No Longer His Second Choice

1: 1

At the gathering, someone asked Austin Barnes what had made him fall for me.

He answered without much thought. Her eyes. They're pretty.

The friends around us pounced on it right away. They say when you fall for someone's eyes, you've fallen for their soul. You're done for.

I ducked my head, embarrassed, but Austin said nothing. He only drank, one glass after another.

That night I scrolled onto my stepsister's secret social media account. The post was a close-up of a pair of eyes, the caption plain.

"Three years since we broke up. Do you still like them?"

A minute after it went up, Austin liked it.

"You know I do. You were the one heartless enough to go abroad back then. When are you coming home?" he wrote in the comments.

Only then did I understand. What he liked wasn't my eyes. It was the other person he saw inside them.

I stared at the post on my phone and couldn't make sense of it for the longest time.

I'd been with Austin so long, and I had never once known he and Vivian Sinclair had been together.

I refreshed the post. Vivian replied fast.

"Next week. Miss me already?"

Austin didn't reply again, but he liked the comment.

I looked up at him, seated by the window.

The screen of his phone had already gone dark. He held a cigarette, lighting one off the last, and nothing in his face gave anything away.

I opened Vivian's account. The bio across the top of her profile read, bright as day: "Everyday love with my ex-husband."

For three whole years, this account had been logging every little moment with her ex-boyfriend.

I scrolled to the very bottom and started from the first post.

"Broke up with my boyfriend. He drank a lot. He said he couldn't bear to let me go."

"But I'm going abroad, at least six or seven years, maybe never coming back. I don't want to be with him anymore. How am I supposed to comfort him?"

I checked the date. Posted June 28, 2023. The same day I met Austin.

I was on my way home then. A drunk man was standing at the entrance to my apartment complex.

When his bleary eyes landed on mine, something in them suddenly cleared. He seemed to murmur someone's name under his breath, and then it turned into a single question. "Can I get to know you?"

After I met Austin, he chased me hard.

He mined all my social media to learn what I liked, finding new ways to make me happy.

Later I asked him why he'd been so drunk that day. He only smiled and said, "Bad mood. But at least it led me to you."

Only now did I understand. He'd been blackout drunk because of Vivian. He'd wanted my number because these eyes looked so much like hers. And the name he'd murmured to himself was Vivian's too.

My hands were shaking a little as I kept scrolling.

"Got sick. I don't have many friends over here, so I called him in the middle of the night. He flew more than ten hours to take care of me."

"He stayed ten days, didn't leave until I was all better. Before he left he asked again if we could get back together. I still said no."

"I have my studies to finish. I don't want to keep up a relationship that leads nowhere. But he said whenever I needed him, he'd always be at my side."

I remembered. That day was my birthday.

Austin, who used to see to my every need, vanished that day. His phone was unreachable, my messages went unanswered. Days later he told me the company had an emergency and he'd gone abroad.

The comments were all swooning.

"Oh my God, will you two just marry each other right where you stand?"

"I can go without a love life, but not my ship!"

After Austin came back, he confessed to me and made up for the birthday he'd missed.

I was so happy I never once noticed that when he looked at me, those words seemed meant for someone else.

Back then I was overjoyed. When I said yes, I told him he could love only me, be good only to me.

He smiled but never gave a clear answer, and I was so deep in my own happiness that I completely missed how strangely he was behaving.

Tears fell and smeared the screen.

But the words on it were still just as clear.

"Valentine's Day today. My ex-husband came to see me again."

"During the movie our fingers laced together, and I couldn't help kissing him, like we'd never been apart at all."

"I know he has a girlfriend now, my dad's ex-wife's daughter. He says looking into those similar eyes feels like I never left. He says if he can't be with me, he'll be my family instead and keep watching over me."

"No matter what, the person he loves most will always be me."

2: 2

My stomach heaved. I made it to the bathroom and retched for a long time, but nothing came up.

I'd disliked Vivian since we were kids, for one simple reason: her mother was the mistress who tore my family apart.

My parents divorced the year I turned six. Less than two months later, my father brought a new woman into the house, and holding her hand was Vivian, only four months younger than me.

