Sweet Romance11 min read
He Called Me "Subway Girl" — Then He Kept Me
ButterPicks11 views
"I can't help you spam people all night," Kadence told me through the phone, but I could hear her grin.
"Please," I said, thumb hovering over the message. "Just one more push. For old times."
"One more push," she agreed. "And one more guilt trip."
I hit send.
"You're ridiculous," I whispered to the quiet apartment. My sofa hugged my tired body. The TV light painted my face blue. My phone buzzed and my thumb found the screen like a habit.
Kadence's message was bright and breathless: "Catalina, helper! Click my link! Click, click!"
I typed back a mock-serious line. "You are officially crazy."
She answered with a string of voice notes and ten laughing emojis. My screen filled with her little demands and pleas.
"You owe me," I typed finally, and I tapped the link with a tired sigh.
I later wished I'd never touched it.
"Who is spamming you?" my colleague Mira asked the next morning when my phone exploded again.
"Kadence," I said. "She's running one of those... schemes. I want nothing to do with it."
"Too late," Mira laughed. "You already posted, didn't you?"
I had. I had sent her link to some stale contacts, to "zombie friends" who never liked posts or replied. I hit send and felt a small pang of shame. But then the replies started coming. A "subway guy" sent a big question mark. "AA Cement" sent a promotional link back with a cheeky "mutual clicks, beautiful." I rolled my eyes and laughed, remembering the subway man.
I had seen him once, weeks ago. He was tall and precise in a white shirt and dark trousers, a gold-rimmed pair of glasses catching the light like a punctuation mark. He had looked like someone who did not belong to the noisy rush hour. I had been braver than I remember. I had slid my QR code across the subway railing and forced a smile until my cheeks hurt.
He had been polite. He had been cold. He had not messaged very much. But he had let me keep him as a fantasy in my head.
"You're still on it," Kadence mused when she called. "Text him. Make a joke. Be cute."
I typed something ridiculous. "Want to get rich quick? Click this link." I attached a bowing emoji.
When a single reply came back — "How did you get my number?" — my stomach did a happy, dumb flip.
His name was Corbin Stevens. He wrote like a closed notebook: short, clean lines. "You know me?"
"I could say the same," I answered. "But let's start over."
He wrote, "Okay."
I wrote "Good morning" every day for a week. He wrote "Good night" back twice. I did not know how to be cool in this exchange. I tried humor, food pictures, silly headlines from the newsroom. He stayed polite, sometimes indifferent, sometimes a small, private smile in text.
One evening, tired from another late shoot, I found him on the subway again. He was there, eyes closed, headphones on. My heart did a thing I cannot explain; it did not listen to reason. I followed him.
He left at my stop. He walked in front of me, pockets full, shoulders steady. I followed him as far as the convenience store at the gate of my building. I told myself it was coincidence. I told myself I would stop. I found myself buying yogurt just so he'd notice the yarn of my clumsy life.
"Hi," I said when he was in front of the register.
He looked at me like he had been waiting thirty seconds for a stranger to interrupt him. "Hi," he answered. The word was flat but not unkind.
"Do you... like this yogurt?" I asked.
He blinked. "I eat food."
My cheeks turned hot. "Do you live here?"
"There," he said, pointing to the building next door, and then he left. I thought my voice had been ridiculous and I laughed afterward alone.
I started bringing him breakfast. I learned his rhythm: seven in the morning down the stairs, seven-thirty back. I stood in the light with a paper cup and a soft smile. The first morning he walked past me. The second morning he took the cup, thanked me, and left.
"You're relentless," Kadence said when I told her. "This is either brave or very stupid."
"It's a plan," I lied.
At the hospital where he worked — he was a pediatrician at the city hospital — I came on a reporting assignment and saw him change. On the floor among children, his voice changed. "Corbin, can you show me?" the nurse asked, and I watched him kneel, patient and soft with a little boy with a bad cough. He moved like sunlight through leaves. He was not cold when a child needed warmth.
