Sweet Romance12 min read
I Dreamed of Him Beating My Ex — Then He Asked Me Out
ButterPicks10 views
I wake up gasping and someone is yelling in my head: "Punch him!"
"Yes! Hit him!" I shout into the darkness of my bedroom and then sit bolt upright.
"Imogen?" Larissa's voice comes from the bunk below.
"It's fine," I whisper, cheeks wet without me remembering crying.
"You're screaming again," she says, worried.
A week of the same dream had already hollowed me out: in sleep I watched my ex get his face rearranged, and every time the fists belonged to someone else—someone dark-haired and impossibly calm, who stood in the center of the ring like he owned the air. I always played the rabid fan, screaming until my voice broke. I never imagined the man delivering the blows would walk up to my dorm door the morning after the third dream and say, looking like he'd slept in an expensive storm, "Stop yelling in my sleep."
"Stop what?" I said, still half-asleep at nine a.m. on a Tuesday, and then realized he was not someone I knew from class. He smelled like winter and old books. He was Finch Vitale.
"Don't be dramatic," Finch said, actually rolling his eyes. "You do know you sound like an auctioneer at a boxing match."
"Excuse me?" I cursed my throat, which had turned traitor. "You can hear that in the hallway?"
He shrugged like he wasn't bothered. "It's not like I invited the noise, but now that I'm involved, I might as well make it useful. You want me to stop beating up your ex in real life? Give me a name."
"My ex?" I said. "You mean—"
"Yes. Give me a name or stop using public property for personal concerts," Finch said.
I swallowed. "Nicolas Butler."
Finch's mouth twitched. "Consider it done. Now stop screaming at three a.m. I'm trying to sleep too."
I should have been terrified. Instead I felt a ridiculous lightness—like a kite someone had finally untangled for me. The next day the campus forums exploded: "Finch Vitale beats Nicolas Butler? Is this a romantic revenge?" Someone posted a grainy video with the caption: "Finch goes full knight." Comments spewed like geysers.
"Did you do it?" Larissa demanded as if she were interrogating a war hero.
"I didn't do anything," I lied. "It was a dream."
"Dreams don't break faces." Stefanie said, chewing.
"Apparently some do," I muttered.
My phone buzzed. Finch: "X cold? Is that what they're saying about me?"
I froze. The rumors started to feel like a physical thing. "I didn't—" I started and then deleted the words. He messaged again: "Don't ignore me, Imogen. 'X cold' sounds unfair. Also 'X' is a weird placeholder."
I didn't reply. I bit into a chicken drumstick like some people bite revenge, and for once the taste was just food.
Nicolas Butler had been my boyfriend for three years. He’d been easy to fall for—handsome, polite, certain in a way that felt reassuring when I needed to pad silence into something meaningful. Then, one week ago, he announced, "I'm done," and walked off like someone in a drama who mistook me for a stage prop. The very next night he posted an open declaration of love to Giavanna Nilsson on the school's public board. Heart emojis. Fire emojis. Everyone watched.
"Of course he'd pick a dancer," Larissa said, cold and sharp. "So dramatic."
"She is a dancer," I said. "He didn't pick her because of talent. He picked her because she was new and shiny."
"Whatever," Greta said, rolling her eyes. "Look at the bright side. You have a dream vigilante."
I should have been angry then; I mostly felt like laughing and strangling both of them at once.
A few nights into this mess Finch knocked on my door, face all rumpled in a way that made me oddly protective. "You really shouldn't scream about private fights in public."
"I wasn't screaming! You were dreaming about my ex and—"
"I told you I didn't ask for this," Finch snapped. He was annoyed and adorable in equal parts. "But if you won't stop, at least offer to buy me dinner. I'm not getting paid for vigilante work."
So we went to a night market. "Tofu, tofu, tofu," I announced. "Make it a tofu feast. You owe me muscle time."
He looked at the table, then back at me. "If you keep saying 'tofu' that way, you sound like a cartoon."
We sat under orange lights and ate rows of tofu as if we could forget. Finch kept glancing at me like a man checking the wind before jumping. "Do you always make a habit of collecting messy lovers?" he asked finally.
"Do you always make a habit of collecting people who shout for you in their sleep?" I snapped.
He laughed. "Fair point."
