Chapter 95 Didn’t You Buy the Medicine for Me?
But shouldn’t he at least say thanks? I’m not obliged to buy the medicine for him, but I did anyway. Oh, well. I will think of it as repaying his generosity for selling the shoplot cheaply to me.
At night, she returned to her dorm and placed the medicine neatly in her storage basket. She then received a video call request from Yulia and promptly accepted it.
It was noisy on Yulia’s side, and it took Stella a while to recognize the background—Yulia was at a party.
“Where are you?” Stella asked in curiosity.
“Oh, I’m at an event organized by a business leader. A lot of company presidents and popular figures are here. I got a promotion not long ago, so I bit the bullet and invited myself to the event as well. Had you been in Hollowcrest City, I would have invited you too! It’s a pity that you’re abroad. Look.” In the video, Yulia was wearing an evening dress with a sweetheart neckline, and she had some light makeup on, looking pretty and fresh. With her phone in hand, she gave Stella a tour of the place, moving blithely in the crowds.
Stella seemed to have recognized someone from the video—Miles. Maybe the weather was hot because he was dressed in a dark gray T-shirt, dancing with a woman. Seeing that, Stella’s heart immediately sank.
He appeared to be in a good mood, chatting and laughing with that woman. In no time, Stella identified the woman as his ex-girlfriend, Gabriella Nolan. Her face tilted toward him as she chatted merrily with him.
Upset, Stella only chatted absentmindedly with Yulia for a while before ending the call. After that, she sat in her bed with her legs crossed.
It’s true that we have parted ways, and I’m now studying abroad. Even so, Stella felt a tinge of jealousy. She could control her actions, but she could not change her feelings.
Ever since she went abroad, she felt extremely alone and homesick. The more she stayed in America, the more she missed her compatriots. While she was struggling alone at a foreign place, he was happily dancing the night away with another woman.
Stella was normally a very composed and proper girl. Back in Solaria, she was always worried that she’d get jealous and act out, which might expose her true feelings for him. If so, words would eventually reach him.
However, now that she was abroad without any acquaintances around, she was free to express her feelings. Right now, she just wanted to be jealous. In the heat of the moment, she decided to dump the medicine that she had just bought for him without a care.
Hence, the ten bottles of Prilosec all went into the bin.
This was Stella’s second time in a foreign city and country. Apart from the loneliness, she felt quite intrigued by the new environment. When she was not busy with studies, she would take the bus and travel around the area for some fun. After all, America was a melting pot of various ethnicities, which was a very different scene from Solaria.
When she wanted to share her feelings, she would take the bus and journal her thoughts on it. For example, she would write down her travels of the day and the new sceneries she came across.
Normally, she would share her ‘travel journal’ with Lisa, who would reply with admiration, ‘I’d love to go to America in the future.’
Since Stella only had two months in America, she did not have much time for traveling.
On a day without classes, she took the bus and traveled again. As usual, she wanted to send her thoughts to Lisa, but she realized belatedly that she had sent the message to the wrong person. What was worse—she had sent it to Miles.
As Lisa and Miles’ names were next to each other on her contacts list, she accidentally pressed ‘send’ to the wrong contact. She had not gotten over her anger at Miles, so she naturally decided to delete the message and, thankfully, had the window of time to do so.
She rewrote the entire paragraph and sent it over to Lisa. Lisa reacted to her message with a heart emoji and once again expressed her wish to visit America.
After reading Lisa’s reply, she was about to exit the app when she suddenly received a WhatsApp message from Miles. ‘If you take Bus 31, you can reach Finger Lakes. The scenery is great there. Bus 10 takes you to the International Motor Racing Research Center. Bus 15 goes to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. I’d recommend visiting Finger Lakes. It’s a place I loved. But you’re traveling alone as a girl, so I’d suggest you take a cab there. It’s going to take half an hour each way. That way, you won’t be home too late.’
She was a little frustrated because she had clearly deleted the message, but he somehow managed to read it. She did not reply to him.
Not only that, she didn’t like his authoritative tone and his ‘recommendations’. He sounded as if he had visited the city before.
Hmm, he does sound familiar with the places around here. Has he really visited this city before?
She took another look at the name of his beloved place. Finger Lakes.
She had not heard of this place before. Her frustration still lingered, but she was curious about the location. She wanted to know what Finger Lakes looked like, given that he had crowned it as his favorite place.
On a whim, she got off the bus and took an Uber to Finger Lakes.
When she arrived at her destination, she immediately felt welcomed by the openness and airyness of the place. The lake surface was tranquil, and a tree-lined path along the marvellous chiseled cliffs led visitors downward and closer to the lake itself. There were relatively few people around; she could see the horizon in the clear weather under the perfect sunshine.
Miles, have you been here before? I’m now in the city you’ve been to, walking the path you’ve taken.
Stella did not go anywhere else for the entire afternoon. Instead, she spent her time at the bridge in the gorge, listening closely to the sound of the lake and relishing the serenity.
During that trip, she took a lot of photos of Finger Lakes but shared none of them with Miles. It was her solo trip, and she did not want him to know about it.
