Sweet Romance12 min read
I Lied, I Kissed Him, I Stayed — The Night I Broke My Own Rules
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I still remember the first thing I did wrong that night: I decided to be brave when I had only one brave drink in me.
"I can't believe you did it," Tatiana said the morning after, her voice a mix of triumph and scandal.
"You think it's funny?" I snapped, but I couldn't stop my hands from shaking.
"I know your type. You always faint at ten meters from confession," she teased, but there was no real malice. Tatiana had been my best friend since we were eleven; she was also the one person in the whole world who could turn my most humiliating memory into a joke we could both share.
"Stop, stop," I said, and sat down too hard on my bed. My head felt like someone had wrapped it in a blanket and then shook it. I reached for the thermometer, and the numbers told me what I already suspected: fever. Too many things had happened in the last twelve hours for my body to pretend this was normal.
"Are you okay?" Tatiana's face was suddenly serious. "You look like you wrestled a storm."
"I wrestled myself," I said. "And I might have lost."
"Talk to me." She moved closer. "What happened at the reunion?"
"I drank," I replied. "You know me; alcohol is a shortcut to bad decisions."
"And?"
"And...I think I kissed Ethan."
Tatiana blinked. "You what?"
"I said it. I kissed him. I thought he was asleep. I thought he wouldn't remember. I... I undressed him a little. Helped him with his belt. Then I panicked and left. I took a train back at dawn." I pressed my palms to my temples. The memory made my cheeks burn all over again.
Tatiana didn't laugh. For once, she was quiet in a way that suggested she understood the kind of thin, ridiculous courage that makes you do reckless things. "You mean the Ethan Alves?" she whispered.
"The Ethan Alves." The name felt heavy in my mouth. He had been everyone's school myth: the tall, distant student who did not laugh on cue, who solved problems faster than the clock itself, who made grown-up hearts skip during assembly. He was—still is—cleanly dangerous in the way he moved and spoke. My crush had lived inside me for years, folded up and quiet, like a secret I read instead of acting on. That night, I acted without thinking.
"Did anyone see?" Tatiana asked.
"Someone sent a message in the group. I woke up to 'Annika, you and my brother...did you?'" My voice went small. "Why did she mention he had a brother? I mean, she is his sister."
Tatiana covered her mouth and then, predictably, she tried to fix it. "I tried to pull it back. I offered my signed photo of that pop star. I even offered a lipstick."
"You offered a lipstick as a bribe," I said, incredulous.
"I offered great bribes," she defended. "And it worked. The message was deleted. Sort of. But an hour later, someone posted about a girl ripping up love letters. You know, in school it got blown out of proportion. You were the punchline back then; I thought my brother would keep distance."
"I thought he hated me because I ripped letters," I admitted.
"You did rip letters," Tatiana said, not unkindly. "We did it together."
"And he still refused to sit near me." I laughed despite myself, the sound brittle. "High school trauma. I thought it was over."
We both held that moment of memory a little too long. I stared at my hands, still warm from the fever.
My phone buzzed. A message in the class chat had reappeared. "Annika, are you okay? You were at Ethan's table, right?"
"Shut it off," I told Tatiana.
She did. "Don't leave your phone within reach of gossip."
"Too late." My stomach dropped. "He might have seen. He might have been awake when...when I was a mess."
"Did he say anything?" Tatiana asked.
"He sent me one word later that day." I hesitated. "He said 'Don’t.'"
"Don't what?"
"Don't make it a habit," I whispered. The words sounded worse when I said them out loud.
Tatiana's face softened. "Well, you did. You made it a habit. But it's not the same now." Her meaning: some things change.
Days passed. My fever hovered like a tiny resentful ghost. Millicent—my mother—left a boxed lunch and a note: "Eat, don't wake me, I'm at mahjong." Her voice in writing sounded like a wave: sharp in the edges but warm at the center. When I finally ate, I scrolled through the old group chat like a guilty sleuth. One message stood out: "Annika, you and Ethan...are you two a thing?" Then a flurry. Then a reminder: photos of the reunion were starting to circulate.
I remembered that necklace—my first real splurge—sitting cold and weightless around my throat. "When did I lose it?" I wondered aloud.
