Sweet Romance11 min read
I Kept the Broken Umbrella
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“Are you all right?” a girl asked as rain slapped my face.
I opened my eyes to her voice and a white dress dripping over my knees. She was closer than I expected. Her hand was on my wrist, warm and steady.
“Did a car—” she said, but the rest fell into the sound of horns and the rain.
I pushed myself up and blinked the world back into focus. The city smelled of wet concrete. My skull throbbed. The girl’s brown eyes were wide. Her hair stuck to her forehead.
“You’re soaked. Do you want me to call—” she started.
“No.” I held her wrist, too dumbstruck to say anything else. “Thanks.”
She smiled like sun through windows. I remembered the first time I had ever seen her—years ahead, a different life—and the same kindness. I remembered the voice in a crowded room, my own stupid words before I blacked out. I remembered how everything had ended.
I remembered promising myself, once, that if I ever got a second shot I would hold on to the people I loved.
“My name’s Eamon,” I heard myself say. “Eamon Thomas.”
She laughed. “I’m Dakota. Ride with my dad. He’ll keep you warm.”
I watched her climb into the back of the black car and I felt something like luck and something like fate fold into my chest. The umbrella was crooked and muddy. I took it. I kept it.
Two weeks later my mother died the way she had died the first time—fast and unfair—and the world didn’t reset around me. I had been given the same mercy and the same grief. That night, in a corridor full of voices and beeping machines, I held my mother’s hand and told her I would be all right. I lied, then I vowed.
“I can go back,” I had told my empty apartment when the funeral ended. “I can try to do it right. I can protect her.”
I had no plan beyond the vow. I only had a memory loaded with all the points I could change. I had a single promise, and a small, cracked umbrella.
“You look like you’re about to fight someone,” my friend Gustav said three months later when we were unloading boxes in our dorm.
“Maybe I will,” I said. “Maybe I’ll just protect someone instead.”
“That someone being Dakota?” Gustav grinned.
“Yes,” I said. “Her.”
*
We met again that fall at A University. She was impossible to miss—tall, sharp cheekbones, a mouth that could curl into trouble. Everyone called her “Peach,” a childhood name. I learned later it came from a silly nickname her friends couldn’t stop using.
“You’re the class rep, right?” Dakota asked the day we were handed our training gear.
“Yes,” I said. “You missed the first day.”
She stuck a long leg out of the new uniform and squinted at me. “You look familiar.”
I almost told her why. Instead I handed her the extra uniform I’d retrieved and said, “Here. Change here.”
“You brought me clothes?” she said, surprised.
“You’d better not parade half-naked in the quad,” I muttered.
She laughed too loud. “I will owe you.”
Over the semester I watched her move like someone half on fire. She’d laugh, then sleep badly. She trained like it was an old muscle. She would throw a coffee cup away like it was nothing and then send me a message that said, “Buy me the same stuff tomorrow. I’ll pay you back.”
She didn’t. She had money and could have bought the world twice. But she was not careless with people. She was careless with herself.
One day she hit our drill sergeant, Fraser Andre, on purpose—just a playful throw that ended with Fraser on the grass and everyone stunned. Fraser laughed and rubbed his bones.
“You okay?” I asked later.
“Yeah,” she said, pulling at the collar of her uniform. “I beat him because he tried to act like I couldn’t.”
“You like proving people wrong,” I said.
“Someone has to,” she said. “Why not me?”
She kept the whiskey bottle at a place I couldn’t see—inside a drawer with a fortune in leather. She owned a bar near campus that everyone called the best secret on our street. She never told the whole story about how it started. She moved between the parties and the hard nights like she owned both.
“You’re serious about the bar?” I asked the night I found a nameplate with her name.
She waved a hand as she shook a cocktail shaker. “I’m a bad boss. But the job’s solid. I give people a paycheck who need one.”
“You paid me more,” I said.
“You were working like a mule. You deserved it.”
I wanted to refuse the extra money the day she wrote the raise into a note and handed it to me. I wanted to tell her that I would take only what I needed and nothing more. Instead I took it and turned away.
