Sweet Romance13 min read
He barged into my life—then into my towel, my messages, my heart
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I woke up at seven and could have sworn the sun smelled like coffee. I put my hand over my eyes, counted the seconds I had left to dream, and then peeled off the sheet because work does not wait for anyone's nostalgia.
"Muriel?" my brother's voice floated from the living room, loud enough to carry a double kill in a game.
"Yeah," I shouted back without getting out of bed. "Tell Mom I'll call tonight."
He didn't answer because he was busy celebrating another fantasy victory. That's Cason: tall, always hungry, an athlete with a laugh that could fill a dorm hall and no patience for anything quiet.
I pushed open my wardrobe, found the plain white blouse I planned to wear to a client event, and cursed when the zipper on the pencil skirt stuck. After a day of running a product launch at the conference center, nine p.m. had become ten, and ten became the time I finally escaped the chaos.
"You're back!" Cason said when I came in later. He barely looked up from the couch.
"Yep. Took forever," I said, placing my bag in my room. My whole body wanted a shower and a bed.
The bathroom light was on. Of course Cason forgot to turn it off again. The tiles would be damp. I sighed, undid my blouse, then my skirt zipper—simple, automatic, the kind of undramatic undressing you do when your brain is half at the office and half on the pillow.
I pushed the bathroom door.
And stopped.
There was a man in there—drying his hair with a towel, sun-streaked droplets still on his shoulders. He was not an old man. He was not a friend of my brother's I knew. He was young and definitely not wearing clothes.
My brain lagged. I did not scream. I did not faint. I did the thing where everything slows and you realize your mouth is open and your hands forgot the towel on the hanger.
"Uh." He jerked, half-choked on the word, then his eyes slid over me. He noticed I was in my underwear and not, say, fully dressed with pearls and composure. His gaze did exactly what anyone's gaze might do—it moved like an exploring hand.
I grabbed the hanging towel like a lifeline and bundled it around my chest. "Close the door," I snapped, and the sound surprised me with its sharpness.
He fumbled with the latch, eyes wide and embarrassed. "I'm—I'm sorry. I thought—" He stopped. He looked like a kid who'd been caught taking cookies.
I backed out, clutching the towel to my chest. "Who are you?"
"Cason's teammate. Milo." He swallowed. "Milo Medina."
"Cason who?"
"My teammate—Cason," Milo said. He had a grin that would have been charming in a different moment. Now it was dangerous because I could tell it hid steam and sweat and the smell of the track.
I walked into the living room wrapped like an emergency bandage and felt my heart still banging. Cason snorted. "Bro, you messed up the towels again."
"Shut up," Milo said, red on his neck. Then he turned to me. "Sorry. I didn't know someone was home. I was just passing by practice and—"
"It's late," I said. "You should go."
"Can I sleep here?" Milo cut in, sudden and loud.
Cason's face lit up. "Yeah, sure. Share the couch with me."
"No," I said flatly. "Milo, you sleep in your dorm room."
Milo blinked like a dog being told the ladder won't fetch. "But—"
"Don't be ridiculous. There's a guest bed in the study." I watched Milo's face flicker: hopeful, then embarrassed, then sheepish. He bowed his head like he was apologizing for wanting to be normal.
"Muriel," Cason said. "He sleeps in my bed a lot. It's fine."
"No," I repeated. "Milo, you go to the study. Now."
He left with a small, "Okay." I closed the door and leaned against it, one hand still twisted in the towel. My pulse slowed, but the image had stuck: chest, abs, and a gait that made even my knees remember that they existed.
The next morning I saw him in daylight in a very different role: shy, polite, and texting "Good morning, sister?" with the sincerity of a child offering the last cookie. His messages were harmless but frequent.
"Are you up?" he would type.
"Did you eat?" he would ask.
"Good night, Muriel." The last one came with a row of emojis that made me roll my eyes. Still, I found myself smiling, which is something I told myself I didn't have time to do.
I kept him at arm's length. He was young. He was nineteen and still smelled like locker room and the kind of toothpaste they sell near stadiums. The truth was, the first image of him—naked towel and all—had stuck in a way I did not want it to. Attraction could be blind, or honest, or messy. I preferred professional, tidy, and safe. I had deadlines, a rent and a boss who spoke in curt emails. Love had to wait. Or so I told myself.
One night, the aroma of braised beef—my mother's impossible braised beef—came through the door. My mother worried about my eating habits like it was a national emergency. Cason had accepted to take some leftovers to Milo. "He comes by anyway," Cason said, shrugging. "It's fine."
