Sweet Romance15 min read
He Called Me "Wife" Before I Knew How to Be One
ButterPicks15 views
I dropped the egg pancake the instant Jaelynn stepped out of the black car. The thin, greasy wrapper landed on the pavement with a wet slap, and I stared at it like it had betrayed me.
"Get away from my friend," I snapped before I could stop myself.
The car window rolled down. A man in a crisp suit looked at me like I was an annoyance plucked from the air. His eyes were cool. He wore gold-rimmed glasses and had the sort of face that made statues feel insecure. The whole scene sped up into a melodrama in my head: wealthy man, predatory intentions, rescue scenes and courtroom monologues.
Jaelynn, who had followed me to the curb in a daze, grabbed my arm. "Leoni," she whispered, "this is my—this is my uncle."
"Your uncle?" I repeated without heat-proofing the sarcasm from my voice.
She looked like a kid who’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. "I didn't tell you because... I didn't want you to worry that I'm different."
"You told me you were poor."
"So you wouldn't stop being my friend," she said, small and pleading. "Please don't be mad."
I wanted to be mad at her for the lie, at the world for the car, at my own reflex for always trying to be the hero. Jaelynn's uncle stepped out of the car then. The air around him seemed to have a different gravity. I, who had been bold enough to accost a menacing stranger a moment before, found myself shrinking.
Jaelynn pushed me behind her and whispered, "My uncle is Emerson Felix."
Emerson Felix. The name hit me like a train. He owned half the city in people's whispered stories—one of those founders whose portrait always looked like it belonged in a bank vault. The presence of his name is what made my spine lock.
Jaelynn squeezed my hand like a talisman. "He's my real uncle. Please don't say anything."
I wanted to roar. Instead, I let myself be her shadow. There was a ridiculous relief in being protected by someone else for once.
We tried to go on with our lives. I, Leoni Rizzo, went on applying for jobs like a marathon runner who had lost her shoes. Applications, interviews, rejections. Then, like a lightning strike or a lucky subway transfer, a call came from Emerson Felix's company—Felix Holdings—asking me to come in for an interview.
"Why would a big company want me?" I told Jaelynn on the phone.
"You are Leoni Rizzo," she replied, meeting my complaint with one of those looks that meant "don't be ridiculous." "You're amazing."
I showed up at the interview thinking it would be a joke. Instead, I was hired on the spot. They told me they needed a temporary administrative assistant until their projects needed a different expertise. "Project departments are full," said the HR woman with an air of inevitability. "But we'll see how you grow."
That is how I ended up standing in front of the big, heavy door of Emerson Felix's office with a paper cup of coffee that I had been told was not hot enough.
"Come in," a voice said.
He was there, at his desk, concentrating over a set of documents. He accepted the coffee without looking up and then said the thing that made me humiliate myself all over again. "The coffee's not hot."
"I can make it hotter," I said. "I'm sorry."
He smiled like it was the most private joke in the room. "Nice view," he said then, and the world narrowed.
Weeks passed. Or maybe days. Time folded into lists and meetings, and I became the person who kept his schedule intact. My life fit around his calendar. The company whispered rumors—someone said the boss had a new secretary, someone else said she was a graduate, someone else said she was only an intern. The staff's gossip was a chorus that made me feel smaller. I buried myself in spreadsheets and meeting minutes.
"You know what they say about you?" my friend on the phone asked once.
"What?"
"They think you and Mr. Felix are—"
"Stop." The word "rumors" was a stone in my mouth.
One afternoon, I heard people in the hallway whispering about me like I was a foreign story. I slipped into an empty conference room and sent Jaelynn a video. She answered with a selfie, sunglasses on, a message full of emojis. "Relax, babe," she said. "He's probably got a crush."
I laughed because it felt safer to laugh.
Then one day the rumor twisted itself into an opportunity. Emerson began to—unintentionally, maybe—include me in his life. He requested short updates at odd hours. He asked me to sit in when vendors came. He protected me at dinners when people raised wine glasses that I should have lifted. He made study of me like a delicate, deliberate project.