*
“You look awful,” Dakota said the night she climbed onto my back and let me carry her home. She’d been drunk again, a sloppy, honest drunk that cried and then laughed like it had layers.
“Careful,” she said when we hit a pothole. “You’ll spill me.”
“Stop moving,” I said. “Lie still.”
She tucked her face into my neck. “Do you know I’ve never felt safe at night?”
“Yes,” I said, suddenly quieter. “You told me, over the bar counter. You said drinking keeps the nights shorter.”
She hiccuped. “That sounds worse when you say it like that.”
“It’s still not okay,” I said. “Not when you’re fragile.”
“What would you do if I said I like you?” she asked, voice heavy with sleep and beer.
I tightened my arms. The moon looked small and cold above us. I could have kept my mouth shut and let the moment slide like a coin down a drain. I didn’t.
“I already do,” I said. “I like you.”
Her body stiffened for a second, then she giggled like a child. “You said it.”
“I meant it,” I said.
She breathed in, made a small, sleepy sound, and let herself be carried the rest of the way up the stairs to the dorm.
That night I went home and tacked a small note inside the cracked umbrella’s handle: I’ll keep this, and the rest, safe. - E.
I left it there for her to find.
*
The cheap phone in my pocket buzzed at odd times. Gustav sent me a photo of the campus forum where someone had posted a clip of Dakota singing at the bar. Her voice bent the room like light through glass. People were already calling her “the bar angel” online. We both laughed.
“You look like a god,” Dakota told me later, half-serious. “Why don’t you smile more?”
“Because I don’t want to waste it on strangers,” I said.
She narrowed her eyes. “Bull.”
Jaliyah Bryan, a girl with a constant smile and a talent for trouble, took to spreading stupid rumors about Dakota. Someone once claimed Dakota had been paid to buy a place near school. Another time, someone posted a blurred photo suggesting Dakota had been…anything. Rumors are like cheap wings: they fly easy and then the landing is ugly.
“You don’t need them,” I told Dakota when she went quiet.
She slurred a laugh. “You sound like a dad.”
“You look like you might smash your phone if you read the forum,” I said. “You should stop.”
She raised an eyebrow. “So what? I’ll cancel the world with a song.”
“You can start by not fighting it alone,” I said.
She looked at me like she was trying to see if I was sincere, then she did something small that meant the world: she leaned forward and punched me in the shoulder.
“You’re not allowed to give me lectures,” she told me.
“I’m not giving a lecture,” I said. “I’m offering a hand.”
She put her hand on mine then, fingers warm and brief. “Deal.”
*
Photo scandals and bar fights came and went. Dakota sold an idea, convinced Dolan Conner and Alfonso O'Brien to open a tiny convenience store that ended up being a quiet hit. She donated quietly to strangers who needed more than money. Once, when a woman with a sick brother came into the bar and started crying about college fees, Dakota handed the woman a room key and her number and then looked like she had swallowed a fight.
“You’re too kind,” I told Dakota that night.
“I don’t have any other talent,” she said. “Kindness is cheap if you have money.”
“You’re not buying people,” I said. “You’re choosing them.”
She rolled her eyes. “Stop moralizing.”
I was tired of moralizing. I was tired of watching her shoulder the world like a coat that didn’t quite fit. I wanted to do something louder—something she’d notice.
At the end of exam week a troll tried to post doctored messages that made it look like Dakota had leaked test answers. The thread was fast and mean. Someone even claimed she had offered tests for sale.
“Don’t touch it,” Dakota said when I pointed it out.
“I’m not going to let someone twist your name,” I said.
“You’re too dramatic,” she replied, but she didn’t move from my side.
I printed screenshots, traced the account, and found the hostel where it posted from. I approached the kid who had posted it—young and terrified of trouble.
“You did this?” I asked him.
He stammered. “It wasn’t me—I was paid.”
“By who?” I asked.