Tatiana had left the necklace on me when we were leaving the reunion, claiming she would "drop it off" and then stuffing it into my hand in front of the crowd. She never did the gentle things exactly right. Her explanation later was, "I thought it would be cute." I thought of the necklace as a small red flag—something that would make Ethan notice, or not notice, depending on how brave he felt.
That afternoon I went to her house for what was meant to be a neutral birthday dinner. Neutral, of course, is a lie. The moment I arrived, the living room was full of Ethan's university friends—people who laughed too easily and poured drinks into cups with the kind of casual politeness that doubles as judgment.
"Annika!"—someone waved. "So glad you're here."
"Thanks," I said, clutching my gift too tight. I had bought something ridiculous for Tatiana because that was what panic shopping looked like for me. Then someone had the bright idea to make a show of gifts. "Open it."
Tatiana nudged me, and my world tilted. "It's for Ethan," she said.
"For him?" My voice shrank. A dull heat rose at my neck. I could have asked her to stop, but I did what I always do in crowds: I avoided confrontation by playing small.
"Just open it later," I muttered.
"No one opened it later."
Ethan picked it up among a stack, fingers deliberate. He was always deliberate. He had been picking things up since the reunion—the box, my clumsy attempts—and placing them aside in the same quiet way he always used to ignore me in classes. He slit the ribbon with a corner of his thumb and then, to my horror and fascination, his eyes flicked to mine.
"Open it," someone urged drunkenly.
My throat closed. The box was lighter than I feared. Inside was a set of lacy things. I felt every pair of eyes dig into my skin like tiny knives.
"What did you send him?" Tatiana whispered, trying to sound like an emergency room surgeon rather than a schemer. "Did you know?"
"I thought it was for you to give," I said.
Ethan's face was unreadable. He stood up, palms flat on the table. "Let's eat," he said simply, and carried the box away.
He didn't make a scene. He didn't laugh. He didn't point. He moved like someone who had chosen not to judge, and at that moment that small, simple mercy felt like a betrayal of my plan to be brave and bold. He brought the box into his room and shut the door. He didn't throw it. He didn't display it. He handled it like a private relic.
I followed him up the stairs in a heat of shame that surprised me with its depth.
Outside his door I knocked, fingers trembling. "Ethan?" I said.
"I know it's you," he said in that low voice that made me feel small and seen at once. "What do you want?"
"Can I—" I started. "Can I take that back? I wasn't thinking. I can give you something else."
"Don't." He sounded tired. "If you give me something, will you keep it? Or will you give it and then run?"
The question hit me like an icicle. I froze.
"I—" I couldn't lie to him. I hadn't learned that skill yet, not about this. "I ran."
"You ran." He didn't ask more. "Annika, you do things halfway sometimes. You start things and leave."
"My whole life," I said, without thinking. "You can't make me into a confession."
"Do I want that?" he said, and his voice softened in a way that was worse than scolding. "You woke up and ran away. You came home on the dawn train. Why did you run?"
"Because I was scared you'd be cruel when you were sober," I said. It came out in a rush. "Because I couldn't stand to see the look on your face. Because the worst-case scenario is always the one I choose."
He closed the door without a fight. He didn't slam it; his hands were steady. He said one thing as he closed it: "Then don't do anything else halfway."
I sat on the stairs long after he left. What did he mean? Did he know the truth of my fear? He did. Years of being close to him and never close to him had taught me how he watched: as if he were cataloguing mistakes to keep them orderly rather than punish them.
The next days were a series of small collisions. He ignored me in class like it was a public courtesy; he answered me once with a sentence that made other people laugh, and once with a silence that made me sweat. Tatiana and I kept orbiting each other, eating and mocking and repairing the fragile edges of our friendship with the kind of jokes that look mean on the outside but are kind where it matters.
One night, a phone call pulled me out of sleep.
"Open the door," Tatiana said, voice high on a kind of panic I recognized from childhood. "Open it now."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because it's my birthday and I'm dramatic and I'm letting Ethan decide whether you come or not," she replied, perfectly loyal to her role. "Hurry."
