Sweet Romance12 min read
My Dad's Friend, My Whole World
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I was twenty when I kissed him for the first time.
"You can't be drinking in here," a voice said over the noise. "Give me that bottle."
I blinked at the sudden calm so close to me. Joel Roussel stood in the KTV light like a man carved from midnight—tall, composed, dangerous in a way I had learned to mistake for safety.
"Pauline," he said, sounding more like a sentence than a name. He stepped forward and tugged the bottle from my hand.
"You're not old enough to be out here making a fool of yourself," he added.
I watched his lips without meaning to. They were glossy, as if they had a color all their own, and the light made them look almost soft. I felt my heart do a ridiculous thing.
Before I knew what I was doing, I leaned forward and brushed my mouth against the corner of his lips.
"Hey!" someone shouted. The room buzzed. People laughed. I heard my own breath hitched. Joel's breath hitched too—deep, held.
He pulled away so fast it stung. He looked at me like I had startled him, then like I had broken something.
"Pauline," he said with a hardness I hadn't heard before. "What are you doing?"
I closed my eyes and played dead—a childish habit when I didn't want to deal with grown-up looks.
He carried me out of the room like I weighed nothing, his arms steady and sure. His scent—lemon and warm leather—filled my nose. I wanted to relax into him, to stretch and yawl with the lazy, illicit comfort of it. But I didn't. I kept pretending until the car hummed and we were moving.
"You're too young to be doing this," he murmured, buckling my seatbelt as if buckle clicks could keep me safe. Then he slid into the driver's seat, and I watched a world of control press into his shape.
"Why were you drinking?" he asked, as if he had a right to ask.
"I'm grown," I mumbled.
"Oh?" He tilted his head. "Twenty and drinking is grown? You know better than I do, kid."
He pinched my nose, admonishing, and I couldn't stop staring at his mouth.
"This is ridiculous," I told myself. "He's my father's friend. He is older. He is Joel Roussel. He is not mine."
"Stay away from trouble tonight," he said, soft and private. "I'll take you home."
"Take me where?" I asked, all teeth and grin. "My dad's house? My house? Or...?"
"To my place," he said after a beat. "You can stay at my place. I'll text your parents. Don't cause trouble."
His house had pink slippers on the entry shelf that were absurdly soft. He told me to go take a shower while he ran out for some things. I stood in his bathroom for a long time with a towel wrapped around me, thinking up ways to tell him I liked him that wouldn't sound like a child's confession.
When I came out, hair damp and brain full of schemes, he was at the sink brushing his teeth. He looked at me and his eyes were unreadable.
"You're crazy to like someone like me," he said, not a question. His mouth had that ghost of a smile. "You should be with someone your age."
"I'm not sure I want someone my age," I said, deliberately. "Someone my age texts too much."
He handed me a mug of hot milk with honey. "Drink," he said. "And don't be stupid."
He ran his fingers through my hair while he dried it, and I felt small and enormous all at once. The smallness came from being childlike in front of him; the enormity came from having someone so steady close enough to lean on.
"Do you think you should be with someone your age?" he asked suddenly.
I shrugged. "Do you?"
He didn't answer.
The next day I went back to college because life demanded normal. People noticed. Boys asked me out and I said no because someone else filled my thoughts.
"What's up with you?" Linda, my roommate, demanded the night she found me musing on the edge of the dorm stairwell. "You're glowing. Did you get a new video game? No? Spill."
"It's Joel," I confessed. "He's—"
"Joel Roussel?" Linda's eyes popped. "Your dad's friend? Girl, are you insane?"
"He isn't my dad's friend in the way you mean," I said stubbornly. "He's Joel. I like him."
"Pauline, he is like twelve years older," she said, voice full of scandalized concern. "And he's basically every rich family's dream. What are you even imagining?"
"A world where he likes me back," I said like it was the most natural thing.
She didn't laugh. She only smiled and said, "Okay, then go get him."
When word got around that I had kissed him at the KTV, the campus blazed. One of the school's popular boys—Bryson Cameron—used my rumor like a hook and came at me with a shy, breathless confession.
"Why did you refuse me?" he asked when he cornered me near the courts. "Is he your crush?"
