Sweet Romance14 min read
My Mango Fever and the Man Who Broke My Rules
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I never thought a single night could rewrite the map of everything I believed about myself.
"Ivan, get up," my father shouted from the doorway like the weather itself had turned against me.
"Ivan—" He meant Leoni, but everyone in my family called me Leoni the way others keep a nickname in reserve. "Leoni, get up. Look at what you've done."
"I'll sleep a little more," I mumbled, burying my face deeper in the pillows. My hair was a dark curtain, and the sunlight on the curtains made everything lazy.
"Wake up this minute!" my mother barked from behind him. "You come home at dawn, you make a scene in a bar, and you beat a boy so badly his brother has to bring him here? Where did you get this spirit?"
"Mom," I croaked, still half-sleeping.
"Don't you 'mom' me," she said. "Get down and apologize to Fisher."
"Apologize? To Fisher?" My jaw snapped shut. "He deserves worse. Two-faced. He did it first."
"You stop right now," my father said. "It doesn't matter who started it. Hitting is wrong. Go down and apologize."
"I won't," I said, stubborn and red-faced.
"Fine." My mother grabbed my ear with a practiced motion that still made me wince. "Downstairs, now."
I was dragged out like a stubborn cat. "You're awful," I muttered.
"Be quiet," my mother hissed. "You don't get to argue."
From downstairs I could hear Fisher Valdez's whining. "Serves her right," he said. "She deserved it."
"Fisher," someone said quietly. The voice had a cool, contained timbre, and even in that moment I wondered why my heart pricked. "Explain once more exactly what happened."
"It's not my fault!" Fisher sniffed. "I— I didn't do anything wrong."
"Caspian," Fisher whispered. "Please, tell them."
Caspian Albrecht sat across from me like a statue carved in moonlight, but with eyes that cut clean through pretense. He was the kind of man people wrote about—tall, narrow-shouldered, with eyes that made me suddenly ashamed of my own loudness. He was not supposed to be here. He was not supposed to be my audience.
"Caspian," my father said, frowning. "Your brother looks like he's been hit by a truck."
Caspian finally turned his head. "I'm not here to cause trouble," he said quietly. "I just want to know what happened. Be honest."
"I hit him because he—" I started, but my voice was clipped by embarrassment and a thousand reasons to shut up. "He was flirting. In front of Rena. He acted like he had no boundaries."
"You fought for a friend," Caspian said, as if stating a fact about the weather. "I'll consider that."
"You will what?" Fisher squealed.
Caspian's lips tilted the tiniest bit. "We came by to sort it out, not escalate it. If this is settled, we will leave."
"You're not leaving until she apologizes," my mother said.
I rolled my eyes in full view. "No way. He's a snake."
I don't know why I grew bolder. Maybe adolescence had given me a habit of scaring people, or maybe I had always been a little too brave. "He's an idiot. He cheated. I gave him what he deserved."
"Enough," Caspian said softly. "If it's a misunderstanding, we'll clear it."
That was the first time I saw that smile, the tiny soft arc that made someone else's day feel like a warm room. It caught like a rumor and it stayed with me.
Later, as they prepared to leave, Fisher limped past. I felt guilty for the bruise, but not for the intention. "Don't tell Rena I was beaten," he whispered to me. "I'll never hear the end of it."
"I won't," I promised, though I wasn't sure I meant it.
Caspian turned to leave first. Fisher followed. "Goodbye," I said too soon, and both of them shot a glance back.
I should have expected nothing more. He was a big-city man; I was a known troublemaker who'd been sent away to sleep off a fight. But I couldn't help the way my chest loosened when Caspian glanced my way.
Later, in the quiet of dawn, I felt foolish enough to call him—Caspian had left his number and a polite "take care" in a message. I typed with my fingers trembling like leaves.
"Would you let me buy you dinner?" I wrote. "As an apology—sort of."
"Tomorrow," he replied simply. "Pick a place."
The next day I scrambled. I dressed like someone who wanted to be believed: a pale-blue dress my mother kept folded in a drawer for "proper moments." I looked at myself in the mirror and felt like a costume.
"You're seeing Caspian?" my mother asked, suspicious.
"Just dinner," I said. "He wants to clear the air."
"Be nice," she said, the way mothers do. "Act like a lady."
"I will," I promised, though I wasn't certain what behaving like a lady meant when you already had a bruise on your wrist and a memory of being dragged by your ear.
At the restaurant he arrived precisely, an hour early. "Sorry I'm late," I said, flipping through a menu as if it could keep me anchored.
"I was early," he said. "You set the place."
We talked about small things at first—menus, trivialities. Then, because I couldn't seem to stop myself, I spilled the sauce on my dress. A glob of dipping sauce landed like a dark blotch across my chest.
"Oh no," I breathed.
Caspian moved so fast it made my stomach stumble. He took off his jacket and laid it around my shoulders like someone wrapping a sleeping bird. "We'll clean it," he said.
I felt warmth and heat both. He walked me to the mall, bought me a new shirt, and wouldn't let me pay. "You invited me," he said, as if it were the only argument necessary.
That night, after a trip to the mall and a new shirt tucked into my bag, Caspian and I returned to the restaurant. He kept stealing glances, the kind that felt like small, secret conversations. I kept thinking of the way he had said, "Tomorrow," over the phone.
