Sweet Romance12 min read
I Pretended to Be My Twin — Then the School Bully Fell for Me
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"I can't believe you broke your leg," I said into the phone, palms sweating like I was about to faint.
"You promised," Callum begged. "Please, Blythe. My spring semester starts late. It's only a little while. Just pretend to be me. No one will notice."
"You want me to be your college twin?" I laughed, the sound too sharp. "Callum, I'm a girl. How do you expect me to live in a men's dorm?"
"Please," he said again, voice small. "Dad will kill me if he knows I injured myself at a party. Mom is out of town. And—I'll pay you back. I'll give you all my spring savings."
I let out the laugh that was more a cry. "Why are you like this?"
"Because you're the only person I can think who can do it," he said. "Come on, Blythe. You're pretty. Dress like me. Keep your head low."
"I am not your stunt double."
"You're my twin. It's the same face!" He was right about that. Our faces were close enough that strangers mixed us up, but we'd never planned for me to swap lives.
"Fine," I said, more out of curiosity than courage. "Two months. I can do two months."
The campus greeted me with heat and strangers and the hum of possibilities. I packed Callum's clothes into my suitcase and told myself: small voice, low posture, keep it together.
The dorm room sign said 311. I pushed the door and the first thing I saw was a grin that split the room.
"Hey, roommate!" the grin said. "You must be Callum." A boy with sunlight in his smile stepped forward as if to wrap me in one big, harmless hug.
"I'm Ace," he said. "Ace Soares. Nice to meet you."
I blinked. "Hi," I said, keeping my voice lower than usual.
A quieter, stubbier boy with glasses nodded, "Ethan Carr. Your diagonal across the room."
The sun left the room the moment the bathroom door opened. He stepped out like he owned the air: tall, a little browned by sun, sharp in the way you could only be sharp if you knew you were the sort of person people watched.
The first look was an inventory, the second a challenge. "Seasoned," he said with a rough laugh at nothing, wrapping a towel around his waist. "I'm Greyson."
"Greyson Blanchard," he announced by way of introduction, as if that explained everything.
He glanced at me and then at my suitcases and his mouth did that tiny, ugly curl of a laugh. "Callum? Pfft. Sounds delicate."
The room's warmth turned to a prickling cold. Ace smiled like he'd offered me a candy, Ethan blinked behind his glasses, and Greyson's eyes darkened with what I couldn't name.
"He's just joking," Ace said. "Ignore Greyson. He talks rough but he's harmless."
"Harmless my ass," Greyson said, tone flat. "Don't act like you're better than you are."
I kept my shoulders hunched. I stayed quiet. I kept my head down and tried to be nothing at all.
They took to teasing me like a sport. "Small white face." "Delicate." "Little carrot." Every nickname was an arrow. "Stop calling me names," I told them once.
Greyson's voice dropped like someone throwing a stone into still water. "Cry and I'll laugh," he said, and then he walked away with a dangerous smile.
He was the type of bully who made a room smaller. He was also the type who, if coaxed, held a dangerous kind of attention. I could feel, after a week, that he learned my reactions like a pattern and then used them.
At night, I would hide behind a bed curtain, experiencing the odd life of a boy who wasn't me. I watched the world from inside a life-size costume. I missed breathing as myself.
One night after "training"—Greyson's term for the running he punished me with—Ace leaned over and said, "Why do you always try to be invisible?"
"I'm good at it," I said, then forced a laugh.
"You're not invisible to everyone," Ace said softly.
"Like who?" I asked, and then I saw Greyson looking our way, his expression unreadable.
Weeks unspooled. Greyson's taunts never stopped, but little things changed. He would, very quietly, pass me a bottle of water. He would lift the heavier stack of books I refused to let Ace carry. He'd be the last to leave the library when I was practicing a speech I was supposed to give at orientation.
"You're different with me," I told him once, because I couldn't hold the thought back.
He didn't answer. He just stared like he'd been given something tricky to puzzle out.
One late autumn night, Greyson stumbled back into the room. He smelled like whiskey and trouble. Ace and Ethan helped him to the bed, then Ace yawned, "Go to sleep, Greyson."
Greyson's lids were heavy, but when he turned, his gaze found me. It crawled across me the way some people read letters on a page, slow and intense. He crawled to the edge of his mattress and leaned over my curtain.
"What are you doing?" I whispered.
"Because I'm awake," he said, breath hot and close. "Because I can't sleep."
