He Used Me as Practice for Her Chapter 11
By the time I arrived at the café, Ethan had already been waiting for a while.
“Latte or Americano?” he asked.
“Neither.”
I met his gaze.
“Ethan, I don’t drink coffee.”
His smile turned awkward.
“Right. Sorry.”
“I forgot.”
Yeah.
He forgot.
Back in sophomore year of high school, I’d beaten Chloe’s exam score for the first time.
Her friends had accused me of cheating.
The argument escalated.
Someone ripped up my test paper.
Someone else dumped an entire cup of coffee all over the notes I’d spent weeks organizing.
I demanded an apology.
Ethan had stepped in and tried to smooth things over.
“Come on,” he’d said. “We’re all classmates. Don’t make such a big deal out of it.”
That night, I’d hidden behind the athletic fields and cried where no one could see me.
After searching forever, Ethan finally found me.
He handed me a stack of notes he’d rewritten himself.
“I fixed everything,” he’d said.
“Stop crying.”
“I didn’t cheat.”
I’d been sobbing so hard I could barely get the words out.
“I earned that score.”
“I know.”
He’d shrugged.
“So what?”
“The truth is the truth. Next time, just score even higher.”
Then he’d added:
“Why care so much about what other people think?”
Because he never had to.
Ethan had grown up being Ethan.
Popular.
Admired.
Confident.
The kind of person who walked into a room already knowing he belonged there.
I wasn’t.
Everything I’d achieved had come from fighting for it.
I needed those accomplishments.
I needed people to acknowledge them.
From the beginning, we had never been the same.
I looked at him calmly.
“Ethan, we already broke up. Stop doing this.”
His eyes reddened almost immediately.
“Can’t we try again?”
His voice shook.
“Even criminals get a chance to defend themselves, right?”
He laughed weakly.
“If I screwed up, tell me how. I’ll fix it.”
I shook my head.
“You’re not a bad person.”
“You don’t need to change.”
I paused.
“You just didn’t love me enough.”
Silence filled the space between us.
Then I continued.
“You bragged to your friends that dating me was just practice.”
“You constantly criticized what I wore.”
“You’d get angry whenever I dressed up.”
“The day I wore a skirt, you said I looked like a prostitute.”
His face drained of color.
“You gave Chloe the four-leaf clover bracelet I’d spent two years earning money to buy.”
“You knew I was upset, so you bought a fake replacement and tried to pass it off as the real thing.”
“When my grandmother fell and I was taking care of her, you were out hiking with Chloe.”
“That’s not what happened!”
Ethan cut me off desperately.
“She hurt her ankle. That’s why I carried her.”
He leaned forward.
“I know she posted pictures online.”
His voice cracked.
“I just…”
“I just wanted to see if you’d get jealous.”
He shut his eyes.
“I know that was messed up.”
“I know it was.”
“But I really loved you, Charlotte.”
“I really did.”
“And I never gave you a fake bracelet.”
He immediately rolled up his sleeve and showed me his wrist.
“The fake one was Chloe’s.”
“I got the real one back.”
“Look.”
“I’ve been wearing it this whole time.”
I stared at the bracelet.
Then I sighed.
“But you still gave it away.”
The words hit him like a punch.
His shoulders trembled.
After several seconds, he forced out:
“I’m sorry.”
“I was wrong.”
I nodded.
“I know.”
Then I looked away.
“Ethan, I cared about you once.”
The café suddenly felt very quiet.
“But I don’t anymore.”
His face crumpled.
“Charlotte…”
“Please don’t do this.”
His voice was thick with tears.
“Please.”
“Can you at least look at me?”
“Stop treating me like I don’t exist.”
A painful smile tugged at his lips.
His eyes glistened.
“I thought that’s why you agreed to meet.”
“I thought maybe…”
‘His laugh broke halfway through.
“I thought we were getting back together.”
He lowered his head.
“Guess I got the wrong idea.”
After that day, Ethan stopped showing up everywhere.
He stopped waiting outside classrooms.
Stopped appearing in the library.
Stopped finding excuses to sit beside me.
My college life finally became peaceful again.
One afternoon, one of my roommates suddenly asked:
“So… that hot basketball guy who asked you for water. Has he talked to you lately?”
I looked up from my textbook.
“What?”
She scooted closer.
“Charlotte, seriously. Stay away from him.”
Her expression turned serious.
“He’s gorgeous, sure.”
“But he’s bad news.”
Apparently, after that basketball game, Ethan had become one of the most talked-about guys on
campus.
Girls constantly approached him.
Love letters.
Messages.
Invitations.
At first, he’d turned everyone down.
Politely.
Consistently.
“I already like someone.”
That was always his answer.
Cold. Untouchable. The classic campus heartthrob.
Then something changed.
Almost overnight.
He started accepting everyone’s attention.
If a girl showed interest, he’d entertain it.
Sometimes he didn’t even care whether she already had a boyfriend.
The rumors spread fast.
And eventually, his behavior caught up with him.
One night, he was allegedly caught in a hotel by another girl’s boyfriend.
The confrontation ended with Ethan getting beaten up.
My roommate snorted.
“Typical player.”
“A walking red flag.”
Not long afterward, Ethan left school.
This time, it wasn’t his decision.
He was expelled.
Somewhere along the way, while I wasn’t paying attention, the bright, carefree boy I’d once loved
had completely fallen apart.
I flipped the page of my book.
My heart remained perfectly still.
Ethan had been a chapter in my life.
Nothing more.
Now he was simply someone from my past.
I had bigger things to focus on.
For the first time in a long time, my future belonged entirely to me.
