Sweet Romance14 min read
I Wrote Our Names in Snow (and He Liked Me for Years)
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"Your boyfriend called and said he's breaking up with you."
I looked at my phone, read the message, and blinked. "We were always just friends, right?" I typed back, because that was a safe thing to say. It felt like a joke I'd been practicing for years.
There was one beat of silence, then a string of replies came flooding in.
"Mrs. Irving, show us how it's done!"
"Man, you've been licking him for years and still didn't get a bite?"
"Bro, what a waste of virtue!"
I scrolled, my thumb hovering, while my stomach pinched. A second later the call came through—his name on the screen: Irving Ray.
"Sorry, excuse me," Irving said casually in the group so everyone could hear, then leaned into the private line. His voice dropped. "Sorry, I have to take care of something."
"Take care of what?" I whispered to the phone, though anyone else listening would have heard him clear as daylight.
"Family matters," he said, clicking his teeth together the way he always did when he was annoyed. I heard the weight behind the words.
I hung up first, shut my phone off, and walked into class with my heart doing an unfunny little jitter.
"Evert says you're possessed," one of my classmates joked when Professor Evert Johansen lifted his spectacles from the tip of his nose.
"I'm just trying a new semester persona," I said and smiled like a calm, well-adjusted girl. The room laughed, and for a moment I felt like myself again.
After class I rushed for the dorm, determined to be ordinary.
"Hey, look!" my roommate squealed, shoving me from both sides. "There's a Cayenne at the gate. Fancy."
"I don't know cars," another said, "but that white-haired boy is good-looking."
I glanced up and saw Irving walking straight toward us—sunlight on his cheekbones, smile bright and effortless. He stopped a pace away, and then, as if nobody else existed, grinned at me.
"Hi, sis—Gracie," he said, using the nickname our teammates loved to call me.
My roommates vanished like puppets pulled away by a string. I stumbled, bumped into Dane Espinoza, and froze into his arms.
"You little rabbit," Dane grinned, then tried to look stern. "Don't faint on us."
I heard Irving's chuckle before I saw him. "Everything okay?" he asked.
Dane made a show of straightening his shirt. "She almost fainted when she saw the great Irving."
Irving swept me up by the waist before I could protest. "All right, you can go."
Dane shuffled a little and left, making sure the scene read like a movie.
Once we were in the car the air conditioner hit me hard.
"Ah-choo!" I sneezed.
Irving glanced at me sideways and flicked the temperature up two degrees. He didn't smile. The dashboard and his face wore the same low-pressure weather.
"What did you mean on the phone?" I asked finally.
"What phone?" he said, but he sounded like a man trying to hold his breath.
"The 'we were always friends' line." I tried to joke. "You know how your fans interpret everything."
He set his jaw, and for a long moment the only sound was the tires on asphalt.
"Didn't you hear me?" he said quietly. "Gracie, we are married."
I unhooked my shoe from under the seat and curled into it like a nervous kid. "You said 'we're breaking up' earlier," I said, trying to make sense of the sudden tilt of the world.
He handed me a blanket. "Don't say it again."
"Say what again?"
"That you're sitting in someone else's car without permission," he said dryly.
My face flushed. I realized what I was wearing—a skirt that rode up if I wasn't careful. I grabbed the blanket and concealed myself, then realized I was blushing for a reason that had nothing to do with my outfit.
"Did you—" I began.
"No," Irving cut in. "What color?"
"White," I admitted.
His throat moved. "You're shameless." He let a tiny, private laugh go. "Is that a photo now?"
"Click." I couldn't help myself. I took the picture.
"Hey!" he said. "What are you doing?"
"This will sell," I said, thumbs already editing. "Fans will want it."
Irving laughed. "What, do I not pay you enough?"
He paid me. Every month he sent fifty thousand to my account—our agreement, our compromise: I was his unseen wife and, privately, his photographer. I lived off that and my student loans, and I didn't complain. I liked the simple math of it: my pictures, his life; his victories, my small warmth.
Irving was an esports legend. He had nerves of steel in a storm of pixels, and he drove like someone who knew exactly what the road owed him. I slept in his car sometimes because the passenger seat was strangely comfortable and because watching him through the lense of my camera felt safe. Only in dreams did I let myself be braver. In those dreams I touched his cheek, and once, impossibly, our lips met.
"Gracie," he said once, as if he'd read me. "Breathe."
"Okay." I found my breath.
When we stopped at a private restaurant—an old favorite of mine because of the shortribs—I wanted to melt into the booth and become the chair. But that wasn't how life worked. A few minutes in, January Harrison walked in.
She was the kind of actor that made people still stare when she had no makeup on. January smiled, sat opposite Irving, and the tray of staff around them seemed to orbit her.