From that day on, I became invisible in my own home.

My father and stepmother never mistreated me. But their eyes only ever saw Vivian.

From middle school on, I lived at boarding school, because I was the extra one in that house and I didn't want to be treated like empty air.

Even my mother grew sick of me after my father's affair. After she remarried, she rarely came to see me.

The year I finished high school, I wanted to apply to a school abroad I'd always dreamed of. I knew that studying overseas wasn't an unreasonable request given what my family could afford.

I offered to take a part-time job to ease the burden. In the end, all it took was one sentence from my father to make me give it up: "We don't have that kind of money to waste on you."

But when Vivian did poorly on her SATs and threw a fit at home for a few days, my father offered to send her abroad without a second thought.

"Go do your bachelor's first. If you want a few more years after that, apply for a master's, a doctorate, whatever you like. Your father earns money so you can enjoy your life."

Favoritism. It was the one thing I'd always ached for.

Until I met Austin. I thought he was the exception.

I pinned every hope I had about love on him, and what I got in return was this laughable.

My father chose divorce over my mother for another woman, and I was only Austin's second choice, the settle-for after he couldn't have Vivian.

It came back to me all at once. There was a night I got drunk and poured everything out to Austin.

I told him I was always the one overlooked at home, the one given up on, that everything good went to Vivian.

Back then I never noticed the relief in his eyes when I told him how happily Vivian had grown up.

The man I thought loved me above everyone had only ever seen me as her stand-in, and I'd still been begging him for love.

The comments were split. Some people were shipping them; plenty of others were tearing them apart.

"No, seriously, dragging it out before was one thing, but flirting like this while you've got a new girlfriend? Do you not find yourself disgusting?"

"Your sister's got the worst luck, stuck with a sister and a boyfriend like you two. She should run."

"Gross. I'm going to stick around just to watch you two crash and burn."

Vivian ignored all of it. Austin, though, replied to them one by one.

"It's all one-sided on my end. I have no feelings for my current girlfriend. Stop attacking her."

"If she were willing, I wouldn't choose anyone else. I'd only ever be with her."

"She has her own dreams to chase. She could never give up her studies and her whole life for me, and I understand that."

The insults below kept coming.

"Did anyone force you to be with your girlfriend? If you can't let go, then lock it down already. Why ruin someone else in the process?"

"Eating what's in your bowl while eyeing what's in the pot, and then setting yourself up as some devoted lover on top of it. You've really got the whole game figured out."

"If you loved her that much, why didn't you wait for her to come home? Would a long-distance relationship have killed you?"

Austin kept replying: "It was me drinking poison to quench my thirst. I love her too much. I can't accept a life without her, not even a shadow of her. Call me a scumbag all you want, but don't attack her."

"She wants to keep studying, and she might stay abroad to work later. She was thinking of me when she suggested we break up. From start to finish, I was the one who couldn't let her go."

"I didn't eat from my bowl while eyeing the pot. My current girlfriend and I have never done anything. The only person I've ever loved is her. Please stop attacking her."

Austin wasn't lying. He and I really had never done anything.

Even holding hands only happened the few times I reached for him first and he didn't pull away. I'd been foolish enough to think it was because he respected me too much.

Now I understood. If you truly loved someone, how could you hold yourself back?

Because of what Austin wrote, the arguments in the comments died down, and even more people started shipping them.

By now Vivian's account had gained a fair number of followers, and no one cared that behind those sweet-looking little moments was the wounding of one innocent person.

Back in the room, Austin lay drunk on the bed.

When he saw me come in, he suddenly sat up and stared into my eyes for a long time.

Then he pulled me in and kissed me.

Something we'd never once done in three years.

I froze. But before I could react, I heard the name that came out of his mouth.

"Vivian, don't go."

3: 3

That night, it took everything I had not to break.

I pushed Austin away.

I picked up my phone and accepted the interview offer I'd been putting off for so long.

It was recommended-admission season, and I'd spent all this time weighing which school to choose.

