Sweet Romance14 min read
My Birthday, His Mistake, and the Ring with My Name
ButterPicks11 views
"I can't believe the fortune-teller meant this," I said, wrapping the thin hotel blanket around my shoulders.
"You said it was either big disaster or big luck," Elias replied from the bedside, cigarette smoke curling between us like a small gray ribbon.
"I didn't think 'sleeping with my boss' typed into big luck," I answered. "I thought maybe a lottery or an inheritance."
He inhaled slowly and didn't smile. He never smiled like other people. He took another drag and the ash trembled. "Happy birthday, Anna."
"Don't," I whispered, and my voice sounded small. "Don't call it that."
"You called me that first," he said, quietly, and his hand—warm and careless—rested on the sheet near mine.
I tightened the blanket up to my chin. "Elias, you were drunk. I was helping you home."
"You brought me in," he countered. "You put me on the couch."
"So? I thought you were going to sleep it off." I tried to make it light. "You didn't need me to tuck you in."
He stared at the ceiling, then at me. "You could have said no."
"I could have said no," I echoed. "I could have refused to carry you. I could have refused to check your pockets for the keys. I could have refused to...'"
"Ella?" He flinched at the nickname, then frowned. "Anna."
"Don't," I repeated. "Don't make this into something it's not."
"I never make things into what they're not," he said, and there was something tired behind the words.
I forced a laugh. "Right. Corporations and honesty, got it."
He squinted at me. "You are impossible."
"Maybe I'm just trying to keep my dignity." I swung my legs off the bed and stood up. "Can I get dressed now?"
He didn't move. "Stay."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because," he said, and then swallowed. "Because you'll leave."
"Yes," I said. "That's the plan."
He stared at me for a long time, his jaw working. Finally he reached for his cigarette and flicked it away. "You want to quit."
"I will quit," I said firmly. "I won a chunk of money. My parents wired me half from a house demolition compensation. I can start my shop."
"Your parents already gave you that?" His voice was too bright for a moment.
"Yes. I told you. Everything's going forward, unless you plan to stop the government."
He exhaled and let out a sound that could have been a laugh or a groan. "Why didn't you tell me? You checked your account like it was a god."
"I didn't," I said. "I wanted to keep it secret. I didn't want vultures."
"Vultures?"
"You know. Colleagues who suddenly forget their own mortgages."
Elias shook his head. "You are ridiculous."
"You keep saying that," I muttered. "You keep buying me ridiculous gifts."
He winced as if I'd hit him. "You took them."
"I did," I said. "Because you bought them."
His mouth twitched, an almost-smile. My heart did a stupid little jump. That was one of those moments—him doing something off-script, and my chest reacting like the first time I tasted a good coffee. I blushed and looked away.
It should have been simple. I would keep my job long enough to finish the big proposal, hand it in, collect the final paycheck, and leave. That was the plan. But plans tend to twist.
"You're going to the club tonight," Evie had texted that afternoon.
"Do it," I typed back. "I won't. Big deadline."
"You always say that," she replied. "Stop being the office nun."
"I can't, I have this plan," I told her truthfully. "And I'm saving up a good send-off."
"You're killing me, Anna," she sent. "Do you want me to drag you out?"
"No." I closed my phone. "No, thanks."
Elias appeared at my desk like a shadow, a presence that had become so normal I nearly didn't register it ten minutes ago. He leaned over the partition and asked, "Do you have time this weekend?"
"Time for what?"
"To finish that project."
"You're joking."
"No." He didn't smile. He never truly smiled for anyone except when he was alone and things were quiet.
I should have felt offended. Instead I found myself thinking of Saturdays and nights he would order food for the team, of the small kindnesses that were his way of being decent. I thought of the way he carried himself like a man in an expensive suit who had never learned how to be reckless, and how that steadiness had felt like a shelter.
That night at the bar, I had a ridiculous plan. Feed him a drink or three, take some embarrassing photos, and leak them to the office chat. People would laugh; he'd be humiliated. That would be my petty revenge for being asked to stay, for snacks that came with conditions, for the times he teased me about my phone.
