Ficorpio
Chapter 1
Chapter 1
A year after my roommate and her boyfriend broke up, I started dating him.
Not for any grand reason.
I was jealous of the way he had treated her.
Once we got together, he was attentive to me, considerate in every practical way, but emotionally he always stayed lukewarm—never cold, never truly warm.
Then, half a year later, he finally seemed to change, and I thought I’d managed to reach him at last.
But during the holiday break, he ran into my former roommate.
Under a sky blazing with fireworks, I realized the truth:
he had never really forgotten her.
The reason I got together with Ethan Sterling was simple.
I liked the way he cared for my roommate—his quiet attentiveness, the kind of warmth that never needed to announce itself.
Back in college, I had watched their long, lingering love story unfold from inside our dorm room, envying her and everything about her like some pathetic voyeur.
Even her name.
Vanessa Hayes.
It was elegant, polished, self-possessed—the kind of name that sounded as if it had been chosen with hope. As if her father had wanted her to grow up steady, certain, always moving toward her own horizon without bending for anyone else.
My name was Claire Carter.
The thing my father said to me most often was, Be good. Be sensible.
So what I learned was how to make other people happy.
I still remember one evening outside the dorm, when Vanessa got mad because Ethan had shown up late.
He didn’t argue. He just reached out, touched her forehead lightly, then pulled a cake from his bag like a magician revealing the final trick.
It was one of those viral bakery cakes people waited five hours in line to buy.
Vanessa took a single bite before handing it back to him as naturally as breathing.
“I hate chocolate. Remember what I like next time.”
Ethan only said, “Okay.”
At first I was surprised.
Then, almost immediately, something sour and aching rose in my chest.
Because if it had been me, I probably would’ve pretended to love it even if I didn’t.
Because pleasing people meant being loved.
Or at least being loved a little more.
But Vanessa didn’t need to do that. She only had to be herself, and someone would keep loving her anyway.
Ethan Sterling and Vanessa Hayes broke up around graduation.
It rained hard that day, and he stood outside the dorm building for a very, very long time.
A year later, I ran into him at a dinner.
When he heard at the table that I’d graduated from the same university, he looked genuinely surprised.
Then again, that made sense. Back then, his whole world had been Vanessa. I doubt he’d ever noticed me at all.
I was that small. That forgettable.
Chapter 2
Chapter 2
So when he came to me later, when he was the one who reached out first, I hesitated for a long time.
Because I knew there was someone in his heart who could never really be replaced.
But in the end, I still said yes.
Because I wanted so badly to know what it felt like to be loved that way.
To be chosen without hesitation. To be indulged, remembered, treated like someone who mattered.
Everything I’d once watched from the shadows outside that dorm building, everything that had belonged to Vanessa—
I wanted a taste of it too.
After we got together, Ethan was good to me.
He really was.
He remembered my period and would make me something warm and sweet ahead of time. If I worked late, he’d come pick me up without asking a single extra question. Flowers on holidays. Gifts on my birthday. Thoughtful in every possible way.
And yet, once I actually had it, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off.
He almost never showed real emotion. Most of the time he was quiet, unreadable, somewhere inside his own head—and he never told me what he was thinking.
More than anything, we were polite with each other. Careful. Civil.
But the Ethan I’d seen in the past had been vivid.
When Vanessa got angry, he got nervous. When she said something careless, he’d smile and coax her out of it. When she came back late, he’d get mad.
Back in college, I used to hear them talking in the dorm—what he’d eaten that day, what he’d seen, little scraps of ordinary life.
But with me, he was always gentle, composed, perfectly mannered, neither warm nor cold.
In an entire year together, he never once volunteered the details of his day.
It felt like he was fulfilling the duties of being a boyfriend, not loving someone.
Sometimes late at night, I’d catch him sitting out on the terrace, the ember at his fingertips glowing and fading in the dark, as if he were turning something over in his mind.
By then, he was already the youngest area president in the company, a man who could control any room he walked into. What could possibly make him look like that?
I thought there was probably only one answer.
Vanessa.
When I felt bad, I used to ask myself what, exactly, I liked about him.
The answer scared me.
Maybe I didn’t actually like him at all.
Maybe what I wanted was a love that couldn’t be pushed away. Someone who would let me be myself and still love me, steadily, without wavering—like the way he had loved Vanessa.
But Ethan never gave me the chance to find out.
One day, I tested the waters.
“What kind of girl do you like?”
He said he liked someone like me. Quiet. Well-behaved. Easygoing. He said he hated difficult women.
Everything he listed was the opposite of Vanessa.
Something split open inside me then, because I had seen what he looked like when he loved someone.
It wasn’t this.
It wasn’t built on self-sacrifice.
Still, I chose to believe him. I think I just wanted to make a bet with myself.
Chapter 3
Chapter 3
So I folded away every emotion and took being “understanding” to the extreme.
I wanted to know whether, if I were thoughtful enough, accommodating enough, unlike Vanessa enough—would I finally get the kind of love and care I wanted?
Or maybe the better question was: even if I got it, would it make me happy?
That was how we spent the next six months. Nothing dramatic. Nothing tender. Just… fine.
That day, I’d made plans to see a movie with a friend. I’d specifically picked a theater that was fair for both of us—middle distance, no one getting the short end of it.
Right before I left, she texted me.
Claire, there’s a new theater doing a promo. The IMAX tickets are super cheap.
I clicked the link. It was near her place. It would take me over an hour to get there.
But she sounded excited, and I didn’t want to ruin that.
When I arrived, I texted to ask where she was.
On the way. Traffic’s bad.
I waited more than ten minutes.
Then another text came in.
The forecast says it might rain. Are we still going?
I stared at the message for a long time, then deleted the words I’d typed—I’m already here.
Instead I sent: Maybe let’s skip today. Honestly, it’s kind of a pain for me to get over here too.
She replied instantly: Ugh, I’m so sorry. I’ll treat you next time.
I said okay.
Then I stood there at the theater entrance and suddenly wanted to laugh.
Once again, I had said the thing someone else didn’t want to say.
Once again, I had handed someone else an easy way out.
Once again, I had absorbed feelings they didn’t want to deal with and made them my own.
It was as natural as breathing.
As pathetic as instinct.
I sent Ethan a text.
Where are you?
He replied almost immediately.
With a vendor. How’s the movie?
I locked my phone.
The thing adults are best at is knowing when not to speak.
I didn’t go home. I just walked, aimless, until I passed a reptile shop.
In the display window, a lizard lay draped over a piece of dry wood. Gray-brown, its scales cracked like a dried riverbed, completely still. All the other animals around it were active, restless.
It alone was quiet.
I stood there staring at it for a long time.
It wasn’t trying to please anyone. If you came closer, it didn’t hide. If you ignored it, it didn’t follow. Its emotions belonged to itself. It didn’t need anyone to soothe it, and it didn’t exist to soothe anyone else.
I wanted it.
Not because it could offer emotional comfort—exactly because it couldn’t. Between us there would be no expectations, no demands, no asking.