Chapter 15
Ethan Williams didn’t leave. He bought the apartment across from mine and moved in.
And he ran to my school every day.
Ho shamelessly followed me for half a year, with the attitude that he would wear me down for the rest of his life. Sometimes when I got furious, I would scold him, “Ethan Williams, stop acting out your expired deep love, okay?”
His eyes would immediately raddan. “Sophia Johnson, I’m begging you, don’t do this to me, okay?”
“I shouldn’t have run my mouth, I shouldn’t have said those things to hurt you, I shouldn’t have thought of ditching the
wedding to make you lose face.”
“I truly love you. I was just unwilling because of my ridiculous pride. I know I was wrong.”
“Tm begging you, don’t abandon mo.”
I felt no ripples inside, and even found it a bit laughable, “Ethan Williams, you’re really quite pintless like this.”
I continued to ignore him.
I had imagined the absurd, but I hadn’t imagined the even more absurd – that Oliver Smith heard about him from
somewhere and followed him here too.
Sometimes I felt that the two of them were indeed from the same circle, both with a performative personality.
I must have committed arson and murder in my past life to have encountered these two lunatics in this life.
On Christmas Day, they both asked me out at the same time.
Lagreed.
I wanted to make things clear to them once and for all.
Ethan Williams booked a restaurant, and when I stopped in, it was already decorated with a roomful of camellias.
The happiness on his face was real, but it instantly lost color when he saw Oliver Smith appear behind me.
“Why are you hara?”
Oliver Smith snorted coldly “She asked me to coma”
I put my bag on the table and raised my chin. “Both of you, sit down.”
“Sophie…”
Ethan Williams called out to me.
“Today I’ll make everything clear here once and for all.”
“The three of us have known each other for eighteen years. We’re all thirty years old now, stop playing these childish
games
I looked at Oliver Smith. “I’m grateful that you were a beam of light for me when I was helpless. Maybe I only liked that light
and not you. When you didn’t respond at all and I got tired of it, I let go of that fondness. So Oliver Smith, I don’t owe you
anything. And I’m telling you, your current obsession with me is only because the obedient, timid girl has grown up to not
need any shaltor and doesn’t revolve around you anymore. You just can’t accept it.”
“I’m not a toy for you two to take out your anger on each other. So Oliver Smith, leave. It’s good for both of us.”
Oliver Smith looked at me quietly and turned to leave.
Watching his retreating figure, for a moment it was as if I had traveled through time and saw my twelve–year–old solf
hiding in the bathroom, hurt and self–conscious. But this time it wasn’t him who saved me.
It was that I finally learned to fight back
It just took quite a while, but it’s not too late, is it?
“Sophie… I know you liked me, that you truly loved me with all your heart.”
Ethan Williams may have already realized what I was going to say, his face showing a pained expression.
My feelings for Ethan Williams might be a bit more complicated
I took a moment. “About Lily Thompson…”
He explained urgently, “I never loved her, never touched her.”
Inod, “Yes, you just want to vent your unresolved feelings towards ma, especially as the wedding approaches, you feel more and more pent up”
won’t lie to you. In those five years we were together, I was happy, I was sad, I was heartbroken, I was blissful. It was the
C
feeling of being in love, it was my experience. I too once thought I would spend the rest of my life with you.
“But sometimes life is unpredictable, you never know what will happen in the next moment. I heard those words, I played
along with your act, I brutally retaliated against you with the very things you wanted to use to hurt me…”
“Don’t say anymore… Sophie.”
“Eighteen years, you want me to give up, how can I give up…
