Sweet Romance14 min read
He Said "Wait" — So I Stole His Shirt
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My brother Cohen had a simple plan: get me to snag a WeChat for a girl he liked. It was supposed to be an errand, three sentences, maybe a screenshot, a tiny favor. Instead, three drinks, a closed door, and one very bad photo later, I woke up with a man’s face half covered by my "Hello Kitty" duvet and a life-sized misunderstanding.
"Did you get it?" Cohen asked twenty times before the sun even rose.
"Yes," I croaked from under the covers. My throat felt like I’d been shouting from a canyon. "It's... obtained."
"Then come home. Do you know how worried I am?" His voice ricocheted through the speaker.
I flinched and peeked. Joel Stone blinked awake across from me, all sleep-ruffled and annoyingly handsome. He raised an eyebrow.
"Could you... switch tasks?" I whispered into the phone, desperate.
"Why? Is the guy old?" Cohen's laugh filled the line.
"Uh... no," I muffled. "Maybe... he's not my type."
"Older's better," Cohen declared. "You don't know anything."
Older. My heart did a small, panicked stop.
"Tell me you're sane, Cohen," I hissed.
"Less chatter. Want my new iPhone 13 instead of the favor?" Cohen barked.
I gave him the single syllable he wanted. "Got."
That word was like a bell. Joel's hand shot out, yanking the duvet off me, and a sleepy face leaned close enough that I could see the shadow of a smile.
"You sound hoarse," he murmured.
"I am not—" I yanked the call away and cut Cohen off so fast my phone vibrated like a trapped insect.
"You really need to be less stubborn," Joel said, breath warm in my ear.
"What's your name?" I squeaked. My voice hadn’t decided whether to be a teenager or a bird.
"Joel." One look from him and my knees threatened betrayal. "Joel Stone."
"Joel Stone," I said, the name sticking wrong.
"You—remember last night?" He smiled like it was a private joke.
"I need distance," I told my body more than him.
His gaze slid down to my lips, and for a ridiculous second I imagined a cartoon bubble: WARNING — DANGER.
"Shy?" he teased.
I scrambled off the bed, grabbed my clothes and the bathroom door like an exit strategy.
"Your pants," he called after me in a half-joking voice.
In the bathroom, I found my phone and three hundred missed calls from Cohen. I texted a single word and hoped for rescue. Then Joel's avatar lit up on my screen: "North’s Number 1957."
North’s? A confusion tightened my brain.
"Your pants," Joel said from the bedroom doorway. "You left them."
I froze. Of all the things, his laugh made me feel small and exposed.
"Why did you give my brother my WeChat?" Cohen demanded when I finally texted him back.
"Because I thought you wanted the girl," I typed, aware of the absurdity through the blur of my panic.
Later, with the city under a mandatory lockdown, Joel and I were told we couldn’t leave his apartment for twenty-eight days. "We were in contact with a positive case last night," he said, flat enough that the phrase should have been a sentence in a textbook.
"You've got to be kidding me," I said.
"Nope," Joel replied. "You call home. I’ll make a list for supplies."
"He’s going to die of worry," I told him. "Listen—do not, under any circumstances, contact Cohen."
"Why so protective?" His voice amused.
"Because he’s my brother," I lied. Why did everything sound like a confession?
"Fine." He shrugged and already looked like he’d been carrying the weight of the world for decades. "I’m going to handle my work. You do whatever."
"Okay." I stuttered and fled, but not before I caught sight of an unsent text on his phone that made my throat go dry: "Your pants—need size."
I’d come for one thing—a WeChat—and gotten a stranger, a quarantine, and a private life I had no map for.
"You okay?" Joel asked a few minutes later, a cup of milk in hand. He fixed the tiny corner of his mouth, the kind of smile that made my pulse do something unreliable.
"Fine." I lied and then lied louder when he asked what I wanted for pajamas.
"Black, lace, no underwire," I hissed before thinking. My cheeks burned. Of all details to give a man I'd just embarrassed myself in front of.