That change pulled at something in me. I began to understand that what I liked was not just the tidy face in glasses. It was the way he could be both steady and fragile at once.
"Is he taken?" my coworkers asked when I returned to the station, cheeks shining.
"Not that I know," I said. But I knew — from the way he answered "Good night" — he had a distance he kept.
Two months of small rituals passed. I brought him sandwiches. He refused at first, then took one when the rain made him stop. He returned replies to my messages. He let me sit at his stoop and hand him pastries like offerings on a tiny altar of hope.
One night the taxi I took home turned the wrong corner. My phone trembled in my hand. I called for help with a voice mindless with fear.
"Hello?" Corbin answered. I heard his breath, and something like alarm.
"I'm lost," I whispered.
"Tell me where you are," he asked.
"Near the old bakery on Carolina Street," I said, and I repeated the license plate. He stayed on the phone like a steady rope. He told me to tell the driver to stop at the church on the corner and wait.
"Stay on the phone," he said.
When I stepped into the yellow light of the street, he was a shadow under a lamppost with eyes I had thought I knew. "You okay?" he said.
I wanted to swallow my pride and fall into him. I did the next best thing.
"Thank you," I said, and I bowed as theatrically as I could. He let me. He smiled once.
"Don't do that again," he said. Then he left.
Later I dreamed he had called me "girlfriend" in a hospital hallway and I woke with my heart loud in my chest.
We grew closer. He started to accept little things from me: breakfast, a scarf when I forgot gloves, a small bottle of hand lotion when I complained about the cold.
"Stop spoiling me," he said once softly, and I pretended he was teasing.
But life demands friction. At a company gala where my family — yes, my family — had come into the light of public attention, rumors sparked like dry tinder. I learned the Stevens family had long ties with another household, and a name circulated like a frostbite threat: Anna Forsberg.
"Are you engaged to Anna?" someone asked him at a cocktail reception. It arrived as a joke and then a colorless silence.
"No," he said that night when we met in the dim stairwell. "It's our families talking. It's not real."
"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked.
"I didn't think they'd bother me," he said. "I didn't think my life would look like this."
"Because your mother sets tables for alliances," I answered.
There was an ache in his face then, and for the first time he looked small and angry in the way people look in mirrors when they do not like the reflection.
"Can we... be honest?" I said.
"Yes," he said. "I don't want them to set a table for me without asking."
And he did something he had never done: he told his mother he would not accept plans. He told her he had someone he liked. She tried to smile. The news moved through rooms like a draft.
"She's showy," his mother said sharply once at dinner. "She's famous now. My son's life is careful."
"He's not your son in pieces," he said.
That winter I traveled for work. I needed to see old places, rewrite my life into a new map. Corbin tried to come with me. He could not. The hospital was a cold-iron anchor. I left feeling a little abandoned though my head knew otherwise.
While I was gone, another man appeared in my orbit. Fletcher Spencer was an old school senior that my past had made into a memory. He began as a polite help, then texts, then dinners offered, then favors that looked suspiciously like claims. He had a smile as clean as monogrammed cuffs. He knew how to press into spaces without asking, a soft sort of violence.
"He's interested," Kadence told me. "But you like someone else, right?"
"I like Corbin," I said.
Fletcher came around more. He booked a seat near my table at a local event under the pretense of congratulations. He helped me carry a camera up a flight of stairs. He seemed to be everywhere my life had to be, polite, present, an unasked twin of attention.
"How do you feel about Fletcher?" Corbin asked one night, a thread of quiet danger in his voice.
"I don't want to meet him half-way," I said. "I am telling you because I want you to know."
"Good," Corbin said. "Don't let him take space he doesn't earn."
I believed him.
But Fletcher had a set of habits that were not mine. He started to appear in shoots I didn't invite him to. He offered to set up my travel schedule and slowly wound himself into the edges of my team's plans. He posted pictures I never recognized, staged images that implied intimacy. People started to text me, "Is Fletcher your boyfriend?" and I had to delete messages like dead leaves.
