The One That Got Away Was Mine

My boyfriend of three years was in love with the one that got away. Until the day I found her picture. I went silent. Because she was my first love from college.

Chapter 1 The walletsized photo slipped from the pages of an old copy of The Moon and Sixpence. Carter kept the book on the highest shelf in his study.

He hated people touching his things. I was only looking for a missing contract. My finger slipped. The pages fanned open. A photo fluttered to the hardwood floor.

A woman in a white buttondown shirt stood under an oak tree. Her profile was sharp, her eyes cold. She wasn't looking at the camera.

She looked impatient, like the rest of the world wasn't worth her time. My lungs tightened. A dull ache knocked against my ribs. Audrey. The Audrey I loved in college.

The Audrey I lost. And my boyfriend, Carter, kept her picture hidden in a book. For years. I crouched on the floor. My eyes locked on her face. The soup boiled over in the kitchen.

The rain lashed against the windows. My phone screen went black. The study door swung open. Carter stopped dead.

The color drained from his face. "Harper." His voice tightened. "Why are you going through my things?" I pinched the photo between two fingers.

I tilted my head up. "Who is this?" He went silent. That silence was familiar. Three years. Every time I asked why he dodged the topic of marriage.

Every time he drove to the Seattle waterfront alone on May 17th. Every time he typed his laptop password. Audrey. I used to think he just didn't know how to express himself.

Now the truth stared me in the face. It was guilt. Carter stepped toward me. His hand darted out for the picture. I jerked back.

His fingers swiped empty air. "Harper, stop acting crazy." A laugh scraped up my throat. "I haven't even done anything yet, and I'm acting crazy?" The crease between his brows deepened. "She's just someone from my past." "From your past?" I stared at the photo.

My voice came out flat, hollow. "Then why hide her picture?" Carter stood over me. He still wore his suit jacket. His tie hung loose around his neck.

He just got back from his company's annual dinner. The faint smell of champagne clung to his clothes. Thirty years old. A stable career. Handsome. Mildmannered.

Perfect soninlaw material. Right now, his eyes were guarded. Hostile. Like I was the intruder crashing their story.

The silence stretched tight. "Her name is Audrey," he finally said. "I knew her in college." I didn't blink.

He let out a breath, offering up a confession like it was a debt he owed me. "I liked her for a long time. But we were never together.

Harper, it's all in the past." I gave a slow nod. "And?" Carter flinched. I held his gaze. "So I should be moved?

Moved that you kept another woman in your heart and still dated me for three years?" Chapter 2 His jaw tightened. "Do you have to speak to me like that?" "How do you want me to speak?" I dropped the photo on the desk.

Slid it toward him. "Want me to ask if she's pretty?" "Ask exactly which parts of me look like her?

Ask if every time you looked at me these past three years, you were seeing me, or seeing her?" Carter's Adam's apple bobbed. He didn't deny it. A bitter laugh escaped my lips.

The sheer absurdity of it all. Three years with Carter. Three moves. Seventeen arguments. We traveled to Sedona together. We bought a succulent and watched it die.

We talked about buying a house. We squeezed into a tiny kitchen making instant ramen at two in the morning. I thought those moments were real. But they were just a cover.

A shadow of another woman buried underneath it all. And the most absurd part? That shadow wasn't a stranger. It was the woman I used to love.

I wanted to ask Carter a million questions. Did you know she hates cilantro? Did you know she has a faint scar on her left wrist?

Did you know when she gets mad, she doesn't go cold, she just presses her lips into a thin, tight line?

Did you know she once sat in a college library and wrote an entire notebook of unsigned letters to a girl? You know nothing. You just loved a fantasy.

A version of Audrey you made up in your head. But I had her. And in the end, I was the one who lost her. The first time Audrey and I actually spoke was in the college library.

I was nineteen. She was the famous ice queen of the architecture department. Top of her class. Quiet. Always alone. She didn't kiss up to anyone, and she wasn't afraid of anyone.

I first saw her backstage at the freshman debate tournament. She stood under the harsh stage lights, her voice flat and steady, and tore the opposing team to shreds.

