Sweet Romance12 min read
How a Viral Quarrel Made Eben Mine
ButterPicks17 views
The night my phone doubled as a mirror and a scoreboard, I never planned to become anyone’s "quarrel queen." I had four thousand followers on a small platform and an appetite for blowing off steam. I had no idea a drunk upload and a shouted joke would change everything.
"I can't believe you posted that," Janessa said, and I could hear her laugh like she was trying not to cry.
"I didn't mean to," I said. "It was late. I was drunk. The clip was supposed to be private."
"You have ten thousand new followers, Evelynn. Ten thousand. Not ten, not a hundred. Ten thousand."
I smelled the cheap coffee in the kitchen and the faint lemon scent of the cheap phone case I kissed when the count finally loaded. My hands shook. I opened the video and watched myself on a cruise ship, arguing with four Korean and English-speaking women about manners like I was giving a speech. I remembered everything except for one small, stupid thing.
At 2:40 in, with my voice wobbling, I had shouted, "Husband!" to the handsome man at the next table—just to give myself a little courage.
And someone had taken that as a brand-new fact about me.
My phone buzzed with a private message, black avatar, deep voice.
"Did I hear I am your husband?" the message said.
I laughed and dragged my thumb to type something witty. Then I checked the sender's profile out of habit. The follower count matched one person I had watched religiously for months. Eben Coulter—tech creator, the voice that fell into your chest like a slow, good song.
My heart did a small flip I did not expect.
"You serious?" Janessa said. "Eben Coulter? The Eben Coulter?"
"He has a nickname," I said. "He is J—well, I mean, E. He has the deep voice. I listen to him to sleep."
"You listen to a grown man to sleep," Janessa laughed. "That's so soft for you."
"Shut up," I said. My mouth warmed. "He sounds like a cozy baritone that solves problems."
Eben sent a photo. It was the same man I had pointed at when I had screamed "Husband!"—white shirt, glasses, a jaw like sculpted stone. My explanation died in my throat.
"I am the man at the next table," he wrote. "You were brave."
My fingers hovered. "You were sitting there," I typed. "Why didn't you help?"
"I was afraid it would slow your rhythm," Eben replied. "You were fighting in four languages. It would have ruined the tempo."
"What?" I laughed, then my cheeks went hot.
"Also," he added, "you're cute when you get nervous."
I touched the screen and almost dropped my phone. I told myself I would be dignified. I told myself not to melt over a message. But two hours later, when his avatar blinked and the private chat became a promise—"Let's meet"—I felt something like permission to be less dignified.
We met in a cafe downtown. I dressed like a woman who taught physics and liked the smell of old books—something to lean into my "I have depth" act. Janessa told me to be cool. "Don't be loud, Evelynn. Don't be dramatic."
"You are thrillingly bossy," I said to Janessa as we went in.
We sat across from each other, and he was even more precise and stiller in person. His voice was the thing everyone online loved—low, calm, the sort of sound that makes tea taste better. He said, "Hello, Evelynn. I am Eben."
"Hi," I said. I was suddenly small. I said, "You watched me fight." It sounded like a test.
"I watched the whole thing," he said. "You were brave."
"You talk like I'm a cause," I said, defensive. "I just don't like rudeness."
He tilted his head. "That's what makes you different." Then he smiled. It was small. It was quick. "And brave."
That smile broke something warm and dry inside me. "You smiled," I said, because when a man who doesn't smile much smiles at you, you remember it forever.
He laughed once, low as a cello. "I do smile." He took off his jacket and draped it over my shoulders the minute I shivered. "It's cold," he said.
"Thank you," I told him. The jacket smelled faintly of mint and a machine-shop soap—clean and faint. I buried my hands inside the sleeves and felt at home instantly. That was one of the first moments: his jacket, his smile, someone noticing me properly.
We talked for hours about tech ideas and bad perfume and the oddities of being someone people expected more from. He knew physics enough to follow me, and he had the kind of patience that turns boring explanations into a shared joke. He did not treat me like a viral clip. He listened like I had content worth saving.
"Why do you speak four languages?" he asked.
