Sweet Romance15 min read
Moving In Above My Ex (and All the Small, Loud Things That Followed)
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I moved into a new apartment full of cardboard and stubborn optimism, and then discovered, to my complete and undeniable horror, that my ex lived one flight below.
"Do you have a cramp in your toe?" a low voice asked behind me as I fumbled with a box.
I froze with my thumb held up like an idiot. "I—no. It's itchy. That's it."
"Uh-huh," he said.
"Uh-huh?"
I should have walked away. I didn't. I told myself I wouldn't look. I did.
He filled the hall like the kind of man who was carved out of somebody else's confidence: tall, broad, and deliberately dramatic. His eyebrows were thick and sharp as if someone had used a ruler. He had that annoying kind of good-looking that made people assume he had easily-earned charm on credit.
Flynn Kobayashi wore a loud floral shirt and short-cut shorts, the kind of outfit that said, I don't care and I mean it. He had the same crooked smirk I remembered. Three years had passed since we broke up; the last fight had been ridiculous and loud enough to bleed through the years.
"You kept something of mine," he said suddenly, like a judge handing down a sentence. "Return it."
"Return what?" I asked, although I already knew. The argument then had been a catalogue of possessions thrown like weapons. We had traded collars, necklaces, and stupid little sentimental things until we had nothing left but stubbornness.
He bumped my shoulder deliberately and kicked my suitcase. "Don't get mad. You get puffy when you lose your temper."
"I hate you," I said before I could stop myself.
He laughed that high, annoying laugh. "You always did."
After that, I moved in, unpacked, and lay on my bed thinking I might die from embarrassment at any minute. The ceiling was so painfully white it stabbed at my eyes, and somehow my mind slid right into that tiny crease of memory where Flynn still existed like a splinter.
My phone lit up with calls—99+ missed calls, all from Mabel Green. I called back and the second it connected Mabel screamed down the line.
"Leona! Did you die? Why didn't you answer?" she shouted. "Also, did you move into Flynn's building on purpose? Are you trying to get flattened by karma?"
"What? No!" I said.
"Your feed says you moved upstairs," Mabel said, delighted. "Flynn posted something. He said, 'Someone with the surname Leona moved upstairs.'"
"What? Who does that even—"
"He posted a picture of you pulling your suitcase," she gushed. "People asked, Are you getting back together? He said, 'Let's see how she behaves.'"
"Let's see how she behaves," I echoed, feeling incandescent with something I couldn't name.
Mabel laughed. "So? Are you going to chase him?"
I pinched the bridge of my nose. "I am not chasing him. Who am I, some dog? No."
"Ah. But what if you want to?" Mabel teased.
"Then I will be the proudest dog alive," I retorted.
The little demon in my head that still loved to stir trouble whispered that Flynn's shirt the morning had been unbuttoned too low. It said he had abs, his expression, the old, tiny provocations that had once lit me up like a match. I wanted to stomp the thought out, but at night my fingers found his name in my phone like muscle memory.
Three nights later I woke to water running. It was three in the morning and my bathroom had become a small, wet room of panic. Somehow my lock had failed, the plumbing had exploded, and the water was seeping through the ceiling in polite, deadly veins.
"Why is your apartment sinking?" Flynn's voice said. He was at my door, soaked from the waist up. He had a wrench in his hand like a surgeon. He looked ridiculous and ruinously handsome. He looked like every stupid memory I had thought was finally dead.
"Get out," I said, but the lock had been forced and he came inside anyway, like it was his right.
He set down tools and, without asking, scooped me up from the dripping tile.
"What are you doing?" I demanded. He smelled like lemons and oil and a little smoke from the lighter he had abandoned on the sink.
"Shut up," he said softly. "Get warm."
He held me in his arms and the world narrowed to the sound of his heartbeat under my palm. His face was wet not only from the water. He cried, and I couldn't place the moment that made him break down; all I could do was feel it like a current pull at my ribs.
"Why are you crying?" I said, which was the world's worst question.
"Because I'm an idiot," he said, and then he laughed in a small, dangerous way. "Because three years ago I was an idiot and I said the meanest things."