"Small world," she said.
Irving's expression tightened for a heartbeat. Then he put his hand on my thigh and tugged me forward like I was a secret flag.
"You're here," January said, and for a second she looked surprised. Then she smiled in a way that made my teeth ache.
We talked. I tried to be a lamp: silent but present. January and Irving traded updates—the kind you trade when two people still know the cadence of each other's speech.
"Congratulations on the club," January said to Irving, syrupy sweet.
"Thanks," he replied.
She toyed with her cup and mentioned, casually, "I'm going to start working here more."
I asked for ice in my drink just to have something to do. Both of them said "room temperature," and I shouted "ice!" because I'm a terrible liar.
January's smile wobbled for a second when Irving swapped my glass for a cooler one. Her fingers whitened. A tiny hiccup escaped from me. I was a human embarrassment.
Irving's mouth curved at me with that soft possessive affection he'd saved for private moments. "Hold still," he told me as a remedy, and then, with the kind of concentration that made my knees weak, he put his palm over my mouth.
"Hey! What are you doing?" I protested.
"Trying to fix you," he murmured. He kissed me, quick and not-rehearsed, and I felt the whole restaurant tilt.
January's cup slipped from her hand. "I'm sorry," she stammered, leaving for the restroom, cheeks burning.
I wanted to apologize for stealing oxygen. I wanted to apologize for the globe of the world that now seemed to spin only with us at the axis. Instead I let the moment rest like a warm bread on our table and tried to eat.
Later that night, Irving drove me home. "You're useless," I said, half angry and half thrilled.
"Prove it," he teased. He made a sudden turn. "We're going home."
"Home? Isn't that far?" I asked.
"Yes." He smiled with that slow, dangerous grin. "To my home."
When he said 'home' with that small inflection, everything in me stretched. I had loved Irving silently for years—since he was the lanky boy who practiced with the street teams and I was the kid with a camera. I had supported him in comments, with account after account, cheering like thousands of garden gnomes. When his career staggered, I sent messages and photos and good luck charms. He went away when Jan left for a while and came back ragged and hollow, and I patched him with the patience of an amateur seamstress. People called me a fool. My mother called me a fool too, and Irving—he'd always smiled the way you do when you mean to be kind to a child.
"I told your mom," I said once, in our first week of marriage, after a reporter had asked a blunt question.
He pulled me close. "I told them I chased this person for years, and today I finally caught him." He said "him" like a joke and "caught" like a trophy. Then, without missing a beat, he put a ring of paper in my hand and asked, "Marry me."
I didn't have a clever answer ready, so we got married that afternoon. It felt like being taken up in someone else's wind. We signed papers like two actors handed the script of a different life.
The months after were strange in the ordinary way. He became fiercely determined. He trained, he stayed in the club, he did not come home. I moved into student housing because the house we shared had become an exhibit of things that never were ours. When he did appear, his presence rang like a bell in an empty church.
Then he won. He held a trophy and cried in my arms, and I cried because it felt like finally collecting on years of small faith. He started the top esports club. I became the team's photographer, which meant I could spend my days watching him from a safe lens.
"You're our team's heart," Dane told me, grinning like a kid. "We call you little sister—small rabbit."
"Don't call me that," I said, but my cheeks warmed.
"You're their wife," Dane added bluntly.
"Don't call her that either," Irving said, and then kissed my forehead because he could and I could not stop him.
If I had been more ambitious I would have asked him to introduce me properly. Instead he introduced me in half-jokes—"a friend," "a neighbor's kid"—and the team made a game of calling me 'sis' and 'wife.' I liked being the wordless comfort that didn't require explanation.
But then the internet did its work. Someone dug up old photos of Irving and January. People murmured, people speculated. I was supposed to be invisible, but we don't get to choose the moments that shine a spotlight.
At a bar in the city, a celebration that had felt private turned into a scene. January arrived with a private smile and the sudden news that she might work with a director who had apparently been too friendly in private. She let the world watch her cry and told the story that made people sympathetic.
"You're playing me," Irving said suddenly, low and cold. "Is this for sympathy?"
January blinked, then laughed a brittle laugh. "Irving, please. You've always been dramatic."
Irving's voice cut deeper. "Do you remember when you took the money we raised for my travel? Do you remember the eight hundred thousand that was supposed to be for the club fund?"
A hush dropped. The bar's conversation slowed like a record winding down.
"What are you talking about?" January said, brightening the way someone lights a cigarette in a film noir.
"I mean the money from Gracie," Irving said, and he didn't raise his voice. "The eighty thousand she gave—no, who am I kidding—she gave everything she had. She sold photographs and saved for my flights. You took it."