So Milo showed up at ten p.m., red in the face from practice, holding a paper bag. He smelled like the track again. He looked like a half-starved soldier with the relief of having reached the kitchen.
"Thanks," I said, opening the door a crack and peeking to see who was at my threshold.
He forced a smile. "Can I come in? I need to wash up. Smells really bad."
I hesitated. Then I thought about my mother and the food and how gross it would be to let him wear sweat back home. I told myself this was neighborly. "Fine. Fifteen minutes. New towel in the bathroom. Toothbrush on the sink."
Milo took the towel with the gratitude of someone offered shelter. He walked into the bathroom and, for a moment, I imagined closure. But when he stepped out in a T-shirt that clung to his shoulders, I had to look away.
He sat on the sofa. He sniffed the air. "Your place smells nice," he said.
"Thanks." I handed him a T-shirt of mine. "This fits you. Don't make it weird."
He held the shirt like it was precious. "It smells like you. Like pear and—" He stopped, embarrassed by his own description. "Like soap."
I swallowed a laugh and then a whack of embarrassment. He was young enough to get flustered like that. He was honest.
He lingered. He lingered so much that I found my schedule altered by his presence. On Friday evenings he would appear with groceries. Sometimes it was fresh vegetables. Sometimes it was those little taro balls I like. He would sit and talk and disappear with the kind of patience that is both adorable and a little maddening.
But then the misunderstanding happened. The kind that lives in the middle of a movie but somehow arrives in real life.
One night I was working a shoot that ran late—very late. Two a.m. wasn't a time meant for romantic interludes, it was a time for tired frames and crew calls. I booked a room at a cheap motel forty minutes from my apartment because driving home then would have been foolish. I told myself it was professional.
Half-asleep in the motel lobby, Milo showed up. His eyes were bright and a little wild. "I found you," he said.
"I booked the room for work," I started, and he cut in, his voice small.
"You can't sleep alone. Not safe. I'm—" He waved a hand. "I'm coming with you."
"No." I said it because it was ridiculous. "I can handle being an adult. I'm twenty-seven."
"You're my sister," he blurted.
I laughed then. "What—?"
"You call someone gege at work and your phone shows gege in chat," he said, the logic of his worry ricocheting between his youthful reasoning. He had seen "gege" in one of my messages and thought it meant a boyfriend. He had heard my brother and thought someone was involved. Then he took it a step further and imagined every terrible possibility a protective younger man could conjure.
"I'm calling my leader 'gege' as a joke," I said. "It's Ernst; he's married, has kids, and absolutely not—"
He blinked, embarrassed. "So you don't have a—"
"No." I said, and it sounded louder than I wanted. "I don't have a boyfriend."
He looked as if he'd been slapped and then offered a concession that was way too eager. "Then—then stay in the room. With me. For safety."
I rolled my eyes. "You're ridiculous."
He didn't move. He was serious. "You don't understand, Muriel. People shouldn't be alone at night."
"People are alone all the time," I murmured, but somewhere between the exhaustion and his earnest face, I agreed—just for that night.
We checked in. He stayed near me like a rooster guarding eggs. At some point in the dark he leaned in, voice soft, "I can't sleep unless I tell you I like you."
I froze. The motel's thin walls hummed. "You—what?"
"I like you." He sounded like a man confessing to the moon, small, trembling, sincere. "I— I liked you since the towel incident."
"You said that?" I asked, barely a whisper.
"Yes." He sounded so ashamed and proud at once. "I promise I'm not just—"
"What are you then?" I said.
"A mess," he said. "A mess who will do better."
There was a beat. "Milo." I swallowed. "I'm flattered." I tried to be tender. The line between flattered and frightened is thin. "But I'm older. I'm busy. I—"
"You were beautiful with the towel," he admitted in a whisper. "Terrifying and beautiful."
"That's not a good sales pitch," I said.
He smiled like a kid who'd been given permission to play with the lights. "Do you want me to leave?"
"I want you to stay," I heard myself say, and I did not expect that.
He exhaled like someone who'd passed a test. "Good," he said, and in the dark he moved closer. We did not fall into anything dramatic. We asked no solemn vows. We shared a blanket. He put my knee against his arm like a guard, like a silly, careful soldier.
Days later he got angry. He was young enough to be dramatic, and he needed to see me more. When I had to work through yet another weekend, he felt rejected and did what youth does: he shut down and closed me out.
He blocked my number.
"You did what?" I asked when I found out from Cason. I had thought the hotel night had meant something, but apparently he had been wounded that I didn't answer text messages while I was chairing a production run.