Then, of course, Nicolas appeared at the drinks stall as if fate had scheduled an appearance. He looked at me like he believed apologies were currency he could spend when convenient. Giavanna Nilsson stood beside him, palms pale, smile gentle.
"Imogen," Nicolas said, voice even. "I—"
"Don't," I cut him off because my voice had reheated indignation like soup. "Don't make me feel bad for wanting a face that matches the words you used."
"You're overreacting," Nicolas said, and the world tilted. "You and I just..." He gestured like their relationship had been a scheduled show and he had moved to a better seat. "Can we talk?"
I didn't owe him a private conversation on a night market's public stage. "No," I said. "Not tonight."
Giavanna watched my face. Then she said, quietly, "I didn't know anything." Her voice wasn't the one I'd expected—cold, defensive. It was honest. "Someone messaged me saying they were him."
"I didn't," Nicolas said. "I was here. I—" He trailed off under Giavanna's curious gaze. She looked slightly stunned. "If that's true, you need to fix it, Nic."
This was the beginning of a chain. The next day Giavanna posted a screenshot that made the forum roar: a chat log, flirty and cruel, apparently from the account of Finch. Threads blossomed like weeds. Finch's name was pulled through rumor mills and carved into gossip walls. I watched it all, heart lurching away from me like a frightened animal. Finch texted me: "I didn't do that. I promise."
Then the flood of "You and Finch?" posts arrived. "You were always into the dramatic type," said one. "Plot twist: she likes him," said another. The gossip mutated and multiplied.
The truth was messier. Giavanna had been tricked by an account nearly identical to Finch's. The impostor was someone with access to private channels and time to weave lies. Finch gathered proof and we launched into detective mode like a bad procedural show. He was relentless. "He did this to girls across campus," Finch said as we scrolled through chat logs. "He created fake accounts to flirt, get tokens of trust, then vanish."
I learned later the impostor was a student council member with a smooth smile and a record of helpfulness. He had been good at appearing kind, and mean at distance. When Finch compiled the evidence—messages, IP traces, timestamps, and the coward's own admission under pressure—it read like a noose. The forum erupted. Students who had been victims stepped forward in flurries. The impostor panicked.
We didn't expect the school to organize an emergency assembly, but they did. They said they needed to "clarify student welfare issues" and the auditorium filled with the noise of gossip hitting a dozen walls at once. I clutched my friends' hands. Finch stood beside me like a black star, quiet and sharp.
The principal cleared his throat and began. "There are allegations of impersonation and emotional harassment on campus. We will not tolerate exploitation."
Giavanna stood up, suddenly the center of a hard, honest light. "I was tricked," she said. "This account pretended to be Finch Vitale. He asked me for pictures, sympathy, time—then disappeared. I felt used. I thought Finch would never do that."
Then one by one seven or eight girls stood. Their faces were different—some nervous, some steady. They read messages aloud. Finch handed his phone to the IT teacher. "This is a log," he said. "This is not my account. This is his."
Then they called the impostor up. He looked small in the spotlight. His face refused to be steady. The principal asked him to explain. He stammered. "I... I thought..." he started, and then hardened. "I didn't do anything that bad."
Giavanna, eyes blazing, interrupted. "You didn't do anything that bad? You used my loneliness for your game. You built trust to wreck people. You have to look at what you did." Her voice echoed off the auditorium's walls.
"What did you expect?" he replied, voice brittle. "It's not like I forced anyone to reply."
"You encouraged them!" someone shouted from the front row. "You made them give you pieces of themselves."
The principal's face went thunderous. "You are being asked to stand in front of your peers and accept responsibility," he said. "We will act according to our code."
They read the code. They read out accounts from the dozens of girls who had been hurt. The impostor kept trying to smirk, but cracks appeared. "I made mistakes," he muttered.
"You're going to learn how public 'mistakes' look like," Finch said softly beside me. "Watch."
And then the punishment began.
They took the impostor through every step. The student council revoked his positions. The school's social channels, usually a warm nest of campus pride, turned cold as evidence piled into the open. They held a formal retraction day where the impostor had to publicly log in and issue apologies to each victim. He had to stand in front of a crowd and read the messages he'd sent, line by line, without excuse. He tried to shift blame with a twitch of bravado, but each attempt was met with the dead weight of testimony—girls who had once whispered now spoke in a chorus. They spoke of late-night texts that tore at sleep, of promises made and broken like cheap decorations.
