I Confirmed Cambridge While He Was Laughing With Her Chapter 04

I Confirmed Cambridge While He Was Laughing With Her Chapter 04

The day before my departure, Silas showed up at my door. “You free today? Come with me to the bookstore. Mattie’s studying for the IELTS, I need to pick out study materials for her.”

“I’ve got plans.”

“What plans?”

“I’m packing my things.”

“Moving flats? Want me to help?”

“No.”

“Alright. Wanna grab dinner tonight, just the two of us?”

He almost never said “just the two of us.”

I nearly said yes.

“Mattie has evening classes, so I’ve got nothing going on,” he added right away. “Remember that BBQ spot just off campus you’ve been wanting to try?”

“I’ll pass.”

“What’s going on? You keep turning me down lately.”

“Nothing.”

He studied my face for two seconds and dropped the subject. “Fine, I’m off. Mattie’s waiting for me downstairs.”

He took a couple steps away then turned back. “Oh, Mattie really loved that matcha cake you baked last time. Can you make her another one soon?”

That cake had been meant for him, for our two-year anniversary. He hadn’t finished it, and brought half of it over to Martha.

“Sure.”

Once he left, I went back into my apartment. My closet stood empty, bed stripped, desk wiped clean.

Only one object remained sitting on my desk: the cheap keychain he had bought, saying he had grabbed it on impulse walking past the campus gate. Ten dollars.

That was the only gift he had given me in two years of dating.

Martha got a three-thousand-two-hundred-dollar necklace and lavish birthday parties. I got a ten-dollar keychain.

I set it down on the desk and laid a slip of paper underneath.

I rewrote that note three times.

The first draft filled an entire page. I wrote everything, starting from Pre-Orientation Cadre Camp all the way up to today. I tore it up.

The second draft had only one sentence: [You have never truly seen me.] I tore that one up too.

In the end I wrote only five short words: [We’re done. Take care.]

In the afternoon, Hazel helped me haul my luggage downstairs. “You’re really not going to tell him?”

“Tell him what?”

“That you’re leaving for Cambridge.”

“He wouldn’t care.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“He never even notices whether I’m around or not.”

Hazel didn’t push further.

My Uber pulled up. I loaded my suitcases into the trunk.

Martha dropped a new Instagram post at exactly that moment: [Thanks for hitting the bookstore with me, Silas! Crushing IELTS!]

The photo showed them side-by-side in the bookstore, him holding a tall stack of textbooks for her, grinning wide.

I climbed into the car. As the vehicle pulled away, a new text popped up.

[Jennifer, Martha wants the matcha-cake recipe. Can you send it over? She wants to bake it herself.]

That final message was still all about Martha.

I typed a reply: [You can find plenty of recipes online, look it up.]

I sent it, then exited the chat window.

I scrolled our entire conversation history back to the start, across two years. The word I typed most often was “okay.”

[Okay, I’ll help you.]

[Okay, I won’t go.]

[Okay, go stay with her.]

[Okay, I’ll head home alone.]

Nine out of ten messages he sent me were about Martha.

The tree-lined campus street faded behind the window.

I wondered when he would come looking for me in my apartment. If he would stare for a second seeing my empty closet. If he would remember the matching-style necklace I had scrimped two months of breakfast money to buy for him two years ago.

But I knew. Even if he was caught off-guard for a moment, he would grab his phone right afterward and text Martha: “Jennifer’s gone…”

I closed iMessage and powered my phone off.

At six o’clock, the plane lifted off on schedule. It pierced through layers of cloud cover and touched down in a new city.

Nobody was there to meet me. Yet for the first time, I felt free.

The second I turned my phone back on, dozens of texts and missed calls flooded in—all from Silas.