Sweet Romance13 min read
Everyone Called Him "Hubby" and I Couldn't Tell If I Was Jealous
ButterPicks10 views
I heard my brother call a handsome man "hubby."
I stopped tying my shoelace and froze.
"Hubby, push the tower, push the tower," Forrest said, voice bright in the living room.
"You're back?" I called, easing into the doorway.
"Forrest, hurry!" a man's voice answered from the couch.
I walked around them. Forrest was slumped on the sofa, controller in hand. The other man—tall, face sharp, eyes dark and amused—leaned forward, focus on the screen.
"I heard that right," I said without meaning to.
Forrest blinked. "Oh, this is my sister, Kaydence."
"This is Nicolas," he said, not looking up. "You can call me Hubby."
My smile froze. "Wait—call you what?"
Nicolas finally lifted his head. He had a slow, easy smile that did something strange to my chest.
"Don't call me 'hubby' all the time," he said, voice honey-smooth. "Call me Nick if it's less embarrassing."
I mouthed the word anyway. "Hubby."
Nicolas's eyelids lowered and he chuckled. "Don't call me that in front of her. It's weird."
I forced my face into a grin. "Hi, Hubby."
Forrest scowled, but not hard. "You two gamed together?"
"He's my contractor," Nicolas said, like it settled everything.
"Contractor?" I echoed.
"Yeah." He shrugged. "I'm his client. I pay him to annoy me with deadlines."
Forrest rolled his eyes. "I'm the younger sibling, not the one being bossed."
Nicolas tipped his head toward me. "Then what about you, little friend? What do you want to play?"
I remembered to breathe. "I'm not a little kid."
"Whatever you say," he said, and his scent—mint and something warmer—floated over me.
I touched his arm without thinking and my hand met warmth. "Don't tell my brother I came to mooch dinner."
Forrest shot me a look that said, You can't pull this on me.
"Too late," Nicolas said. "You're the guest now. Let me rescue you from your terrible sibling."
That night, his hands were loose with me, casual and near, and for the first time I noticed small, oddly perfect details: how his knuckles bent, how he laughed without using his mouth, how he slid a foot across the rug only to find mine with ease.
"Small crime," he murmured when he scented my nerves. "What did you do?"
"I only snuck a little of your brother's snacks," I lied.
"For that you will be punished with two bowls of instant noodles," he said, and fetched them like he liked doing it.
I didn't think I was the kind of person who could be so easily warmed by someone's ordinary kindness, but Nicolas made an ordinary bowl of noodles feel like a private offering.
The night folded into days where he would drop notes of care into my life. "Little friend," he'd text. "Eat a good breakfast." He'd leave a paper bag on the dorm's front desk: books, a fresh pen, old notes labeled in neat handwriting. He had a name for everything he did and the name always felt tailored for me.
"Forrest, he always calls you Hubby," I said once, mid-bite of noodles, too curious.
"Forrest did?" Nicolas raised an eyebrow. "I make them call me Hubby. It's tradition."
"For whom?"
He tapped his chin. "For people who are terrible at flirting."
"You're terrible at it?" Forrest scoffed.
"Not terrible," Nicolas said. "Just selective."
I kept my hands busy with chopsticks. "So it's a joke?"
"Mostly," Nicolas said. "But I do like hearing it sometimes."
I heard him in my head like a soundtrack and I asked stupid questions: Why him? Why me? Why the attention?
He answered none of them directly. Instead, he taught me how to connect two sockets for an old lamp and how to fold a paper crane properly. He had explanations for the way light fell on a city street and why coffee tasted different at every cafe.
One afternoon he slid a thin envelope across the table. "For your French exam," he said.
"For my what?"
"For when you decide to stop being stubborn and accept help," he said. "I have study guides."
"Why would you know that?"
"Forrest talks. I listen."
I read the papers and realized he'd handwritten notes in the margins, explanations, little tricks. "Why are your handwriting and your brain equally pretty?"
He made a small, offended face. "Don't make my pen blush."
"Do pens blush?" I asked, and he laughed.
"Maybe only mine." He watched me with an expression that looked like amusement and something softer. "You should put your hand down sometimes and let someone pull you close."
I didn't let anyone pull me close. Not really. But he would lean into the space between the room and the night, and I would let him sit there.
"Little friend," he'd call, and I'd bark a laugh. "Little friend," he'd text when I didn't answer, and I would find that the world felt less dangerous.
Once, the dorm elevator stalled.
