Sweet Romance13 min read
How I Slapped a Liar and Got Into My Dream School
ButterPicks12 views
I still remember the exact click of the mailbox flap the day the acceptance letter arrived: a pale envelope with a university seal I had always wanted. I held it like a small sun, heat trembling between my fingers. Then I looked up and saw Matthew Harrison leaning against our Maybach—my family's Maybach—holding a girl I recognized from our driveway. She was wearing one of my jackets.
"I can explain," Matthew said before I could speak.
"Explain?" I said. "Is that what this is? Explain how you made that jacket belong to her?"
He smiled like a shark. "Elora, be honest. You and I both knew we would go our separate ways. Besides, she—her family—has a nicer car than yours."
I laughed. The laugh came out thin. "Dwight Sousa, this car's dirty. Maybe you should sell it."
The driver—Dwight Sousa—shifted in his seat and looked mortified. The girl on his arm, Estrella Pinto, fluttered her lashes at Matthew as if they owned the whole parking lot.
"Elora," Matthew said, and his voice was calm, practiced. "We can't do long distance. We should break up. You don't belong in my future."
I opened the envelope again. The acceptance letter folded into my knuckles felt absurd and weightless. Then something sharp and impossible slid through me—like a line had been cut and rejoined. I blinked, and the cafeteria noise pulsed twice. Suddenly I was back in the examination hall, the ink of the last question still drying on the page in front of me.
It happened so fast I thought I had fainted. But I didn't faint. I smiled inside, a small, private victory. Second chances don't come with a manual, but I had one: memory. The last lifetime—call it a season of mistakes—played like a cheap movie. I'd loved the wrong boy, trusted the wrong driver, and missed my best work because I was busy being in love.
"This time," I told myself, "I won't be blind."
The days after the rewind were practiced like a theater rehearsal. I took better care of my study time, ignored Matthew's sudden attention, and watched people in slow motion as if I were learning their lines.
Then came the phone repair.
I'd been photographing Matthew and Estrella for nearly a week—restaurants, the Maybach, matching shoes, little handholds. I knew where they went because I could track the signs: the same café napkins, the way Estrella always smoothed her hair when Matthew looked at her. When she stepped out of the car with a too-small dress and a lipstick I recognized, I snapped photos like an archaeologist collecting fragments. I wasn't proud; I was deliberate.
At the hotel door I watched them walk in together and took the picture for my private archive. A moment later I tripped—someone had bumped into me—and my phone slid and broke. The boy who apologized, twice apologizing for the broken screen and the cracks, was Ethan Morrison.
"Sorry, I'm clumsy," Ethan said, red at the ears. "Let me take you to a repair shop. It's my fault."
"No, it's fine." I tried to be brusque, but when he fished his wallet out to bribe the shopkeeper, his hands were honest and quick. He argued like a gentleman with a tired shop owner and then paid. He gave me his contact after fixing the screen.
"I'll be responsible," he said, eyes earnest. "If anything else happens, call me. My name's Ethan."
I added him on impulse. Maybe because the world had been rearranged by the luck of a rewind. Maybe because his whole face looked like someone who kept small promises.
What followed was small mercies and soft details. When I was cold, Ethan offered his jacket without thinking. "Take it," he said. "You can have it back when your cheeks stop glowing."
"You're very forward for a stranger," I teased.
"Not a stranger anymore," he answered. He had a laugh that sounded like a warm room: easy, steady. Later, when my phone was buzzing with messages from Matthew—messages heavy with apology and thin with guilt—Ethan would text, "Are you sure you want to keep responding?" He wasn't trying to be my hero publicly; he was trying to be quietly useful.
Matthew, of course, continued to be a performance. He flirted with drama like it was an art. He posted vague messages to make me jealous. He leaned on Dwight like Dwight was a ladder to climb.
"He told me you were unfaithful," one of my classmates wrote, feeding the rumor. "He says you cheated on him in tenth grade."
"Is that true?" another asked, and ten people chimed in with recycled gossip.
"He's lying," I told my mother, but my stomach twisted. I had already decided to collect every fact, every picture. If the truth was a sword, I'd polish it.
It was pride—not entirely pretty—when I marched into the driveway and found Dwight Sousa switching on the Maybach with a face so nervous it was almost comical. I asked him, with a sweetness that felt like ice: "Have you moved into my room lately? Does Estrella visit often?"