I couldn't lie; I had to go. I dressed in the speed of someone running away and towards something at the same time.
He was there. Ethan stood in the hall looking like a statue carved into midnight. He wore a plain shirt that fit as if they agreed ahead of time in the tailoring shop. His jaw was bare of the cares I had given it, and his eyes—those dark, unreadable pools—looked at me as if he had been waiting for me to decide whether to sink or swim.
"You're not supposed to be here," I said, ridiculous.
"I came because...your sister called," he said. "She said you might come and I thought—" He stopped.
"That you could stop me," I said.
"That I wanted to," he answered. The words were tiny and ordinary, which was the most dangerous way they could appear.
We went home together that night in silence; for the first time in years, it felt like a shared secret rather than a one-way confession. A neighbor—Daisy Murray, the block's gossip who always wore two things at once (an apron and a loud voice)—walked by. She saw us. She raised an eyebrow and then went back to her business, but the way she looked at us made me aware of the skin between us. Ethan didn't move. He slid his scarf around his neck and then, without asking, put a hand to shield me from the rain.
"What's this?" I asked then, because a change had happened so small and yet so huge.
He didn't look at me directly. "You were shivering back there."
He wrapped his scarf tighter around my shoulders. The touch was small and precise, and it made the entire world small enough to rest in his palm.
My heart did something stupid.
"Don't do that," I whispered.
"Do what?"
"Make me feel...seen," I said. "You always make me feel seen the wrong way."
He gave me a look that could have been a smile if he uncoiled himself. "That's my line to worry about."
That was the first heart-flutter. The second came two nights later. He sent me a simple message: "Are you awake?"
I was. "Yes."
"I left your necklace in my car. I thought you might want it back."
"Why would you do that?"
"Because you left it," he said. "And I didn't think it should be in someone's hands who didn't know you."
I pressed my lips together. How do you respond when someone you had admired at a distance takes one of your small treasures and keeps it safe because they think you deserve it? I said "thank you" and it felt like a confession.
"Do you want dinner?" he asked, as if dinner could solve any of the complicated things lying between us.
"I do," I said. "But not tonight. My mother is back from mahjong, and she hovers like a secret police."
He laughed then—one small, private sound—and then texted me a picture: my necklace resting on his car seat, a note that said, "Keep better track of your treasures."
The third heart-flutter happened in the kitchen of my building. Millicent had left the door ajar and gone to the stall to make tea. I was standing there with a bowl and no appetite, when Ethan appeared at the doorway.
"Are you making noodles?" he asked.
"Something like that," I said.
He moved in like he had the right. "Eat with me."
"You're not busy?" I asked.
"I can be," he said, "but I'd rather not."
We ate, and for a while the apartment smelled like broth and calm. Then something small and private occurred: he reached out and pushed a strand of hair behind my ear. The gesture was so simple I couldn't even call it bold. But my breath stopped.
"You're very fidgety today," he said.
"Not fidgety," I replied. "Just...hot."
He looked at me, then took off his jacket, draped it over my shoulders, and said, "Then cool down. These jackets are my size."
Later, when we argued—because we always did once or twice a week—we argued with words that managed to pull things out of both of us. He accused me of doing things halfway. I accused him of being only half there when he wanted, all winter. He said something then that stunned me: "You taught me that being cold is safer."
I realized what he meant. I had protected myself by playing small and by setting the world at a distance. He had protected himself by becoming unreachable. When the two protections met, fireworks were inevitable.
The small incidents built into a kind of daring. I stopped running away from him after I realized running was a coward's decision. I started to test the edges: a bold question, a kiss just to see if he'd notice, a joke told in the wrong tone. He noticed. He answered with a gentleness that scared me and with a paltry cruelty that made me want to scream. We were learning each other's dangerous edges.
At the same time, life kept producing the funny, humbling things it always does. A dinner at a friend’s place where his ex—no, not ex; someone he had once been merely acquaintances with—showed up, and my stomach started to ache with old jealousies. I found myself overreacting, and he found himself refusing to fight me. At one point a man at the table called us out: "Are you two together or what?" The question hung like a dare.
"Yes," Ethan said simply. Then he lowered his voice and added, "We're trying not to be idiots."