"I can do this," I told myself when the lights went out.
"Kaydence?" Nicolas's voice cut through the dark, close and breathy.
I reached blindly and found his hand. "Nicolas?"
"Don't call me that." He sounded oddly shaken. "Call me Hubby."
"I will not," I said, though my heartbeat was loud enough to fill the confined space.
He chuckled and squeezed my fingers until the lights blinked back to life. "You kept me from panicking."
"You kept me from panicking."
We both laughed, a small, ridiculous sound in the humming lift. He let me lean against him, arm warm against my shoulder.
"Do you know how stupid you get in the dark?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Good." He hummed like a small bell. "Stay here. Don't disappear."
I was still in the lift when he bent forward to move a leaf from his hair and, on impulse, I reached and brushed it away. Our hands met in his hair and for a second time I felt something hot and strange tighten in my chest.
When the elevator doors opened he helped me out and brushed my sleeve with indifferent ease. "I will see you at the station," he said.
The days kept falling into place: study sessions, sushi dinners, library cross-street walks. He would tell stories about the city he grew up in, how there was a best street for late-night noodles, how the best sunrise could be seen from a certain parking lot by the harbor.
He started to come over to my dorm again, bearing contraband snacks and a ridiculous Hello Kitty throw he'd bought at my joke request.
"Forrest, seriously?" I said when he placed it on the sofa.
"Forrest didn't see," Nicolas said casually. "I thought you said you liked it."
I pressed my face into the softness of the fabric like it could hide me. He laughed and took a seat across from me.
"You look different in that light," he said. "More like the person who wrote 'accept help' on the test sheet."
I blinked. "That's not a person."
"Everything is a person to someone," he said.
He never pushed me. He prodded me with questions, dragged me into the library, fed me ideas. One evening he found me with my eyes red, study notes splayed like wings.
"Too spicy?" he asked.
"No." I wiped at my face. "Too many words."
He reached across and patted my head. "Then let's go drown those words in ramen and regret."
He was warm, present, and unhurried. I liked him like a secret told to the air.
It wasn't always easy. Once he smiled differently at a woman in a bar, leaning in like he was swapping secrets.
"He has a girlfriend," I told myself, to steady my pulse.
Nicolas left the woman on the sidewalk and walked across to me. "She was leaving," he said. "Not mine."
"You always do that with girls like her," I said.
"Like who?" he asked.
"Like the kind who laugh with one eyebrow raised and walk out of a story."
He tilted his head. "You don't believe I like you."
"That's not what I said." I bit my lip. "I said you're confusing."
"Confusing in what way?" he asked.
"In the way you call me 'little friend' and then act like you want to own the air around me."
He hummed. "Do you want me to stop calling you that?"
"No. I don't." I said it too quickly, then pretended I didn't.
He put a small paper bag in my hands one evening. The knots were tight. "Open it," he ordered.
I did. Inside lay a silver necklace, a thin chain with a crescent moon pendant.
"For the long nights," he said. "So you can carry a little light."
My throat closed. "You didn't have to—"
"I wanted to," he cut in. "Will you let me put it on you?"
I let him. The metal was cold against my skin, then warmed. He hooked the clasp with practiced fingers. His palm brushed my neck, and the world became only that warmth and the faint weight of metal at my throat.
"Thanks," I said.
He smiled in that quiet way that made his face like a smaller, private stage. "Now you can't leave without taking a little of me," he said.
I hated how true that sounded.
The necklace became a private talisman. I wore it to exams, to library nights, to the grocery store. When I studied late and the city hummed low, I'd touch the moon and remember his hand.
Then came the night he drank too much before a farewell party. I answered a call.
"Kaydence, it's Nicolas's friend. He's drunk. Can you come get him? He's in the back alley."
I did. He leaned against me on the cab ride home, head heavy like a made thing. His breath smelled of whiskey and the night.
"Do you like me?" he murmured into my hair, words slurred and simple. "Say yes."
I slipped a hand into his hair and rubbed the base of his skull. "You need water," I said, because the world felt precarious when his voice smoothed like that.
"I need you," he said, and then kissed me.
His mouth was warm and clumsy and completely unlike the careful teaching he usually offered. When he pressed his face into mine I felt something loosen and then a sharp, bright fear.
When I stepped back into the light next morning he was already awake and casual, as if the night was only a small bridge we'd crossed.
"Do you remember?" he asked, deceptively calm.
"Not everything," I admitted.