At night, she went back to campus and sent a Twitter message to Matthew. ‘Where did Miles graduate from?’
He replied with a question mark, probably because he was puzzled by her random question.
She explained, ‘He sent a message to me today. Since he sounded very familiar with the bus routes, I assumed that he had stayed here before.’
After a long wait, she received a curt reply. ‘He graduated from Cornell.’
She frowned at the new information and felt disturbed, as if she had fallen into a trap—a trap set up by Matthew.
Miles graduated from Cornell, and Matthew arranged for me to study here.
On the other side, Matthew had swiftly screenshotted his chat with Stella and sent it to Miles. Miles did not read the details at first because his focus was on how Stella addressed him. She referred to him as ‘Miles Grant’.
Good, that’s awesome. She always addresses me as ‘President Grant’, sounding so polite and distant, but in private, she seems to be comfortable referring to me as Miles Grant.
Miles was sitting on the sofa of his mansion while reading the chat between Stella and Matthew.
Aside from noticing how Stella referred to him in private, he read the chat content and felt some unfamiliar feelings rising in his chest. It was some sort of unexplainable bitterness.
Zane Levitt arrived in America a week later. He dropped by to visit Stella because she was, after all, his ex-wife.
He told her that this was his first trip to America and Cornell. He had heard about Finger Lakes and its amazing views, so he requested that she give him a tour. She quickly turned down his request and expressed her objection toward visiting Finger Lakes.
A little disappointed, he told her, “If you’re not going, I will visit Finger Lakes alone.”
He also sensed the odd changes in her expression and decided to pay a visit to the destination on his own.
“I’ll bring you around here. How about we visit the grocery stores for a start? America’s grocery stores are quite interesting.” She gave him another suggestion. For Zane, he was fine with going anywhere as long as he could spend time with Stella, and so he happily accepted her suggestion.
Zane spent a total of three days in America. Aside from taking her classes, Stella also brought him around to some grocery stores. Perhaps out of selfishness, she did not bring Zane to any one of the destinations recommended by Miles.
Technically, the local destinations were open to the public and not owned by Miles. But somehow, Stella felt that she should not introduce Miles’ favorite places to Zane.
Am I too selfish? Stella also thought that she was acting petty.
Two months went by in the blink of an eye, during which she picked up a lot of knowledge in fashion design. As she had majored in landscape architecture before, she was adept at sketching, and that has saved her a lot of trouble in her studies. Not only that, she believed that she had some talent in fashion design after immersing in the course.
The day before she went home to Solaria, she went shopping and bought a lot of stuff, mostly for Matthew. Since she started working at Amon, he had always been very supportive toward her endeavors; thanks to him, she was able to buy the shoplot from Miles below market price and learn fashion design. Had it not been for Matthew, she would have been lost in life.
She bought a number of luxury items for Matthew, from belts, shirts to bags. Not forgetting Zachariah, she bought some toys for him too. Then, she thought of Miles and decided that she had to buy something, but Miles didn’t seem to need anything in particular. After some internal debate, she decided to buy him a pack of e-cigarettes—she wanted him to quit smoking because it was bad for his health.
Matthew took note of the date of Stella’s return, and she informed him that she’d be back at Hollowcrest City to hand him the items she had bought for him.
Miles was at Matthew’s house as well, but he did not know about Stella’s return. He was only there because Matthew had invited him over to play with Zachariah.
Soon, Stella showed up at the entrance of his house and knocked on the door. She had specifically requested Matthew not to pick her up at the airport because she did not want to trouble him more after everything that he had done for her.
Zachariah immediately ran up to her and gave her a big hug. “Stella! I missed you so much!”
“You lovely boy. I bought a lot of gifts for you!” With Matthew’s help, Stella hauled her items into the house. It was then she noticed Miles sitting at the sofa, smoking and scrutinizing her.
She’s gotten prettier and more mature. Her body looks like a ripe fruit, ready to be devoured. He could not stop himself from getting aroused by her charm.
It had been months since he had slept with her. If they had been married, he would have been labeled as a man with low sex drive for their lack of intimacy. In fact, his sexual drive was very normal, especially when he saw her voluptuous body.
When he was lost in his thoughts, Stella was busy taking out the gifts from her bag. Most of the items were for Matthew. After she handed out the gifts, the bag was empty.
Miles’ frown deepened at the sight as he asked her, “Didn’t you buy some medicine for me? Where are they?”
“The Prilosec?” Stella had anticipated the question because she told him about the Prilosec before, and she had prepared the perfect excuse for this moment. “President Grant, when I went through customs, my luggage was overweight, and the officers wanted me to throw away some stuff. I was afraid that I’d be seen as smuggling the medicine and get into trouble with the authorities, so I decided to throw them away!”
She looked calm and composed when she lied to him. On the other hand, Miles was fuming silently at her reply. It does not matter whether or not her luggage was really overweight. To her, it seems that Matthew’s gifts are more important than my medicine!
Her favoritism had crossed a line. He was rarely angry with people, and the few times he lost his temper, they were all because of this woman.
Miles noticed the frozen smiles on Matthew and Zachariah’s faces, and he smirked silently. Stella Johansson…