"Go," I said, my heart tripping.
"Do you ever get tired," he murmured, "of pretending?"
"Of pretending?" I echoed.
He rolled his chin toward me, a dangerous tilt. "You pretend to be a boy."
"I—"
"You pretend to be someone you're not for someone else," he said. "I pretended."
"I—look, Greyson, you better sleep."
His laugh was small. "Do you think I don't know? Do you think I don't see what you are?"
"Please," I said, panic tangling me. "If you tell anyone—"
He didn't move. "I won't tell," he said in a voice that made my stomach drop. "Unless you don't like what happens when I don't tell."
The next morning he acted like nothing had happened. He was sharp and distant and cruel again. Maybe it was a trick of the night. Maybe I hadn't imagined it. Or maybe the truth was waiting like a seed.
Days later, when a girl from another dorm tried to flirt with Greyson and he brushed her off in a way that made the room notice, he did something nobody expected. He pulled me to him with an arm that was more claiming than playful.
"You're prettier than she is," he muttered.
"Pretend you didn't say that," I hissed, face hot.
He glanced up like someone checking a scoreboard. "I don't expect us to be reasonable. I just… am bad at hiding things."
Then came the night he was drunk enough to be dangerous and honest.
Greyson pressed me into the wall by my bed, the room small and the curtain thin. He smelled of liquor and salt. His breath hit my ear. "I think I like you," he said, voice raw.
My chest flipped. "What?"
"I'm serious," he said. "I like you more than I should, more than I planned. I hate that I do. I don't know what to do."
"You're drunk," I said, because it was simple and clean.
"Maybe," he said, low and fierce. "But I remember this. I remember the way I feel. I remember that I saw you a long time ago and didn't know what to do."
I couldn't meet his eyes. "You can't do this. I'm leaving soon. My brother—"
"You're not leaving me out of choice," he snapped. Then softer: "Tell me you like me back."
I swallowed. "I can't. I'm posing. For someone else. For your roommate. For a reason."
His grip tightened, then eased. "Then lie," he said, as if offering me a bargain. "Say anything."
I did not lie. I didn't say anything at all.
When the next day arrived with an ache in my chest, the corridors hummed with campus life. But the secret jammed inside my ribs was getting harder to hide. I was a costume, and the costume was starting to smell like me.
One afternoon in the dining hall, a table of upperclassmen started yelling at me for taking a seat they'd claimed. Things escalated fast. One slapped the table; another called me names. My hands shook. I couldn't hold back tears.
Greyson came like a storm.
"Leave," he said without raising his voice, an order issued like a command in a war zone.
"Who asked you?" the biggest of them snarled.
Greyson's hand slammed down on the table. "I'm telling you to go."
The men filed out, faces pale. A circle of students had gathered and were whispering, phones out. Girls gasped. Boys watched with the slow, curious stare of people watching fireworks.
"Nice of you to keep your room fed," someone muttered to me. The hall echoed.
The scene battered me into shock. But that was not the hard part. The hard part came when the rumor mill spun faster than a top. A girl named Valentina Schumacher—pretty, loud, entitled—started to smirk louder than anyone. She saw a chance.
"You're dating Greyson?" she asked loud enough for half the dining hall.
I froze.
"He's mine," she declared. "Don't play games with men."
Ace stepped between us. "You can't talk to Blythe like that."
Valentina rolled her eyes. "I can say what I want."
From that moment, Valentina made it her business to make me life small. She whispered to others, planted little seeds of doubt, spread a fake message that I was using Greyson for attention. She sent texts designed to make Greyson jealous. She cornered girls with stories and made them look at me like I'd done something shameful.
"Aren't you tired of me?" she mocked once, flinging her hair like a banner. "Of all of us? You steal things you don't own."
"Stop," I said, voice thin. "What have I done to you?"
"You took him," she said, venom in every syllable. "And you were supposed to be a boy."
I stared at her. "I didn't take him. He—"
Valentina wasn't interested in my explanations. She played to an audience who liked drama.
It was clear we had a problem: if she kept stirring, she would succeed in painting me as a liar and worse, make my few days of borrowed life unbearable. I tried to ignore her. Greyson tried to ignore her. But Valentina wasn't someone who stepped back.
Then came the day she surpassed herself. She organized a little, staged reveal: she distributed a counterfeit message across campus—a fake screenshot implying I had confessed publicly to "stealing" Greyson. Phones buzzed. Screens glowed. People stopped me in hallways, tapping and whispering.
