If Mason hadn’t tried to help me, I might have been able to get up on my own. But his half-hearted attempts at care only led me to fall a third time. By now, I could barely feel the pain in my body. The repeated falls had finally jolted me awake.
For five years, I had been blinded by Mason’s fake affection. It all started when I was a freshman, lost on our massive campus. Mason swooped in like a knight, took my heavy bags and handed me a tissue to wipe away my sweat. I was smitten by the seemingly perfect, considerate senior. Some people called me shameless, but Mason never turned me down and always seemed to give mixed signals.
He had invited me for midnight snacks after breakfast, given me cute toys as gifts and sweeten the deal whenever he had messed up. But once I became his official girlfriend, things changed. He had gone hot and cold and whenever I felt hurt, he’d throw in some sweet gesture to make up for it.