Used & Thrown Away, I Outshone My Team

After staying up all night optimizing the core algorithm for the upcoming World Championship regional qualifiers, I felt a bit groggy when I pushed open the door to the school's robotics lab. A deep male voice came from the inside, accompanied by a girl's giggles. I walked in to find Zack Davis sitting at the captain's desk, with Chloe Adams leaning over him, playing with a mechanical component. Chloe was a notorious delinquent in our school, perpetually sitting at the bottom of the academic rankings. Yet, ever since the robotics team was founded, she had been clinging to Zack. Wherever Zack was, Chloe was sure to be there. There were even rumors in the hallways that Chloe was his true muse, while I, the top-ranked Ivy League preparatory student, was just a boring, controlling girlfriend who forced Zack to tolerate me because I helped him with his homework. Even though Zack once claimed that I was the only girl he envisioned standing beside him on the World Championship stage. "Zack, I've completed the behavioral prediction code for the new robot model. Take a look," I said, handing him the printed logic trees and the flash drive. But Zack didn't even look at it. "Stella, you're so smart, I'm sure it's fine. Let Chloe handle the testing," he smiled, but the smile didn't reach his eyes. After that, he tossed the flash drive I had worked on all night onto the desk toward Chloe. Chloe looked at me provocatively, spinning the drive on her finger before "accidentally" letting it slip. It clattered to the floor, sliding straight into the trash can. "Oops, clumsy me," she giggled. This was not the first time this had happened, to the point where I couldn't even feel a hint of anger anymore. Zack disliked me interfering too much in the team's "culture." He said that I only needed to play the role of the supportive genius girlfriend, completely ignoring that eighty percent of the robot's functional code had been written by me. I held myself up and looked at him stubbornly. "Zack, aren't you going to take a look? I coded for two nights straight." Zack stood up, slightly frowning. "Stella, I don't want to waste time on boring logistics right now." Boring logistics. Was he talking about the code, or about me? But in the end, Zack never gave me the chance to speak. He pulled me into his arms, resting his chin on the top of my head. His voice came from above, soft and emotionless. "Alright, I'll celebrate your birthday with you tonight." He was always like this. I felt like I was drowning. Just when I was about to give up the struggle, Zack would pull me back. But once he was sure I was safe, he would let go of my hand without hesitation and watch indifferently as I sank deeper and deeper. Yet I craved the warmth he once gave me, whether years ago or now. In the end, I buried my face in his chest and said softly, "Okay." I wore a silver charm bracelet and arrived at the restaurant an hour early. This bracelet was something Zack insisted on buying for me when he won his first local coding competition. Even though we were just middle schoolers back then and he had saved up his allowance for months, he stubbornly wanted to put the bracelet around my wrist. Even when his parents cut off his pocket money, he never once asked for it back.