Seven Years of Love Seven Minutes of Truth

Chapter 4 Chapter 4

To silence any second thoughts, I opened my laptop right there on FaceTime with Maya.

Without hesitation, moments before the midnight deadline, I logged into the Common App portal and changed my acceptance from Columbia to Stanford. The cursor hovered over the "Confirm Change" button for just a second before I clicked, watching my future transform with a single mouse click.

Maya was ecstatic, practically bouncing off her bed. She'd been begging me since junior year to join her at Stanford, painting pictures of California sunshine and Silicon Valley dreams.

Back in freshman year, Aiden and I had made a promise over late-night study sessions and shared dreams. We'd work hard, ace our SATS, and head to Columbia together. The aerospace engineering program there had been his dream since the day his dad took him to the Air & Space Museum when we

were twelve.

Even though I never loved the idea of harsh New York winters or felt particularly drawn to Columbia's engineering focus, I'd spent three years of high school making it my goal. Every AP class, every SAT prep session, every extracurricular -all carefully chosen to match Columbia's requirements. I'd even joined the robotics club just because Aiden said it would look good on our applications.

After being neighbors for so long, both our families had already pictured our future together. His mom would invite me over for Sunday dinners, talking about how nice it would be to have both of us at Columbia, casually mentioning all her friends whose children had found their soulmates during freshman orientation. Everyone, including me, thought Aiden and I would naturally become a couple after graduation - the perfect high school sweetheart story.

Now, I couldn't find a single reason to go to Columbia anymore. The thought of walking those same campus paths with him, sharing classes, running into him and Madison at the library or campus coffee shops – it made me physically ill. Or rather, after today, if I kept trailing after Aiden like his faithful shadow, I wouldn't be able to look at myself in the mirror.

I just needed to get as far away as possible. Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA – anywhere would do, as long as he wasn't there. The entire West Coast suddenly seemed like the perfect escape.

If he was going to the East Coast, then I'd head West. Three thousand miles and three time zones felt like a good start to forgetting the last six years of my life.

Seven Years of Love Seven Minutes of Tru