He smiled like someone who had tucked away a secret. "Good. I prefer it that way."
After that, things moved with the softness of curtains in a warm house: small talk over ramen, study notes with extra circles, walks home with the moon pendant swinging. He'd show up with small victories for me: a borrowed book, a pack of orange slices, a note that said, "You will do fine. Eat, sleep, breathe."
We told no one. Forrest pretended not to notice. "You two are ridiculous together," he'd say when he did notice. "You call him Hubby and you call her little friend—what is this?"
"It's ours," Nicolas would say. He'd slide his hand across the table and find mine with a casualness that felt like design.
Then came a strange day when people at his office called him things like "hubby" and "boss," as if they shared an inside joke. He had colleagues—Grayson and Noah—who laughed and nudged him.
"Are they real friends?" I asked.
"They're coworkers," Nicolas said. "You think I sit at a desk all day thinking of ways to be gentle? You'd be surprised what meetings can do."
He surprised me daily.
One evening, a misunderstanding yanked the rug from under me. A friend at school, a polite boy named Zaid, asked to study together. I said yes, awkward because I didn't want to stir things. Later that night Nicolas appeared, cool and close, and he watched the way Zaid laughed at my jokes.
That look made me small. He stepped in front of me like a shelter.
"Don't let him take you away," he said, mock-gruff.
"I wasn't going anywhere," I said.
He studied me. "You were going places. Good places. I like that."
Sometimes his words were like a map and sometimes like a lock.
We argued once about the future—a small thing. "You said you wouldn't like students," I told him.
"I said 'not now,'" he snapped, softer than I expected. "I said I didn't want to rush hearts."
"Then why me?" I asked sharply.
"Because you are not a rush," he said. "You are a tide."
I wanted to laugh and punch his shoulder at the same time.
He leaned close and whispered, "I want to teach you where the best late-night noodles are."
"That's not an answer," I said.
"It is to me." He kissed my temple. "Come with me Saturday. Try every place until you hate me."
I ended up going, because I always ended up going.
We moved at a careful pace, but there were times he was reckless—like when he posted a series of photos with me and wrote things that made me blush in public. "My little friend," the caption said. Forrest texted me an emoji that could be both disdain and affection.
"You can't put me on your feed," I said.
"You wanted me to be honest," he answered easily. "I am."
I got used to being honest back. "You can't make me yours without asking," I said once.
He laughed. "You won't let me."
"I might," I admitted.
He leaned in and kissed me there, gentle and whole. "Then do," he said.
The months slipped by with library dates, test passes, small moves of affection: a warm hand on my back when I read a bad grade, a sly tuck of my hair behind my ear when I fell asleep on the bench. He wasn't perfect. He had secretive flares, a quick temper if someone insulted me, and a private stubbornness when he thought he was right.
But he showed up every time, in ways that mattered. He defended me. He argued with strangers who were rude. He made sure I had the best note-taking supplies. He surprised me with a stack of French novels when I said I wanted to read more.
Then came the night I thought would be ordinary and wasn't. I cooked for him—simple pasta—and he came and sat across, eyes bright. His phone buzzed with messages and he grinned in that slow way.
"Who is Bomb?" Forrest teased, pointing at a contact named 'Baby.'
Nicolas's face went glossy for a second. He tapped the screen and read aloud, making a private moment public. "Baby, are you okay? Baby, I miss you."
My mouth went dry. "Is that—"
"It's from my sister," he said, smirking. "I rescue a lot of lost causes."
"It sounded different," I managed.
He shrugged. "Different how?"
"Like someone you might date," I said, which sounded absurd.
He reached over and put his palm on my knee like it was a normal thing to do. "You're my only person who can't be replaced by a text."
I let go of the tiny ironies and rested my palm over his. "That's good," I said.
That night, we spoke about possible futures. He said someday he might move cities for work. "Will you come?" he asked.
I tensed. "Maybe," I lied, scared to be left.
He took my hand in both of his and kissed the back of it. "Then come," he said simply. "Or I will go where you can follow."
We made no promises because we were terrible at promise-making. But we did make plans for small things: to try every noodle stall in his hometown, to teach each other secret recipes, to keep the moon pendant safe.
Graduation came and with it the hard question of where to go. I had options in different cities. He had offers that could take him far. I sat on the edge of a map and felt both thrilled and sick.
"Take an offer near me," he said one night, leaning through my window like a conspirator.
"My acceptance isn't that easy," I said. "What if I fail?"