"Say it," a girl told him. "Say you used us."
He swallowed. "I was lonely," he said. "I wanted attention. I didn't think about the damage."
"No one deserves to be treated like a pastime," Giavanna said. "What you took from us is not attention. It's time and trust."
They required him to attend a restorative circle for three months in front of those he'd harmed. The school forced him to step down from the council and banned him from participating in any organizing work. The dean assigned him to write apology letters, to volunteer for campus counseling services under supervision, and to sit for an entire week in the counseling office, listening to survivors speak. The final stroke was the most public: during the week of the big spring fair, the administration held a campus-wide forum on online safety where the impostor—face pale and shaking—presented what he'd done, how he'd done it, and what it had felt like to watch the wreckage. Students recorded him, shared his confession, and the clips soaked into the internet like ink.
The crowd's reaction moved through a sequence I will never forget: confusion, disbelief, then anger, followed by a slow, satisfying shift to silence and finally quiet pity. The impostor's face collapsed in front of people who had once admired his easy smile. He tried to laugh at one point, a short sound like a bark strangled, but no one joined him. The group who had once whispered his praises now kept their distance, and he realized, slowly and painfully, his status had been stripped. He had to walk across campus like a man who had lost his shadow.
"It was public," I said later to my friends, still trembling. "I kept expecting him to... to snap."
"He did snap," Finch said. "He snapped his reputation on the stone and then tried to sweep up the pieces."
Giavanna found the courage to stand in the front row during the forum and say, "I hope this helps someone else. I hope it wakes people up." She looked exhausted and alive.
The impostor dropped out within a month. The school's sanctions were heavy—suspension, public apologies, mandatory counseling, and a formal record that would likely prevent him from representing the school again. When the news came, it felt like a small bell had rung, marking an end. It did not erase what had happened, but it showed that doing the right thing sometimes had an audience.
If the impostor's punishment was institutional and cold, my next public scene was personal and roaring.
Nicolas came back drunk one night to the dorm area, stumbling like a puppet with its strings cut. He wanted to "talk," which, in his version, meant pleading and performance. He found us at the dorm entrance: me, Finch, and six of Finch's friends—Colin Crosby, Julian Sims, Penn Blake—standing like a guardhouse.
"Imogen," Nicolas slurred. "Look, I'm sorry. It was messy. Giavanna's not who she—" His words blurred.
"You're drunk," I said. I didn't mean to be kind. "Save your reasons for somebody performing Shakespeare."
"I—" He reached for me. Finch's hand tightened on my shoulder like a promise. "Let me explain."
I will never forget the cafeteria after that. A rumor had already set like frosting. Nicolas walked in with a goofy bravado, thinking he was in a movie where the hero stumbles into redemption. He found instead an audience. A group of students who had watched him post the public feelings and then vanish turned their heads. He tried to approach me at the long table; the room hummed with interest. Someone started to film. Someone else whispered. He cleared his throat like a man about to read a speech but had only feeling, not logic.
"What do you want, Nicolas?" I said, loud enough for heads to swivel. "You broke three years like it was a ribbon. You traded us in the middle of a street. You put it on bulletin boards like an art piece—"
"She provoked me," he blurted. "She—"
"Liar," I said. It came out like a verdict. People leaned in. He flushed. "You made yourself into someone who can be forgiven on a timeline. Sorry doesn't cover it."
"Imogen—" He reached again; this time a dozen cameras flashed like tiny suns. "Please. I can—"
"Do you know what it felt like when you ignored me?" I asked. "Do you know how it felt to have someone talk about me like I was an accessory?"
"I did my best," he said, voice thin.
"Your best was to find a prettier, newer model," I said, and then something that had been building inside like pressure erupted. "I didn't need pretty words on a public column. I needed you to be present when my life wasn't performance. You couldn't even pretend."
The cafeteria stilled as if someone had pressed pause. Nicolas's face lost color like a window with the blinds drawn. Students began to murmur; some were sympathetic, some bored, some hungry for drama.
"You dumped me and then tried to rewrite history," Finch said, stepping forward. His voice was low and controlled. "You posted your new relationship like a victory and left without explanation. Now you come here drunk asking for pity. This isn't about us. It's about respect."
