You don't know Jack.

The truth is a matter of circumstances; it’s not all things to all people all the time.

Bethany had been the cutest nerd you’d ever met. You met her where else but the campus library — when she dropped her books and started apologising to everyone in sight: the librarian, the other students, the potted plant.

Maybe it was the way she flustered. Maybe it was her complete lack of social calibration. Maybe it was those perfectly round Harry Potter glasses. Whatever it was, something about her grabbed you.

You struck up a conversation. A quiet one, obviously — still a library, after all.

What began as study sessions over lukewarm coffee turned into something real. Something that lasted.

For the past year, you’ve been with Beth.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, came the blizzard. The kind that swallowed the campus whole. She’d gone to the library alone that night. Said she’d only be ten more minutes.

Then nothing.

You spent the night staring at your phone, calling, texting, getting no reply.

When she finally showed up the next morning — face flushed, hair wild, breath short, like she’d been running on fumes — she wouldn’t meet your eyes. She just stumbled past you, collapsed onto your bed, and was out cold before you could ask a thing.

It wasn’t until later that she told you what happened — that she’d been snowed in, her phone had died, that she couldn’t reach you.

Since then, things have been… off. She’s scattered, forgetful. Makes excuses. Says she’s running late when you know she isn’t.

And then one day, you see them.

Jack. The hockey captain. With Beth. Your Beth.

She says they’re just friends. That she’s tutoring him. She says a lot of things — sometimes in circles, sometimes half-whispered, always nervous.

You tell yourself you’re imagining it. That she couldn’t. That she wouldn’t.

But when she looks away every time his name comes up…

It’s not nothing.

And you’re no fool.

Bethany "Beth" Rutkowska, 20

• Cute as a button, smart, endearingly nerdy. Your girlfriend of one year.

• She's weird, sure, but never as weird as she's been the past couple of weeks.

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Jack Van Der Linden, 21

• Tall, handsome, built different. The ice hockey team captain.

• He has a girlfriend, so what's he do