We spent one night in his apartment because I had no energy to walk home. I had intended to sleep in the spare room, but when I turned to avoid him at the last second, his eyes caught mine and he smiled in that dry, disarming way. He said, "Stay," like an order and like an invitation.
I did. We didn't make promises we couldn't keep. We made small gestures instead: he left me a cup of tea on the table the morning I had hated myself for being brave; I wrapped my scarf around his shoulders when he was down with a cold; he texted me long lists of the tiny useless things that made him think of me—train stations, a crooked lamp, my laugh.
Time kept folding those moments in until the shape of "us" was less of a rumor and more of a real thing. We had arguments—sharp and loud on some nights—but also a kind of steady care. He was not the ice mountain people painted him to be; he was precise, yes, but not cruel. And where he had been distant, he was now trying, with an awkwardness that only made me love him more.
There were public difficulties, too. People remembered the reunion. Gossip is a weed that grows in sunlight and in shadows. Someone posted a photo of us leaving a bar. Someone else joked that I had "taken him" on a dare. But when things went sour, when a former classmate tried to humiliate me with a public story, Ethan did something extraordinary: he stood up at a small reunion, took my hand, and called me his.
The room hushed. "This is Annika," he said. "She's exactly who she is. She's not a rumor."
His voice was quiet, not triumphant, but the effect was the same. I felt an odd, hot peace spread through me. People in the circle swallowed and then clapped because sometimes crowds clap to close things that might otherwise stay open. I looked at him—his jaw set, his eyes calm—and the world tilted.
There were still bumps—moments when I messed up and ran to the safe places. Once I almost left again because I was scared of being half-loved and of being the one person who could not be made complete by someone else's careful hand. Ethan found me on the stairs with my bag packed, feverish and panicked. He did not shout. He did not cajole me with words I would later regret. He handed me a small packet he had kept since the reunion: the little box with my necklace inside, wrapped in tissue.
"Why are you crying?" he asked when I couldn't stop.
"Because you keep my things," I said. "Because you remember me when I forget myself."
He looked at me then, soft and frightening. "Then let me keep remembering you."
We married years later in a small city hall ceremony—our first real rebellion against doing things half. There was my mother, Millicent, crying with a smile so wide she looked like a proud conspirator. Tatiana wore a mischievous grin as she said, "Finally, someone to clean your apartment properly." Daisy Murray came by with a cake that had too much frosting. Benjamin—who had pretended to be my awkward date for the night of the fake-drink—raised his glass and declared it was time people stopped playing small.
"Are you sure?" my mother asked with exaggerated solemnity.
"Yes," I said, and looked at Ethan who was trying to hide his smile behind a hand that looked very much like a boy who did not expect to be this happy. He had bought a modest ring, like the ones he'd once confessed as his budget, but when he slid it on my finger, everything felt like the right kind of ridiculousness.
"Do you promise?" the registrar asked.
"I do," we said, and then Ethan added, quietly, "I mess things up, you fix them."
"I will," I replied, and meant it. I thought of the nights I had run, and the night I had stayed, and the laugh that came out of me sounded like someone who had finally found the rhythm of being both brave and foolish and complete.
Years later, when someone asks me what changed, I point to a smell—no, a detail: the small ripped seam in the shirt he wore on the first night I panicked and undid a belt that probably didn't need undressing. The rip is still there, at the cuff. He mended it once, then forgot. I keep it as proof that some things survive because we choose them, even if we are clumsy.
"Our life," he said once as we sat at our kitchen table, "is full of half-finished lists."
"Good," I replied. "That means we'll have work forever."
He looked at me like I had given him some precious thing. "Then let me be your partner in finishing them."
I put my hand into his. It still felt like a small dare and a soft anchor at once.
"I lied, I kissed him, I stayed," I remember thinking then, the stupid sentence like a backwards confession. But now when I say it, it sounds less like shame and more like the exact truth: I did a wild thing, and it taught me how to risk the rest.
And the ripped shirt cuff? It still sits at the back of my drawer. Sometimes I take it out and trace the thread, and I remember the night I panicked—and the morning I chose to come back.
The End
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