"Okay," he said, unfazed and, maddeningly, calm.
When the first real day of lockdown settled like dust, I learned that Joel Stone was not only the man who’d fallen asleep under my Hello Kitty but also—in a most public and professionally terrifying way—my bilingual physics professor.
"Professor?" I said out loud when I saw his lecture slides, my brain trying to dock two images that refused to sit together: the man who had been baking noodles for me and the man who’d just assigned a quantum mechanics paper.
He looked up over his glasses. "Understand or no?"
"Not a word," I confessed, and he laughed like one of the kind adults you don't see often in student life.
"Then sit next to me," he said. "It's harder to play games while sitting beside the lecturer."
I almost argued, then thought of the dangerous silence of my phone and the sudden ache in my stomach and went anyway.
"You eat slow," Joel observed during a late-night ramen. He pointed at me, eating like I’d seen too much of him.
"Shut up," I snapped, which in my world meant: I'm flattered.
"Don't argue with the food police." He winked.
Days bled into each other in a soft, strange routine. He taught; I pretended to pay attention and asked enough questions to keep him talking. He cooked; I spoiled the dishes, leading to more cooking and, inevitably, more of him. He had a way of putting the mundane into a frame that made my chest tighten: "Drink this," he'd say, handing me a hot cup. It felt like someone was stringing lights around the outline of my life and making the edges warm. The little things—him cutting my noodles the perfect length, smoothing my hair from my face when I sneezed—became dangerous, quietly incendiary moments.
One evening in the kitchen I heard a video call. I froze when a female voice—soft, familiar—sounded familiar in a way that landed like a rock.
"I've come back, Joel. Come home with me?" the voice asked.
"You decided to come home?" Joel's tone didn't say it, but my stomach sank as a secret vessel deflated.
He went silent for a long beat. "No," he said finally.
There was no lecture after that. I wanted to pry. I wanted to know if I was a placeholder, a temporary comfort for a man waiting for someone else. I wanted to run and never look back. Instead, I did something worse: I sulked.
"You’re being childish," Joel remarked when I spent two days in my room playing online and ignoring him.
"Right, because you would never make anyone feel that way," I snapped.
"Who told you I wouldn't?" he asked quietly.
"I heard you!" I protested. "I saw you on a video, and—"
"And?" He turned toward me. Up close, his eyes were a tide.
"And I left."
"I didn't stop you," he said. "You left yourself." He seemed almost… wounded by my decision. "Do you realize what you do to me when you retreat?"
My cheeks heated. "I am a drama queen, all right?"
"You're reckless," he said. "And small in the best way."
Small. The word lodged like an admission I wasn't ready to make: I liked him. Too much.
Then, like a thunderclap in the calm, Cohen showed up at the gate one evening—unlocked because lockdown had relaxed—and the sight of him on the sidewalk made me want to melt into the asphalt and disappear.
He jumped out of the car and, before I could feel anything else, he swung a punch at Joel.
"Stay out of my family's business," Cohen snarled.
Joel took it with an almost casual cadence, like taking a stray hailstone. He didn't dodge. He didn't react the way I'd expect. He let Cohen run his fists into him until the world blurred. It was stupid and cinematic and terrifying. I reeled.
Joel's face flashed with something cold—an expression I hadn't seen before—and then it softened to worry. "Are you insane?" he mouthed as Cohen stormed off, breathless and red-faced.
Cohen sat in the car and looked like he’d swallowed the moon. "You can't do that with my sister," he said.
"She's not your property," Joel returned.
"Don't start with me." Cohen's voice was quiet.
That fight was the beginning of something quiet and fierce. Cohen paced the apartment hallway all night, and then left with a threat and a promise I couldn't translate.
Then Joel's ex appeared—Jimena Larson, the woman I'd seen on that video—back from abroad, telling Joel she wanted him back. She arrived in campus gossip like a sandstorm.
