Sweet Romance12 min read
Did Professor Evander Fall for Me — Or Did I Fall for the Chase?
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I never thought that the simplest reason to move — a boring lease, a crooked agent, a crooked heart — would land me in the middle of everything.
"Who is he?" I asked, my voice shaking as if the camera's shutter had pulled a thread inside me.
Margot snorted beside me. "Emerie, that's Evander Santiago. He's a professor in Han's department. Handsome, icy, apparently impossible."
"Icy how?" I said, because "impossible" sounds like a challenge.
Margot rolled her eyes. "Like a glacier with perfect pecs. He does not notice ordinary mortals."
"Then I'm not ordinary," I said, and took the photo.
He walked away, strong shoulders cutting the air like someone who refused to be bothered. I couldn't help the stupid little thrill that climbed my throat.
"Does he have a girlfriend?" I asked, already knowing the answer wouldn't stop me.
"No," Margot said flatly. "No girlfriend. But rumor says he doesn't like women."
"Fantastic," I whispered. "A puzzle. A fortress. A trophy."
Margot slapped my arm. "You are incorrigible."
I ran after Evander the very next day.
"Professor Santiago!" I called, breathless by the lakeside. His back turned like an advertisement for restraint.
He stopped, turned, and I almost forgot to breathe.
"Yes?" His voice was cool, clean — like mountain water.
"I'm Margot's friend — well, her boyfriend Yahir's friend — I'm basically in-law adjacent," I babbled, trying to be casual and failing spectacularly. "I need help with a lease. I don't understand the contract. Can I add you on WeChat?"
He tilted his head. "You can ask Yahir."
"I can't. He's Margot's boyfriend; it's awkward." I forced a helpless smile. "Besides, it's my lease. I just moved and I'm poor and terrified of being conned."
Evander gave me one of those looks — like he was studying the grammar of my panic. "Then send the contract. I'll look."
My heart tried to escape my ribs.
We chatted by message later. I tried to be subtle, then clumsy, then endearing. I sent him paragraphs that probably made sense in my head and nonsense on the screen.
"I live in a place with bad public safety," I lied once. "Would you say your neighborhood is safe?"
"Where I live, you couldn't afford it," he replied simply.
I blinked. Then I did what any self-respecting romantic schemer would do: I switched tactics. For all my vanity, the poor-girl routine was my ace. It worked more often than it should.
"Professor," I said one night, typing faster than sense, "I don't make enough for a lawyer. If someone cheats me in a contract, will you help me understand my rights?"
He answered in three words. "Send it."
Then he sent me a link — a brain hospital public account. I stared at the screen and felt my cheeks flush with a mix of rage and embarrassment. He had literally sent psychiatry articles.
I almost gave up. I did give up, for a week.
Then I met Dixon Cooper.
"Want to go to the amusement park?" he asked. "I'm free tomorrow."
Dixon was everything I wanted right then: soft smile, a small snaggle of a canine tooth like a secret, warm and uncomplicated. I found myself answering yes before I realized I was choosing someone safe.
"Who's the guy?" Dixon asked when we rode the carousel and a familiar profile brushed past.
"A professor," I said. I lied by omission. I didn't tell Dixon that when the carousel slowed, my phone buzzed: Evander. "Just passing through," he wrote. "At the park. If you want, come say hi."
I tried not to look. I failed. I found Evander standing in the shade, hands in his pockets, watching.
"Is he your friend?" Dixon asked calm as sea air.
"Yes," I lied again.
Evander watched us talk, then walked away. I felt both exhilarated and absurd, like a performer watching their own silly show through a mirror.
Over the next two weeks my life became a series of small, electric moments.
"Did you eat?" he'd text. "Are you sleeping?"
"Yes to both," I'd reply, which was usually true.
"Come to my office next week. Bring the contract."
And when the rain came and the shoot went wrong — my camera, the one my mother had bought me, sliding down a muddy slope — Evander was there like a sudden hand.
"Are you hurt?" he asked. He pulled me up as if I were a fragile heroine in a cheap romance.
"I think so," I said, my voice small.