"Fine," Nicolas said, finally loud. "Fine. I messed up. I—"
"That's not the point," I interrupted. "You cheated on honesty. You were never honest. I sat with an image of what we were. It was a fantasy you let me keep because you liked the shape of it. That stops now." I stood up. My knees were shaking but I felt weightless.
People started clapping, but not in the usual way—this was not applause; this was collective acknowledgment. Someone shouted, "Say something real!" Another voice: "Tell him to own it!" The noise built like a chorus.
Nicolas's bravado broke. "Please," he begged, and for the first time his eyes were small and raw. "I can change. I'll tell everyone Giavanna—"
"Don't use her as a shield," I snapped. "You used people."
A girl behind him—someone I'd barely known but who had been watching—stood and spoke. "You used us all," she said. "We were your audience." Her voice made a line. People around us nodded. Her words landed like stones. He crumpled.
The dean arrived then because someone had texted him that things had escalated. He took Nicolas aside and said in a quiet but firm voice that there would be a mediation required, and if anyone had complaints they should submit them. The public element didn't stop there. Someone had uploaded the moment to the forum and the comments flowed: "Serves him right," "Good for you," "He deserved that." A few posts were kinder: "People make mistakes—" but the more common tone was the hall-of-mirrors kind of justice where guilty men shrank.
Nicolas tried to salvage himself with half-explanations and apologies, but the campus had already formed the new story: he had lost more than a girlfriend. He had lost an audience that had given him the benefit of the doubt. He had to face the small acts that expose a person—friends withdrawing, tutors canceling, the exchange of glances that felt like a thousand small doors closing. He began to lose the privilege of being believed.
The cafeteria scene was messy and public and felt like a scalpel. He later tried to send messages begging for forgiveness. Many were unread. One of his friends yelled at him for not behaving like a man; another simply blocked him. The rumor mill's verdict was merciless: he was no longer the safe boy who handed out snacks and notes. He'd become the kind of man who left scraps of other people's time in the gutter.
That public unspooling gave me a sense of rightness I wouldn't have expected to savor. Not because I sought revenge for its own sake, but because truth aired out like laundry and cicadas stopped singing. The exposure forced people to see him differently. He would have to live with the knowledge that he had been seen. That awkward heft—public recognition of failure—pushed him to examine himself in a way private pity never would.
Afterward, Finch and I walked back through the campus, air cold and clean. He kept glancing at me like a man who had memorized a map and could never forget a certain route. "You okay?" he asked.
"I think so," I said. "It felt strange watching everything happen publicly."
"Public is a good teacher," he said. "And you needed an audience to know you're not alone."
He was right. The messy forums and the auditorium and the cafeteria had been violent in a way that hurt but also liberated. The impostor was gone. Nicolas had to face the consequences of being small in public. People whispered for a week and then the campus moved on, but something inside me was rearranged.
"You owe me tofu," Finch said suddenly. "And a real apology for sleeping on my floor when your dreams ate our building."
"I thought you liked sleeping on my floor," I said, rolling my eyes.
"Only because you left the window open."
A while later, during finals and late-night studying, I found myself returning to the quieter parts of this story. I remembered the first time Finch had shown up in my life beyond a dream: years ago, when he—smaller then and quieter—had slipped a small sprig of gardenia into my locker. I had assumed it was an anonymous kindness. I had never thanked him. I had never known.
"Did you always stalk me with gardenias?" I asked him one night, half-joking, tucked between stacks of notes and the warm smell of library paper.
He looked at me like I'd asked him to recite the weather. "I followed you because you left crumbs of your life around. That was enough."
"I thought you were mean," I said. "I was wrong."
"You weren't wrong," he said. "You were young. You didn't have to figure me out. Now we get to."
He put his hand over mine then and squeezed, not dramatic, not performative—just a small promise. In the margin of my life the gardenia stayed: a quiet echo of the truth that sometimes the person who shows up in your dreams is the one who keeps turning up in the waking world to hold you steady.
And when people asked what had happened—when the forums quieted and the campus bus resumed its usual chatter—I said, simply, "I dreamed him beating my ex." Finch looked over, a smile tucked behind his mouth, and said, quietly, "I heard you."
"That's cheating," I told him.
"Maybe," he said. "But it worked."
The End
— Thank you for reading —