I didn't like him in that way. I liked the depth in Joel's eyes, the quiet gravity of his hands. I told him straight.
"He is older," Bryson said, the words tasting like pity. "You know that's bad."
"Maybe," I said. "But he doesn't make me small."
Bryson tried to warn me without seeming to. "People will talk, Pauline. He's not your world."
Then Joel came up behind us, calm like a tide. He asked the boy politely to loosen his grip. The change when Joel looked at Bryson—sharp, polite steel—left Bryson stumbling back.
"Stay away from her," Joel said simply. His hand checked my wrist. He inspected where the boy had grabbed and his eyes darkened. "You hear me?"
I thought then that Joel never looked like a storm and a harbor at once. He was both things.
Over the next weeks we fit pieces into a close that felt private and secret. He made me laugh the way a sun will suddenly light a whole room. He nudged me, teased me, and in the in-between moments he did small things that meant everything—tucking stray hair behind my ear, insisting I take soup when I had cold, sending me a silly emoji when he was away. I devoured each small mercy.
Once, when he was busy and I found the guts to ask whether he could be mine, he simply said, "I'm twelve years older." That was not a no. It was a fact, a stone in the river. That night, we both pretended it didn't matter.
Then one evening at a fancy charity event, something I thought might be harmless unraveled. I had dressed with an odd mixture of hope and dread. I held a flute of champagne, trying to feel like someone who belonged.
"Drink this," Joel said, swapping my glass for orange juice. "You don't need this."
I glared. "Nobody tells me what to drink."
He hummed and handed me his jacket. "Then wear this so you don't catch a cold."
I watched him work the room with that effortless authority people whispered about. He smiled with his mouth and carried an entire room with his calm. I felt like a small, secret thing planted in his sleeve.
Then a woman appeared—refined, composed: Kinsley Garcia. She slipped her arm through Joel's, laughing in a way that made me reconceive of the world as a place where I wasn't the center.
"Joel, there you are," she sang. "Let's go meet a few people."
They left and people around us nodded approvingly. I waited and waited for Joel to come back. He texted one word: "Okay." It felt papery and small, like a dismissal.
I left early, heart sore and oddly hollow. I told myself it was fine. He would come around. He always did. But after that, he didn't call as often. He became precise and a little distant, like a photograph someone had edited to make themselves smaller.
I told myself not to brood. But the empty days filled up and then a week swelled into a month. When my parents spoke of Joel as if engaged in some other life—"He's getting married; we should be ready to congratulate them"—I sat there like a ghost. The person I loved seemed to fit into a different life with someone else.
I filled my days with study. I said yes to Bryson once, I think more to prove to myself I could move on than because I wanted him. He tried, but he was a soft ache. The one place I couldn't forget Joel was the river near the wall of town where I used to go when the sky felt too heavy.
One night, I leaned over that railing and thought about letting go.
"Pauline."
I almost went over at the sound of his voice. He had that furious, scared tone I knew well.
"You can't do this," he said. He grabbed my arm like a lifeline, pulled me back until I stumbled and fell into his arms.
"Why did you leave me?" I demanded, all the hurt spilling out. "Why did you make me believe we had something—then leave me like I was nothing?"
Joels' hands were large and warm. He said, slowly, "Because I'm afraid. Because I thought I was protecting you."
"Protecting me from what? From you?"
He finally stopped pacing and looked at me with something raw. "I like you, Pauline. I like you too much."
The words were a bell. I asked, "Can you mean that forever?"
"I can try," he said, tired and steady. "Will you come home with me?"
We fell into an odd, stumbling happiness. He let me in and we made small rules for ourselves—no public headlines, no careless exposure. We private-dated, hiding our meals between work and school. He taught me how to be careful; I taught him how to laugh louder.
There were tests. People asked questions we didn't want to answer. My father, Dean Dudley, was not pleased at first. The night he found out, he took Joel for a walk and—I'll never forget that—he hit him.
"You hurt my daughter," my father had said later, remorse and thunder in his voice. "You make promises. If you break them, I will find you."
Joel returned bruised, honest, and more determined than ever. He had been hurt, but he stood and said, "I'll protect her. I will."
That night my world rearranged itself.