"He blocked you?" Cason grinned in a way that was not kind. "Dude, he did that? Milo? That's so him."
"Unblock him," I told my brother. "Now."
Cason pretended to be helpful and pretended to be offended all at once. "Okay, Muriel. I told him. He says sorry."
When we met again in a run-down kebab place near the campus, Milo's face had the kind of color that comes from exercise—flushed with apology.
"You blocked me," I said.
"I panicked. I'm sorry." He kept his eyes on his hands. "I saw you with someone else and I thought—"
"Someone else?" I asked.
"My pride," he said. "I thought you had a boyfriend. I thought—"
"You thought my boss was my boyfriend because I called him gege?" I said.
He went scarlet. "It sounded—" he began, then dropped his voice. "It sounded like you were close."
I laughed despite myself. "Ernst is married. He has a daughter. I call him gege because the team jokes. It was stupid, yes, but it's not what you think."
He looked like he had been given both a diet and a dessert. "Oh." Relief and a dumb little grin. "So you aren't taken?"
"No," I said. "I'm not."
He brightened like a bulb. Then the grin faltered and he said, "Can I try again? Properly?"
"You mean, actually ask me out?" I put my chin up. "You know my life is messy."
"I know." He fished his phone out and tapped with clumsy fingers. "Then let me help you be less messy."
He helped in ways small and big: delivering soup at midnight when I was at the office, bringing me a ridiculous duck plush with an apology note, reading the schedule I'd scribbled on a napkin and pointing out a conflict before I did. He became a presence who was steady even when clumsy.
"You're clingy," I told him once, as he handed me a paper cup of hot lemon tea in the freezing stairwell outside the venue. He looked so pleased. "But in a useful way."
"It's a skill," he said, proud.
There were three times when my heart stumbled and then skipped forward, moments I filed carefully.
The first was the night he sat on my sofa after his shower and reached for my knee as if to steady himself. I felt his hand brush and the small electricity dart like a fly. He smelled of soap and an apology. "You okay?" he asked, voice low.
"Yes." My answer was honest and soft.
The second was when he drove me home in the rain, because the wipers could not keep up and he laughed like it was the best thing in the world to have me sitting beside him, wet-haired and breathless. "You look good in the rain," he said, like a child awarding a prize.
The third was the night he made me laugh so hard in my kitchen that I forgot to worry about tomorrow. He had poured cereal as if it were a gourmet dish and had decorated my table with a heart carved out of seeds.
"You planned this?" I said, tilting my head.
He shrugged, trying to be nonchalant, but his hands trembled. "I practiced carving hearts last night."
I laughed until I cried a little—idiotic and happy.
We had small fights too. He hit his limits and I hit mine. Once he surprised me by opening up about his home. "My mom worries," he said, voice raw. "She wants me to get a scholarship and to be decent. She thinks dating too young will ruin me."
"So do I," I admitted. "I worry about being enough."
"You are." He touched my fingers and squeezed them. "You are enough."
We navigated the family ritual: the first time he came home to eat my mother's braised beef. He sat at our family's table and ate like he had been given a medal. Cason pretended to be jealous. "Don't forget, this table is my empire."
Milo made the wrong move in the most charming of ways—by trying to be too protective. One evening he got into a heated argument with a cousin of Cason's who told a joke that pried at an old insecurity of mine. Milo stood up and did that raw, stupid, athletic thing where he leaned forward with fists clenched.
"Hey, chill," I said. "Sit down."
He glared and then sank back, red in the face. "You know I don't like when people talk about you like that."
"Neither do I," I said.
That night, as the house cooled and the streetlights blinked, Milo put his head on my shoulder on the couch. He was quieter than usual. "I don't want to rush you," he said. "But I want to be with you."
"I know," I whispered. "I want to try."
Weeks passed. He came to my office once, ridiculous in an oversized hoodie, bringing coffee for my team. My colleagues laughed and called him the mascot. He stood by my desk with my umbrella and my stubborn pride leaning like a tree.
Then came the day of the formal introduction. I invited my parents to dinner. It was a test, the kind you design in your head and then find the real stakes are different. Milo arrived in a shirt that fit like a second skin; he was nervous and delighted. "Hello Mrs. Bridges," he bowed with the manners of a boy who's read one too many etiquette guides. My mother fussed with his collar.
"You look good," my father said, and Milo's face split into a grin that could have sold cars.
Later, after the dinner, my mother whispered, "He's a good boy. He takes care of you."