"It will sting," he warned, checking my knee with the kind of slow concentration he would otherwise reserve for a difficult paper. "We should get it cleaned."
"I can walk," I said, but my leg was soft and stupid.
"Neither of us cares about your pride," he said, and lifted me into his arms.
My camera was sodden and filthy. Evander drove me to his house, carried me into warmth, wrapped me in a blanket and made ginger broth.
"Drink," he said simply, and I gagged and laughed through the heat.
"You're impossible."
He smiled that faint smile that made the world tilt.
His attention was steady. He checked my wounds, pressed gauze, hummed a tune I'd never heard but liked immediately.
"Why do you know how to do this?" I asked when he bandaged me.
"I know how to look after people," he said. "Sometimes that's enough."
We sat on his couch and watched cartoons like idiots. I told him things I never told anyone else. Old hurts leaked out; my father leaving with a young woman and her son; my vow to never bind myself to anyone's promises; my ridiculous, selfish confession: I was chasing Evander because he was too far away to catch.
"Why chase someone who says he's not into women?" Margot asked in that sharp, practical voice that is fatal to many fantasies.
"Because I like a challenge," I said. "And because when someone doesn't notice me, I notice them twice."
He surprised me again: "When you said you liked me at the police station, did you mean it?"
I hated how raw the question sounded. "I meant it," I said. "I meant... I liked the chase and I liked you."
He looked at me like he was measuring something precious. "I think I like you too," he said, and the words were quieter than all the proclamations I'd trained myself to want.
It should have been simple after that.
It wasn't.
One afternoon a woman in a floral dress grabbed him on campus. "Pervert!" she screamed. "He groped me!"
People crowded. Phones came up. The woman wailed. I saw Evander try to step away, dignified and slow; she clutched him and collapsed dramatically. People closed in.
"Let go!" I shouted, pushing through, furious, dumb, like a heroine eating a second helping of courage.
"Who are you?" Evander asked.
"I'm his girlfriend," I lied without thinking, and the lie hung around my neck like a cheap necklace.
"She pushed me!" the woman shrieked, pointing at Evander, then at me. "She's his accomplice!"
The crowd's mood turned from curiosity to rage like weather.
"Police!" someone called.
We were hauled in. The woman put on an Oscar-worthy performance; the officers seemed ready to take her story at face value. I wanted to die.
When the police played the campus video, everyone's faces shifted. The footage showed the woman step toward Evander as if rehearsing a fall, then fall as he moved to free himself. She had staged it: she had touched him, then thrown herself down. The truth flickered across the screen like a living lie unspooling.
The woman froze at the frame. For a moment she looked terrified, then furious. "Manipulated video!" she shrieked. "You edited it!"
"Video is unedited," the officer said. "It's timestamped. We spoke with witnesses."
She shifted — denial, then bluster, then anger. People around us started to murmur. Her face was a mask that cracked into quick, ugly pieces.
I caught Evander's eye. He was calm. He had been calm through the whole absurdity. That calm steadied me.
Later, after we left, he asked, "Why did you say you were my girlfriend?"
I could have said the truth — that I was protecting him because I wanted him to see me as brave. But the truth got clumsy in my mouth.
"Because I wanted you to know someone cared enough to fight for you," I said.
He wrapped his coat around my shoulders in the autumn rain and argued with stats about how messy human behavior can be, but he kept steady. He drove me home and did not let me go.
After the woman’s stunt, the campus had a feverish taste for scandal. Her story spread like wildfire online. People who had not been there formed judgments as if they had.
I would have left it at that if Margot hadn’t been incorrigible enough to dig.
"She staged it for money," Margot said the night she sat in my kitchen, spreading her findings across the table like evidence. "She has a history. Look."
"History?" I asked.
"Paid complaints, people who sued for benefits. There are threads, comments, a few other campuses where she tried the same trick."
I stared at the evidence and felt an awful unease. "Why would anyone do that?"
"Because people weaponize attention," Margot said. "And because campus security and virality are easy prey."