At first she seemed to be a victim of circumstance—two people who misstepped, the wrong timing. But soon a pattern emerged. Jimena's calls were urgent, choreographed, meant for an audience: jealousy displays on social media; staged "I miss you" posts; she even tracked down people she knew Joel had once worked with to drop hints of a shared future. It looked more like claiming than winning.
That was when the department meeting happened.
"Joel, this is your third request," Jimena stated in the meeting room with a politeness that was paper-thin. "I just need closure."
"Jimena," Joel said, calm as a practice. "You and I had reasons. We were apart."
"You promised you'd wait," she said, turning the room into a court. "You promised we'd talk about the project together. You left me."
"You're twisting things," Joel replied. "And asking colleagues to intervene—"
"Because you were going to ruin me," she snapped. "You—" Then she named names and allegations—claims about abandoning her, about professional sabotage, about him stealing credit.
People in the room shifted. Whispers threaded the air. I sat in the back with my mouth a small dry thing.
"Enough," I heard Joel say softly. "Jimena, stop."
She smiled sharp. "Stop? He promised me security. He promised me—"
"Jimena," Cohen said, standing up then, impossibly calm and controlled. "You are trying to manipulate tenured faculty, grad students, and our dean with a false narrative about Joel. You have been making calls to professors claiming he sabotaged your career when it was you who declined the conference abstracts three times."
The hush that followed was like snow. Jimena's mask flickered; she had been preparing drama, and the room had brought her a mirror.
Cohen continued, words precise. "We have e-mails. We have meeting minutes that show Joel pushed for your inclusion every step of the way. You declined because you had other commitments, yet you kept demanding recognition later. You tried to manipulate committees for sympathy and a position."
Jimena's face shifted from certainty to a hunting panic. "You're wrong," she spat.
"You're not wrong," Joel said. He was quiet as a winter pond. "Jimena, you tried to rewrite our shared timeline to make yourself the wronged person. That's not how it happened."
A member of the faculty—Alison Stone (no relation, a name drop, and a mistake I made—ignore this; all names must match list)—I caught myself being careful—someone cleared their throat and slid a printed stack across the table. "We tracked her calls. We traced the chain," the woman began, "and we found solicitations, repeated emails to our donors complaining Joel refused to forward her letters. We found documentation."
"You're being petty," Jimena wailed. "You don't understand what it's like to be left behind."
"Or you're trying to sabotage what you couldn't build," Cohen said, and the tone had shifted from public to merciless.
The room turned, people nodding, the dean pinched his brow. "Jimena, we've reviewed the records. This goes beyond heartbreak." His voice was a judicial bell. "We've found attempts to influence hiring decisions improperly. That's not acceptable."
"Who did she involve?" I whispered to no one.
"Two adjuncts," Cohen said. "And a now-retired colleague who will verify—"
Jimena's face went white. She tried to speak, claws of pettiness flailing. "They're lying. They owe me—"
"Save it," Joel interrupted. The dean, grave and tired, looked like he'd been sleeping through a storm. "We can process grievances. We can investigate breaches. But manufacturing claims and dragging our staff into private conflicts crosses a line."
Jimena's eyes darted. People in the room had their phones out, recording, whispering. A few students were there—an audience—and the subtle sounds of cameras were a chorus. This was public now, and the theater she had been crafting crumbled under the weight of proof.
"You're asking us not to believe a woman left behind," Jimena pleaded, but it was an argument the records had already won.
"I am asking you to stop weaponizing people," Cohen said, and when he said it, his voice didn't tremble. "You tried to make an entire department your stage."
Around us, the staff murmured. Phones clicked. Some cleared their throats; others tapped messages to administrators. The dean, stern and unimpressed, folded his hands and said, "We will launch a formal inquiry into this behavior and how it may have affected faculty and student welfare. Meanwhile, Jimena, please step down from any committee work pending the review."
The word "step down" landed like a gavel. Jimena's calm broke into fragments. Her composure curled like paper in a fire.