"We'll get the short table," I hissed into the receiver. "I want someone to bump into him."
"You look terrible, Anna," Evie answered out loud. "Don't do anything you'll regret."
"Too late."
Elias and I drank. He gave each other a look as if calibrating the night. "You okay?" he asked at one point.
"Fine," I slurred, more bravely than I felt. "Just tired."
We ordered another round. He told me about his sister's return. "Keiko's back tomorrow," he said. "She's been studying abroad."
"That's who you were buying that ring for?" I asked, half-joking.
He paused. "No. For someone special. But Keiko's back."
I noticed the way his face softened when he said her name. There was the smallest flicker of something human—care, nostalgia— and I felt my chest twist. Heart moment two: he spoke softly about his family in a way that broke the icy sculpted image.
Later, the drinks did their job. He was loose. We staggered back to his place. It was routine—I'd often been to his apartment, blurted recommendations as I tidied, fed him when he forgot food. My revenge plan was a joke that had once lived in my head for two years; tonight, it felt doable.
I crouched by the couch, phone ready. "One photo," I whispered. "Just one."
He coughed and opened his eyes. They were black pupils in the dim room. "Anna," he said, and the name sounded soft and heavy.
"Just sleep," I told myself. "I'll put the blanket over him and—"
His voice came out like a small apology. "You don't have to do this."
"I what?"
"Be nice to me."
"No," I said. "I don't."
His hand, small against the sheet, found mine. "Stay."
I told myself I should have left. I didn't.
He kissed me. It was not the sloppy, drunk press of two bodies; it was a deliberate, quiet kiss like someone trying to remember something important. I froze. His lips warmed the side of my face, and the straight line I had tried to hold all these years blurred.
"Yesterday—" he began when the light leaked over the sill, "we should talk."
"Let's just pretend," I said, the words scraping. "Let's just pretend this never happened."
He swallowed. "You think it's nothing?"
"I think we both had too much to drink," I said. "Let it be."
"You want me to think that?" He looked at me with something fragile on his face. "Do you know what I think?"
"No," I said.
He reached over, grabbed a shirt from the floor, and put it around me like a shield. His fingers brushed my shoulders. I felt the guilty warmth of that small touch. Heart moment three: he did something public and ordinary—covered me with a shirt—and the way he did it made my stomach spin.
"I'll tell everyone you left early," I lied, to save both of our faces.
He nodded. "Good."
Then he stood to answer a call, and I slipped out.
The week at work was an exercise in normality. Conversations went on about the project, clients, supplies. I was supposed to be finishing the pitch deck. Instead, my stomach tightened. My bank balance glowed on my phone and whispered about rent and freedom. In the corner of the open-plan office, I saw him laughing with a woman who wasn't me.
"I didn't know he had a girlfriend," a teammate said in the pantry. "He always keeps things quiet."
I watched him through the glass, and my chest felt hollow. The woman, tall and golden-haired, slid her hand into his. They left the store together, and I followed at a distance like a shadow.
It didn't take Sherlock to assume the worst: handsome boss, pretty woman, jewelry store. I pictured a future in which I had been ridiculous and he had been shallow. Rage rose like bile.
I was dizzy all afternoon. When my screen filled with white from focusing too long, I made a decision. I wrote a resignation letter in a few minutes, printed it, crumpled it, then smoothed it out and put it in my bag. I would hand it in after the meeting.
Instead, he asked me to come to his office.
"Anna, come in," he said.
I wanted to toss the paper at him. I almost did. Instead, I walked in, heart raging. "Elias, I'm resigning."
He laughed like someone had told a joke he didn't get. "Again?"
"This is serious. I don't want to work here," I said. "The money's there. The business will be mine. I can't be your..." I stopped because the office clock ticked mercilessly.
He did something I didn't expect. He sat and looked at me, then looked away and said, "My sister is back."
I frowned. "Your sister?"
He rubbed his temples. "Keiko. She flew in this morning. She'll be at the celebration tonight."
"The 'celebration'?" I said. "You never told us there was one."
He made a face. "It's a company dinner. We closed a big account."