"I use them when I argue," I said. "It helps me win."
"Then you must be very smart," Eben said. "Smart people are not often loud."
"Who told you that?" I asked.
"Everyone," he said. "Except you."
He was different from the online Eben who posted inventions and softly narrated the sound of bearings. In person, he was human-sized and present, and sometimes that presence felt like his own kind of invention.
At my apartment later, after he walked me to the door, he hesitated and then reached to smooth a corner of my hair. "You cried about your parents," he said softly.
I stared. "You remember that?"
"You said it in a late-night stream once," he said. "I couldn't sleep and I listened. You found their fight unbearable. You said you'd protect anyone you loved by yelling."
I had told half the internet that, I thought, but hearing him say it as if he'd been awake for me felt like a small miracle. "Maybe I wanted to be loud because I thought they needed me," I said.
"Maybe," he said. "Or maybe you are louder for the right reasons."
His hands were steady when he touched my cheek. "Do you want to go on a date?" he asked. "Not the kind you stage, a real date."
"Yes," I said. It was a breath, an agreement that slid easily into place.
Our story did not happen in neat stages. It unfolded as a series of small, ridiculous events stitched together by quiet minutes. We were "husband" and "wife" online before we decided what that meant in the sun. He appeared in my life at odd hours—at the perfume counter when my card was missing, at the swimming meet when I had gone to support a student, even in the dark when he appeared with a spare pair of shoes because I had forgotten mine. He showed up, and with him came the relief of a hand that steadied me.
"Why do you keep coming?" I asked once as we walked through campus.
"Because," he said, and he smiled that small smile again, "I like standing next to you."
People started making videos and edits. "Quarrel Girl and Eben Coulter" trended for reasons I couldn't fully understand. Janessa squealed when my follower count jumped to fifty thousand.
"People will think you've been taken," she said. "Everyone will be writing wedding scenarios."
"Good," I said. "He can fend for himself online."
He strolled into my life as if he belonged and then waited patiently when the world accused him of being a player. Rumors were a thing he handled with the same cool as a broken prototype: meticulous and unmoved. I, meanwhile, had no training for romance, only for arguments. I was still the woman who could start a debate with a security guard and leave victorious.
We had small, private lessons. He taught me not to be ashamed of my loudness. I taught him the shortest possible way to change a lightbulb. He also coaxed me into accepting affection. "You're not just 'loud' always," he would say. "Sometimes you're fierce and sometimes you're tender, and you deserve both."
There were heart-stopping moments that I file away like postcards.
"You're the only person I tell things to before anyone else," he told me one rain-smell night. He took off his scarf and wrapped it around my shoulders. "I told you first because I trust you."
That sentence made my knees weak. "You told me first?" I repeated.
"Yes," he said. "You make sense."
Another time, in a cramped hallway as an event erupted into chaos—the usual torrent of cameras and gossip—I overheard someone gasp and say, "He's different with her." The stranger's whisper struck me like thunder. I looked at Eben. He had his hands full of my coat and a paper cup, but when he saw me he smiled and bent close like a lighthouse bending toward calm.
"Do you see that?" I asked him later. "They think you treat me differently."
He put his hand flat over mine. "I treat you the way you deserve," he said. His voice was very low. The warmth made my chest ache. That was the third saved moment—when someone else saw what I had felt all along.
We spent evenings learning each other's rhythms. I loved the scratch and rustle of his notebooks. He loved the rhythm in which I argued—fast and bright. He would hum under his breath while building things, and I would interrupt with big ideas. Sometimes the thing he built was not a gadget at all but a small ritual: when I called him "Eben," he would remove the corner of his glasses to look at me clearer; when I did something uncharacteristically gentle, he would smile like a secret had been handed to him.
Our warmth was not only between us. Once, at a university event, someone whispered that he wasn't friendly to anyone. Then he corrected the whisper, speaking up so clearly the whole room heard: "She is allowed to be loud. She is allowed to be right." The room went quiet. I heard someone murmur, "I've never seen him say that." People turned toward us, and I felt like I became public property in the kind of way that made me feel honored.