"You're being ridiculous, Leoni," I told myself, and then I couldn't anymore when he cornered me against the office wall and asked me a question that made the floor drop.
"Why do you keep thinking I'm with someone else more than with you?"
"I don't—" I stammered. I felt my face go hot. The world was a small, fulsome breath. "It's nothing."
He laughed softly. "Let's just try truth. Do you want me to be part of your reality?"
"I—" That single syllable was an avalanche.
He leaned in like the sort of person who waits for the last piece of the complicated puzzle to fall into place. "You're the kind of person who buys food for street dogs," he said, and then told me about the day he’d first seen me at orientation, about a shy girl being dragged by her exuberant friend, about tiny, human details he had watched through the years. "I thought about you for a long time."
His confession was not a cinematographic thunderclap; it was a steady light. My heart knocked in my ribs like it had been rehearsing.
We did things that had not happened to me before. He cooked for me—no, he insisted on doing things for me. He picked me up after long days. He held me when I slept off too much wine in his apartment. He said "wife" to me in the most offhand way once and the syllable had doubled in my ears until I realized he had changed the landscape of my life.
"I love you," Emerson said one night in my kitchen, while I watched him chop vegetables with careful, almost shy, movements.
"I—" My voice failed. I was small and stunned and also strange with gratitude.
"I'll prove it," he said instead, and he did. He carried me, moved slowly through the city with me in the passenger seat like the rest of the world could be rearranged. He introduced me to his family. My parents adored him in the way strangers give themselves over to ease.
"You're a good man," my mother said once, squeezing my hand so hard I felt her pride.
We married in a small ceremony, and then the rest of life felt like a turning page. I thought the chapter of uncertainty had folded shut.
Until it didn't.
Jaelynn was a friend—my roommate, my confidante, the only one who knew my cheap secrets and my midnight bakes. She had been wrapped in mystery when we first met; she said she was from a poor family but always had new clothes and never seemed to worry about anything. She laughed like someone who had practice slipping between social classes. I found out later that she had invented poverty as a convenient costume.
It began with small things. A missed phone call. A text that was strange. She stopped visiting, and when she came back she was different—dressed in pieces that carried the sheen of money, her stories increasingly framed by proximity to power. She was not the person I had known, or maybe she had always been the person who knew how to be what she wanted.
Rumors about her became a problem when men like Damon Alvarado began to orbit. Damon was the sort of man who could be both charming and brutal with his words. He ran in circles that had no time for scruples.
Jaelynn had been using and being used in a way I couldn't accept. She had invented a poor girl persona to draw sympathy; she had used Emerson's cousin—a family friend—and later used a network to attempt favors. Damon Avarado was her new conquest: a powerful man she flirted and schemed with to edge her way into social standing.
One evening, at an industry gala held by the company, the truth had to be set free like a caged bird.
The gala was opulent—gold plates, crystal glasses, and a stage that glittered with the names of sponsors. People posed and smiled in a way that makes memory look like a glossy photograph. I had arrived that night to assist Emerson and to make sure the ceremony ran smoothly. The event was a kind of company year-end that gathered every important client and partner.
"Leoni," Emerson said as we stepped into the ballroom, "stay near me tonight."
"Of course," I said, because my job was part of my heartbeat.
The MC called people to the stage for a charity announcement. The music hummed. My feet were like roots.
Then a rumor moth flapped its wings too loudly. Damon Alvarado and Jaelynn Smith entered together, and they looked like a pair of people who had rehearsed casualness. Jaelynn carried herself like a queen in a borrowed crown. Damon scanned the room like a man assessing prey. He spotted us and walked toward the stage with the kind of smile that announces trouble.
"Should I—?" I asked Emerson.
"No," he said. "Watch."
We watched as Damon climbed the stage and took the microphone with a practiced hand. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, his voice silk with teeth. "I'd like to propose a special toast, not for business, but for authenticity."
The crowd leaned in like a flocking thing. I felt a sudden chill.
