Chapter 3

Three days later, Noah threw a party at his house and invited everyone in our class.

His parents were away on vacation, so the entire house had become a playground for a group of recent high school graduates like us.

I hadn’t planned on going, but Noah dragged me over early to help set everything up before the party started. Isabella had arrived early as well.

Halfway through the preparations, Noah took Isabella upstairs to get something, leaving me downstairs to set up the computer for the screen display.

As soon as he was gone, I quickly pulled up the IP address and compared it with the one I had saved in the screenshots from the application portal.

It was an exact match.

I immediately saved the evidence, and by the time Noah and Isabella came back downstairs, I had already put everything away and returned to what I had been doing as though nothing had happened.

The party started soon after.

I sat alone in a corner, watching everyone else celebrate in the living room.

At some point, someone suggested playing Truth or Dare, and one of the girls I knew called me over to join them.

When Noah chose truth, someone looked between the two of us with a teasing smile.

“So when are Noah and Claire finally going to get together?”

Everyone turned toward us with amused, knowing looks.

They all knew Noah and I had once been inseparable, and in their minds, it seemed almost inevitable that we would eventually end up together.

I knew better now, although there had once been a time when I had believed the same thing.

Noah glanced at me awkwardly before explaining in a slightly stiff voice, “You guys have the wrong idea. Claire and I are just good friends.”

Isabella immediately moved closer to his side, though the smile on her face had gone a little rigid.

“Stop saying things like that. You’re only going to make things awkward for Claire.”

The room fell quiet for a few seconds before someone quickly changed the subject and urged everyone to continue the game.

Isabella was chosen next, and her question was whether she had a crush on anyone.

As soon as the question was asked, everyone around us started laughing and teasing her.

Isabella glanced at Noah beside her before answering with a shy smile.

“I do. We agreed to apply to the same university, and he even gave me this necklace as a graduation present.”

As she spoke, she pulled a delicate necklace from beneath her collar and showed it to everyone.

The tiny diamonds in the rose-gold butterfly pendant flashed under the party lights. It hurt to look at.

I recognized that necklace.

Three months earlier, when Noah and I had gone shopping together, I had stopped to admire it in a store. Noah had promised that he would buy it for me as my eighteenth-birthday present.

My birthday had already come and gone, yet the necklace had never appeared. It wasn’t until I saw it hanging around Isabella’s neck that night that I finally understood Noah had given it to someone else.

With everyone around her cheering and teasing, Isabella blushed and admitted that the person she liked was Noah.

Despite the excitement around them, Noah didn’t look particularly happy. He stayed silent, glancing at me nervously.

Another friend asked, “But didn’t Noah and Claire agree they were going to the same university?”

“Claire isn’t going anymore,” Isabella said, clearly carried away by all the attention around her.

“She didn’t want to get in our way, so she applied to some small school thousands of miles away out west.”

Everyone stared at her in shock.

They all knew my grades had always been among the best in our class. The fact that I had been willing to attend the local state university with Noah had already seemed like a waste to most of them, so there was no reason I would suddenly choose some obscure school on the other side of the country.

I looked at Isabella calmly. What she didn’t know was that I had already started recording before she made that remark.

“What are you talking about? When did I ever apply to another school?”

Isabella put on a surprised expression, though the satisfaction in her eyes was impossible to hide.

“Didn’t Noah tell you? A few days ago, we wanted to make sure the application portal was working properly, so we logged into your account and resubmitted your application.”

For a moment, Noah looked uncomfortable when she admitted it in front of everyone, but he quickly recovered and spoke as though he had done nothing wrong.

“It doesn’t matter that she told you. You were going to find out sooner or later anyway. If you had actually been paying attention to your own application, Isabella and I wouldn’t have had the chance to change it in the first place.”

I held his gaze for several seconds and saw no trace of guilt in his eyes.

“Fine. I understand.”

With that, I stood up and left.

I hadn’t come to socialize. Now I had both the IP evidence and the recording.