We kept our love quiet. Linda knew. Bryson drifted away after a while. Life, mercifully, grew simpler. Joel was careful; he was firm when he needed to be; he made me laugh like a child who'd found permission to be silly in the middle of the day. He reminded me to eat, to sleep, to do my homework. He could be impossibly romantic in ways that made me feel both spoiled and safe.
On the day I graduated, Joel was there in the back. He handed me a small bouquet and said, "Congratulations."
"Thank you for coming," I whispered, clinging to the normality of it.
"We have another day coming," he said, squeezing my fingers. "A bigger one."
True to his word, he stood with me when we registered our marriage one spontaneous afternoon. My father's face when he saw the certificate was a story in itself—half anger, half a reluctant, cracked pride. He didn't scream at me. He folded us both into a hug that smelled like cigarettes and sweat and the unspoken willingness to move on.
"Just so you know," he said to Joel in a voice that had both the tremor of a man and the command of a general, "if you fail her, I will send you to bed early."
The days that followed were mostly ordinary and astonishingly tender. Joel worked like someone building a house beneath us, steady and patient. He insisted on doing small things—he brewed me tea, left notes, took me to little museums I would never have found on my own.
But the world is not all private kisses. There were people who wanted things of us—status, attention, gossip. Margarita Bradley, a woman I had encountered at events, wore manipulation like perfume. She smiled too perfectly at everything and took too much pleasure in putting everyone else in place. When she learned about me—about our relationship—she began to weave.
At a city charity gala, Margarita made a spectacle. She found chances to whisper into influential ears that my marriage was nothing but a PR stunt, that Joel had married me to deflect talk about some business scandal. She did it with such honeyed confidence that people began to look at me sideways. Whispers wrapped around us like smoke.
Joel noticed, of course. He tightened his hand on mine whenever Margarita's gaze slid toward us. But whispers are dangerous things. They can erode, drop by drop, the trust people have in you.
We decided to address it at the gala—because hiding never felt like the answer. I wore a simple dress; Joel wore a suit that made him look like a quiet pillar. Margarita glittered like she always did—too much jewelry, too many smiles. She worked the room like a tide, and at a certain moment she found us.
"So sweet," she said, honeyed voice sweet as cracked glass. "What a lovely story. Congratulations on your... marriage."
"Thank you," Joel said coolly. "Is there a reason you wanted to talk?"
She smiled wider. "Oh, I just adore a good story." Then she leaned in and lowered her voice, loud enough for the people near us to hear. "People should know who else will gain from this union, shouldn't they? Some deals must have been struck."
The room shuddered with a new tension. Joel's jaw moved, but he didn't answer. I felt a burn of shame hot in my cheeks. I could see guests racing to their phones, faces hungry for gossip.
"Enough," I said before Joel could. My voice surprised me—solid and dangerous. "That's a lie."
She laughed, her teeth too bright. "Is that your defense? Accuse me of lying? Or does this woman demand a public trial?"
The air in the gala became electric. Folks began to lean in, hungry for drama. Margarita evidently loved it. She spread her arms and, with a flourish, declared, "Let's make it interesting. If they won't defend themselves, I'll show just how... transactional this union is."
Joel's face tightened. He smiled a smile that had an edge. "Margarita," he said, "if you have something true to say, say it. But if you're spreading poison, there are consequences."
"Oh, please, Joel," she purred. "You know how the city talks."
At that, an assistant of Joel's—Finch Koch—stepped forward and took Margarita's arm gently. "Ms. Bradley," Finch said, voice steady, "we can take this somewhere private. But if you choose public accusation, you'll be responsible for these consequences."
Margarita scoffed. "What consequences? You think I'm afraid of the court of public opinion?"
I watched a small storm gather in Joel's eyes. He had been calm long enough. He turned to the crowd in a voice that was both soft and precise. "People," he said, "if you want to look, look at the facts. Margarita is a consultant who has been paid to create social frenzy for months. She has contracts with tabloids. She benefits when a story sells. If you want truth, ask why Ms. Bradley is invested in destroying lives for clicks."
There was a ripple—some bewildered, some offended. Margarita's smile faltered, then snapped into a mask of outrage.
"That's slander!" she cried. "You can't say that."