We kept finding each other in stupid small ways. One night, after a long day of lectures, I came home and found his glasses on my kitchen counter. There was a note: "My glasses need your face to be squared." He had also left a pair of clean pajamas folded by the bed with a cup of rice porridge. The porridge tasted like someone tried and failed and tried again—he had tried to cook for me. I thought that was the most generous thing anyone could do: to attempt what you know you might fail at, because the failure would be shared.
Of course, this story wasn't only about sugar. The internet has teeth. People called him a liar and me a user. Someone stitched together old videos to suggest a thousand things. A rumor about his character spread one bright morning and a tidal wave of hateful comments came for both of us. I felt the heat of it more than the coolness of his hand.
"You should deny it," Janessa said once. "You should make a proper statement."
"I could," I said, "but then his real voice will be gone. People forget what a person sounds like when they only read angry comments."
He didn't push me. He walked with me through the lies like he walked through a machine room—calm, sure. To anyone watching the live that day, it must have looked like a small battle. In the hall that afternoon, someone who had whispered his reputation now watched him stand there and tell the truth—simple, steady sentences to clear out nonsense. A small crowd formed and people started whispering appreciatively.
"What happened?" a woman asked. "Why is he being so patient?"
"Because he knows the truth," someone else said. People recorded the exchange with their phones, but the thing that mattered was not the recording. It was the way his voice made sense of my mess.
When people are cruel online, the best punishment is to be human in public. He gave them that. He sat with me in front of those screens and watched the numbers tick. I knew what pity looked like online; I knew which comments tried to make me smaller. He made me bigger by allowing me to breathe in his presence.
There were small jealousies. I asked why he would walk into a competition hall like he owned nothing. He shrugged. "I don't care about being known. I care about being here." He stayed for the student, for me, for the idea that someone small mattered.
We were not perfect. Once I stole his glasses in the middle of the night—stupid, childish. He let me laugh and slid his hand over mine like a benediction. The next day, when I returned them with a kiss that lasted a second, he said, "You're ridiculous and I like it." I rode on that compliment for a week.
Some parts got ugly. The rumor mill spun a sordid tale about a so-called other woman, and dozens of accounts gathered like vultures to watch him fall. But the real spectacle was when the truth, quiet and precise, arrived in public.
A woman—someone who had lied in a comment thread—tried to make a show at a university panel. She came with printed screenshots and gossip, certain of applause. "He hid everything," she said. "He misled people. He took advantage."
I expected that to be the end of it. Instead, every volunteer, every student, every colleague who had actually seen Eben stepped forward. I watched faces change from curiosity to fury to protectiveness. The woman’s smirk faded as one by one they corrected her story. A student who had benefited from Eben's mentorship stood up and said, "He helped me rebuild a motor after midnight last semester." A professor cleared his throat and said, "He presented his research publicly and honestly."
It was small, precise justice—public and clear. The liar stuttered. "But—" she started, then sputtered into silence as the people around her refused to be quiet. She left with a smallness in her step not unlike shame. I watched her go and I felt a fierce satisfaction that was kinder than revenge. That day, the crowd's reaction was not to mock but to reclaim what was true.
One of the best punishments for cruel gossip is to have the truth spoken in front of a room full of witnesses. Another is to have the liar's audience change its mind and choose better. It was not a dramatic arrest or public shaming. It was much better: genuine people standing together. Her face when she left—that tiny crumble, that surrender—was more satisfying than any shouted crowd scene.
We found our rhythm. He became a part of my daily life as if he had always belonged there: he came to deliver tea when my apartment smelled like burnt toast; he listened when I stayed up arguing with a stranger at midnight; he rubbed ointment on my hands when I burned them on a lab flame. He was ordinary and extraordinary. He messaged me during the day with sentence fragments that felt like kisses: "Found a bolt. Thought of you." "If you are loud, be proud." "Come back to the lab. I have an extra set of goggles."
There were fights too, as there should be. Once I accused him of fetching the attention he couldn't live without. He looked at me like I had hurt him and said, "I don't need attention. I need you." My throat closed. "I don't know how to be anything but loud," I told him, furious.
