The night before our graduation trip, the boy I had loved since middle school tagged me in our group chat and wrote, “Stella didn’t book your ticket. Sit this one out.” What hurt wasn’t being left behind—it was realizing, with terrifying clarity, that I had spent years begging for a place in a life where everyone else had already decided I was optional.
Chapter 1
A year earlier, I would have demanded answers. There were eleven people going on that trip, so how did Stella manage to buy tickets for ten and forget only mine? But that night, sitting on the edge of my bed with half-packed clothes scattered around me, I stared at Jake Morrison’s message and typed one word.
Okay.
Then I left the group chat.
Jake called less than two minutes later. For one foolish heartbeat, I hoped he was calling to say he had realized how cruel it looked, that he would fix it, that the trip would not be the same without me.
Instead, his first words were, “Leah, why do you always have to make everything dramatic?”
I closed my eyes.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You left the group. Stella feels terrible. She told me you’ve been picking on her lately, and honestly, I’m starting to see what she means.”
There it was.
Stella.
Always Stella.
“I’m not upset,” I said.
“Then why leave?”
“Because I’m not going.”
“You could stay in the group.”
“For what?”
He went quiet.
I almost laughed.
Jake had known me since I was twelve. My father died when I was eleven, and afterward my mother moved to Florida to build a small real-estate business while I stayed in Ohio with Grandma until I finished school. There were years when loneliness sat beside me like another person at the dinner table.
Then Jake came along.
Some boys at school had found out Dad was dead and Mom lived hundreds of miles away. They stole my pencils before tests, poured soda into my backpack, and once let the air out of both bicycle tires while I was in class.
Jake found me crying beside that bicycle.
He did not ask many questions.
He confronted the boys, then walked my bike nearly two miles to a repair shop.
After that, we became inseparable.
We walked to school together through snow and summer heat. He knew my favorite candy, the date my father died, and how I hated thunderstorms. When Grandma’s arthritis got bad, Jake carried groceries into our kitchen without being asked.
At fourteen, we made a ridiculous promise that we would attend the same college.
At fifteen, I realized I was in love with him.
At seventeen, Stella Moore moved into the house next door to his.
Pretty, bright, outgoing Stella.
She became part of our group almost immediately. She laughed easily, touched people when she talked, and had a way of making every room feel like it had been waiting for her.
At first, I liked her.
Then small things started happening.
Stella stopped riding her bicycle to school and asked Jake to drive her instead.
He agreed.
I waited for him to say, “Leah rides with me too.”
He never did.
So every morning, I rode alone while Jake’s truck passed me on the road with Stella in the passenger seat.
Another time, I watched him tutor her in algebra at the library. She made a mistake, and Jake laughed and tapped her gently on the forehead with his pencil.
It was nothing.
That was what I told myself.
Everything was always nothing.
A ride.
A joke.
A missed invitation.
A seat saved for Stella while I stood.
A conversation that stopped when I approached.
One tiny cut never looks serious.
A hundred of them will still make you bleed.
The first time I left our group chat, I lasted six hours. At two in the morning, ashamed and panicking, I texted my friend Chloe and asked her to add me back.
The moment I returned, Stella wrote, “Leah! Why’d you leave?”
Then another message appeared.
“Jake, don’t forget to pick me up tomorrow 😊.”
I stared at it until my vision blurred.
That humiliation cured me of leaving again.
Until the graduation trip.
So when Jake said, “If you leave this time, don’t make Chloe sneak you back in,” I did not defend myself.
“I won’t.”
He sounded almost disappointed by my calmness.
“Fine.”
Then he hung up.
I cried after that.
Not loudly.
Grandma had already moved to Florida to stay with Mom, and the house was empty except for me, so technically I could have screamed.
Instead, I sat on the floor beside my suitcase and cried quietly out of habit.
I had planned to tell Jake something on the trip.
My mother had persuaded me to apply to colleges in Florida. For months, I had secretly been considering it.
The trip was supposed to be my goodbye.
Now there was nothing left to say.
The next morning, I packed for Florida instead.
My phone began buzzing.
Jake.
“Why did you block Stella?”
Another message.
“She didn’t forget your ticket on purpose.”
Then another.
“She’s sweet, Leah. If she upset you, I’ll apologize for her.”
That sentence finally made something inside me go still.
He would apologize for her.
He had never apologized for himself.
Stella had sent two messages after I left the group.
“Such a shame you can’t come!”
Then:
“Don’t worry. I’ll keep an eye on Jake for you 😉.”
I blocked her.
Now I blocked Jake too.
There was a knock at the front door.
When I opened it, Chloe Reed stood on my porch wearing pajama pants, oversized sunglasses, and a grin.
“Surprise.”
I threw my arms around her.
Chloe had graduated early after winning an art scholarship and had spent six months studying with a private instructor in North Carolina. She walked into Grandma’s house like she still lived there, dropped onto the sofa, and kicked off her shoes.
“I saw the group chat,” she said.
“You came because you thought I was devastated.”
“I came because I missed you.”
“Liar.”
“Fine. Both.”
I sat opposite her.
“I’m going to Florida.”
Her smile disappeared.
“For college?”
“Yes.”
“What about Jake?”
“Jake is ancient history.”
Chloe stared at me.
Then she leaned forward and pressed the back of her hand against my forehead.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking for fever.”
I laughed for the first time in twenty-four hours.
I showed her the college brochures Mom had mailed me. Universities in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa, and Orlando were circled in red ink.
Chloe slowly smiled.
“You’re serious.”
“I’m tired of planning my whole life around someone who keeps planning his without me.”
She stood.
“Then we’re taking our own trip.”
“What?”
“My program is finished. You need campus visits. I need a vacation.”
Within two days, we had an itinerary.
And for the first time since Stella had appeared, my future looked larger than Jake Morrison.
A week later, Chloe and I arrived at the airport for the next leg of our trip.
That was where we ran into Jake’s group returning from theirs.
Stella spotted me first.
“Leah!”
Jake turned.
Stella smiled sweetly. “Did you come to pick us up?”
Several boys laughed.
One said, “Little late, Leah. Hotel messed up the rooms. Jake and Stella had to share for two nights.”
Another whistled.
“They’re perfect together. You might as well surrender.”
I looked at Jake.
He was watching me carefully.
Once, those words would have destroyed me.
Instead I smiled.
“You’re right.”
The laughter stopped.
I nodded toward Stella.
“They do look good together.”
Jake’s face changed.
I lifted my boarding pass.
“Anyway, my flight’s boarding. Have a safe trip home.”
I walked past them with Chloe.
“Leah,” one of the boys called. “What game are you playing?”
I did not turn around.
That night, while Chloe and I were flying south, someone posted a video in our old class chat.
Jake Morrison was kissing Stella Moore.
I never saw it.
And for the first time in years, Jake did something that should have broken my heart while I was somewhere else building a life he knew absolutely nothing about.