"You said a lot of mean things," I pointed out weakly.
"Yes." He stepped back enough to glare at me. "And because you still look like the orange that smiles at me on my phone. Stop being cute."
He shoved me onto the bed and then, just as his hands found my face, he pretended to be stern. "Don't try to use flirtation as flood insurance." He slapped my cheeks with ridiculous severity. "I'm a grown man who hates mush. Now go to sleep."
The next morning, there was a new lock on my door and a note on my shoe rack: "New key. You are permitted to try to win me back." His joke felt like a dare.
I added him on every chat without thinking. He accepted quickly. His profile had not changed: a big orange as his avatar, and the username 'OrangeIsSweet' like the least subtle pun in the world.
We started to orbit each other again like poorly trained satellites. He was doing something with his restaurant—he owned a cozy hot-pot joint downstairs—and I, thanks to a push from my landlord, Jamie Simpson, agreed to a blind date in Flynn's restaurant. It was mortifying and oddly cosmic.
"Leona, you walked into my restaurant like you were hunting for a confession," Flynn grumbled when he spotted me.
"Because a girl walking into a restaurant that used to be 'theirs' while wearing the scar of a breakup is apparently provocative," I shot back.
He tossed a roasted peanut at me. "You're obvious. You have timelines, coincidences. You have those dramatic entrances."
"Maybe I just wanted hot pot," I said.
He narrowed his eyes. "Or maybe you wanted to see me."
"Stop being dramatic," I said, but when someone across the table tried to offer me seaweed, Flynn stepped up and pulled him aside as if to say, not within my radius.
"She doesn't eat seaweed," he said, turning a simple food choice into a territorial claim.
Dinner was awkward and silly. He kept glancing at me until I felt like a bug pinned under light. I kept my cool by deliberately not looking, which was a terrible plan.
"Why did you really move here?" he asked at one point, quiet enough that only I heard.
"My landlord promised to halve next month's rent if I went on a blind date," I said.
"That's low," Flynn sneered.
"You go to the trouble of following me down to the restaurant and you call me low," I said. "Double standard."
He sighed. "I say mean things because I don't know how to say the soft ones. Sorry."
"That's the problem," I said. "You used to say the big words like they were toys."
He glared. "And you used to leave them behind like trash."
"I didn't leave them behind. I got tired of picking up garbage."
We fought in small, ridiculous ways and in one electric moment we slipped into that old grammar of touch. He pinched my cheek, called me "big and soft," and I shoved him, both of us laughing and flinging insults like cotton balls. It felt dangerously like home.
Then his luck blew up like a bad soufflé.
Flynn's father hit a catastrophic downturn with business. The family company collapsed. Flynn vanished for days. When I found him, he was at a cheap bar, leaning into someone who wasn't me. The woman was close, too close. When I tore her away, she pretended to be offended. People in the bar stared because drama is currency in small towns and smaller restaurants.
"You can't do this to me," I told Flynn later in the stairwell outside his restaurant. My voice was brittle.
"Do what?" he asked.
"Act like I'm charity. Sell the house because you can't handle failure and then come back when you have money again."
He looked like he wanted to push me away. "I didn't ask you to sell anything."
"I sold my house," I said. "I sold the one place I had left because I thought you needed help. I thought—"
He slammed his fist against the wall. "I don't want your pity!"
"Then why did you have a woman tied to your arm a week after your father's business failed?" I demanded.
He inhaled like he was about to drown and admitted between teeth that he had been reckless and stupid. "Yes. I slept with someone. It was a mess. I was trying not to feel like a cripple, to feel anything. I'm sorry."
"I sold my house," I repeated. "And you used me as a weekend."
He left me then, furious and raw. He stayed away for a while. He told me he couldn't be a man I could lean on because his life imploded. He didn't want to drag me down.
I thought I had learned to hate him, but when I saw him cry in the back stairwell, when I saw his ribs like someone had traced my hand over them, I felt the old pull. Love is not convenient. It is a kind of stubborn bruise.
He came back like a stray dog when he had a place to sleep and food to eat. He said sorry in small, astringent ways: "I was wrong," he would say, then light a cigarette and stare at it like burning answers.