"And?"
"And I thought," he said slowly, "maybe you'd come. You always work. I thought—"
"I thought you wanted me to be part of something," I snapped.
He looked hurt, then embarrassed. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a small velvet box, and put it on his desk without opening it. I stared at the tiny box as if it might bite.
"Elias, what is that?" I asked.
"It's for someone I thought was mine," he said. "But I was wrong."
"You were wrong?" I echoed.
He took a breath and said something that made the room shrink. "Anna, I thought we were... I thought that your accepting little things meant you were okay with more."
"You thought wrong," I said, heat rising. "You thought I was your girlfriend because I accepted gifts?"
"I didn't say that," he protested. "But—"
"You bought me things I didn't want to keep, you gave me flowers, and I accepted them because they were the only bright things. But do not—" I pointed at the box, "—make me out to be your property."
"I'm not," he said, voice low. "I only wanted to show you I could be a man who cares."
"Then care without a retainer," I said. "Don't think a necklace is a contract."
He blew out a breath. "You quit then."
"Yes."
He looked like a man punched in the chest. "Anna," he said. "Before you go—"
"What?"
"I need you to know the truth," he said. "The woman you saw at the mall—Keiko—she is my sister."
I felt my face go red in a way that had nothing to do with embarrassment and everything to do with how quickly I could be so wrong. "Your sister?"
"Yes." He ran a hand through his hair. "She graduated from art school abroad. She came back today."
My anger fizzled like a wet match. For three days my image of him had been a villain; now I stared at a brother, not a scoundrel. Guilt pricked at my skin like nettles.
"Then why the ring?" I asked.
"I don't know," he admitted. "I work in blunt gestures. I thought—maybe I'd be honest and stupid at the same time."
I laughed, short and sharp. "You are both honest and stupid."
He smiled then, for real. Small, disarming. It felt like sun through the clouds.
"Look," he said. "I was clumsy. You were clumsy. Can we just be blunt adults?"
"Can we?" I echoed.
He crossed the office and took the resignation letter from my hand. "Keep working," he said. "Just finish the pitch. Let me—let me show up with less arrogance."
"And when it's done?"
"Then you can go," he said. "Or you can look after that shop of yours with me standing on the sidelines if you want."
He sounded vulnerable without armor. I was a moth feeling heat from a tiny flame. The idea that he might stand on the sidelines for me—offer to be present in some uncertain, sober way—made my stomach flip.
The company celebration that night was a clean bright room full of toasts and clinking glasses. I sat on the edge, wondering how the world expected me to act. I wore the dress he had said I should wear—stubbornly, I had decided to wear it just to spite him. Evie squeezed my hand like a dare.
"Ella?" someone called, and the low hum of the room quieted for a second. It was Elias. He had a nervous energy about him, like a man on a bridge about to jump or to sit.
"You look good," he said in a voice I couldn't rehearse.
"You look like a man showing off a woman who does good work," I said.
He laughed then, a soft sound that made people glance our way, and that was when his sister entered the room. She was tall and warm and luminous in a way that made the crowd rearrange themselves around her. People smiled. My chest pinched.
"Ella," she said, approaching us with a smile, and then she stopped as if she recognized me. "Anna, right?"
I swallowed and nodded. "Hi."
"Elias told us a lot," she said, and the pronoun 'us' made my pulse hitch. "He said you'd saved a project."
"Did he?" I said faintly.
"He also said he was foolish and that you swore at him once," she added, and I snorted.
We talked like polite strangers, then later as acquaintances, and then something else settled—a family at the edges of a new habit. Elias paid attention to her, and sometimes his eyes drifted to me. It was uncomfortable and oddly protective. The crowd watched, and I felt both seen and small.
When the speeches ended, Elias tugged me outside. "Can I explain one thing?" he asked.
"One thing, Elias?"
"I wanted to propose to you properly," he confessed. "Not tonight. Not in front of everyone. But I had meant to show you that you were seen. That I saw you."
"I didn't ask to be proposed to," I said, voice uneven.
