My Girlfriend Gave Me the Lowest Grade

I was happily waiting for the lab session to end so I could celebrate our one-year anniversary with my girlfriend. That was when our advisor accidentally uploaded the semester's grading sheet to our group chat of over a dozen students. Although he deleted it quickly, it was not fast enough. I had already seen the failing grade my TA girlfriend had given me.

Seeing my face fall, my classmates tried to comfort me in my embarrassment.

"Don't take it to heart, Luke. Alyson is notoriously brutal. She never pulls her punches when she grades."

"Yeah, everyone knows she is the most terrifying teaching assistant in the entire science department. A bad grade is nothing. She literally made me cry last semester."

"Me too! Even the professor didn't call me stupid, but after I made one mistake on an analysis, she looked at me with those cold eyes and told me to drop out. I was terrified."

Was that really just her style? But I had clearly seen the perfect score she gave Tristan. Tristan, who had ruined three consecutive experiments without ever receiving a harsh word from her. She had even stayed up all night in the lab just to help him redo his work.

As I stared blankly at the glass beaker in my hand, Alyson walked in from the adjoining lab. She wore her usual crisp white lab coat, her silver-rimmed glasses resting on the bridge of her nose, her eyes as distant and cold as ever.

Seeing us gathered together whispering, she knit her brows in annoyance. Afraid of catching her temper, the others quickly scattered back to their stations. Before leaving my side, one of them whispered a final warning.

"Keep your cool, Luke. Whatever you do, do not start an argument with her. Even the professor won't be able to protect you if she gets angry."

Alyson was ruthless with everyone, including herself. She despised mixing personal life with professional work, which was why we had kept our relationship a secret. My classmates assumed we were just typical peers, which explained their well-meaning advice.

And indeed, their warnings were not exaggerated. Alyson held immense sway in the department. As our advisor's star student, she had published several high-impact papers during her doctoral studies, single-handedly securing massive grants for the lab. She was already being scouted by top research institutions before she even defended her thesis. The professor treated her like gold, consulting her on almost every decision.

In this lab, crossing Alyson meant career suicide. The last student who had argued with her had been forced to leave the program entirely.

I gave a quiet nod. "Don't worry. I won't cause trouble."

The moment Alyson stepped deeper into the room, the atmosphere turned freezing. Everyone held their breath, terrified she would spot a flaw in their setups. She walked along the rows with a clipboard, inspecting each student's progress and results.

"Steps are correct. Data is consistent. Clean your glassware and you are dismissed."

A collective sigh of relief swept through the room. Unwilling to linger any longer than necessary, they quickly washed their beakers and slipped out.

Soon, the lab emptied out until only one group remained, which included me. I was not even supposed to be working today. I had only come to wait for Alyson so we could head to our anniversary dinner, bringing iced teas for my friends along the way. But Tristan had skipped out on his shift, leaving his team short-handed, so they had begged me to help them log their data.

Alyson glanced at our group's spreadsheet, her forehead creasing. "Who ran this sequence? How did no one notice such a fundamental tracking error?" Her voice was flat and icy. Her eyes scanned the remaining students, stopping directly on me. The clipboard was sitting right by my elbow, and she instantly assumed I was the culprit.

The girl beside me quickly grabbed the sheet to defend me. "Alyson, it wasn't Luke. He only came here to..."

"Did I give you permission to speak?" Alyson cut her off, her gaze narrowing as she focused on my hands. "Luke, is that how you hold a reagent bottle? Did no one teach you basic safety protocols, or did you leave your brain in your dorm room this morning?"

I stared at her, completely stunned. In the twenty-some years we had known each other, she had never spoken to me with such raw disdain. Our parents were close friends, and we had grown up side by side. Coming from a family of academics, she was a certified prodigy, skipping grades in elementary and high school before moving directly into her doctoral program.

My family was in the commercial estate business, and I possessed no natural talent for science. My grades had always been average. But Alyson detested incompetence. Terrified she would grow bored of me and leave me behind, I had spent my youth studying until my eyes bled, crying over practice sheets late into the night. My parents had begged me to stop, telling me I could easily inherit the family's multi-million dollar business without pushing myself to the brink.

But I wanted to stand beside her. I loved her.

I thought I had finally closed the distance between us. I had worked myself to the bone to get accepted into the same master's program under the same advisor, and she had finally agreed to be my girlfriend.

Yet, hearing her insult me in front of my peers felt like a knife twisting in my chest. When Tristan's negligence almost caused a fire in the lab last month, she had not said a single harsh word to him. She had never called him stupid.

Now, she was demanding I take the blame for his mistake, waiting for me to humiliate myself.