I sat in the third row. My fingers crushed a plastic water bottle. My heart hammered wildly against my ribs. I thought it was just admiration. I didn't know the truth until later.

We didn't actually speak until the second semester. I was looking for a copy of Norwegian Wood in the library. The shelf was too high. I got on my tiptoes.

My fingers grazed the spine. Suddenly, a hand reached from behind me. It pulled the book down and handed it over. I spun around. Audrey. She was taller than me.

Her sleeves were rolled up, exposing pale, slender wrists.

She glanced at the cover. "This one isn't for you," she said. "How would you know?" I shot back. "You'll cry." Heat rushed to the tips of my ears. "Do you know me that well?" Audrey looked at me.

It was a brief, weightless glance. But it made my pulse stutter. "Not really," she said. "But you look easy to fool." After that, I couldn't stop watching her.

I noticed she hated the dining hall bell peppers. She never drank sweetened milk. She always chose the window seat in the library.

I noticed how she tied her hair up when she drafted, exposing the clean line of the back of her neck.

I noticed how cold she sounded, but how she always crouched down to feed the stray cats on campus. Slowly, we became friends. Chapter 3 First, we shared an elective.

Then, library tables. Later, she started bringing me hot coffee when I was up late drafting project proposals. She never offered sweet words of concern.

She just set the cup by my hand. "Don't die on me." I laughed. "Audrey, can you try sounding a little more optimistic?" She sat across from me, opened her book, and said flatly, "No." Back then, I thought the world was massive.

I thought the future was miles away. I thought we had all the time in the world. But growing up doesn't make goodbyes any easier. Graduation year.

Audrey got an offer from an architecture firm in London. I was planning to stay in Seattle. She asked me once. "Harper, do you want to come with me?" She didn't push.

She just asked. That night, we sat on a bench at the edge of campus. The wind rustled through the oak tree. The leaves whispered above us.

She texted me a screenshot of two flight itineraries. Her voice remained steady. "If you want to, we can try this together." I stared at the screen.

My insides twisted into a tight knot. Of course I wanted to go. But I was terrified. Terrified of leaving the city I knew. Terrified of my parents' disappointment.

Terrified that an unapproved relationship would crush us under its weight. Terrified I didn't have the guts to face the unknown. The silence dragged on.

Finally, I forced the words out. "Audrey, I don't think I can." She looked at me. She didn't say a word. "It's not that I don't love you," I added. A small smile touched her lips.

It was a light, fragile thing. "Harper, love sometimes isn't enough." She went abroad alone. I stayed. We didn't have a screaming match. We didn't even say we were breaking up.

The texts just slowed down. The time zone gap stretched wider. Eventually, even a simple "How are you" felt like an intrusion. That's how adults fall apart.

It's not always a shattering explosion. One person keeps walking. The other stays frozen in place. By the time you finally snap out of it, years of dead space stand between you.

Then came the party. I saw Audrey again. She wore a long black dress under a cream trench coat. Her hair was chopped to her shoulders. Her makeup was minimal.

A single silver stud caught the light on her ear. She stood in the crowd like a coldtoned painting. Quiet. Impossible to ignore. Carter stopped dead in his tracks.

I heard the sharp intake of his breath. "Audrey," he called out. She turned. She saw Carter first. A polite, detached nod. Then, her eyes found me. The entire room went dead silent.

Her gaze locked onto my face. No shock. No flinching. No dramatic reunion joy. She just watched me. Like watching rain she always knew was coming. Seconds ticked by.

Her lips parted. "Harper." Carter froze. "You two know each other?" I didn't get a chance to answer. Audrey was already walking straight toward me.

Chapter 4 She smelled of a faint woodsy perfume. A stark contrast to the laundry detergent she used in college. But her eyes hadn't changed.

Still so calm, like she could see right through me.

I heard my own voice. "Long time no see." Audrey offered a faint smile. "It's been years." Someone nearby laughed, smoothing over the tension. "You two know each other?

What a small world!" Audrey pulled her gaze away. Her tone was flat. "College classmates." I gave a stiff nod. "Yeah. College classmates." The words dropped between us.