He knelt down. It was ridiculous and very human. "I know," he said. "I wasn't going to. But I thought—" He opened his hand. The small velvet box gleamed. Inside, a ring with my name engraved on the inside: ANNA.
I stalled. "You made a mistake," I said. "People don't propose with engravings as a mistake."
He looked like a child learning his lines wrong. "I don't get it right," he said. "I am bad at romance. But I'm good at remembering the smallest things. The way you send me the status at eleven pm. The way you fold receipts. The way you keep your phone on silent. I remember."
"You remember receipts?" I said, incredulous.
He smiled like an idiot. "It felt like remembering to breathe."
There was something so honest in his clumsy earnestness. People had crowded to the door by now. Someone took out a phone. The moment stretched thin and then bright as a thread.
"Ella," Evie hissed later after we were home, "that was a public moment."
"Yes," I said. "He did it in front of everyone. Realistic."
"How do you feel?" she pushed.
"Confused," I admitted. "And oddly warm."
The pregnancy news came two days later like a gust of cold wind. I had been dizzy for a week and blamed the late nights and the stress. At the clinic, the nurse smiled and said, "Congratulations, you're expecting."
"No," I said. "No, it's a mistake." I had done tests and cried, and then the little nurse gave me the paper with the official words. The ink looked accusatory.
"Elias?" I called. "You can't be serious."
He arrived with a bouquet and the look of a man whose world had tilted and started being kind of beautiful and terrifying at the same time.
"You should have told me sooner," he said. "Are you okay?"
"I'm 24. This wasn't planned." I told the story like a report. "We were careless."
"We were," he agreed.
We argued about options, about parents, about my plans, about the shop I had once dreamed of. He kept insisting, "We can handle this." And I kept thinking of the way he had stood in the hallway with a cigarette and a half-smile, and how that smile had, slowly and annoyingly, turned into a shelter.
"Will you stay?" he asked once, the dark worry in his eyes making him look very boyish.
"I'm not sure," I said. "But I can't do it alone right now."
"Then don't," he said. "Don't do it alone."
In the months that followed, people watched us like a slow scenic painting. He did things the only way he knew—with purchases and acts that read like compulsion. He bought vitamins in bulk. He scheduled every appointment. He read parenting blogs at midnight and forwarded me links with a single note: "Read this." He appeared at my home unannounced and fixed the leaky faucet even though he had never been a handy person.
There were small moments: he took off his jacket when I shivered on a cold day and draped it over my shoulders; he clicked his pen while waiting for me in the antenatal classroom and then, when the baby kicked, he laughed like a lunatic. He left Post-it notes with reminders on the fridge like little flags of love.
"You're not a tool," he said one afternoon when I was snapping at him for rearranging my plans. "I'm not buying your compliance. I'm trying to be useful."
"You're doing it loudly," I told him. "But yes, useful."
When the rumors about the 'other woman' refused to die down, people whispered in corridors and pointed as if I were a spectacle. I could have been cruel back. I had a plan once—foolish revenge that involved photos—and I could have carried it out for pain's sake. But there was a child growing in me, and the thought of starting anything with a deliberate cruelty felt like poisoning the air we would breathe. So I didn't.
Instead, a confrontation happened anyway. It wasn't about Elias. It was about someone who tried to spread a rumor—that there had been a deliberate affair, that I had tried to game the system. A junior manager, Georg Dumont, had started a stream of messages in the group chat scornful enough to be hurtful.
"She slept with him to get the job," Georg typed with a confidence that smelled like gossip and vindictiveness.
"She blackmailed him," another chimed in.
They didn't know the facts. They only wanted the thrill of being the ones who knew. The office hummed like a beehive suddenly on edge.
It exploded into public confrontation during a midmorning meeting. Georg asked a question with a smile that thought it had already judged. I couldn't hold it in.
"You will stop," I said, standing up with a sudden clarity.
Elias looked at me sharply. The room went quiet because I was the public person who had always been quiet. "No," I continued, my voice steady now, "this ends here."
Georg laughed. "Anna, is this about your birthday adventure? People love a good scandal."
