The night before our graduation trip, the boy who had once promised he would never leave me behind sent a message that did exactly that. “Maya, Olivia forgot to book your ticket,” Jake Morrison wrote in our group chat. “There’s nothing we can do now. You’ll have to sit this one out.”
Chapter 3
The August heat wrapped around me the moment I stepped outside Miami International Airport. Liam was waiting near the curb in a white T-shirt, holding a homemade sign with my name written across it in careful block letters.
He took my suitcase before I could protest. “Food first. Campus check-in second.”
Brighton University was greener than I expected, with sprawling lawns, old brick buildings, and massive magnolia trees shading the walkways. Liam knew every useful detail—the quiet floor in the library, the dining hall station with the best grilled chicken, the shortcut between the humanities building and my dorm.
When we reached my room, he pulled freshly washed sheets from his backpack. “Your mom told me you’d forget bedding.”
“I did not forget bedding.”
“You packed four novels and no pillowcases.”
“That proves nothing.”
He laughed, and I realized how long it had been since laughter around a man felt easy.
My roommates noticed him too. That night one of them leaned down from her bunk and asked, “So who was Tall, Dark, and Responsible?”
Before I could answer, Liam texted.
“If they ask, tell them I’m still trying to win you over.”
I pressed the phone against my chest to hide my smile.
“No,” I told my roommates. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
Then I added, “Not yet.”
Over the next several weeks, Liam became part of my life without demanding to be the center of it. He brought iced tea after orientation, waited while I finished long library sessions, and took me around Miami on weekends. He never asked me to prove how much I cared about him, and he never made kindness feel like a favor I had to repay.
One evening after a movie, we stopped beneath a pedestrian bridge near campus. The air smelled faintly of hibiscus and rain. Liam looked nervous for the first time since I had known him.
“Maya?”
“Yes?”
“Can I stop trying to win you over and officially call you my girlfriend?”
I made him wait three seconds.
“Approved.”
His surprised laugh was so sweet I remembered it years later.
Chloe eventually posted a picture of us online. In it, Liam had one arm around my shoulder while I looked up at him laughing. Someone from high school sent the picture into the old class chat.
Jake called that night.
“Maya,” he said, his voice rough, “where are you?”
“Miami.”
“I went to Silverton looking for you. They said you never enrolled. Why didn’t you come? You always said we’d go to college together.”
I was sitting beside Liam outside my dorm, our shoulders touching. “That was a long time ago, Jake.”
For several seconds, all I heard was his breathing.
Then he whispered, “I get it.”
The line went dead.
I thought that was the end.
The following afternoon, one of my roommates texted that a guy had been standing outside our dorm for hours. When I went downstairs, I saw Jake beneath the magnolia tree wearing jeans and a jacket despite the brutal September heat.
He stepped toward me.
Then his knees buckled.
Students shouted as he collapsed. Liam, who had been crossing the courtyard, reached him before I did.
“He’s dangerously overheated,” Liam said. “We need the clinic.”
Jake’s temperature was frighteningly high. The campus medical staff packed ice around him and started IV fluids. Nearly an hour passed before his eyes opened.
He saw me and immediately tried to sit up.
“Maya. Please. I messed up.”
“Lie still.”
“I blocked Olivia. I blocked everybody. I’ll stop seeing all of them.” His voice cracked. “Come back with me. You said you’d always stay.”
I looked at him and remembered the boy who had walked my broken bicycle two miles under a gray Ohio sky. That boy had been kind to me when I desperately needed kindness. For years, I had confused gratitude for a lifetime obligation.
“Do you remember the day those kids ruined my bike?”
His eyes brightened. “Of course.”
“I thought you were the best person in the world. I loved you for what you did that day. Maybe part of me spent years trying to repay you for saving me.”
“Maya—”
“But then Olivia came along. You gave her rides while I biked alone. You made plans with her and expected me to accept whatever was left. You changed colleges without telling me. You let her forget my ticket, then called me petty for being hurt.”
His face crumpled.
“Every little thing said the same thing,” I continued. “I wasn’t important to you anymore. What hurt most wasn’t Olivia. It was you making me feel replaceable while expecting me to keep waiting.”
“I can change.”
“I believe people can change. But sometimes they change too late for the person they hurt.”
Quick footsteps sounded in the hall.
Olivia rushed into the room, pale and tearful. “Jake! Your parents are frantic. You’ve been missing classes for days.”
She reached for him.
He jerked his arm away. “Get out. This is your fault. If you hadn’t come between us, Maya and I would still be together.”
Olivia stared at him. “My fault? She left you. She moved here. She met someone else. How is that my fault?”
I stood.
They both looked at me.
“Jake, that is exactly why I can’t come back.”
He went silent.
“You’re still blaming someone else for choices you made. Olivia didn’t force you to ignore me. She didn’t force you to lie by omission or humiliate me or assume I would always be waiting. Whatever happens between the two of you is your business. But if you still believe she is the reason you lost me, then you haven’t learned anything.”
I walked out.
Liam was waiting near the end of the hall.
He studied my face, then held out his hand. “Frozen custard?”
I sniffed and smiled. “With extra toppings?”
“An irresponsible amount.”
I took his hand.
For the first time, walking away from Jake didn’t feel like losing something.
It felt like arriving somewhere.