"If I may," Damon continued, "there are people here who have chosen to present themselves one way, and reality another. There is a story being told about rags and riches that is—well, dishonest."
The lighting shifted as if to make him a man of truth. He looked at Jaelynn like a puppeteer whose strings had suddenly become visible. "Jaelynn, come here."
Jaelynn’s smile faltered. The spotlight sieved down like rain. She looked at me and then at Damon.
"Stand up," he said, and his hand was not kindly.
She came forward, trembling. The room had become an ocean of faces. People murmured.
"Let's hear it from you," Damon said, and the words were oil and sand together. "Tell them the truth."
Jaelynn swallowed. "I—" Her voice went thin.
I felt something in my chest unspooling. "This is—" I began.
"Hold on," Emerson said softly beside me. He didn't look angry. He simply took my hand. The sensation of his fingers in mine steadied me as a lighthouse steadies a little boat.
Damon, however, was not satisfied. He had orchestrated a theater where Jaelynn could be cut down to size and he could stand tall. But the room was not empty of witnesses—board members, clients, and reporters were present. The gossiping rumor had mutated into a planned public spectacle.
Jaelynn, who had always been my chubby, secret-sharing best friend, now became the center of a storm. She tried to plead, but the microphone amplified the tremor in her voice. "I— I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't know how to—"
"Let's put all the cards on the table," Damon said, a performance that made his teeth flash like knives. "Jaelynn, you told Leoni and others you were poor but were actually from a family that webbed itself into influence. You used sympathy to climb. You used intimacy to manipulate. Is that not right?"
At that, the crowd leaned forward. A dozen cameras switched on. Jaelynn’s eyes welled. She tried to speak again; her mouth failed her.
Emerson's face, in profile under the chandelier, looked calm as a cathedral. He walked up to the stage.
"Stop," he said, and his voice cut through the room like winter. "This is not for the stage. Jaelynn, step down."
Jaelynn burst into tears. "I'm sorry," she sobbed, covering her face with both hands.
"Why did you lie to me?" I demanded. The question fell into the room heavy as an iron pot.
Jaelynn looked at me as if someone had handed her a photograph of herself she didn't recognize. "Because I was afraid," she whispered. "I was afraid you'd change."
"After everything we've been through?" I said, my hands beginning to shake. "You thought you'd risk the honesty of our friendship for... for what? A profile?"
Jaelynn's shoulders convulsed. "I wanted— stability. Someone to stop asking me for help I couldn't return. I thought if I made myself small and unobtrusive and then grew—"
"Grow?" Damon interrupted with a bitter laugh. "You grew into me, Jaelynn. You grew into the kind of woman the city wants to display like a trophy."
The room made a sound—like colliding plates, like a wave. People began to talk, to point, to take pictures. Reporters pushed forward, pens out and phones filming. Jaelynn was shrinking under a weight made not of stone but of people's eyes.
Emerson stepped closer. He turned and looked at me the way someone might look at a map before choosing the right road. He then turned to the room.
"Everyone," he said. "This is not entertainment."
His voice was measured. "Jaelynn is human. She is my niece's friend. She has made a mistake and been dishonest. But she is not a spectacle."
"Then what should happen?" Damon asked, his voice a knife that couldn't pass for velvet.
Emerson's face tightened. "There will be consequences," he said.
"Consequences? For what? For being poor? For lying? For—"
"This is not just about Jaelynn lying about her background," Emerson said, and his gaze leveled on Damon. "This is about coercion—about making a person feel they must perform poverty to be loved, and about using that performance as control. Mr. Alvarado, I'm sure you remember your ethics classes. Where are they now?"
A murmur rolled through the room. Damon's smile didn't falter, but there was an edge. People began to realize he was not only trying to expose Jaelynn—he was trying to poison other relationships and consolidate control.
Emerson continued, "Our company does not bed rumor. We verify. For those who have participated in coercing someone, there will be internal review. For those who try to humiliate people in public forums, there will be accountability."