Something small and ugly happened on the last night of a charity banquet that my family attended as a public unveiling. Fletcher had sent a private invitation to some of the press, "an exclusive look at my collaboration." He arrived wearing practiced concern, and he found his way to my side.
"You're glowing tonight," he said.
"Thanks," I said. I was polite. I was wary.
He made a move to take a picture up-close. "For my feed," he said. I moved away.
He fumbled, and a reporter's lens caught him. His hand landed on my shoulder with a pressure that was not a touch but a claim.
"Excuse me," I said. "Please don't touch me."
He laughed softly. "Come on, Catalina. We're all friends here."
A murmur moved through the room. A screen flickered. Someone tapped a laptop and an image flashed on the big display — not mine, but something curated: staged photos and private texts Fletcher had posted as evidence of a false intimacy. In the keynote room of the gala the lights went dim and a new image bloomed across the screen.
"You're making this weird," Fletcher hissed as guests turned, phones raised like curious birds.
"Turn it off," I demanded.
"Why?" he asked, and his voice had the brittle certainty of a man who believed himself untouchable. He tried to step past me toward the control booth.
"Stop," Corbin said.
"Is this your doing?" Fletcher snapped at me. "You set me up?"
"I didn't," I said.
Corbin moved. He did not shove. He steadied himself, his hand on Fletcher's elbow like a medic holding a patient down.
"Who set this up?" Fletcher asked, voice rising.
At that moment Kadence stood up from the audience, phone chiming with a live feed. "This is for you," she said loudly. "You posted those staged 'couple' photos. I downloaded the originals. You edited them. You made her into something she didn't consent to."
Phones were everywhere. People began to murmur into cameras live. A hundred small windows lit up with recorded proof.
Fletcher's face turned color. "That's not—" he began.
"You're a liar," Kadence cut in. "You created a story to make yourself appear available and clever. He liked her, you wanted to step in. You thought planting evidence would give you a head start. You thought you'd win."
A screen behind us streamed an original photo: Catalina and an applause sign she had posed with for charity, arms not linked. On the right, the edited version Fletcher had made. On the left, a chat log Fletcher had used to solicit flattering posts, "Help me look close, I'll credit you." That very chat, now public, said, "She is the best part of my night." The words were not hers.
"Turn it off," Fletcher begged. He moved toward the control console and someone blocked him, a concierge with a security badge.
"Who wants to believe a man who fakes a story?" a woman in the second row asked. The voice was small but the question thundered.
Fletcher laughed once. "You all are insane," he said.
"You're not a loner, you're a thief," Kadence said. "You stole her image. You stole her story."
Phones flashed. A murmur became a chant. "Liar! Liar!" It was cruel. It was combustible. Fletcher's smile dissolved into a hand tugging at a collar, eyes wild.
"Please," he said, getting smaller within the public circle. "I didn't... I just—"
"Get away," someone hissed. A video started to trend within minutes.
He reached out, hands shaky. "Catalina, I'm sorry. Please. Let me explain."
"Not here," I said. My voice surprised me — it was small and steady. "You made your choice."
Fletcher's mouth opened and closed. "I didn't mean to hurt you," he said.
"Then don't," I said. "Leave."
He stumbled. He tried to step toward me. Guests recorded with the delicious glee of a crowd watching a bad play end badly. His mother's face in the crowd went ashen. People whispered, "He ruined it for himself."
He dropped to his knees on the carpet. The rich, red fabric bunched against his suit. His head bowed like someone waiting for mercy.
"Please," he begged. "Everyone, please. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I can fix this. Catalina, forgive me."
A woman in the front row laughed, not kindly. Cameras caught the livid expression of Fletcher's small group of supporters turning away. Phones uploaded.
He screamed for attention and received contempt. People lined the stairs, and one by one, someone in glitter stopped to record. A man with a camera clicked, "This is what arrogance looks like." A child shrieked.
