This Multiple Choice Question Only Had Me As The Answer Chapter 01
The day my SAT scores came out, my eighteenth birthday, I had just checked my results. They were high enough to get me into Ivy Coast University with room to spare.
That’s when I saw Jordan’s Instagram post.
The photo showed Yvonne Ellison, the transfer student, her eyes glistening with tears as she smiled, leaning into him.
The caption read: [We did it. Finally got Yvonne over the line to Crestview. See you there.]
The post had gone up at six that evening.
Back then, I was sitting with both our families in front of a birthday cake.
The one person who’d promised he’d “never miss it” was nowhere to be found.
I folded my hands in my lap and silently gave him one last chance.
If he so much as texted “Happy Birthday,” I wouldn’t change my application. I’d still follow him to Ivy Coast.
But the candles burned low. The smiles of the adults around me grew stiff. My phone stayed silent.
He was with Yvonne, checking her scores, celebrating her finally making the cutoff for a decent school.
In the living room, his mom kept calling him, her embarrassed apologies filling the awkward silence. All she got was his voicemail.
Watching Mrs. Hayes’s guilty expression, my eyes stung, but strangely, all I felt was relief.
Fifteen years as childhood friends. Everyone assumed we’d end up together.
Then Yvonne transferred to our school. She came from a single-parent home, and Jordan seemed to think that meant she needed him more.
He felt bad that she had no one. But he forgot that I was waiting for him, too.
On application day, my homeroom teacher looked at my submission and asked, surprised, “Didn’t you and Jordan plan to go to Ivy Coast together? Why did you put down Liberty Military Academy?”
I smiled and said, “Suddenly, a uniform felt cooler than matching couple T-shirts.”
Yeah. I wasn’t following him anymore.
Jordan, this was always a one-choice question. And I chose myself.
***
“Chloe, I brought you breakfast burritos from that Southside Diner you like. Eat them while they’re hot.”
Jordan stood at my front door, holding a brown paper bag. He smiled, almost apologetically.
He reached out and ruffled my hair, the same way he’d done a thousand times before. “Still mad at me?”
I looked into his eyes.
There was real guilt in them. And confidence too.
He knew me too well. Or maybe he just knew the old me too well.
Before, whenever he made me angry, all he had to do was lower his head and ruffle my hair like that, and I’d forgive him like a tamed cat.
I took the bag. “I’m not mad.”
He raised an eyebrow, clearly surprised by how easily I’d let it go.
Once we were inside, he kicked off his shoes and sank into the couch as if it were his own place.
“About the other night,” he started, his voice soft, “I really didn’t mean to miss it. I was going to come right after helping Yvonne check her scores, but she got really emotional. Her mom isn’t around, so I couldn’t just leave her.”
He paused, watching my face. “I figured since your parents and mine were both here with you, and your scores were already solid, it’d be okay if I stayed with her for a bit.”
His guilt was real.
But so was his belief that it was fine for me to be overlooked.
“Don’t be mad, okay?”
I opened the bag and took a bite of the burrito. “I told you. I’m not mad.”
He stared at me for a few seconds. Something felt off, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.
“Oh, right.” He pulled a beautifully wrapped gift box from his backpack and set it in front of me.
“Your eighteenth birthday present. I got it a month ago. Couldn’t give it to you that night, so here it is now.”
His voice carried a hint of pride. “I might’ve missed the party, but I didn’t miss the gift. Open it. You like it?”
I lifted the lid.
Inside lay a pink rhinestone bracelet, shiny and sweet, like sugar glaze on a cheap Valentine’s candy.
It wasn’t my style at all. I usually dressed in clean, simple tones and never touched things like this.
More importantly, I was allergic to cheap metal alloys.
“Pretty, right?” Jordan leaned in with a grin. “I had no idea what to get you. Yvonne spent a whole afternoon helping me pick it out. She said all girls like sparkly pink things.”
He said it so naturally. So warmly. “She’s got good taste. You should give her a chance. She even asked me to tell you she hopes this bracelet brings you luck. See how thoughtful she is?”
He let another girl pick out my birthday gift.
And then wanted me to thank her for being so “thoughtful.”
I looked at the bracelet and felt a wave of absurdity.
“Jordan, do you still remember that I’m allergic to cheap metals?”
He blinked. Then rubbed his forehead, brushing it off. “Oh, right, I forgot. Yvonne said this one’s a bestseller, and it’s supposed to be lucky.”
“If it gives you a rash, you can just hang it on your bag. It’s the thought that counts, right?”
Thought.
Whose thought? Yvonne’s? Or his?
I closed the box. “Okay. I got it. Tell her thanks.”
Jordan, seeing that I’d accepted the gift, relaxed and sank back into the couch, already planning the future.
“You submitted your application to Ivy Coast, right? Yvonne’s applying to a school near there too. We’ll be really close. The three of us can still hang out all the…”
“Jordan, actually, I didn’t apply to—”
Before I could finish, his phone buzzed.
A “favorite contact” alert.
He instinctively glanced at the screen, smiled to himself, and typed a quick reply.
I recognized that ringtone.
He’d set it for me once, back in high school.
Then he’d taken it off. I didn’t know when. But everyone knew when Yvonne’s had been added.
“What were you saying?” He looked up, still smiling.
I stood up and picked up the burrito bag.
“I said, I hope college is everything you want it to be.”
Before I could finish, his phone rang again.
This time, it was Yvonne.
He answered, and her voice came through, shaky with tears. She was afraid of messing up her application.
Jordan’s expression shifted instantly. The casual ease vanished, replaced by urgency.
“Yvonne’s got a problem. I need to go,” he said, grabbing his jacket, his face full of apologies. “I’ll bring you strawberry cheesecake tonight.”
The door closed.
I looked at the burritos on the table. Then at the pink bracelet.
I stared at it for three seconds.
Then I threw them both in the trash.
I turned and walked back to my room. My computer screen was still on.
On it was the confirmation page:
[Liberty Military Academy – Application Successfully Submitted]
Jordan, your future has Yvonne in it.
You’re not in my future anymore.
We won’t be seeing each other in Crestview.