A dull, heavy ache pressed against my ribs. College classmates. So clean. So safe. The perfect cover for everything. We used to pull allnighters for assignments.

We sat together by the library window. We spent our last nights before graduation talking about the future. We had gotten so close, only to let reality tear us apart.

But reuniting after all these years? We could only brush it off with two words. College classmates. Carter spent the entire dinner distracted. Audrey sat across from me.

She didn't say much. Only answering when spoken to. She was an architect now. After a few years abroad, she came back and opened her own firm.

Her team was running The Waterfront Art Space project. Someone across the table laughed. "Audrey, you haven't dated anyone all these years?" Carter's eyes snapped up.

Audrey picked up her water glass. Her voice didn't waver. "I have." My fingers tightened around my fork. The guy leaned in, intrigued. "Who?

Anyone we know?" Audrey stared at the surface of her water. "It doesn't matter." I dropped my gaze to my plate. The food suddenly tasted like ash. It doesn't matter.

I knew she didn't mean it like that. But the words still slid right under my ribs like a blade. Halfway through dinner, Carter stepped out to take a call.

People broke off into small groups. Audrey stood up and walked out to the terrace. I hesitated for a second. Then I followed her out. The river wind was freezing.

It plastered my dress against my legs. Audrey stood by the railing. An unlit cigarette rested between her fingers.

I walked up beside her. "Since when do you smoke?" She tilted her head. "Since I started working." "It's bad for you." "I know." Her voice was a low murmur. "That's why I didn't light it." We fell quiet.

Years of dead space stretched between us. Like a massive, rushing river. I stood on one bank. I could see her right there on the other side. But neither of us knew how to cross.

She broke the silence first. "How long have you and Carter been together?" "Three years." "That's a long time." I stared at the clean line of her profile. "When did you meet him?" "Late in college.

Through a club project," she said. "He did me a favor once." "And that made him like you?" Audrey let out a soft laugh. "You're asking me?" "I can tell he does." "Then you should also be able to tell." She turned to face me.

Her eyes gave nothing away. "I never liked him back." My throat clamped shut. Chapter 5 "And I don't like people who fall too deeply in love with their own devotion," she added.

I knew exactly who she meant. And I knew I had no right to be mad. The wind picked up. The ends of Audrey's hair brushed against her collar.

I noticed the faint scar on her left wrist. It was still there. She slipped with an XActo knife while making a model in college. I went to the campus health center with her.

My palms had been slick with sweat. She had laughed and called me a coward. I stared at that scar. A sharp ache chewed at the back of my throat. "Audrey," I called out.

My voice was barely a whisper. She looked at me. I wanted to say I was sorry. But the words felt too light. Like an expired ticket, years past its date. Audrey waited.

When I didn't say anything, she slid her unlit cigarette back into her purse. "Let's go back inside," she said. "It's freezing." She turned around. My hand shot out on its own.

I grabbed her wrist. She stopped. I froze. Her skin was ice cold. I jerked my hand back like I had touched a hot stove. Audrey looked over her shoulder at me.

A ripple finally broke through the calm surface of her eyes. "Harper," she asked. "Are you still afraid?" I didn't answer. Because I didn't know. The drive home was dead silent.

Carter didn't say a single word. He pulled the car into our underground garage.

He put it in park and finally spoke. "Were you and Audrey close?" "We were okay," I said. "Just college classmates?" I turned to look at him. "What else would we be?" His brow furrowed. "Harper, I'm not an idiot." A laugh slipped out of me. "What a coincidence.

Neither am I." The air in the car was sucked out of the room. Carter gripped the steering wheel. His knuckles turned white.

His voice went tight. "What exactly is the relationship between you two?" Years ago, that question would have sent me into a panic. I would have deflected.

I would have found the safest, easiest lie to hide behind. But I was twentyeight now. I had my own job. My own bank account. My own apartment lease.

I survived insomnia, stress ulcers, layoffs, and brutal overtime in this city entirely on my own. I was no longer the girl who hid behind silence. So this time, I didn't back down.

I unbuckled my seatbelt and said calmly, "She's my exgirlfriend." The silence in the car was suffocating