"I am pregnant," I said. "What I do is none of your rumor business. You owe me an apology."
"Apology?" Georg scoffed. "You think we apologize for truth?"
"You're using me to make yourself important," I said. "You're making a show. This is my life."
The room filled with murmurs. Someone took out a phone. My face burned.
Elias leaned forward. "Georg," he said, slow and controlled. "What you wrote is defamatory."
Georg smirked. "Name one thing that's untrue."
Elias turned to me. "Anna, do you want to tell them?"
"No," I said. "I'll let you."
He stood. "Georg," he said loudly, "you started a rumor. You made our teammate a target. You will post a correction on the company group and apologize publicly at eleven."
Georg blinked as if he'd been slapped by truth.
"I want you to say why you did it." Elias's voice was a rock. "You did it because it made you feel superior to someone else."
Georg's face changed. "I—no—"
"You'll say it," Elias insisted. "And you'll tell them how you fabricated intent without facts."
Silence lengthened. People leaned forward, hungry for the drama they hadn't known they'd paid for.
"I won't," Georg muttered.
"You will," Elias said. "Or you'll let HR process this."
Georg paled. HR was not the best friend of office bullies. He shifted uncomfortably under the chair. Faces in the room watched him like jury members.
"I apologize," Georg finally said, voice thin. "I—I'm sorry."
It wasn't smooth. It wasn't satisfying like a perfect cinematic collapse. Georg's apology trembled and had an air of self-preservation. People took photos. Some nodded. A few scoffed. But he had to write the correction in the group, and the message appeared: "I misreported facts about Anna. I apologize for the harm." The chat erupted with reactions, half genuine, half for show.
I felt dizzy and angry that such a weak apology would ever matter. But the ripples settled. In that small public space, the record corrected itself. People murmured; whispers turned to conversations about workplace responsibility.
Georg looked at me with something like shame. He lost face that morning. It wasn't the epic public undoing I might have imagined, but it was a tiny reckoning. He would think twice before writing such things again.
"I didn't want him fired," I said later to Elias. "I wanted him to see how small this cruelty looked when it was called out."
"You did well," he said, his thumb rubbing the ring's engraving on the inside, feeling my name. "You were very brave."
"I was just tired," I admitted.
He smiled. "You were light years braver than tired."
We kept living in the small orbit of our messy growing family. His sister became real: Keiko, warm and teasing, who adored him and approved of my cooking efforts. My parents, delighted and fierce, talked wedding and diapers like two future planners. Evie tested baby names and sent me lists that ranged from elegant to absurd.
Not everything was soft. There were nights when I snapped and told him I didn't want the shop to be postponed forever. There were nights he sat outside and smoked, looking far older than his years, fatigued by the weight of promises.
When the baby came, people flooded the hospital room like spring weather. He was a terrible patient but an excellent father in ways that mattered. He cried when the nurse held our daughter against her chest and announced her weight.
"Anna Grace," I said finally.
He laughed and squeezed my hand. "Good name."
Years later, when the small engraved ring sat in the top drawer of our home with other trinkets—a key from the apartment we had first shared, a crumpled ticket stub from the first movie we saw as a couple—I would sometimes open the drawer and trace the letters.
"Anna," I'd whisper to myself. "Remember that morning."
He'd be there, making coffee, or folding the laundry, clumsy and earnest in his unique ways.
"Do you remember how stupid I was?" he'd ask.
"You still are," I'd say, rolling my eyes.
"And you?"
"I was stubborn."
We both laughed.
One rainy afternoon, years after the birthday that changed everything, I took the little box from the drawer and opened it. The ring sat there, its engraving worn down in places but still perfectly legible. I slid it onto my finger and felt the familiar tug of memory.
"I kept it," I said.
"You did," he replied from the kitchen. "You kept everything that mattered."
I smiled. The storm outside rattled the windows, and the house smelled like coffee and baby shampoo. It was ordinary, messy, and full of the small proofs of a life we had made together.
"Happy birthday to me," I said, because it still felt like a strange blessing.
"Happy birthday to us," he answered, and that little difference mattered.
The End
— Thank you for reading —