"Alyson, this is Tristan's shift," my classmate said, unable to stay silent any longer. "Luke was only helping us because we were short-handed." She knew speaking up against Alyson was risky, but she refused to let me take the fall. She gave my shoulder a supportive squeeze, determined to clear my name.

Alyson froze, her brow furrowing slightly. She looked at me, her gaze softening just a fraction, as if waiting for my confirmation.

Once the ice was broken, the other members of the group chimed in.

"She is right! Tristan didn't even ask for permission before skipping out to attend his driving lessons. We were desperate, so Luke stepped in to help."

"Luke is completely innocent here. If the data is messed up, that is on Tristan for abandoning his post."

They had been frustrated with Tristan's constant slacking for months, and now the dam had burst.

Alyson remained silent for a long moment, a flicker of regret passing through her dark eyes. "I see. I did not have the full context. I will speak with Tristan about his absence. Everyone has worked hard today. You may all leave before the dining hall closes."

Just as the group began to pack up, relieved that justice had prevailed, Alyson's gaze snapped back to me.

"Luke, stay behind."

Everyone froze, confused.

"The laboratory is not a playground," Alyson said coldly. "There is no such thing as just helping out. Every procedure must be followed perfectly. Your hand placement on the glass was incorrect, Luke. You will clean every single piece of glassware in this room before you leave tonight."

I looked up at her in disbelief, but she kept her face turned away, refusing to meet my eyes. My classmates immediately began to protest, ready to stand up for me again.

But Alyson silenced them with a harsh warning. "Anyone who helps him can pack up their belongings and leave this program permanently."

The threat hung heavy in the air. Everyone was stunned. I knew what she was doing. She wanted me to submit to her authority, to beg for her leniency.

It was just a few hundred flasks.

"Understood, Alyson," I said, my voice entirely flat. "It was my mistake. I will clean them."

My quick compliance did not seem to bring her any satisfaction. She paused, then turned on her heel and swept out of the room.

My classmates refused to leave me alone.

"We are not leaving you, Luke," one of them said. "She can't kick all of us out of the department. Let's get this done quickly."

Rolling up their sleeves, they began washing the glass beakers alongside me. They scrubbed the glassware aggressively, venting their frustration.

"Tristan is such a piece of work. He always dumps his duties on other people."

"And Alyson never calls him out on it. It makes no sense."

One of the girls leaned closer, lowering her voice. "Do you think there's something going on between them? During our department dinner last week, she had a little custom charm hanging from her bag. When some guy tried to touch it, she practically snapped his hand off."

"No way. Can you actually picture Alyson in love?"

"Well, someone said they saw her dragging a guy into the stairwell to kiss him after an argument. They couldn't see his face, though."

Was it really love? I remembered the charm she used to keep on her bag. It was a matching silver pendant I had saved up to buy her. But she had taken it off recently, replacing it with a plush key ring. When I asked about it, she claimed she had bought it from a charity stand out of pity.

Later, I saw the exact same plush key ring hanging from Tristan's backpack.

Had her feelings for me already shifted long ago?

Lost in my thoughts, I barely registered their chatter. We worked quickly, leaving only a dozen flasks left. When they offered to finish the rest, I gently pushed them toward the door.

"You guys should head out. If Alyson walks back in and sees you here, she will only find another excuse to penalize us. I can manage the rest."

They hesitated, but eventually nodded, offering apologetic smiles. "We will order some takeout for you, Luke. See you back at the dorm."

The moment the door clicked shut, the fake smile slid off my face. In the empty, echoing lab, the weight of the day finally crashed over me.

This was not how our anniversary was supposed to go. We were supposed to be sitting at a nice restaurant overlooking the river, sharing a small cake and taking photos.

Instead, I was alone in a cold room, my hands pruning from the soapy water.

Had I been wrong from the very beginning? Perhaps her acceptance of my feelings was never about love, but merely pity for the boy who had chased her for over two decades.

I scrubbed the last beaker, my wrists aching and my legs numb from standing. I turned off the lights and locked the heavy door behind me. My phone showed several missed calls from the restaurant, but it was already too late. They had likely given away our table, and there was no point in calling back to apologize.

The science building was dark and empty. Normally, I would have teased her by pretending to be scared of the shadows, wrapping my arms around her waist just to hear her sigh and say, "We are chemistry majors, Luke. There are no ghosts here, only chemical reactions. You are the only scaredy-cat around."

But tonight, I felt nothing but a quiet, hollow exhaustion as I made my way down the stairs.

As I stepped through the main entrance, I saw a familiar, slender figure waiting beneath the stone archway.