Ashford, with the best career prospects for me, was all the way out in New York, and Austin worked at his family's company here. Choosing it meant three years apart.

Carlton, right here in Los Angeles, was a good school too, but it didn't come close to Ashford.

The old me would have compromised for Austin. I used to think a small concession here and there was nothing next to him.

But now I had no reason left to stay.

My whole life, I'd been waiting for a share of favoritism that was supposed to be mine.

I thought if I were good enough, my parents would finally see me. They never did. They'd always rather pour it all into Vivian, who couldn't hold a candle to me.

And now Austin had shown me the same truth.

The only thing I could truly hold onto was my own future. I shouldn't have hung all my hopes for something beautiful on a shadow that was never really there.

When my friends heard my decision, they were happy for me.

They asked what had changed my mind, and I told them why, laying out everything I'd learned from that secret account, exactly as it was.

At first they couldn't believe it. Then they were furious on my behalf.

Really, who could have imagined that a boyfriend who acted like he loved me so deeply had, underneath it all, been doing everything for someone else?

I couldn't have imagined it, and neither could they, so I didn't want to think about it anymore.

I didn't want to keep pinning my emotions on someone who wasn't worth it. I'd done enough of that already.

First I waited for my parents' favor, then for Austin's. Now I only wanted to think about myself.

I spent the next several days buried in the admission paperwork. The day my provisional acceptance from Ashford came through, Austin called.

"I'm eating out tonight, so I won't be coming home."

I used to believe Austin without question.

He'd say he was overseas closing a deal, or away on business, and even when he missed my birthday, missed Valentine's Day, I believed him, again and again.

Only now did I see how foolish that thinking had been.

I opened Vivian's secret account. She'd posted a new update: "Back in the country."

Austin had gone to see her. He'd forgotten today was the day my acceptance results came out. He hadn't asked a single word about it.

He'd long grown used to me revolving around him, treating him like my whole world. It had never once occurred to him that I might choose to leave.

When I got to Austin's place, I found a bouquet of tulips on the table, the kind Vivian liked, and beside it, the desserts she loved.

I don't like flowers, and I rarely eat sweets.

I gathered up everything of mine from all those years in his home, and just as I was about to leave, I ran into Austin and Vivian.

4: 4

When Austin saw me, he looked a little caught off guard.

I looked at the two of them and said nothing.

In the end, it was Vivian who broke the quiet.

"Sis, what are you doing here?" She wasn't the least bit puzzled by my presence, but she asked anyway, all wide-eyed innocence.

"Oh, right, I forgot to mention it to you. I came back home to rest for a while. Austin's a friend of mine. We're just catching up this trip."

"You two are...? I forgot you were dating. He never told me either. I only heard it from another friend." Vivian smiled again.

The way she told it, I was the girlfriend he'd kept out of sight for three years, and she was the "friend" he'd rushed off to see the moment she was back in the country.

When Vivian said they were just friends, Austin's arm was draped loosely around her, and he gave her waist a pinch, drawing a little startled squeal out of her.

I ignored whatever was passing between them.

Austin noticed the suitcase in my hand and frowned. "What's this about?"

"Nothing. Just grabbing a few of my everyday clothes. I'm heading back now."

"All right. Travel safe." His tone was flat.

He didn't ask me to stay. He didn't offer to see me off. And he didn't explain a single thing about what was going on between them.

Back at school, there wasn't one message from him on my phone.

Scrolling before bed, I opened Vivian's secret account again out of habit.

She'd posted something new.

"Today he said in front of my sister that we're just friends, and he was so unhappy about it. This man is such a handful."

Vivian had attached a photo. There were several clear kiss marks on her neck and collarbone.

Austin had commented: "You really don't know why I'm unhappy? You of all people know exactly how I feel about you."

Nausea rolled through me. Three years of us, and to the two of them it had turned into nothing more than a prop for their flirting.

At least I didn't care anymore. Letting him go was simpler than I'd imagined.

I got in touch with my advisor at Ashford University and joined the lab early.

Early the next morning, I boarded the plane with my suitcase. Before takeoff, I sent Austin one message.

"Let's break up."