My painter boyfriend, Jared Brown, ran eight red lights to rush back and celebrate my birthday with me.
Everyone knew he loved me to the bone, that I was the one he would marry. But that didn’t stop him from pinning another woman in his car, creating art in an entwined embrace.
Suddenly, a shooting star streaked across the night sky.
Amid my friends' warm blessings, I closed my eyes and made a wish on my twentieth birthday.
This time, my wish wasn’t to marry him. Instead, it was to vanish completely from Jared’s world, so he could never find me again.
Dialing a familiar number, I said, “Professor Davis, I’ve made up my mind. I agree to participate in the time capsule experiment at the base.”
In seven days, every trace of me would be erased from this world, leaving Jared to hold onto a robotic replica of me, consumed by grief and regret for the rest of his life.
——
The whole Houston knew that Jared, the genius artist, adored me to no end.
A year ago, to gain his family’s approval for dating me, he knelt silently in the rain for a whole day and night.
Today, on my twentieth birthday, he personally lit up the entire city with fireworks for me.
As the fireworks illuminated the night, what I received wasn’t a romantic surprise but a message from an unknown number, containing an unspeakable video.
[A special gift for your twentieth birthday. Do you like it?]
The short sentence brimmed with provocation.
In the video, Jared’s breathing was heavy, and a woman was pinned in the passenger seat.
With the same hands he used to create his masterpieces, he tucked a loose strand of her hair behind her ear while wielding his most prized paintbrush.
“Relax, just one final stroke,” Jared said in his familiar magnetic voice, soothing the woman in the passenger seat.
She bit her lower lip, her dazed eyes following his brush’s fluid movements.
As he finished, she couldn’t help but coo softly, “Jared, I...”
Mid-sentence, she reached out, trying to touch something.
But Jared’s expression darkened instantly. He grabbed her chin with one hand, his tone sharp with warning. “This is not for you to touch. Remember your place.”
“Fine, I won’t touch it…” She feigned annoyance, her voice carrying a mix of coyness and flattery.
“I know that belongs to Lia. When can we move on to the next step?”
Jared let out a resigned chuckle, his expression helpless. With his slender fingers, he pressed against the back of her head and leaned down to kiss her lips.
“You’re so noisy,” he scolded, though there was an imperceptible trace of indulgence in his tone.
The video abruptly ended with her soft moans.
Clutching my phone tightly, I felt like I had plunged into an icy abyss.
As the clock struck midnight, a tear fell from my eye.
“Surprise!”
At that moment, my best friend, Annie, burst into the room with a group of friends.
I hastily wiped away my tears, hiding my phone behind me, and tremblingly turned off the screen, pretending nothing had happened.
“What are you doing out here alone on the balcony, birthday princess?”
Annie gleefully dragged me back into the living room from the seaside balcony.
In front of me was the birthday surprise Jared had meticulously prepared.
A pure, flawless white swan cake that now looked unbearably ironic.
“Hurry, make a wish and blow out the candles. Your boyfriend specifically instructed that wishes made at midnight are the most magical.”
Just then, Jared’s senior, Chester, interrupted her, “Wait, there are still fifty seconds left. That brat is timing it remotely.”