"Will you take me back because you're better?" I asked once, when his pride cracked and he was oddly small.
"If you want a man who will vanish when trouble comes, yes," he said. "If you want me—real me—stupid and trying, then maybe."
I stared at him. "You know what? I don't want your pity. I want your work."
He blinked. "Work?"
"Help me unpack boxes—not just things," I said. "Help me learn to hold on when it's ugly."
He laughed, snorted, and then kissed me a little too roughly, like asking for permission and not wanting to wait for the answer.
We started living together in a messy, affectionate way. He cooked with my pink apron on, but we argued about everything from how to stack dishes to whether his friends could crash on our couch. He would catch me in the kitchen and pretend to be critical, and then put a grape into my mouth like a five-year-old trickster.
The winter came soft and white. He wore a stupid set of red devil horns once and insisted I wear a matching pair. He also wore five o'clock shadow that made him look older than his thirty years. We traded rings like bad magicians; I slipped mine on his finger and he slid his on mine, both protests mild and full of nonsense.
"There," he said. "Now you can't run."
"I can always take it off," I said.
"Try me," he said, and kissed the back of my neck.
Everything was fine until someone from the past tried to profit off old misery.
Paola Tariq had been a name I heard the night Flynn slipped into the wrong orbit. She was loud in the kind of way that wants attention like a beggar wants alms. She had that quick smile that looked rehearsed, as if she’d practiced being charming in the mirror every morning.
Weeks after we'd settled into a rhythm, she appeared at Flynn's restaurant on a Friday night during the busiest hour. She came in with her friends like a storm—an ensemble of handbags and fake laughter. My stomach did a sick little flip when I saw her go in and sit in Flynn's spotlight, smiling like a woman who'd already won.
"She's back," Flynn muttered when he saw her. His fingers tightened on a bowl. There was something like a flinch in him that made me want to reach out.
I stayed for a while, then left to buy more vegetables, because going was a poor idea when the heart is like a loose thing. I watched from the entrance, a shadow, as Paola leaned forward and said something to Flynn that made his jaw clench. She turned and winked at the whole restaurant like it was a stage and she was the lead.
Later, she took one of the waiters aside and whispered too loud, so everyone could hear. She pretended to sob about some scandalous romantic nonsense, noises that are fast friends with attention.
"She is a liar," Flynn told me later. "She once said that the reason I left my family was because I wanted to run from obligations. She painted drama and sold it."
"Why does she care?" I asked.
"Because she wanted to get noticed," he said. "And because she likes to be the one who ruins endings."
Two weeks passed. Paola became bolder. She claimed, loudly, in the corner of Flynn's restaurant, that she had been with Flynn during the worst moment of his life. She claimed he had promised to marry her. She claimed, at one point, that she was carrying something important and that Flynn had abandoned her.
The restaurant is small and the tables cluster like islands. People noticed. Phones came out. Eyes watched. Gossip is an appetite that grows at the sight of blood.
I couldn't let it continue. I felt stupidly furious in a way that wasn't purely about Flynn anymore. I was tired of being the butt of someone else's story. I was sick of watching someone else rewrite the only tender parts of my life.
So I planned a different kind of event.
"What's this?" Flynn asked when I dragged him to the back of the restaurant one night. He was wiping a table, nervous and a little too polite.
"I want to host a small event at your place," I said. "A tasting night. Invite regulars. Make it about the food. But there's going to be a guest."
He squinted. "Who?"
"Paola." I said it simply.
He inhaled sharply. "Are you mad? She makes trouble."
"Exactly." I paused. "She makes trouble. And I'm going to make sure the truth gets served with the soup."
Flynn looked at me like I had a dangerous idea that might be, in fact, brilliant. "What are you going to do?"
"Bring proof," I said. "I remembered a little thing: when she first showed up, she told a story about being left pregnant, remember? She wrote messages to a number that wasn't Flynn's. I saved screenshots, I tracked some of her posts. I have receipts of dates when she was seen with other men. It isn't enough to simply tell the truth—we need witnesses."