He told me. The name was small but it led to a party house where someone liked stirring trouble for a laugh. I didn’t scream or drag anyone in public. I called the house manager instead and brought the facts by. It felt small and big at once—the right kind of small. The troll’s account vanished, the post was deleted, and a crowd later at the bar cheered the “bar angel” like she’d single-handedly saved exams.
“You did that?” Dakota asked later, surprised and a little proud.
“I did,” I said. “Because you deserve fewer lies.”
She looked at me like I’d thrown her a lifeline. She laughed, then leaned close and kissed my cheek quick and without ceremony.
“Good,” she said. “Then let’s drink to it.”
I didn’t drink much that night, but I watched her laugh like a cup spilling sunlight.
*
The real turning point came on a gray afternoon when she disappeared from the bar for almost two days. Her phone went to voicemail. The staff said she had left a note but it looked like nonsense. I found her at the small house near the river where she had grown up—the place she avoided telling anyone about. She was sitting on a wooden step, boots off, face streaked with makeup and tears.
“Dakota,” I said, sitting beside her on the step.
She didn’t look at me. “They—”
“Who?” I asked.
“My father,” she said, voice small. “He’s angry I run the bar without telling him everything. He wants me to take over a hospital he built or to marry someone who helps the line go up. He says I’m not using the money right. He says…he said I would end like Mom.”
“Like your mom?” I asked.
She nodded. “My mother wasn’t—” she stopped and laughed once like a hiccup. “Never mind.”
“We can face him,” I said.
She turned to me then. “You’ll stand there and take it? You’ll let him try to buy you or me?”
“I’ll stand,” I said. “And I’ll say what I need.”
We did. We went together to the Forsberg manor, and I met the men in their dark suits and quiet ways. Dakota’s father, Theodore Arellano, had a voice like a closed window.
“You are not a child,” he told her when she spoke up for herself. “You have a duty.”
“I’m not your duty,” she said. “I’m your daughter.”
I sat stiff as a man on a wire, every moment ringing. He looked at me like I was a stray dog.
“Young man,” he said finally. “Do you seek something?”
“Yes,” I said. “I seek her happiness.”
He laughed like a cup tipping over. “Ambitious. Please leave.”
I left, because I had to—because fights with men like him were often the kind that finished worse. But when I left I left a quiet trace: I published the financials of the convenient store and the bar’s receipts in a way only a careful hand could do. The math made sense. Dakota was being prudent. Her father could not find a reason to strip her right of ownership.
“You did that?” she asked later, stunned and not quite able to keep the relief out of her voice.
“I did,” I said. “Because you are tired of running alone.”
She reached across the table, took my hand, and for once this time she didn’t hide her fingers from me. Her grip was small and strong.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You don’t have to say it,” I said.
She smiled then—real, not a spark that trembled. It felt like the first morning after a long storm.
*
Winter crept in slow and slow. We studied in the library together. I made lists and she made jokes and the long hours turned into a habit as natural as breathing.
“Promise me something,” she said one night as we were leaving the coffee shop.
“What?”
“If you ever get tired of being kind, tell me. I will be better at taking care of myself. I’ll take a vacation from saving people.”
I looked at her. Her eyes were wet with something like fear, but also relief.
“I will tell you,” I said.
“And Eamon?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t fix me. Just stay.”
I laughed. “Deal.”
It wasn’t an epic line. It was an honest one.
One day, gossip spiraled again. Jaliyah Bryan tried to humiliate Dakota in front of a crowd by implying Dakota had used money to buy grades. Jaliyah had the platform and the reach and the kind of teeth that could chew reputations to dust.
“Here we go,” Dakota said, as though she had been saving the exact right eye-roll for the occasion.
I stood up from where I was at a table and walked over. People around us hushed, sensing conflict.
“You gave money?” Jaliyah asked, voice light and cruel. “You bribed professors?”
“No,” Dakota said. “I gave funds to people who needed them. Last I checked, charity is not a crime.”
Jaliyah took a step forward. “You’re hiding something.”