"Prove otherwise," Finch said. He stepped aside and handed a thin folder to a journalist who had been hovering. "Here are her last three bills for media consulting, signed invoices, payments sent to accounts linked to the gossip sites. If you'd like to fact-check, please do."
People whispered. The journalist skimmed. The air cooled. Margarita's face went from lily-white to a shade that looked like peeled lemon.
"No—these are private," she began, scrambling.
A woman near the front—one of the event's patrons—stood up. "So you profit from people's pain?" she asked, incredulous.
"Your invoices suggest so," Finch replied. He didn't shout; he just presented the evidence like a set of clean plates.
Margarita's hand flew to her throat. Her practiced poise cracked. "You're lying! I—"
"No," Joel said quietly. "You have been paid to create scandals. You know where to point the camera. You orchestrate hurt."
She tried to laugh, but it was a small, brittle sound. People took out phones. Some recorded. Others whispered, betrayed.
"And the worst part," Finch added, "is she came to this gala tonight with the supplier of one of those outlets. We have the messages."
At that, Margarita's composure collapsed entirely. She stood there as the room inhaled and held its breath. "You're all—you're vicious," she said, voice shaking. "You can't destroy me."
"You can try," Joel said. "But we will stand here and lay out the truth."
The crowd began to shift—a group of women, then men, then many faces I only knew by sight, stood and murmured. "How long has she been doing this?" someone asked. "Why wasn't this checked?"
Margarita's mask came off. Her cheeks bloomed with color, and then shame. She started to speak, then choked on the words. Her defenses were gone. "I—" she began, then turned to the nearest camera and begged, but the room had turned on her.
Someone laughed, quietly at first, and then more openly. Others shook their heads. A few even applauded Finch for exposing her. A group of young women I didn't know—students in sharp dresses—filmed her as she flailed. "She used us," one cried. "She used our hurt as content."
Margarita tried to plead for mercy, but the crowd was no longer hospitable. People closed around their phones, mouths forming verdicts. Security gently but firmly escorted her out as murmurs followed her like a wake.
I felt my throat tighten. The humiliation felt sickening and cruel, but it was also a reckoning. Having her exposed publicly was harsh, but what she had done—if true—was worse.
Joel stayed by my side through it. Later, when the room had settled into a softer buzz and the music resumed, he put his hand on my back and said, "I'm sorry you had to watch that."
"I didn't," I said. "I watched you protect me."
He leaned down, whispering in my ear, "You are mine."
The next morning, the papers had spin and headlines, but they had changed tack. Margarita's name was on more than one page, and the contracts were the real thing. She had burned bridges. Some people called it ruthless. Others called it long-overdue exposure.
There was fallout. Margarita's social engagements dwindled; invitations quietly stopped. Some of her contracts were canceled. She became a cautionary tale whispered about at parties and in articles.
I didn't feel triumphant. I only felt grateful Joel had stood up and that the crowd had seen the difference between truth and manufactured story.
After that, our life got quieter. We learned the rhythms of compromise. He continued to show up, in the small ways and the large. When I landed a job, he celebrated. When I had a bad day, he made soup and insisted I rest.
We married properly—no fuss, a best friend and a few family members. The day we registered, my father watched us with bloodshot eyes and then smiled in a way that looked like surrender. He said, gruffly, "I don't like him. But I like what he does for you."
I laughed and kissed him, and then kissed Joel.
We have fights like everyone. Sometimes he's stern—old-fashioned in ways I love and sometimes bristle at. Once I drank too much at a work dinner. He made me write a page of handwriting sentences as a joke-punishment—funny and old-school—and then cooked me dinner and coaxed me into talking about the ways people could take advantage. He is both disciplinarian and tenderness.
Years later I was pregnant. He retreated into quiet for a few days when I told him. I worried until he came back with a softness that made me want nothing else. "I don't want you to hurt," he said. "But I want this."
We had a daughter and the day she was placed on my chest I looked at Joel and thought how small and how complete we had become. He cried, his face wet and rough, and I knew we had done the right thing.
If there is one thing I learned, it's that love isn't a single burning moment but a million tiny decisions. Joel decided, every day. I decided, every day. We chose one another in the quiet and in the public, in the hospital and in the kitchen, in large gestures and small defenses.
And when people tried to make monsters where none existed, we learned to stand together and show truth.
The End
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