium was full when I walked onto the stage for my project presentation.

Evelyn sat in the front row and gave me an encouraging gesture.

I opened my laptop and took a deep breath.

The moment the screen lit up, I saw three people sitting in the very last row.

Andrew Schmidt.

Nicolas White.

Sue Scott.

All three of them were watching me.

Their eyes held guilt, regret, and a fragile kind of hope.

In the past, I probably would have softened just because they had finally shown up for me.

Now I simply looked away and calmly began my presentation.

My voice carried through the microphone and filled the auditorium.

Some people took careful notes, some whispered quiet comments, and some nodded and smiled at

No one there knew who had once left me behind.

And no one expected me to give up my place for someone else,

When my presentation ended, applause filled the room.

Evelyn was the first person to stand and clap for me.

I stood beneath the stage lights and understood something clearly for the first time.

Leaving them did not mean I had lost my light.

It meant I no longer had to give my light to people who did not deserve it.