For the sake of what I was, for the sake of a promise to my brother, I stayed silent. But Greyson did not.
The next morning during the campus festival, Valentina strutted across the main quad, confident as a queen. She had rallied a small crowd and posted a giant printout of that fake screenshot on the noticeboard by the stage. Students crowded around, phones out, eager for scandal.
"Everyone, look!" she cried. "The truth at last."
The square hummed with attention. Ace and Ethan stood behind me, pale. Greyson stood forward like a blade.
"Valentina," he called, voice low enough to be a threat. "Step away from that noticeboard."
She smirked. "You want a show, Greyson? Here it is. She confessed."
"That's a fake," Greyson said.
"No, look—" Valentina pointed at the printed screenshot. "She admitted she was a liar."
A ripple of whispers flew through the crowd. Heads turned. Phones angled like beaks.
Greyson's eyes did not leave her face. He walked up, steadily, slowly. The crowd fell into a hush because when Greyson moved, quiet followed.
He reached out, took the paper off the board, crumpled it in his hand, and then did something that stunned everyone: he tore it into exacting, deliberate pieces and scattered them at Valentina's feet.
"You're going to tell me you made this?" he asked.
She laughed brittlely. "I— I'm exposing the truth."
"The truth?" Greyson's voice cut. "You're a liar. You made that, and you sent it to the students. Why?"
Her laughter died. "Because—because—"
"Because what? You wanted attention? You wanted me to look bad? To make Blythe look bad?" He folded his fingers and looked like a judge.
Valentina started to sputter. "I—people were cheering me on. I thought—"
"You thought you'd get more likes," Greyson finished. He took a glance at the crowd. "Raise your hands if you shared that screenshot."
A dozen hands hesitated up, then more. Phones were held like guilty things.
Then Greyson did it: he planted his hands on the public microphone on the stage. The speakers crackled. The whole quad leaned in.
He didn't scream. He didn't yell. He spoke with a steadiness that waited on the crowd like a tide. "Everyone," he said, "Valentina made this fake evidence. She forged it to make someone look bad. She wanted attention. She's the one who lied."
A harsh, collective intake of breath rattled through the students.
Valentina's eyes flashed from fury to panic. "That's not true! You're lying!"
Greyson reached down and picked up one of the shredded scraps, holding it up. "You texted it to half the campus numbers. We traced it. You made it. You pushed a lie into our hands."
Some of the students began to murmur, others nodded. A few began to boo.
She took a step back, voice shrill. "You're a bully. You're using your name to stomp on me."
A boy two rows away snapped a photo. "She's posting now," someone said, and phones recorded like moths.
Ace, always the gentle one, spoke softly. "Do you remember when you used to be kind? When we were kids?" He tried to reach her. "What happened?"
Valentina glared at him. "Don't act like you remember me."
Ethan put a hand to his mouth, clearly disturbed. "People are watching," he whispered.
"Valentina," Greyson said, voice like ice now. "You publicly forged evidence and spread it. Do you have anything to say to Blythe?"
Her face flushed red, but the argument had been stripped of all its scaffolding. "I—I'm sorry—"
"Say it loud," Greyson ordered.
"My name is Valentina Schumacher. I made a fake post about Blythe. I am sorry." Her voice trembled, but she did not look at me.
The crowd had grown. Students who'd wanted a show were now watching a small human disintegration. People recorded. Cameras clicked. Someone started a hashtag, and it began to trend through the circle of the quad.
Then the worst happened for her: the girls Valentina had been cozy with for theatrics turned their backs. A few of them stepped forward, voices low as betrayal, "We didn't know," they said, and moved away. The crowd's tone shifted from curiosity to condemnation.
"How could you?" someone asked. "You used people's trust to make drama."
Valentina tried to run. Three boys blocked her path with polite menace; others stepped aside and let the campus justice take shape.
"Public confession," Greyson said. "You dragged an innocent girl's private life into a circus."
He turned to the crowd and lowered his tone. "If you wanted to humiliate her, you've done it. If you wanted evidence, you created it. There is a difference." He took another step closer to her. "Now say sorry—properly. And never touch someone with a rumor again."
Valentina's eyelids fluttered. Her bravado drained. In a voice that sounded two people away from sobbing, she said, "I'm sorry."
The crowd dissolved into a thousand comments, reactions, looks of disgust. Some clapped. Some recorded. Some simply stayed with the taste of schadenfreude.