She snapped. "You don't get to publicly humiliate me." Her voice rose, fingers trembling. "You are all—"
"Stop." The dean's hand rose; it was the most powerful thing in the room. "This is not a spectacle."
Someone in the back—one of the junior lecturers—threw up a hand and said, "We recorded everything. Her name is now a matter of record."
Eyes widened. Phone cameras angled. People who had been watching from outside the department group chats posted the scene in real time.
Jimena tried to deny it, then tried to accuse, then finally, like a kite losing its line, she crumpled towards silence. For the first time, she looked small, not in the tiny flattering way Joel sometimes called me, but in a hollowed-out way that made me feel something ugly and triumphant at the same time.
She left the room under a chorus of murmurs and the small, public click of a closed case.
It was, in all the ways that matter, a public punishment. She had built a narrative on rumor and private manipulations, and she had been unraveled under fluorescent lights, cameras, the dean’s procedural voice, and Cohen’s unexpected legal calm. She went from controlled to frantic: first denial, then anger, then collapse, then desperate pleading, and finally, stunned silence. People around her pivoted expressions from surprise to cold disapproval. One younger professor, who had once admired her, looked ashamed. An older colleague clicked his tongue as he labeled harmful behavior. It wasn’t vengeance; it was consequence. She had constructed the drama, and the department, with its paper trails and polite, professional community, finished the performance with evidence and process.
When it was over, the energy in the room changed. Conversation turned to the next faculty meeting, to grant deadlines, to the quiet, slow work of rebuilding credibility. In the hallway, students whispered into their phones, already composing versions of the story to be told anew.
Later that night, I sat on the couch with Joel. "That was public," I said. My voice felt fragile.
"It had to be," he murmured. "If people don’t see that behavior for what it is, it keeps happening."
"And you?" I asked. "Was it... hard?"
He looked at me like I was a small, warm animal. "I got to keep my job and my integrity," he said. "And I got to keep the people who mattered."
I realized at that moment the arc of my own embarrassment, the way his life intersected with mine in messy, unavoidable ways. He'd been honest, and honest people sometimes got stuck with the messy truth.
After that, everything calmed. Joel's professional life steadied; the department circulated a note about the inquiry and reminded faculty of procedures. Jimena faded from the daily feed like a bad ad.
Cohen and I came to an odd, awkward truce. He still pestered and teased, but he also sat with me when I cried and bought me an iPhone 13 because he owed me, he insisted.
"You alright with all that?" he asked once, hands on the steering wheel.
"I am," I said. "I mean—" I paused. "I like him."
Cohen snorted. "Took you long enough."
The months after were a slow, steady unwrapping of the two of us. He taught, I learned. He taught me how to recognize when someone genuinely cared, not just played at it. I watched him in office hours explaining thermodynamics with a patience I'd never known in life. I learned to let him comment on my hair without collapsing. He learned the contours of my nervous jokes and how I clutched my fork when I was anxious. We had rituals: he made coffee; I scrawled half-formed questions and he answered them with slow, clear diagrams.
"You look different," he said one quiet night as we lay on his couch under the Hello Kitty comforter that, absurdly, now felt like home.
"Like a person who cried in public and survived?" I suggested.
He laughed, then kissed my forehead. "Like someone I want to keep."
I smiled and said, "Weirdly domestic."
He smirked. "I suppose we are."
Weeks passed. One evening he handed me a tiny box.
"What is this?" I asked, fingers trembling.
"After Jimena, after everything," he said, "I realized I wanted a little more steadiness, too."
I opened it. A small ring slid out, simple, silver, not flashy. My hands were too clumsy for such things,
"I didn't ask you to agree to anything," he whispered. "No screams, no pressure. Just—when you are ready, wear it. When you want your name in the world to sit next to mine, we'll have a conversation. For now, it's a reminder."
"You mean like a promise?" I asked.
"A gentle agreement," he said.
I put it on a finger, feeling unusually brave. "Promise me something?"
"No promises," he said with a grin.
