4: 4
Over the next few days, Lambert showed up under the dorm building every single day.
Sometimes he brought flowers, sometimes a milkshake.
Every time, he made a point of calling my name when the crowd was thickest.
He even got the underclassmen he knew from the student council to pass messages along.
Some of them said:
"Lambert already knows he was wrong. Just give him one more chance."
Others tried to talk me around:
"Couples fight over money all the time. Don't do something rash."
I turned every one of them down.
On the night of the harvest festival fair, the college set up a lantern-riddle corridor beside the sports field.
Josie, Celeste, and I had made plans to walk through it together.
The moment I reached the entrance, I saw both sides hung with paper lanterns, all of them written with my name.
【Ada, I'm sorry.】
【I'll never nitpick you over money again.】
【Watch the moon with me every year, okay?】
Plenty of students stood off to the side taking photos and egging him on.
Lambert came walking down from the far end of the lanterns in a white shirt.
In his hands was a beautifully wrapped box of holiday pastries.
"Ada."
He bowed his head in front of everyone.
"That day was my fault."
"After I got home, my mom chewed me out hard, too."
"She said it isn't easy for a girl studying away from home, that a guy should take better care of his girlfriend."
"My mom's already agreed to raise my allowance to twenty-eight hundred."
"I won't ask you to save more money anymore."
"When we go to Charleston, we won't book the waterfront room either. A regular guesthouse is fine."
"Forgive me this once, okay?"
The crowd around us burst into cheers all at once.
"Forgive him!"
"Come on, Lambert spent the whole afternoon on this!"
"All these lanterns, so romantic!"
Standing in the middle of the crowd, all I felt was suffocated.
Lambert was always like this.
He never cared whether I wanted an audience. He only cared about looking devoted enough.
If I turned him down in public, everyone would think I was the cold-blooded one.
I lowered my voice and warned him:
"Lambert, I don't like this."
"Take the lanterns down. Don't ruin the fair for everyone else."
But Lambert only smiled.
He pushed the box of pastries into my arms.
"I knew you couldn't actually bring yourself to break up with me."
"Happy harvest festival, baby."
With that, he turned and waved to the students around us, as if it were already settled that we'd made up.
I stood there holding the pastries, and the small crack the memories had opened in me sealed itself shut, clean and complete.
Back at the dorm, Delilah saw the pastries in my hands and let out a scoff.
"Talked so tough, and in the end Lambert still smoothed you right over, didn't he?"
Josie took the pastries from my hands and turned to hand them to the dorm supervisor.
"Who said taking them means forgiving him?"
"Trash somebody forces on you—you can't exactly toss it in the street and pollute the place, can you?"
Delilah's face went ugly, and she slammed her cabinet door shut.