He nodded slowly. "Public ones."
We scheduled the tasting. I invited some of Flynn's oldest regulars, a couple of journalists from the neighborhood site, and Mabel, who promised to bring a camera and a talent for dramatic commentary.
On the night, the restaurant hummed. Lanterns made the steam from the pots look like ghosts. Paola arrived with her usual entourage, louder than a brass band. She made a show of scanning the room until her smile landed on Flynn, slow and triumphant.
"Welcome back," she purred loudly enough for neighboring tables to hear. "So glad to be here—this place has such memories."
Flynn poured broth into bowls and said nothing. I stood at the door like a conductor about to begin.
"Will you say something now?" Mabel whispered.
I raised the microphone I had "borrowed" from a friend. "Good evening," I said, loud and clear. "We're running a special tonight. It's called 'Truth Soup.'"
A murmur rolled through the room. Paola looked confused, like a cat hearing thunder for the first time.
"I'd like to say something about honesty," I continued. "Paola, do you remember the afternoon you told the table that Flynn promised you marriage? You said he left you when you needed help. We all felt sympathy. We all shared our hearts. Would you like to say that again now, in front of everyone?"
Paola laughed, a high, brittle sound. "This is ridiculous. Women like you always think you own the narrative."
"Fine." I clicked the slideshow on my phone and projected the timeline across the wall using a tiny portable projector borrowed from a coworker. Photographs and messages flickered up: a photo of Paola at a café with a man and a ring box in the background; a message thread with another number; a receipt for a pregnancy test bought at a pharmacy on a date that made her story collapse. The room quieted.
"What is that?" Paola demanded. "That's...photoshopped."
"Is it?" I asked. I invited a blogger friend to live-stream. Phones lit up. A dozen pairs of eyes watched while I narrated. "Here," I said, "is a message you sent to 'Daniel' the week you claim Flynn was your only support. Here is the receipt for the pharmacy two days before you claimed abandonment. Here are the exact timestamps you told multiple strangers your story."
Paola's face changed from smug to startled to furious. "You cannot—"
"Watch," I said. "And here is the security camera footage from a café that shows you with Daniel at the time you claimed Flynn was with you. You said you were alone; records show otherwise."
"You are insane," she spat. But her voice sounded small.
I had prepared more. I had a friend from the local community watch site ready to show a screenshot of an online message where Paola had bragged about how easy it was to get attention by fabricating emotional drama. She had been arrogant enough to post to a private group that was not so private.
The room filled with the low murmur of shock. Chopsticks paused mid-air. Someone laughed, short and incredulous. Phones were out; whispers multiplied like wildfire.
Paola's smile wavered. "You are lying. This is harassment."
A regular stood up. "Why would she lie? I gave her a table one night and she told me the story," he said. "But I remember seeing that message on her phone."
Another diner said, "She said she was pregnant to get sympathy once at my cousin's wedding." Someone snapped a photo of Paola's face; others began to clap—not in celebration, but in the automatic rhythm of an audience demanding honesty.
Paola's friends began to drift away like thin curtains. She tried to reach for the manager; hands shoved her back. Her posture crumpled. The live stream pinged with comments: "Exposed," "Shameless," "Mean."
She moved toward Flynn, a last-ditch effort to claim some control. "You saw me," she hissed. "Why are you letting her do this?"
Flynn did not answer. He looked at her like you look at a puzzle you have no interest in solving anymore. "Leave," he said, voice level, not cruel.
Paola's face rearranged itself into disbelief. "You abandoned me," she cried.
"You lied," Flynn said. "And then you tried to make the lie mine."
Her reaction was theatrical at first—denial at the top, then anger like a wave, then that desperate flail of someone being stripped of a story they'd built to survive. She grabbed for a napkin, dabbed her eyes, and then finally, with a small sound like someone realizing there's nowhere else to fall, she broke.
"I was wrong," she said. "I needed—" Her voice collapsed into a sob. She clutched her phone, pressed it to her chest like a rosary. "I wanted someone to care."