Her fall was not a quiet one. People surrounded her; whispers multiplied; the campus had its theater of punishment. She tried to stand tall, but her voice broke. "It was just to get attention," she said, and the words were eaten by the noise.
The humiliation wasn't physical. It was precisely social: the people who'd been her audience were now an audience with their verdict. Phones logged everything. For Valentina, it felt like a slow public strip of reputation. Her friends no longer smiled. The boy she'd hoped to impress ached away. Some students dubbed the event "the Quad Reckoning." The press of the campus missed nothing.
I stood in the center watching it unfold. My stomach hurt. I had never wanted revenge. I had wanted to survive. But watching someone be brought down for lying felt strangely fair. I had been small and under threat and suddenly part of a story that someone else had written and paid for.
Greyson's voice softened then. "Enough," he said. "You get help, Valentina. You make a public apology on your page and you meet with the student council. You take responsibility."
Her head bowed. Phones kept clicking. A small group of students filmed the apology, and then the video was everywhere.
Valentina's reaction morphed from defiant to ashamed to desperate: she paced, she tried to plead, then realized no one believed the performance. People laughed, recorded, whispered. Some applauded. Some had pity in their eyes. Some wanted nothing more than to be present to see the story conclude.
By the end of the afternoon, the damage was done. Valentina was a cautionary tale. Students gossiped about motives and who she had been before the lie. Others held her actions up as a warning about cruelty.
For Greyson, the punishments he dished out were measured and public. He didn't smash her; he unmasked her misdeed and made sure the campus saw both her crime and her contrition. For me, the punishment was justice—public, messy, and very visible.
The day's crowd dispersed slowly. Phones buzzed into the night with screenshots and commentary. Friends approached me, small offers of sympathy. Ace hugged me. Ethan stayed by my side. Greyson stood a little closer than before, an unspoken line drawn between us.
"Are you okay?" Ace asked, voice soft.
"I'm fine," I said. "Thank you for stopping her."
Ace shrugged. "It's right to stop someone when they're hurting someone else."
Greyson watched the remaining students file out and then said to me, quiet enough that our shoulders almost touched, "I didn't want you to go through that."
"Thank you," I replied. I meant it.
After Valentina's public undoing, people treated me differently. Some smiled with a new kind of warmth. Some looked at me like an interesting story. I could tell Greyson's gaze had shifted: less mocking, more hungry in a careful way.
We had to finish the semester and the secret that still sat between us—my secret—was not fully resolved. But the worst of the rumor storm had passed. Valentina had been punished publicly, and the way she crumpled in front of everyone left no room for her to spin more lies.
In the quiet moments Greyson became possessive in ways that were small and intense. He would press the tip of his finger to my wrist as if measuring my pulse. He would call me "Blythe" when he thought no one else could hear. He'd stand outside my curtain at night and tell me, in a whisper that warmed the dark, "You're staying."
Sometimes he'd be brutal: "Don't pretend to leave me." Other times he'd be soft: "You don't have to pretend with me."
The semester wound down. My brother's leg healed. Callum returned with a limp and an apology that was half proud and half embarrassed.
"You did good," he said one evening in the lobby, watching the others like a father. "I owe you."
"You owe me a better wardrobe," I muttered. He laughed.
At the station, Greyson asked me to stay a little longer under the pretense of handing back Callum's clothes. "Don't go," he said. His eyes were blunt as a blade.
"Go on," I told him. "This ends when we both get honest."
He cradled my face in his palm—an oddly tender gesture from the boy who had initially been my tormentor—and kissed me with the slow, steady pressure of someone staking a claim. It was a promise that didn't say much but said everything.
When I left to go abroad, I was no longer pretending to be someone else. I carried a secret that no longer felt like a trap: Greyson's confession, the way he'd stood in public to protect me, the way he had set Valentina's fake lie on fire in front of everyone. He had been fierce, dramatic, and unapologetically protective.
"Call me," he ordered before the train pulled away.
"I will," I said.
The truth had bloomed messy and stubborn in a campus square, and somehow it had made room for something like tenderness. The bully had stopped being only a bully. The rumor spreader had been seen and corrected. And for the first time in weeks I felt seen as me, not as a costume.
The train carried me away with the weight of new names on my shoulders: girlfriend, survivor, liar no longer. And somewhere on the campus quad, a boy named Greyson had shifted from a cruel joke to the only person who mattered.
The End
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