“Good,” I said. “You found me. I’m hiding everything I don’t want you to know about—my opinion of your manners.”
Laughter broke like surf around us. Jaliyah blinked. She had meant to provoke and she had succeeded at turning people mean. I kept my voice low and even.
“You have two choices,” I said. “You stop lying, or I show everyone your posts from three months ago when you paid a kid to start trouble for a rival.”
She paled. The room hummed. People shifted their weight like a flock.
“I don’t—” she started, then stopped.
“Best to keep it quiet.” I turned to Dakota and lifted my hand so she could see. “You okay?”
She nodded. Denmark-beech cold and warm at once. “Fine. You’re good at saving the day.”
“You’re the one who always saves it,” I said. “I just keep the receipts.”
She punched my arm, hard. “Stop being dramatic. I like the receipts.”
After that, Jaliyah’s posts slowed and she found new hobbies. Dakota’s smile grew quieter and more guarded, but real. The rumors fell like paper and lost their weight.
*
Graduation, the end of another chapter, came like a promise kept. People cheered and then left like birds migrating to towns where the weather suited them. In the quiet after, Dakota and I sat on the old stone steps near the old library and watched our own breath for a while.
“Remember the rain?” she asked suddenly.
I held up the broken umbrella from my bag. The fabric was patched and the handle had my note tucked inside.
“You still have it,” she said.
“I do,” I answered. “I’ve been keeping a few things since we met.”
She reached out and touched the cracked plastic. There were faint mud marks on the edge where our meeting days had pressed together.
“You said you liked me in the rain,” she said. “I didn’t hear you.”
“You did. You just pretended not to,” I said.
She pulled her coat closer. “You did good. You kept promises.”
“So did you,” I said. “You kept getting back up.”
She turned to me then and the world narrowed to us two. Her eyes were the color of old wood, warm and honest.
“Eamon,” she breathed.
“Yes?”
“I don’t want to be alone when I fall apart anymore.”
“Then don’t be,” I said.
She laughed—quiet, real—and it made the air feel new. She leaned forward and kissed me then, gentle and a little stubborn, exactly like her.
When she drew back, I was smiling too wide for my face.
“I will keep you safe,” I said. “But not because I have to. Because I want to.”
“Good,” she said. “I will let you.”
We held hands and watched the lights come up one by one around the city. The umbrella lay between us, a small, broken instrument of a long, raw night. It had held rain before. Now it would shelter other things.
I folded it and gave it to her. “Take it,” I said. “It’s yours.”
She frowned. “You mean you’re giving up the umbrella?”
“No. I mean I’m giving it to you because you were the reason I kept it.”
Her smile broke into that dangerous, soft grin she used on people she trusted. “Then keep the handle. It’s where the note is.”
“I don’t need the note anymore,” I said.
“You might,” she teased. “People forget things.”
“I’ll remember,” I said.
We leaned together, shoulder to shoulder, under a sky that had been too bright and now finally, for once, was letting us rest.
“Promise?” she murmured.
“Promise,” I said.
We walked home with the umbrella between us. The night was dry, but there was a comfort in the weight of it. I kept my arm around her as we crossed the bridge.
Later, when things were easier and sometimes when they were not, there were arguments and small misunderstandings. We had nights when silence was the loudest thing between us, and mornings when coffee and notes on the counter said what words could not. We were slow. We were careful. We learned the right things: how to ask for help, how to refuse pity, how to make a clean joke when the mood grew heavy.
One winter evening, I found a new note pinned to my coat at the bar. It read, in her hand:
You kept the umbrella. I owe you nothing. I love you on days you do and days you don’t.
I smiled until my face hurt. I folded the note and slid it into my wallet.
“You’re sentimental,” Dakota said when I told her about the note.
“Only for the right things,” I said.
“You and I are not clean stories,” she said. “But you are my favorite one.”
“Mine too,” I told her.
She kissed me then, like the world could be rewritten by a single mouth. It felt like the beginning of something that would be messy and true and hard and beautiful.
And it was.
The End
— Thank you for reading —