Dwight's excuses came like small, clumsy animals. "My wife is sick," he said. "I needed to visit. I brought something...for her." He squirmed.
"Bring her what?" I asked, opening a little lipstick I found on the floor. It matched Estrella's lip color.
"It must've fallen," he stammered.
"Maybe," I said. "Or maybe it's just what you give your daughter for dressing in my clothes."
That last sentence landed like a chair being pulled away. Dwight gaped. Sweat popped on his forehead. My parents were away on business and could not intervene, which made the moment all mine.
"I'll go with you to the clinic," I said suddenly. "I'll bring fruit." I turned to walk out the door and didn't stop.
At the clinic, Dwight tried to plead and look contrite. I stayed impassive. Then I told him what he already knew: "You're fired."
He went from denial to bargaining in thirty seconds, and the crowd that had gathered on the sidewalk—neighbors, a deliveryman, a neighbor's teen—began to gossip. I called Preston Larson, my family's assistant, and told him to come. He arrived in a suit and an alarmed expression.
"This is very serious, Miss Elora," Preston said quietly.
"It is," I replied. "It's theft. It's betrayal. It's simple."
We sorted the evidence: timestamps, photos, the lipstick, credit card receipts from boutiques. Preston checked the inventory—an absurd amount of branded items—found direct matches to the clothes on Estrella. The value made the shopkeeper's eyes widen.
"I didn't—" Dwight began.
"Just go," I said. "And tell your daughter I didn't steal her from anyone. I asked her to return what's not hers. Tell her there's one week to make it right."
He left shaking. I felt the weight of moral victory and the sourness of it at once.
The supernova public punishment, though, was yet to come.
I planned the exposure carefully. A weekday afternoon, the school campus group chat was buzzing with end-of-year stress—perfect time. I prepared an archive: hotel pictures, matching receipts, screenshots of Matthew's messages bragging about "better prospects," and a narrative voice memo where he had said, "You deserve better; she has more connections." I added the video from Dwight's car camera that showed him carrying a box from my room into his trunk. I knew the school's group was big enough to make noise. I knew my classmates loved a public reveal.
When I posted, I didn't do it quietly. I wrote a long caption, framed like this: this is what betrayal looks like; here's photographic proof. I played the voice memo at the right volume. Within minutes, the chat group swelled to hundreds.
I went further. I went to the town square where Matthew liked to gloat. I stood in front of the café where he used to meet me and made the campus group post public. People gathered—students, parents, a woman with a stroller. Someone began live-streaming; within minutes, the square was full of glowing phones.
Estrella arrived on Dwight's arm, starched and outraged. She had been oblivious to the fact that she was walking into a stadium.
"How dare you!" she shouted, voice designed for TV. "Stop harassing my family!"
"This," I said, holding up my phone so the screen faced the crowd, "is the video of your father bringing my clothes out of my room. These are the receipts for the boutiques where you bought those dresses. These are pictures of you wearing them."
She laughed at first; the laugh turned thin and then broke like glass. Matthew stood behind her, eyes going from smug to confused to fearful in less than ten heartbeats.
"You're lying," Matthew said, voice high. "You're making a scene."
I kept my voice soft. "I'm showing facts."
"You can't do this," Estrella said, rage sharpening her tone. "You—"
Someone from the crowd shouted, "Return her things!"
The live stream picked up a murmur. A mother in the crowd crossed her arms and said, "Shame on you, girl."
"You're going to apologize," I told Estrella. "Or you'll be made to return everything publicly."
She scoffed, but the crowd was shifting. Faces that had enjoyed her blond hair and Matthew's charm were starting to tilt away.
She swore, and then something snapped. She started to cry, performative at first—sobs that were meant to look wounded. When I didn't fold, though, her face changed. The real panic began: her eyes blinked faster, her mouth opened in denial, and then, as more photos slipped from my phone into the live feed, she went through several stages.
First: Denial. "They're not mine!" she yelled. "He lied! He—"
Then: Shock, when the boutique clerk recognized an item and called out its serial number. "That's ours," she called from the crowd. "Order number matches what the video shows."
Estrella's voice faltered. The crowd drew closer; people recorded, then shouted accusations. Then: Anger—at me, at her father, at the world that had suddenly emptied of allies. She shouted that it was a setup. Matthew, trying to spearhead an alternate story, shouted that I was fabricating everything.