I thought of the boy who had once smelled like towels and track and how he had grown, quietly, into someone who could handle a woman's complicated schedule with patience.
We had a fight before we made anything official. I saw an old photo in his phone accidentally—a candid shot where he was with a girl from school, laughing against a sunset. I assumed too much.
"Who is she?" I asked before my brain checked the volume.
"An ex," he said quickly. "From when I was younger. She was someone I thought I should be with then."
"Are you over her?" I hurtled the question like a test.
"Yes." He squeezed my hand. "Because my future is here."
I put my head on his shoulder that night and let myself believe him.
One day, my boss Ernst—who was always a dry email away—threw a small surprise into our lives. At a company lunch he joked, loud enough for half the table to hear, "Muriel's going to be promoted soon; she calls me gege on purpose to make me feel older."
Everyone laughed. Milo's jaw tightened for a second. He was proud and then embarrassed and then relieved, because he realized the gege tragedy was only a joke.
"You didn't have to apologize," Ernst said to me afterwards in private, the tone that managers use when they pretend they are your friend. "Keep your head down and your eyes on the prize. Don't get distracted."
I smiled politely. "Yes, Ernst."
"You're doing well," he added, and it was irrelevant whether he ment it. It was a line I noted down and then erased.
Months melted like sugar at the edge of a spoon. Milo's texts went from "Good night, sister" to "Missed you today." They were sweet. They were sometimes too fast for my calendar, but I let it be because he brought balance: his youth and my order.
"Will you come to my game?" he asked once.
I went and watched him sprint and jump and play like a man who lived in motion. When he scored, he looked once in the stands and our eyes met. He pointed at me like a child claiming his trophy and then jogged into the arms of his teammates. After the match, he walked over and hugged me like he could lean his whole day on my presence.
"You came," he said simply.
"I did," I answered. My chest fluttered. "I wouldn't miss it."
We had quiet evenings too: he on the floor reading comics and me on the sofa answering emails. He would lean his head on my lap and hum like he found comfort in my presence.
The mistake we'd both make is to pretend that being together meant nothing would be complicated. In truth, we learned each other's limits. We learned how to apologize and how to give space. We learned to make tea and to pause fights when our stomachs rumbled in the middle of an argument.
One evening in late summer he surprised me. He had cut shapes from melon seeds into a heart and strewn them on the coffee table. "It's stupid," he said.
"It is," I said, staring at the tiny heart.
He shrugged. "But I did it."
And I kissed him on the top of his head like a small, private medal.
He stayed. He came to family dinners and to the random late-night on-call shifts. He brought a ridiculous duck avatar to my messages one day and declared, "This is us now." I sent back a pig emoji because I had nothing better to do. He made a collage of my worst selfies and called it "my muse."
We reached the kind of ordinary that seemed sacred.
"Muriel," he whispered one night, hand in mine, "do you think we'll last?"
"I don't know," I answered honestly. "But I want to see."
"Me too," he said.
I looked at him—his freckles caught by the lamplight—and felt the kind of warmth that is not dramatic. It was the soft, stubborn kind that holds through deadlines, through sweat, through misread messages. It was an ordinary warmth, but it was enough.
He loved me in ways that were both clumsy and steady. He made me laugh. He called me names that were ridiculous and private. Cason teased us both mercilessly, and my parents pretended not to look when Milo reached for my hand in public.
One specific memory stays: the towel incident, the pig avatar, and the braised beef in a paper bag on my stoop. They are silly tokens, but they make our history map out like streetlights behind a fog.
The last line of a story people ask for, they want something neat. I will leave you this: I keep the towel folded in a drawer—not because of what happened the night it was used, but because it is the first ridiculous, real thing he ever saw. When I open my messages and see Milo's new avatar—always something ridiculous—I still laugh. When I smell braised beef, I think of my mother and a boy who once banged his shoulder into my knee in a motel room and said, "I like you," and how that small, honest confession changed my life.
He moved in eventually—poorly, with shoes left in places and socks in a wayward trail—but he brought life to every shelf, a laugh to every meeting, and a heart that became part of my schedule in the best possible way.
"Promise me one thing," he said once, in a moment when we were both sleepy and honest.
"What?"
"Don't ever stop telling me stupid things."
"I can't promise stupid," I said, but he took my hand anyway.
"Then promise you'll stay," he said.
"I promise I'll try," I replied.
"I'll try too," he said, and then we fell asleep with our elbows touching and the city buzzing like a distant radio.
That is how he barged in—first into my bathroom, then into my messages, then into my life—and how he stayed by being young and true and annoyingly tender.
The End
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