I Confirmed Cambridge While He Was Laughing With Her Chapter 09

I Confirmed Cambridge While He Was Laughing With Her Chapter 09

Day sixty. Silas’s messages dropped to one every three days. No more long rants, no more begging

for reconciliation. Just short, quiet lines.

[It’s cold here. Is it cold where you are?]

[The cafeteria has a new dish. You’d hate it, way too spicy.]

[That library seat you always used is still empty.]

He was messaging into silence. I never replied, and he stopped expecting answers. It was like

tossing stones down a hollow tree stump, expecting no echo.

Day sixty–five, he sent a screenshot. His iMessage contact list, Martha’s chat marked “Deleted.”

[I’ve cut her out.]

I stared at the image.

For two years he’d taken her endless calls, fetched her packages, picked out suitcases for her,

fastened necklaces around her neck, peeled shrimp for her, bought her expensive birthday gifts. He’d stayed up late gaming with her, driven her places, wandered bookstores with her.

So much of his life had revolved around her. Now he’d deleted her contact. But I no longer cared

whether he did or not.

What I had needed wasn’t for him to delete Martha afterward. I’d needed him to stand between me and the crowd when I was humiliated. I’d needed him to stay beside me when I burned with fever instead of rushing back to her. I’d needed him to hear me say “please make her stop” and answer with a firm “I will talk to her“, not “That’s just how she is, try not to take it personally.”

Deleting a contact couldn’t undo all of that.

I sent no reply.

A day passed, and another message arrived: [Jennifer, I’ve thought about what you said. You were right. You told me I’d never truly seen you. I scrolled back… you said ‘okay‘ so many times. I never asked what you really wanted. I just assumed you were fine with everything. I’m sorry.]

I finished reading, closed my phone, and headed off to class.

When my lecture ended, Louis was waiting for me outside the lecture hall building. “The shop got

some new stuff in. Wanna come check it out?”

“Sure.”

On our walk over, he naturally positioned himself on the side closer to the road. Quiet, unforced.

Back when I walked with Silas, which side he took a ways depended on where Martha stood. If

Martha was on the left, he would walk left, leaving me on the curb exposed to traffic.

Louis didn’t know Martha. He only knew me.

The shop was small, crammed full of snacks and seasonings.

Louis grabbed a bag of Takis Fuego, then another bag of Jolly Ranchers. “You finished your last

bag, right? Getting you another.”

“How did you notice?”

“I saw the empty wrapper sitting on your desk.”

He’d noticed an empty candy wrapper on my desk. Silas hadn’t even known I’d left the country.

“You’re too good to me.”

“It’s not a big deal,” he dropped the candy into the shopping basket. “Just… normal, right?”

Just normal. He thought caring for someone was normal. Once I’d believed being overlooked was

normal.

Back in my dorm that night, I opened Silas’s chat window.

Sixty–five days of messages–rage and demands giving way to reflection, then apologies, then

silence.

He was slowly changing for the better. But his growth no longer concerned me.

I typed a message, hesitated a long while, and hit send.

[Silas, thank you for the cake, and for everything you’ve done since. But we can’t go back.]

He replied almost instantly: [I know.]

[You will find someone better someday.]

You tool

closed the chat. idkant delete te

no rock him. I let it sink to the bottom of my chats, like an old

journal entry I’d finished reading Noe need to rere adat, and no need to tear the pages out.