People leaned in. A few took out their phones. A chorus of tiny flashbulbs popped.
January's laugh snagged. "That's absurd."
Irving's hand went to his pocket and he took out something shiny—a printed message thread, a bank transfer screenshot, a clearly labeled memo where January had told a manager she would 'handle the expenses.' He spread the proof on the table.
"Show us," someone whispered.
"I didn't do that," January said at first, small and incredulous. Then she hardened. "You have no right to bring this up now."
"I have every right," Irving said. His voice was patient, a blade wrapped in velvet. "Because you have been building a reputation as a victim, and you have been stealing from people who trusted you."
A server gasped. "Is that true?"
"Yes," Irving said. "She doctored a paternity test to look real. She did it to keep sympathy and to extort money from sponsors."
The room shifted. Laughter stopped, the DJ lowered the volume, and the bar's patrons turned into a courtroom audience.
"That's a lie," January cried. "That's slander!"
Irving tapped his phone and played a recording. It was a voice file—snatches of a conversation where January instructed a manager to 'make the man pay' and where she bragged about forging a document. The audio was clear, clinical, and undeniable.
January's face changed in the way a mask melts in a fire. For a moment she looked like a fragile animal. Then anger flooded over her. "You can't prove that!" she said, but her voice trembled.
"People here saw you," a man said from a corner table. "I work in PR. We saw you meet with the director and ask him to cover things up."
Phones were out. People whispered, recorded, and uploaded. Someone shouted, "Expose her! Expose her!"
The shift was sudden and savage. The crowd closed around January like weather. Patrons gestured, cameras flashed. Someone pointed at her and hissed, "Shame!" Another shouted for the manager to call the police. Several people looked away, mortified at being in the room with someone whose performance had turned into fraud.
January's bravado cracked. "No, no—this isn't—" She tried to grab the phone off Irving's hand, but a dozen phones now recorded her fumbling motions.
"Why did you do it?" Irving asked, and the hush in the bar pulled like a cliff face. "Why pretend? Were you hungry enough to eat other people's hope?"
Her face contorted from indignance to denial to sudden raw fear. "You—you're lying! You always loved playing the hero!"
"Am I?" Irving asked. "I brought the evidence. I brought the names. You told sponsors to cut checks and then lied about who the money was for. You told a fake story to a director to get pity. And you forged a test to make yourself sympathetic. You used a child as a prop."
There was a collective intake of breath. Around us, people began to mutter. Someone said, "Look at her hands." Another said, "She made that kid come here alone—how?"
She started to pace, hand at her throat, eyes glassy. "You don't know what it's like," she said, in a voice that was suddenly small. "You don't know what it's like to lose control."
"Stop it," Irving said. "Stop the show."
A woman pulled out a small recorder and held it up. "We have everything," she said. "Do you want me to play it for the whole city?"
January's shoulders collapsed. For the first time she was no longer pretending. She stared at Irving and for a second her mouth went slack.
"Please," she said on a level so low only a few could hear. "Please, I'm sorry."
The bar erupted in reactions. Some people shouted "Shame!" Some people began to clap, slowly, in the way people applaud a performance turning honest. Others cried quietly, the way they do when they learn that something they admired was a lie.
January's composure crumbled into pieces. She tried to hold onto the table, then slid down her chair, weeping and voice gone thin. Her face turned white and then red and then raw. People who'd once cheered for her now whispered, stared, took pictures, and shared them with hungry thumbs.
"Get away from me!" she croaked at one point, an old line turned uselessly theatrical as the room recorded everything.
Irving watched her fall apart like a careful man watching fragile glass break. He didn't jeer. He simply said, "You thought you could ride other people's kindness. You thought you could pretend to be damaged to get money. Now everyone sees you."
She tried to speak, to accuse, to blame us all—directors, managers, sponsors. Her sentences collapsed into a tangled knot of apologies and denials. Her eyes found mine, and for a moment she stared at me like a hunted animal looks at calm grass. "You," she mouthed. "You took everything."
"Everything that mattered," Irving answered, quietly. He had the presence of someone who'd been wronged but chose to be the one who explained, not shouted. The public humiliation didn't feel like triumph; it felt like justice being administered in a place where everyone could see.
The onlookers' reactions were many and loud. A student recorded with shaking hands, whispering, "This is huge." A woman stood up and said, "I can't believe I followed her for so long." Two women hugged each other and cried. Someone banged loudly on a glass. Phones were raised like altars.
January reached for her phone and dialed someone, then let it ring out. She pressed her palms to her face, and when she opened them the skin was crumpled with sobs.
"I didn't mean—" she began, and the sentence was cut off by a chorus of people saying, "We heard enough."
