I Haunted His Dreams After He Dumped Me For My Roommate Chapter 11

I Haunted His Dreams After He Dumped Me For My Roommate Chapter 11

After that day, I buried myself in my grad school research internship. I barely went back to the

dorm.

Sometimes Ethan would call in the middle of the night. I rejected every single one. Eventually the

calls became rare.

Mid-July, my inbox received the full-ride offer from my dream school.

I stared at the email, refreshing over and over to make sure. Wild joy hit-then I realized I had no

idea who to tell.

In the end, I treated myself to an iced latte. Close enough to champagne.

I sent Evan a thank-you message. He replied instantly: [You earned it. See you in France.]

After summer break, I dragged my luggage to the airport.

Standing in the surging departures hall, I spotted my mom from far away. She looked so out of place among all the people.

She was still wearing the same outfit from that day at the train station in Chicago. She knew I saw

her.

Her mouth opened. She wanted to say something, then stopped herself.

I could already picture her scolding me the moment she started, “Got your own ideas now, don’t you? Never discussing anything with your family. Won’t even return your mom’s calls.”

“Ungrateful brat. Get as far away from me as possible and don’t bother coming back.”

But even after all this time, I still couldn’t not love my mom.

So I could only keep my distance.

I saw Ethan again during my second year of PhD in France. Years had passed.

At an academic conference, conversations hummed around me.

I stood by the floor-to-ceiling window, watching Parisian neon bleed into the rainy night. And I saw his reflection in the glass at the entrance.

Years later, Ethan looked even sharper, more striking.

He leaned against the wall with practiced indifference, shirt slightly wrinkled, collar loose. His eyes still held that dark, cold, teasing arrogance-the kind you only get from having everything handed

to you.

A colleague whispered the gossip: the handsome guy from the States had tons of people chasing him but never a girlfriend.

Ethan didn’t speak to me the entire time. We were like strangers.

After the conference, I stood at the hotel entrance, waiting for the rain to stop.

A black umbrella appeared in my line of sight, hovering over my head.

Ethan asked, “Walk with me for a bit?”

We walked together down a street lit by dim yellow streetlamps.

He asked, “Have you been doing okay?”

I said, “Really good.”

He told me he’d gone to my old high school in that small Midwest town. He’d seen my photo still

hanging on the honor roll, seventeen years old.

I smiled. “Getting from Boston to that tiny town-was the trip rough?”

He said yeah-took a flight, then a connecting train, then a bus, then a motorcycle taxi.

Picturing Ethan on a motorcycle taxi made me laugh even harder.

But through the rain mist, he didn’t laugh. Those deep, dark eyes looked at me with aching

sincerity.

“Yvie, I’m sorry. When we were together, I took everything for granted-including your love.”

I glanced at him, then walked forward a couple of steps. I looked down at a small puddle on the ground.

I asked, “That photo of me… not exactly pretty, was it?”

Seventeen-year-old me, exhausted, crushed by a future and poverty and the weight of no one

caring.

But twenty-seven-year-old Ethan said, “It was beautiful.”

I gave him a smile and pointed at a car not far away.

“Beautiful’s not your girlfriend anymore. My ride’s here. Goodbye, Ethan.”

He didn’t say goodbye.

He just stared at the ring on my ring finger as I waved, watching me all the way until I got into the

car.

That night, when I got home, I found a silk box in my bag-Ethan must’ve slipped it in without me

noticing.

Inside were a photo and an engagement ring.

The photo was of Observatory Hill, the place I’d once wanted so badly to visit with him but never

did.

I flipped the photo over. Tucked inside were a note and a check for eight figures.

The note read: [If I had been more mature back then, would our ending have been different?]

I thought back to the year I returned to my hometown to study.

In that gray, hopeless town, where everyone believed this was all my life would ever be-I randomly messaged Ethan on a forum. We talked for three years.

He mailed me stacks of study notes and practice exams from elite high schools in major cities.

On the night I missed home the most, I crouched on the school field, unable to see a single star.

I gathered my courage and called him.

I asked, “How old do you have to get before you stop needing love?”

He laughed at me. “Who doesn’t need love?”

A long silence stretched over the phone, so long my legs went numb from crouching. I said, “Ethan, I’m hanging up now.”

That cool, magnetic voice finally came through the static.

“Yvonne, let me be the one you love, I’ll show you the stars.”

The next morning, I cashed the eight-figure check.

And I donated every cent to the same rural girls’ high school I attended.