"You're allowed to be loud and fragile," he said. He stepped closer and gently took my face. "You deserve a voice. I just want to be the one who hears it first."
That was a moment where I learned to let him in fully. He did something small and brave then: he leaned his forehead on mine and stayed there while I sobbed about parents and noise and being someone who couldn't sit still. He didn't offer a lecture. He didn't try to fix me. He simply pressed his palm to the back of my head and breathed.
I learned to trust the way he built things outside of the world I knew: not only gadgets but also patterns and rituals. He would repair a broken camera, yes, but he would also sit in silence with me while I read papers aloud.
"Promise me one thing," I said once, not wanting to sound needy.
"What?" he asked.
"Promise you'll never tell me to be quieter," I said.
He looked at me, amused. "I'll tell you to be careful," he said. "But not quieter."
That answer felt like a vow.
We fell into a pattern of tiny gestures—three at least that I will never forget: the first time he smiled in front of people because of something I did; the day he took off his jacket and wrapped it around me on a cold bench; the moment his fingers brushed mine over a page and he held my hand like it was the solution to a long equation. Each of those moments felt monumental because he chose them and because they were private and public at the same time.
Weeks passed. The internet kept humming. Our followers speculated and made edits. Our friends clapped. Sometimes I worried about what all that attention would do to something quiet and fragile. But I also learned that the more public something true becomes, the harder it is to take it away.
"Will you be here for long?" I asked him one evening as we sat on the roof and watched a distant storm.
"For as long as you'll have me," he said.
"I don't know how to deserve that," I said.
"You don't have to deserve it," he said. "You just have to accept it."
So I did. I accepted him the way you accept a hand that reaches for you in a dense crowd. I accepted the fact that he would laugh at my bad porridge and still come back. I accepted that he would stay when the internet roasted us, and that he would say my name like a comfort.
On a clear day we walked back to the cruise ship where it had all begun—insane, I know—because I wanted to show him the stupid video that started everything. We sat on the railing and watched the ocean. "You were loud," he said, quoting me. "Perfectly loud."
"And you," I said, "watched from next door and became my husband."
He smiled, and then he made me laugh by stealing my glasses and putting them on like a comedian. "I've already told the internet I'm taken. They can keep the editing rights, but you're mine."
I told him something then that was not meant for cameras or comments or any of that noise. I told him I would be loud for the rest of my life and he could either listen or walk away. He kissed me properly that time—slow and sure—and the people on the deck clapped because I guess our story sounded good as a clip.
I think what made people root for us was that nothing about us was perfect. I was loud. He was steady. We were messy and sweet and ordinary in the ways that mattered. We were the kind of couple that lets the cameras roll and the dishes pile up and then sits down to make the worst porridge just to be together. We did not stage anything; we simply let our lives meet.
That viral quarrel that had been the whole universe for a night became, in the end, a small chapter. The real story was in the days after: the jacket he left on my shoulders, the time he sat through an entire panel to correct someone's false accusation, the way he hummed while soldering and asked if I wanted a cup of rice porridge.
I kept one last thing from those early days: his old gold-rimmed glasses, which I sometimes wore to feel like I had a piece of him when he was away. Mint still clung to them faintly, and the memory of his jacket lived at the back of my closet.
"Do you remember when you called me husband to scare off a rude woman?" he asked me once.
"Yes," I said, and I told him the truth: "I was scared. I wanted company."
"Good," he said. "Then we have to keep scaring away anything that tries to be cruel."
I agreed. We had survived being a trending rumor, slightly broken porridge, stolen spectacles, and loud fights. We did it by being stubborn together.
And if someone asked me now what my life was like after that viral night, I'd answer:
"I sleep better now because Eben hums like a slow machine at night. I still shout at injustice in two or three languages. He still borrows my hoodie and leaves his glasses on my kitchen table. When we pass that old cruise ship, we always stop and deadpan, 'Remember when we were married without a license?' and then he steals my glasses and I steal his heart all over again."
It is not a perfect ending because life doesn't do endings. It is a comfortable middle. It is the place where I learned being loud is not a flaw but a signal, and where someone understood my signal and chose to stand beneath it.
The End
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