It went on for a long time. For a full half hour, January shifted through stages: indignation, resentment, denial, terror, begging, and finally collapse. People recorded every second. Some used their recordings to condemn her; others used them to discuss the nature of fame and opportunity. A few people took pity. Dane stood behind me, his jaw tight, whispering, "You okay?" I nodded and clutched his hand; my knees felt as if they might turn to water.
When the staff finally called the manager and the police suggested exchanging statements, January was pale and spent, her makeup smudged into a mask that wasn't hers anymore. She had transformed from an invincible icon into someone everyone thought they understood—and that understanding was merciless.
After it was over, Irving took me by the hand and led me out like a man removing a fragile bird from a window.
"Thank you," I said as we walked into the cold night.
He kissed my temple. "You never deserved that."
My heart swelled with something leaping and dangerous and glorious. I wanted to tell him everything—about the nights I waited, about the small gifts I left on the team's desks, about my foolish whispering prayers to a future that might never happen. But instead I leaned on him, warmed by the simple truth of his hand in mine.
Weeks later, the internet would turn. People argued about whether this was public shaming or necessary exposure. Lawyers would get involved and January would be sued by sponsors; they'd call it a scandal, and her career would slide into the kind of silence that was louder than success.
For me, the moment was different. There was the small, private aftermath: Irving making me soup after the Northern trip where we almost died; Irving wiping soot from my cheek when we came home from hospital; Irving saying in the quiet hours, "I never touched her. I never loved her in the way people thought."
"How can you be sure?" I asked one night, the past replaying its small lies.
"Because you were the one who taught me how to look at light," he said. "Because I've watched you wait and be kind and not demand things I thought were mine by right."
We started to build the kind of life that is not always in photographs. We made furniture trips feel like adventures. We practiced small fights and reconciliations. We took turns making dinner and critiquing each other's bad jokes. He would tease me, "Don't fall too hard for me."
"Why not?" I asked.
"Because then I have to keep being better," he said. "And I like being better for you."
He trained his team harder and harder. Dane complained, "If he doesn't ease up you're going to lose him to the studio."
"Then I'll go practice with them," I said.
One February, when the auroras reached farther than expected, the team planned a research trip to the arctic for a documentary. I joined for the scenery and to shoot the light. We were stranded for a week when an earthquake hit the sea. We lost contact. For seven days, the world was cold and small.
I wrote a note in the snow one dark night when the aurora gave us light—a childish, ridiculous thing. With my gloved hand I wrote: "Irving, Gracie loves you." The letters were clumsy and bright. I hoped the snow would keep it safe like a secret.
When the rescue came, Irving was on the shore waiting, hair wild, face raw, and for the first time in months I saw him as someone less like a hero and more like a man who had been frightened of losing what he had. He hugged me until air left both our lungs.
Later, in the hospital, while we watched television of the earlier scandal, someone mentioned the falsified paternity test and the fake child story. My stomach dropped all over again.
"I didn't do it," Irving said fiercely when I asked.
"Then who—"
"She did," he said. "January."
He had confronted the director; the director confessed when the possibility of legal action arrived. Her story unraveled as one lie met another truth.
When everything calmed down, Irving became less absent. He made soup, left it on the table, and watched me eat. He insisted I take his shirts as nightwear, and when my period hit bad one month, he made a hot water bottle from a bottle and a towel and sat up all night feeding me ginger tea like a man who'd read too many old stories of care.
"You're worth it," he said once as he lit the stove and hummed off-key.
"I'm worth fifty thousand a month," I grumbled, half joking.
"You're worth a lifetime," he said.
We laughed. Then we kissed.
The world kept moving, sometimes toward fame and sometimes toward ruin. The bar video made January's career plummet and later fade into an apology tour that never felt sincere. The esports team grew and sometimes fell under pressure, but Irving kept leading. I stayed with my camera, and in the margins of the photos there began to be one more subject: me.
We married a second time in the ways that counted—no papers needed this time—just promises that didn't need to be shouted. We had small rituals: him tucking his thumb into my palm before a match; me leaving little notes in his bag. Once he looked at me before a game and said, "If I lose, it's because I'm thinking about you."
"I hope you always do," I said.
Years later, when the winter wind would blow just right and the city's lights would blur into watercolor streaks, I'd tell the story of writing my confession in snow. I'd say, "I wrote our names there, and the sun didn't melt them because the light kept them frozen."
He'd smile and pinch my nose.
"Show them," he'd say, and I'd take his picture.
We both knew the world could turn cruel as easily as it could turn tender. But we also knew we had been honest with each other when it mattered, and that was something no one could forge.
The End
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