"Stop!" a parent yelled. "Nobody wants to see this. That's theft."
Her face drained. Then, the dramatic fall: she dropped to her knees, hands pressed to her mouth, breath ragged. I felt a moment of something—mercy? No. Not mercy. Relief. Finally, the public verdict had been issued not by me, but by truth and collective attention.
"Estrella," I said quietly, "get up and face what you did. Return what you stole or we call the police."
She looked at Dwight—who was now a drunken mess of guilt—and he finally crumpled. "Miss Elora, please," he sobbed. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have—"
The crowd shifted from shocked to vindictive to vindication. Someone started to clap, oddly, a slow appreciative sound for the spectacle's climax. Phones clicked like distant insects. People whispered; one man said, "Finally, some justice."
Estrella's reaction was the rawest. At first she tried to spin the story: parents, manipulation, money. She cried for sympathy. Then, when Preston read out store receipts that matched the time stamps on the lobby camera, her bravado collapsed. Her chin trembled. She looked from person to person, searching for help, for a way out, but the square reflected only the harsh light of the evidence.
She surged through the last stages—blaming others, bargaining, a sudden plea. "I'll give it back," she begged, voice high. "I will pay. Please don't ruin my dad. I didn't mean to—"
"Too late," someone muttered.
When the police arrived, after a neighbor had called, the officers asked for a calm statement. Estrella tried to collect herself, but every sentence she spoke was interrupted by another photo, another timestamp, another witness. The public's mood had changed like weather: from curiosity to anger to righteous applause. The man who had earlier complimented Estrella's dress now shook his head and wished aloud that "kids like that learned some decency." Someone recorded the sobbing girl's face and uploaded it—no one in the crowd stopped them.
In the chaos, Matthew's expression went through its own arc. At first he looked like a director pleased with his cast's reaction. Then, as the recording spread and his own messages were pulled up—messages where he laughed about "finding someone better"—he grew pale. Denial. "That's not what I said," he tried.
But the messages were raw and unedited. His smugness drained. He pleaded with the crowd. "Wait—Elora, stop. This is private. We were—"
The crowd hummed, a thousand small verdicts. One woman hissed, "You used her, you imbecile." Another man chimed in with, "And now you try to act shocked?"
Finally, Matthew lost control. He lunged at my phone as if to rip the evidence away, but a dozen hands pressed between us and multiplied the outrage. Security moved him back. The sequence of emotions wrung across his face—arrogance, disbelief, anger, then a cracking desperation—was ugly and telltale. He tried to bargain, to make a scene of repentance, to appeal to sentiments he had never felt. "I'll make it up to you!" he cried, voice breaking.
"No," I said. "You won't."
He went from begging to pleading to a small-hearted collapse. The crowd watched him shrink. Someone in the back whispered, "Wasn't he going to partner with my father's company?" The whisper spread like damp.
A teacher from my high school, who had come to watch the commotion, crossed his arms. "You took advantage of her kindness," he said, loud enough to be heard. "You owe more than apologies."
Kids whistled. A few people started to chant for the shopkeeper to press charges—but the spectacle itself had been a punishment: being stripped of coolness, being handed over to public scorn. I felt no glee in noticing how Matthew's followers drifted away; I felt only a quiet closure. I had rehearsed this in my head; real life had exceeded my small dreams.
When it was all said and done, Estrella's father was forced to sign paperwork that included restitution. Preston arranged for the clothes to be returned or paid for. Dwight Sousa, trembling and broken, begged for forgiveness, and while I listened, I felt a complicated tide: he had been loyal in other ways, but loyalty didn't excuse theft.
Matthew's final state—face streaked by tears, voice raw, a man who had traded honor for convenience—was the last image I wanted burned into him. He stood in a ring of phone cameras and people who once admired him. He tugged at his shirt as if to rearrange himself back into dignity, but dignity cannot be re-buttoned after you've mocked someone. Someone in the crowd called him a "coward." It stuck.
After the square emptied, Preston gave me a cup of tea and said, "You were brave." He didn't mean the pushing or the posting. He meant I had collected truth and presented it.
"It doesn't make me feel better the way I'd thought," I admitted.
"That's okay," he said. "You did the right thing."
The buzz in the school group was deafening. My plan expanded: I opened a larger chat—the entire school—and posted everything. The reaction was a tidal wave. People who had known Matthew's pattern came forward. Messages of support poured in like a soft rain. I felt one of those tender things I've been told about: vindication that is not cruelty.
