On Graduation Day, He Pushed Me Aside ForcHer Chapter 08
“Ivy, I’m sorry. I’m the one to blame.” It was the very first time he was willing to apologize.
“I love you, not her. She never has me on her side.”
I laughed as if I was tricked for a long time. “Let me spell it out for you. You tore up my letter of acceptance because you believed the one from a lousy state university doesn’t matter at all.”
“Gloria was different though; she was destined for Harvard as the top SAT score winner in Wyoming, so she is significant.”
Patrick Muller seemed to relax a little in relief. “See? You got my point. Gloria is the top scorer after all so she couldn’t afford anything going wrong.”
I let go of his grip, laughing so hard that tears welled up in my eyes.
“You say to love me who you think is lower than you. It seems that you would love me and put me in dire in the same time.”
Patrick froze stiff where he stood. I stepped back and put on the hardest voice.
“Get away from me forever! I got tired sacrificing myself to you and your kind. You shouldn’t treat people differently based on their academic performance!”
Patrick stayed.
He waited outside the classroom whenever I had a lecture. He trailed behind me when I headed to the cafeteria. Even when I was in the supermarket just to grab a cold drink, he would come, to give me a
—
cup of warm tea.
“You get severe menstrual cramps and this will do you good.”
I wouldn’t take it and look away. He stood rooted to the spot but still handed the tea to my roommate. “Could you hold onto this for her, please?”
Rumor had it that a cute guy was taking care of me every day. Some classmates would look at me and said, “Aww, he is such a gentleman around you.”
My roommate scoffed. “He’s making every effort to woo her but fails—he must have messed up terribly. I don’t believe he is a gentleman.”
I literally saw halo above her. She knew nothing of the whole story, yet she had an insight into all the humiliation I had endured over the years.
That night back in the dormitory, her friend couldn’t help but ask, “Who exactly is this guy, Ivy?”
I wanted to claim I don’t know him. But before I could say that, it wasn’t him tearing up my letter that came out of my mind instinctively.
I thought back to our childhood days when it rained; he had pressed his only umbrella into my hands and ran home soaking wet himself.
When I scraped my knee during sports, he carried me all the way to the infirmary, snapping at me for being clumsy with a stern face yet handling me in a gentle way to avoid further hurt.
The first time I suffered from excruciating menstrual cramps, he
—
raced across three blocks to buy me ibuprofen and waited outside the classroom just to hand it to me.
He had truly cared for me back then. So deeply that I’d once believed he would always stand on my side.
As I recounted these memories, I started to cry. The dorm fell completely silent.
I wiped my face and spoke as steadily as I could. “Then he met Gloria from the another class. He started talking about her, praising her intelligence, saying they shared identical interests and ambitions, like a twin.”
After that, they worked together for school work, enriched their resumes, and attended every event.
I could never keep up with their conversations, nor fit myself into their carefully laid plans. Whenever the three of us hung out together, I felt like an outsider dragged along as an afterthought.”
I paused for a second, and said in deeper grief. “When taking commencement picture, he shoved me to the edge so Gloria could stand right beside. For application, he planned everything out for Gloria while avoiding me because I was a loser to him.”
Later, when Gloria’s letter of acceptance went missing, he immediately assumed I’d stolen it and tore my own to pieces right in front of me.”
By the time I finished telling everything, a faint smile tugged at my lips.