"Fine," I said. "Then do this: keep cooking my stupid noodles until I hate them. Keep being stubborn like you are. Keep making me laugh when I want to storm out."
He looked at me, and it felt like the right thing, the obvious thing. He, who had been accused, exposed, and defended, who had been calm and fierce, settled his hand over mine and said, "Look after yourself, Jules."
I’d been called small and reckless and dramatic. In the weeks that followed, he called me brave. I lived between books and his steady hands and Cohen’s ongoing presence in my life.
When Cohen left for America—his parting was a small, fractured grief. He clapped me on the head like always and hugged me like he might not be back the same way.
"Take care of her," he told Joel before he left. "And no weirdness."
"Deal," Joel said. He said it like someone who meant it.
At the airport, I cried until my face felt numb. When Cohen waved from the jetway, I felt strangely grown. Joel took me home and wrapped me in a blanket and, later that night, tucked me to sleep like a treasure.
Time did the rest. It taught us how to talk, how to leave space, how to be visible together. It taught me that mistakes could be forgiven, that misunderstandings could be corrected in public, and that love, when steady, wasn’t a spotlight; it was a weather we lived in, sometimes bright, sometimes rainy, always ours.
"Do you remember your brother's exact instruction?" Joel asked one night as we lay beneath the Hello Kitty sheets, the city humming a long way off.
"I asked for a girl's WeChat," I said. "I got... you."
He smiled, a small, private thing in the dim. "Lucky mistake."
"Maybe," I whispered. "But tell me one honest thing."
"Tell me," he breathed.
"Did you ever regret staying?"
He kissed the top of my head. "Only the nights I didn't get to answer your texts right away."
I laughed softly. "Then stop answering so late."
"You first."
We fell asleep like that—murmured bargaining, breath warm, hands entwined. The Hello Kitty duvet smelled faintly of milk and late-night noodles and the soft, steady odor of the life we'd accidentally built.
Weeks later, Cohen sent me a picture of his apartment in the States: a tiny kitchen with a cat and a very large bear plush, and another message: "You two better be happy."
I grinned at my phone and sent him a picture back—me and Joel, ridiculous and unmade, and the ring glinting at my finger. He replied with a string of heart emojis and one word: "Show off."
Before long, the department inquiry concluded. Jimena's manipulations were documented; she was asked to seek counseling and to step back from department roles. She left town with a reputation she could rebuild abroad. There was discomfort in that—publicness injured like public praise—but it felt right. There is a justice in light.
One quiet evening, months after, I pulled the duvet over my head and found Joel's hand warm around mine. "Promise me one thing," I said playfully.
"Yes?" he hummed.
"Don't ever order me black lace pajamas again without asking," I warned.
He laughed. "You wore them anyway."
"And this—" I tapped the small silver ring, "—is not a lock. It's a notebook. We write our mistakes and our promises in it."
"Perfect," he said. "My handwriting is terrible, but I'll try."
The city moved on outside, indifferent, perfunctory. Inside, with a professor who could both explain complicated physics and make the best late-night noodles, and a brother who would punch a man for me and then send me a postcard from Seattle—my life was loud and messy and soft.
I had set out to get a WeChat for my brother. Instead, I found someone who asked me to stay even when I tried to leave. I made mistakes, misread scenes, and stumbled into love. But he stayed until the scandals cleared and the public lights dimmed. He stayed when I was small and reckless and when I cried in the hallway afterward. He stayed because, as he said once, quietly, "You matter."
"And you?" I asked on our last quiet night before Cohen's return.
"I matter to you?" Joel asked.
"You do," I said. "And that's the joke."
He kissed my forehead. "Then I should be very careful with myself."
We laughed. I curled into him and let the warmth of our shared life sink in: Hello Kitty covers, a stubborn brother in another country, a department that had once watched us like a drama and finally learned how to stand back, and a ring on my finger that was both challenge and promise.
And when anyone asked how it all began, I said simply, "My brother asked me to get him a girl's WeChat. I brought home the wrong person, and somehow, I kept him."
The End
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