But the story didn't end at public judgment. Life rearranged itself in quieter arcs.
Ethan became more than a repair-guy. He sat with me while lawyers called, he helped me coordinate the return, and he never once demanded a trophy. He kept showing up in small ways—bringing an umbrella, reminding me to eat, carrying a heavy box without being asked. Once, when I was flustered, he said in a soft voice, "You did all the brave things. I just want to be on your side."
That night, on the edge of campus, he slid his jacket onto my shoulders without ceremony. "You need it more than I do," he said.
"Why are you being so nice?" I asked, thumb worrying the sleeve.
"Because," he said slowly, "someone should notice you when you do the hard thing. I don't want to be the kind of person who only shows up for the applause."
It was one of those small moments that felt like a heartbeat widened: he was not a props man. He had his own life—graduate classes, late lab nights—but he deliberately chose to be present.
There were other heartbeats: when he defended me in a student council meeting without raising his voice; when he walked me to the library and insisted on reading with me even if he had research to do; and the day he left a paper crane on my desk in the lab with a note that read: "For the girl who shocked a crowd into honesty."
Those were the soft scenes: a hand on my back when the lawyers spoke, a thumb tucked into my hair band while we walked, a small squeeze that said, "I am here." For someone who had rewound time once, these were proof that fate had a second layer: not just a chance, but the company you kept after you used it.
At graduation, Ethan stood in the crowd—choosing not to be ostentatious—and when the dean called my name my heart sped as if every small choice earlier had been a step on a long staircase.
"Elora Castro," the dean said, and the applause was ordinary, but my world was not. Matthew's name was not among the callers. His family’s partnership offers had been quietly withdrawn by my father's firm after the public scandal. They would recover in some way—life tended to do that—but it would not be as if nothing happened.
After the ceremony, as sunlight showered onto an old stone quad, Ethan took my hand and said, "You wanted to change the ending. You did."
I looked at him—the quiet, steady man who had first apologized for my cracked phone. "You stood with me. Did you ever think of leaving when this got messy?"
He smiled, sheepish. "I thought of leaving when I saw a knife. Not because it was messy. Because you deserved someone who would not run."
"That's oddly romantic for a lab student," I teased.
"Maybe I wrote a thesis on loyalty," he said, eyes warm.
"Good to know." I squeezed his hand.
Before we left, I sent one last message to a group of high school friends: photos of the public scene, yes, but also a short voice note. "I forgave myself before I forgave anyone," I said. "Not because they deserved it, but because I was done being small."
The voice note rippled through chat groups. People wrote back with kindness. Life went on: classes, friends, small fights about dishes in the dorm, late-night study sessions. Matthew's life dimmed in my memory like a bad dream.
Months later, downtown, I watched as Matthew stood in a court hearing—civil charges, restitution—and I felt something like pity and something like finality. He shouted at the judge; his voice echoed. He had once smiled and referred to me as a "step on the ladder." The public humiliation had started with me, but it continued in front of dozens—sardonic reporters, onlookers who had known him as a golden boy—and wound tight around him like rope.
Ethan, meanwhile, brought me into his messy apartment and cooked siu mai while he complained about a broken centrifuge. I thought about the morning I'd been given again and again: the small chance to act differently and choose differently. Standing there in the light of his kitchen, a bowl of hot noodles between us, I rested my head for a moment on his shoulder and felt the steady hum of the life we'd built.
"You said you'd make me try spicy noodles," I said.
"I do," he said, wrapping an arm around me. "And if you spit them out, you owe me a passport photo."
"Deal," I said, and laughed.
Later that night, I pulled my acceptance letter from a drawer and looked at it once, like one salutes an old friend. Rewinding gave me the tools, yes. But the real change was what I did after: choosing honesty over pretense, choosing people who could stay when the cameras turned, and learning that public justice is sometimes messy but sometimes necessary.
Ethan kissed my forehead like a benediction. "You were brave," he said again.
"And you were patient," I answered.
He kissed me quickly, then looked at me with a small, serious grin. "Can I keep being here? For the small things and the big ones?"
"You already are," I said. "So yes."
We walked back into the night, the city lights like soft confetti. Above us, somewhere between the loud square and the quiet lab, life continued to unfold. I had used a second chance to change my ending—then found someone to write the next chapter with me.
The End
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