Jaelynn broke down completely then. She cried with the sort of raw sorrow that leaves one tiny and aching. The crowd's reaction varied: shock, pity, sudden recordings. A few patrons stood and walked away. Others whispered, hiding their faces behind programs. Someone clapped, an awkward, misplaced applause the way the world sometimes doesn't know how else to react.
Damon, meanwhile, watched the change in the room. His defiance shifted into suspicion, then to anger. He tried to retake control, "This is all about power plays, isn't it? Putting me on trial when I call out a lie."
Emerson fixed him with a look that had been used to steer companies through crises. "Call out lies when necessary," he said. "But not to humiliate people for the entertainment of an audience."
The company's legal counsel, who had been standing at the edge of the hall, stepped forward and spoke into the open room with equal parts quiet and authority. "Mr. Alvarado, we will conduct a formal inquiry into your methods and your dealings." He did not say "you are fired." He didn't need to. In the corporate world, inquiries were a guillotine plated in legality.
Damon's face tightened. He tapped his phone into his ear. "You can't—" He began, but there was no support. A few clients, always hungry for calm, moved away.
Jaelynn's voice broke through the press of people and the shuffle of staff. "I didn't mean to hurt Leoni," she said. "I thought if I had access—"
"Access doesn't excuse cruelty," Emerson said, and then, to the room, "We will make sure the person who coerced Jaelynn into a lie—if such coercion exists—is exposed for who they are. But we will also not turn this into a spectacle."
The cameras were relentless. Reporters whispered. A woman near the edge of the room pulled out her phone and started filming the entire exchange.
Jaelynn was escorted out by HR. She was not arrested or shamed with cruelty; instead, she was given steps: counseling, community service, and—most important—a plan to repair the hurt she'd caused. Damon, on the other hand, found his reputation cracking. Clients called his office the next day to ask for clarifications. The board requested a meeting. He was pulled from some committees; a major investor expressed concern. The illusion of invincibility had been pierced with the steel of corporate prudence.
The punishment was different for each of them because the wrongs were different. Jaelynn's penalty aimed to heal and teach; Damon's punishment aimed to remove the platform from which he could humiliate. Both felt the consequences. Jaelynn's shock turned into shame. Damon moved from arrogance to fury to pleading.
I watched it all from Emerson's side, and it was not pretty. I felt anger at Jaelynn for lying; I felt compassion because she was a kid who had chosen an ugly shortcut. I felt loathing for Damon because his pleasure at exposing someone so clearly showed his appetite for control. The crowd's reaction bled out into gossip and then into daily water cooler talk. People recorded, posted, laughed, and, in some pockets, shook their heads.
But there, on that stage and under those lights, the worst part was watching Jaelynn attempt to reconcile with me.
"Leoni," she begged in a hallway later when it was quieter. "I am so sorry."
"You lied," I said simply.
"I was scared," she answered. "I wanted so badly to belong."
"You belonged," I said. "You betrayed that."
She crumpled and the staff walked away. Her punishment did not end with events that night; it followed her. She lost a job interview because a reporter had filmed parts of the scene and posted it online. She lost a boyfriend who had always liked the idea of her mystery more than she herself. She also lost her own illusion that manipulation could replace worth.
Damon's public unraveling was different. He arrived at work the next day to find that a hostile email had gone out questioning his tactics. He was asked to account for contracts, for favors, for the pattern of coaxing young professionals into compromising situations. The board convened, and within weeks Damon was removed from certain accounts. Articles cropped up that, while careful, suggested he used power to dress cruelty as truth. He tried lawsuits. He looked powerful and unbothered in court filings, but his invitations thinned and his name stopped being a currency. He asked for mercy and for backing. People who had stood with him in a cocktail-lit room began to put distance between his name and their logos.
This was the kind of public consequence that pulverizes reputation slowly but remorselessly. The city likes to eat those who play with others’ lives, and Damon had shown himself too fond of spectacle. His fall was not immediate and theatrical, but it was inevitable and public. He discovered, to his fury, that wealth does not always shield you from exposure.