Around her, the crowd's reactions sliced through her sentence: phones clicked, a teenager snapped a selfie with a half-smile, an old man folded his arms and shook his head, someone hissed, "Why stoop so low?"—other voices whispered, "I always thought she was spivvy."
Paola tried to plead. "Please—I didn't mean to hurt—"
"Stop," I said. My voice was steady in a way I hadn't intended. "If you ever cared about anyone, you should be able to see what you did."
She looked at me, and the defiance drained from her. The mask she'd used to solicit sympathy was gone, and what remained was a face full of raw, small shame. She began to cry in earnest, the kind of ugly, loud crying that draws a room into the immediate business of feeling.
"Please," Paola said to the room at large, "I'll do anything. I'll pay him. I'll—"
"Stop humiliating yourself," someone shouted from the corner. "Leave."
She stumbled out, with her friends scurrying behind like a flustered flock. The doors swung in and the cold night swallowed them.
For a moment the restaurant was a held breath. Then people started to clap, at first awkwardly, then with more enthusiasm than I expected.
Flynn set down his bowl in front of me. He put his hand over mine like a shield and didn't let go. We both looked at the door Paola had left through.
"I didn't want it to go like that," he murmured.
"It had to," I said.
He sat back and exhaled, the long sound of someone who has been holding their breath to keep a mistake afloat. Around us, people returned to their meals, but something had shifted in the air, like a wheel slipping a tooth into a new place.
Later, there was talk. The local blog ran the live video and the story took on a life of its own. Paola's phone filled with messages from people who wanted to know why she would lie. Her social circles narrowed like a tide going out. She tried to post a statement and the comment section filled with mockery and disappointment. People recorded her leaving the restaurant and the videos made their rounds.
Paola was punished publicly: people who had once engaged with her disappeared, her brand of scandal-mongering no longer paid, and she was left to reckon with the small, sharp truth that being the kindest liar is still being a liar. She had gone from center stage to the gallery in a single night.
The scene had changed Flynn, too. He sat with his shoulders hunched and his eyes rimmed in red. There was a long, awkward moment as the last patrons filtered out. A few clapped him on the shoulder. A woman left a small bouquet at the bar. Someone left a note: "Keep the soup honest."
"That felt like retribution," he said finally, voice hoarse.
"It felt like truth," I corrected.
He looked at me, and in that look there was relief and then sudden, guilty shame. "I should have stopped her sooner. I'm sorry."
"You didn't know," I said. "That's the point. Not every liar is obvious."
After that night, the rumor mill slowed. Paola's social accounts quieted. She made a few feeble attempts to paste herself back into conversations, but people prefer new scandals to tired ones, and she had been used up.
The punishment was public and raw. Paola's reaction moved from confident to furious to denial to fragile pleading and finally collapse, and the witnesses in the restaurant—the patrons, the staff, the online viewers—had a range of responses: pity, disgust, cheers, taking pictures, and murmured judgments. The scene was complete: a flooded room of witnesses, Paola's collapse, and the way Flynn and I stood together afterward like a small island.
That night we walked home in a soft snow. He held my hand like someone who needed to be reminded of how to be gentle.
"I could have handled it poorly," he said. "I could have let her spin it for a while."
"You did your best," I told him. "You were here."
"And you?" he asked.
"I stayed." I kissed his cheek like a truce. "I stayed to make sure the truth had a place to sit."
We moved forward, small and awkward together. We learned to stack dishes in a way that didn't start fights. We learned to be jealous but honest, to laugh when we wanted to weep, and to act like roommates in love who sometimes burned the soup but never each other.
Months later, I found a small orange charm tucked into the new lock's key. It was hand-carved, rough and accidental—like everything we had become.
I put the little orange on my keyring and slid the key into the lock, feeling the teeth click into place. The click was ordinary. The charm looked silly and useless, but when the door swung open it felt like the only thing I had ever wanted: an ordinary, shared life that had real, messy work in it.
I stepped inside. Flynn followed. The hallway light caught the little orange and made it glow like a promise.
"Ready?" he asked.
"Ready," I said.
We shut the door and listened to the city breathe. Outside, someone laughed. Inside, my keys jingled, and the tiny orange bobbed like a heartbeat.
The End
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