"Then you fail with my arm to hold you," he said.
We laughed and argued and leaned. Then I took the chance. I picked a school in his city without fully telling him. The result was a quiet thrill when I told him months later over coffee.
"Forrest is going to be jealous," I said.
"Forrest will survive," Nicolas said. "You will have better nights with me."
The world folded into a pattern that fit: study, argue, make up, eat, laugh. He taught me small things, and I taught him other small things. We became someone else's story—his colleagues joked, Forrest pretended to scold, my friends teased, and I kept the moon at my throat like a secret lamp.
One spring evening, he took me to the harbor, where the night was roofed in stars. "Do you know why I'm called Hubby?" he asked.
"I thought it was a joke."
"It started as one," he said. "A dumb thing among coworkers. But after that, it became easier to imagine being honest with people."
He took both my hands in his and lowered his head until our foreheads touched. "Will you be mine? Not for a joke, not for a text. For real."
My heart insisted on a thousand answers but my voice offered one. "Yes."
He smiled like I had given him a key. "Good. Because you already have the moon."
I play the moment back sometimes, like a favorite clip. He was impossible and simple. He was firm where I, at times, felt lost.
"Promise me a lot of things," I teased him later.
"Promise me what I already promised," he said, and kissed me, practical and lazy. He laughed against my lips. "Promise me sushi stalls and terrible puns."
I laughed back. "Deal."
We were young and afraid and oddly brave. He shaped ordinary days into patient care. He stayed for the small emergencies and the small triumphs.
My brother watched us from the sidelines and pretended indifference.
"You're domesticated, Forrest," Nicolas told him once, and Forrest looked like he did not know whether to be insulted or proud.
"Don't let him boss me," Forrest said.
Nicolas grinned. "I already do."
One thing I learned with him was the meaning of slow certainty: a hand that returns, a note left in a pocket, a warm coat draped across my shoulders on a cold night. He was not a man of speeches, but of steady, repeated small gestures that, stitched together, became something like a home.
The moon pendant made me brave in tiny ways. I wore it to lectures, to interviews, to nights I thought I couldn't make it through. Once, when a cruel classmate joked about me being a little sister type, Nicolas stood and said, loud and certain, "She's dangerous. Don't mistake soft for weak."
The room went quiet. I felt heat like a furnace in my stomach and then a slow, tender pride. I realized then, better than before, that he held me like someone who treasured fragile things.
We did not have a perfect story. We had messy things: gossip from other men, mistakes on both sides, nights of doubt. But we also had a public tenderness. Once, during a crowded student fair, someone made a joke about him being "every girl's Hubby." He laughed like a man who owned the joke and leaned his head against mine for a second where everyone could see.
"People will talk," he said quietly.
"Let them," I answered, because I had learned to let him be my shelter and my mischief.
In the end, I held onto the moon pendant and the way he called me "little friend" even when he used my name. He taught me that nicknames could be prayers.
We were ordinary in extraordinary ways: the slow press of fingers at the library, the awkward public selfie he insisted we take, the way he bought a ridiculous Hello Kitty throw because I said it was silly and he liked me enough to be silly with me.
"Do you ever think about forever?" I asked him once, lying on the couch, my head on his chest.
"Sometimes I think about tomorrow," he said. "And if you are with me tomorrow, I think the rest will be easy."
I put my hand on his heart and felt it beat, patient and sure. I let it be enough.
When people asked how we fit, how we navigated differences, I told them the truth. "He makes space for me," I said, and that was as much as I could explain.
On the night that garlands hung from the trees and the city smelled like rain, we walked home slow and we held hands. He stopped, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a small scrap of paper.
"Forrest told me to give this to you when you were nervous about the interview," he said. "But I thought you might like it sooner."
It was a little doodle of a moon and a note: "Breathe. You have a moon."
"You're annoying," I told him.
"Am I?" he said, and kissed the corner of my mouth.
We were ridiculous, tender, and slow as tide. I kept the moon close and told myself, quietly, that if I ever had to pick one person to be my steady thing, it would be him.
"Hubby," I said once, in a game, and he laughed.
"Not in public," he warned.
"In private?" I asked.
"In private," he whispered, and pulled me closer so the moon at my throat brushed his chest.
I learned to answer when he called. "Here," I said once he needed me. "Always near the moon."
He smiled and, for a moment, the city's noise fell away and we were only two people with an ordinary, brave kind of love.
The End
— Thank you for reading —