As for Jaelynn, she apologized to me in long messages; she sat in counseling and worked at a charity that Emerson supported. She came to my apartment one rainy afternoon with a small tray of pastries as a first step toward reconciliation.
"I'm trying," she said.
"That's not enough," I said. "But it's a start."
She nodded, and I took a pastry. People grow in different rhythms.
Emerson, who had been the eye of the storm, held me like a harbor. He had stood up for compassion, and he had let the law and the company process the rest. The charm he'd shown privately had hardened into a steady sense of justice publicly. And that steadiness was what I had married.
There were scenes after that—small domestic ones that felt like stitches in a new life. He built me a kitchen shelf because I kept losing plates. He made a habit of signing the final email of the day "—E." in a way that made my stomach do careful, foolish things. We moved through life like a learned dance. He called me "wife" in the grocery store without meaning to, and the word made the air between us bloom.
"Do you regret it?" I asked him one night as the city hummed beneath our window.
"Regret what?" he said, and he was smiling as if at a private joke.
"Marrying me."
He nearly laughed himself light. "Why would I regret the person who makes me laugh and keeps my schedule in order?"
He kissed me like a punctuation mark. "No regrets," he said.
We had arguments, too. About privacy, about how much to tell my parents. There were mishaps—Jaelynn's attempt at reconciliation was not an instant cure for all the things she'd broken—but we continued.
In the quiet hours, when the city had folded in on itself and the curtains kept the world at bay, Emerson would touch my knuckles and tell me stories of when he was a boy and how he used to think rich people weren't human. "They still aren't," he'd say, winking, "but I'm learning."
I learned that love is not only about the tender moments; it's about the decisions you make when things get messy. It is choosing to be honest. It is choosing to stand by someone in public and tell the truth with mercy. It is choosing to fight unfairness even when the fight draws a crowd.
Months later, Jaelynn came to my door with a new job and a smaller swagger. She had started volunteering at the animal shelter Emerson supported. "I'm tired of pretending," she said. "It was exhausting pretending."
"I forgive you," I told her, and I meant it because she had tried hard.
She worked to rebuild trust, not with grand gestures but by consistent, humble acts. It was not a neat arc. It was a messy, honest one, and that felt better.
As for Damon, he left some accounts and kept others. He swore that fate was against him. He tried to sue for defamation and lost. His public humiliation was not a single, dramatic fall but a slow unweaving—the kind that made him smaller in the halls where he once loomed large.
There was one final act of punishment that I think about sometimes: at a client dinner, Damon attempted to make the room about him. A slide show of deals he'd closed neared its zenith when an email from a major investor lit up everyone's phones with a short, terse message: "We dissociate from practices of intimidation. We request immediate review of Mr. Alvarado's dealings." The room shifted. People pretended to look at their plates, but they had already made their judgment.
Damon's face changed in stages—first arrogance, then irritation, then denial, and finally a hollow panic. He tried to laugh it off, but the waiter refilled his water in silence and the host skipped over him in conversation. The crowd's reaction was a slow withdrawal: no applause, fewer invitations, a thinning of his orbit. People photographed him less; someone who had once been an appetizer on the city's social plate became garnish.
I learned something in all of this: punishment is not always a spectacle. Sometimes it is simple withdrawal, the way water recedes from a shore and leaves behind a beach of truth. When you take away attention and glamour from someone who feeds on them, they wither.
We kept moving. Emerson and I kept building a life made of small, careful choices. The company continued to thrive. Jaelynn rebuilt herself. Damon found new ways—less theatrical, more defensive—but he could not quite recover the vastness he'd once claimed.
One night, several years in, I found an old egg-pancake wrapper in the back of a drawer. I laughed and told Emerson the story of how I'd dropped it the first time I saw his car.
"I remember," he said.
"You were terrifying my friend into hiding," I said.
He kissed my forehead. "You still threw the pancake," he said. "You were brave."
"I was an idiot," I corrected.
He smiled. "You were exactly who I needed."
And I believed him.
The End
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