We took what Margot found to Evander. "You can't just let this go," he said quietly. "It will follow. She can try again, maybe somewhere uglier. We should make sure the truth is public."
I was tired of being the girl who started things. But he looked at me like I was important and wanted — a concept I was still not used to.
"Do you want to make a statement?" I asked.
He blinked. "Do you?"
"Yes," I said, though part of me wanted more than any public statement. I wanted the woman to blurt "I did it" and vanish into shame.
We decided to confront her where the rumor cloud had its source: a student union hall where she had gathered some sympathizers. The hall was packed. People clustered like weather patterns inside, all waiting.
"Emerie!" Margot hissed. "Stay behind me."
I could feel the tension like static. I could see the woman at the front, a floral dress like a cartoon of innocence, staring as if she had rehearsed this.
Evander walked up to the microphone with a slow, patient confidence. The room quieted.
"People have seen more than the headline," he said, voice calm. "There is video. There are witnesses. This incident was a staged event to defame me."
A ripple went through the hall.
"That's a lie!" the woman cried, standing. "I was hurt! He touched me!"
"Sit down," Evander said, without heat. "We will show the video."
He pressed a button and the video filled the projector. It ran slow. The woman’s performance unraveled frame by frame. The audience saw the deliberate approach, the careful slump, the exaggerated cry. Girls shifted in their seats; some covered mouths. A whisper spread, then a louder murmur, then a cascade of disbelief.
"Why would you do this?" Evander asked, and for the first time his voice wasn't a slope of calm but a stone hitting the water. His face was a map of something raw — hurt, maybe, but mostly an indignant desire for fairness.
The woman’s eyes flicked. There was no script for guilt when the audience turned against you. Her earlier bravado thinned into frantic words. "You edited this! You paid to switch the video! You want to destroy me!"
A student stood up. "Look at the angle. There are timestamps. The security office confirmed no edits."
Another voice joined. "She's made claims before. She did this at other schools."
The room's sympathy collapsed around her like a house of cards. People in the back took out phones and started recording her. Others whispered "honey, this is a crime" and "how awful."
She changed tactics, pleading: "I was desperate—"
"Desperate isn't a license to lie," Evander said quietly. "You have caused real damage. You have taken a man's reputation and tried to burn it for your gain."
Her rage cracked, then reformed as pleading. "I only wanted money. My son—"
"That doesn't excuse false accusations," said a professor from the back, someone I recognized from the literature department. "This ruins lives."
People started to clap — not the friendly clap that encourages a performer, but a slow, decisive clap like a gavel.
The woman’s face turned pale. Her earlier performance, which had relied on spectacle, now had no audience willing to participate. A few students stepped forward, their voices shaking, telling small truths about her prior methods.
She tried other defenses: "You were rude to me!" "You forgot me!" "I touched him because—"
"Enough," Evander said. He had that patience again, and now it was tempered with a brittle edge. "The security footage is clear. You staged it. We will take this to the campus judicial board and the police. We will not tolerate weaponized lies."
Her shock turned to bargaining, then to fury, then to a hollow defeat. She grabbed a chair as if she could anchor herself and then let it drop.
People recorded. People whispered. The student union staff escorted her out as murmurs swelled into open condemnation. Some came up to Evander and patted him awkwardly; some slapped the desk in support.
Her last act before she left was to turn and fix me with a look of feral hatred. "You'll regret this, pretty girl," she spit.
"Not if the truth survives," Evander replied, and that was the end of her performance.
Afterwards, the academic board called her for an inquiry. Her accounts were audited. Students who had supported her had to face the facts. She lost social standing, lost temporary positions on student committees, and faced possible charges for false accusation. The university posted a statement emphasizing their policies against defamation and reminding everyone about the need for evidence.
The punishment was public. It was messy. It was honest.
She begged, then lashed out, then begged again. "You don't understand," she cried in the stairwell on camera. "I needed help! I was wrong! Please—"
But the crowd that had gathered around for closure had phones in hands and faces set. There were tears in one or two faces—not for her, but for how easily any of us could be led by spectacle.