He tried to reach me. My chin rose. I wanted to see if he would crumble completely. He did. He wept like a man being judged.
When security moved him out, when his supporters shrank like retreating tide, he crawled a few steps and then stood. His suit had wrinkles he could not iron. He sobbed, mouth gasping. "I'll never do it again," he said. "I was stupid. I'm sorry."
"Too late," a woman said. "You gave us the show."
He stumbled down the corridor and into the cold night with the press huddled like vultures around the door, but their jaws were busy with the scraps of his own making.
It was public and it was brutal. My mother's hand found mine and squeezed.
"Let's go home," Corbin said.
He took me home, and for the first time we reached for each other without a game. He closed his hand around mine and said, "I didn't say it before because it scared me. I didn't know if you would stay."
"I almost left," I whispered. "I wanted to run."
"You ran into my life instead," he said.
We built a small, stubborn world. We had quiet mornings and fierce arguments. We made rules — tell me where you are, don't leave without telling me. We broke rules and remade them.
The jungle trip came months later. It should have been our quiet work journey, my team and I exploring green places for our new travel segment. We crossed wet roots and stepped through fog. I slipped and fell, pain bursting like a bell in my leg. I blacked out.
When I woke up I was in a small clinic, a broken phone in my hand. Corbin called and his voice was a boat anchor, heavy with worry.
"Where are you?" he asked.
"In the jungle clinic," I said. "I... I think I broke my leg."
"Stay there," he said. "Don't move. I'm coming."
He arrived the next day like a storm. He did not ask questions. He barked orders. He held me as they set a cast around my leg. When he sat beside me in the thin mattress bed, he looked at me like I was a small city and he would patrol it.
"You scared me," he said.
"I didn't mean to," I said. "I'm sorry."
"In future," he said, "call me before you become a headline."
We laughed softly through pain.
Months later, a small boy taught us about living in the present. His name was Pippin — a patient in Corbin's ward — and for one day we gave him a day in the sun. We fed him fries, rode a carousel, and watched him laugh like he had swallowed multiple suns.
"Promise you'll come back," he told me, tiny pink lips serious.
"We promise," Corbin and I said together.
The world kept moving, and so did our life. I returned home to a place that was now ours. Corbin asked me to meet his parents. My mother made the worst soup in the world and we laughed. We learned where each other came from. He learned my family stories and I learned his father's silence.
Fletcher's collapse made the rounds for a while. He received hateful messages, and then slowly the world tired of him. He sent apologies that read like tax forms. He lost sponsorships, then a small column, then friends.
Sometimes I wonder if ruin teaches anything. For me, the thing it taught was the rhythm of better choices: to accept affection, to be brave without being reckless, to speak when silence feels safer.
On the first snow of that winter, he arranged the lights in the courtyard downstairs. "Come down," he said on the phone. I opened the window and watched a small world light up.
"It's bright," I said, breath fogging.
"Come down," he repeated.
I dressed and walked outside into soft light. Corbin stood under a string of lights, holding a bouquet and a single committed breath.
"Remember you promised?" he said. "You said you'd teach me how to love."
"No," I answered. "I said I would teach you how to be loved."
He smiled like the night had folded itself to kiss him. "Will you marry me?" he asked then, simple and shining.
I laughed and I cried and the snow turned our faces white. "Yes," I said. "Yes."
We told our friends, and we promised a small kind of forever. Fletcher's story faded into a cautionary headline, and the world kept offering us days — banal, bright, dangerous days — and we learned to meet them with hands held.
At the hospital years later, I watched Corbin kneel with a tray of medicines for a nervous mother and listen to a teenager's story like it was a poem. He was still quiet. He was still kind. He still held me as a harbor holds a boat that came too close to the storm.
Sometimes Kadence will nudge me with a note: "Remember the link?"
I will laugh. "I clicked it," I say. "And he clicked back."
We lived small, we loved loud, and when storms came we chose each other — again and again.
The End
— Thank you for reading —