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Chapter 4

On the ride back, I barely spoke.

At the apartment, I finally asked.

“You’re applying for a European exchange?”

“It’s not definite,” Alfred said, kneeling to rub my shin when I’d bumped it on the shoe cabinet. “Even if it happens, it’s next semester. One year.”

“One year,” he repeated, calm. “We survived four years long-distance. We can survive this.”

He said it like we’d suffered equally.

Like I didn’t still have receipts of every train ticket, every hotel, every “I’ll come next time” from him.

Like he hadn’t spent those same years preparing for IELTS, researching Zürich rent prices, building a life that never once included my input.

I laughed, and it sounded wrong.

“You’re planning to go with Wanda,” I said. “Why do you think I’ll wait for you?”

Alfred’s brows knit.

“Lesley,” he said, voice sharpening, “she’s just a girl. I don’t understand why you’re always hostile to Wanda.”

“Just a girl,” I repeated.

He kept going, righteous.

“This is a career opportunity. We’re ambitious. I don’t know what fantasies you’re inventing.”

Then, colder:

“You used to be fun. You used to be confident. You helped other girls pass me love letters in high school. Why are you suddenly so paranoid, so irrational, so… exhausting?”

Something in me snapped—cleanly, quietly.

“Friend and girlfriend aren’t the same,” I said, voice rising. “You don’t get to blur the line and call me crazy for noticing.”

Alfred stared at me like I’d failed a logic test.

Then he said quietly, voice turned clinical.

“Maybe we’re better as friends.”

That was it.

A cliff.

A breakup delivered like a scheduling update.
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