"You're not the only person in need," someone said to her, soft. "But you chose a path that hurts other people."
She had to walk out with that weight. She had to see the evidence of her own choices.
I stood at Evander's side and didn't try to take credit. He squeezed my hand, and the squeeze said everything: thank you; stay; don't be ashamed of caring.
After that, things became less theatrical. We were allowed to be quietly ridiculous together.
"Are we... official?" I asked one evening while he showed me how to change a lens cap.
"You're mine, in that you annoy me and I let the annoyance become fondness," he said.
I hated that he made me melt with his shrug of the shoulders.
"I'm not the type who does 'official' easily," he said. "But I will do small things that mean the same. I will check that you're home. I will show up when you fall down a muddy slope. I will tell the truth when someone lies about you."
"That's enough," I said.
We bickered. We teased. He learned my favorite foods; I learned the exact pitch of his laugh. I poked his biceps under the table more often than was proper. Once he teased me, "You only like my arms."
"Not only," I said, but my hand lingered to make sure the truth was tactile.
He introduced me to his sister, Cara Francois, who kissed my cheek like a blessing and then demanded I be properly introduced as "the woman who broke Evander's icy heart."
When Dixon Cooper called and accused me of ghosting him, I told him that my life had become an absurd, good kind of complication.
"Did you catch him?" Dixon asked, earnest.
"No," I said. "But I caught more than I expected."
Margot kept an eye on my relationship like a watchdog who also brought cake.
"Don't you dare make him the man your father was," she said one night, razor-sharp.
"I won't," I promised. "But I need to believe in something again."
In the weeks that followed, Evander did things that made me believe in things.
"Do you trust me?" he asked once on a train, fingers folded over mine.
"I do," I said. It felt true without having to be qualified.
We were not perfect. I had habits that made him tilt his head. He had ways of being private that made me worry. We argued over small things, then laughed at our ridiculousness. When my old fear — my father's betrayal — surfaced and I recoiled instinctively, he stayed patient and steady like a good legal brief.
One night we sat on the rooftop and watched the city breathe. "I never wanted a parade," I told him. "Just someone who'd stay when the fire was boring and the rest of life tedious."
He squeezed my hand. "I will stay."
He kept that promise in little things: driving me to jobs, carrying my broken gear, listening to me ramble about composition until I tired. I learned to return his kindness without trying to weaponize my independence as an excuse.
"Will you marry me?" he asked once, casually, as if proposing were the same thing as asking for a cup of tea.
"What? Now? Because we should file a contract?" I laughed.
"I'm thirty," he said. "It would be efficient."
"I don't want to marry a spreadsheet," I said.
"Then don't," he grinned. "Marry me because you want to eat my terrible ginger soup for the rest of your life."
I pretended to think and then, impossibly, I quietly said yes.
We had no ceremony. We had photographs and quiet mornings. We had public fights about stupid things and serious conversations about the kind of people we wanted to become. Margot and Yahir were there, scolding me about how I had once treated Dixon poorly. Dixon smiled like he had known all along, and I forgave him.
I told Evander to keep his bank account private. He promised, half-joking, half-deadly-serious. "After we tie the knot," he said.
"Deal," I whispered.
There is a small, silly thing I keep: my battered camera sits on a shelf, clean now, its leather strap worn like a memory. He once put a tiny sticker of a mountain on the bottom — a joke about "mountain water voices."
Last week Margot pushed me into a hot spring with Evander. I surfaced with steaming hair and a grin.
"You okay?" he asked, smiling like a man who had found his favorite place.
"I'm perfect," I said. "Except you owe me a ridiculous amount of ginger soup."
He laughed. He splashed me gently, and the splash was warm.
I had set out to chase a professor like it was a game. I ended up catching someone who taught me how simple steadiness could be kinder than grand gestures.
At the end of the day, if someone asked what changed, I would answer with the stupidest truth: a man cleaned my wound, fed me soup, and kept telling the truth while the world tried to lie. The rest — the chasing, the prizes, the small, shameless tactics — felt less important than the fact that someone chose to stop pretending and pick me anyway.
The End
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