He Used Me as Practice for Her Chapter 09
College life got busy fast.
I was busy adjusting to classes.
Busy fighting for electives before they filled up.
Busy getting used to roommates.
Busy building a completely new life.
One afternoon, after grabbing takeout from the dining hall, I returned to my dorm and spotted someone standing outside the building.
Ethan.
My first instinct was to avoid him.
I lowered my head and turned to walk the other direction.
But he saw me immediately.
Within seconds, he rushed over and grabbed my wrist.
“Charlotte, you’re really here?” His usually lazy voice carried an unfamiliar tremor. “Why did you change your number? Why’d you delete me?”
I looked at him calmly.
“Ethan, I thought we already made things clear.”
“Clear about what?” His grip tightened instantly. “Breaking up? I never agreed to that.”
His voice rose loud enough for nearby students to turn and stare.
One guy leaning out from the dorm entrance called over, “Ma’am, you need help?”
I thanked the stranger politely before slowly prying Ethan’s fingers off my wrist one by one.
“We already broke up, Ethan. Stop looking for me.”
“All because I went hiking with Chloe once?” he snapped. “How many times do I have to tell you? There’s nothing between us. We’re just classmates. Can you stop imagining things that aren’t there?!”
I blinked quietly and stared at the frantic panic in his eyes.
For some reason, he suddenly felt like a stranger.
So this was what falling out of love felt like.
“Right,” I said softly. “Just classmates.”
“Classmates you needed to practice on in bed so you could get better at pleasing her?”
Every word landed cleanly between us.
Ethan staggered backward like he’d been punched.
His face turned white.
“You… you saw those messages?” he muttered hoarsely. “You saw the group chat?”
I used the opening to pull free and hurry back inside the dorm building.
After that day, Ethan stopped showing up on campus.
But somehow, he found my new contact info.
Friend request after friend request flooded in.
I ignored every single one.
Each request came with another explanation.
[Charlotte, I was just talking big in front of the guys. I never actually thought of using you for practice. I’ve only ever liked you.]
[I already cut Chloe off. I knew she was posting stuff to make you jealous, and instead of stopping her, I encouraged it. That’s on me.]
[Charlotte, I really screwed up. Please forgive me.]
[Just accept the request, okay? You don’t even have to talk to me. I’ll happily stay dead in your contacts forever if that’s what it takes.]
[I miss you so much.]
Then eventually, the messages turned into random little updates about his life.
[Silverport sucks without you.]
[The dining hall food here is disgusting. Every day feels like experimental prison food.]
[Engineering classes are killing me. If I have to draft one more blueprint, I’m gonna lose it,]
[My physics professor talks just as much as our high school teacher did.]
[There are a bunch of tabby cats on campus. If you were here, we could feed them together…]
Reading those messages, I suddenly found the whole thing almost funny.
Back when I was the one chasing after him, I’d send him endless little pieces of my day through
iMessage.
Funny stories.
Pretty skies.
Random thoughts.
Most of the time, Ethan either replied with a cold “k”…
Or didn’t answer at all.
Once, I even tried asking him to share more about his own life with me.
He sounded annoyed immediately.
“Why would a guy send that kind of stuff all day? Anyway, I’m gaming.”
See?
It wasn’t that he didn’t know how to share his life with someone.
He just never wanted to share it with me.
In the end, I blocked Ethan completely.
I never wanted to see another message from him again.
Later, mutual friends told me Ethan had dropped out of school.
And Chloe got a new boyfriend.
I turned my phone screen off.
The news felt like a pebble dropped into the ocean.
A tiny ripple.
Then silence again.
By sophomore year, I signed up as a volunteer during freshman orientation.
That afternoon, a familiar voice suddenly spoke behind me.
“Hey, excuse me, sophomore,” Ethan said casually. “Could you tell me where the guys’ dorms are?”