That was the beginning. Not fireworks, but small things: quick kindness, the way he murmured to me like a secret holder, the way his hand moved to steady me on curbs.
"You're different around me," he admitted once, while we walked beneath the sodium lamps outside the mall.
"I am," I said, honest. "You're the only person who gets to be calmer than me."
A laugh slipped out of him. "Is that a compliment?"
"A compliment," I said.
We were a curious pair: I, loud and messy, and he, precise and still. People noticed. The office staff gossiped when I came to the company for an "informal" visit. My face suddenly belonged on their lips. Someone took a photo of me adjusting my hat. When a student snapped us standing side by side—me tucking hair behind my ear, Caspian shielding me with a jacket—it became a campus sensation.
"You're the campus' new favorite," a girl in my dorm said as we unpacked.
"I'm not trying," I muttered. "It just… happened."
"You should use it," another roommate said. "This could help—people love stories."
"I don't want a story," I said. "I want to learn to be real."
But reality became complicated when food betrayed me in a way I never expected. At his office one afternoon, he left me to eat while he sorted out a contract. I ate cautiously. The dessert contained mango, a sweet smear I didn't dare detect. Later, my lips tingled, and then my throat. My heart jumped. I felt dizzy.
"Caspian," I whispered, but my voice was thin and far.
He was there like a lighthouse. "Leoni, you sound terrible. Stay still."
They took me to the hospital. I remember a cold floor and fluorescent lights and a soft voice saying, "He told us to prepare a bed." I remember being frightened of my own body.
Later, in a private room with crisp sheets, my mother appeared like a storm. She cried, and I cried with her.
"I was so careful," she said. "I kept you away from mango for years."
"Mom," I said. "I'm sorry."
"It is not your fault," she replied, but her tears said otherwise.
Caspian told the nurse my symptoms. He held my hand while doctors listened to lungs and eyes. He said things in small, efficient sentences that made me understand his steadiness.
"I'm sorry," he told my mother when she arrived. "This was my mistake. I brought that dessert."
She stopped crying for a moment. "Why would you bring dessert with mango?"
"I didn't check," he admitted. "I should have."
"I put poison into my daughter's day," I said, half-joking to hide the sting. But he didn't laugh.
The hospital hum had a strange hush. He stayed until my fever broke. I was still weak when my mother lectured me at home, and I answered like a contrite child.
"This was careless," she said.
"I know," I said.
"You should be more careful," she insisted, but her voice softened as she added, "And you should see Caspian as family, not a stranger."
Family. The word lodged like a pebble.
In the weeks that followed, Caspian's presence kept arriving in small forms—messages to check up on me, a bowl of soup left outside my door, a quiet nod in the school courtyard. He helped me when I applied for a summer internship at his company, Albrecht Holdings. I wanted to do something for myself. My father and mother allowed it more because of who Caspian was than anything else. Corporations are like gardens where some seeds are planted, and some are sown by hands that know whose land to use.
"I'll set it up," Caspian said one morning. "If you'd like to give it a try."
"I do," I said, honest as sunlight through glass.
But the world didn't stop being complicated. When I arrived at Caspian's office, people were buzzing. Rumors fly there like paper birds. Some whispered that I had gotten the position because of my family's name; others suggested something harsher.
Someone made a post on the company's forum, a cruel thing, implying I had traded favors for an internship. I wasn't prepared. The post was a blow made of pixels and venom. I sat frozen.
"Who would do this?" I asked.
Caspian's face had that stern set it gets when he is arranging answers from problems. "I'll look into it."
The HR director, Ivan Miller, called me into his office. "Leoni," he began, "this post is explosive. We need to resolve it carefully."
"You know it's false," I said, feeling flayed by a dozen eyes.
"We'll find the source," he said.
We found it. Cora Luna was her name; she sat at a neat desk like a porcelain doll. She was pretty and exact, too pretty to be comfortable. Her smile betrayed the kind of calculation I had seen before in high school rivalries.
"Do you know what you're doing?" Ivan asked her in the conference room where office lights make everyone look two shades tougher.
"What do you mean?" Cora blinked, innocent as a pressed flower.
"This is a serious accusation," Ivan said. "It's defamation. We will not tolerate it."
"You can't control the internet," she said with a little laugh, like a girl tossing a pebble into a pond. "People talk."
"Not like this," Ivan said. "Not about an employee's private life."
She shrugged. "Opinions are free."
"I will be formal," Ivan said, his voice now a document. "Cora, come with me."
The public punishment came the next morning, not because I demanded it, but because a corporation cannot let slander sit like rot in the basement. They called a meeting in the atrium, where a lunchroom full of employees gathered. The company's bulletin flashed the words: "Staff Assembly: Immediate Conduct Review."
I sat in the back with my hands folded. Caspian stood beside me, a sort of calm sentinel. He had told me to go, because silence never helps. I felt small and giant at once.
Ivan stood and spoke to the room. "We have an important matter," he announced. "There has been a post that suggests one of our interns obtained their position through improper means. We take such allegations seriously."
Cora stepped forward with the face of someone who had rehearsed apology lines in a mirror. Her lips were the color of pale roses. "This was foolish," she murmured. "I didn't mean—"
"You posted confidential insinuations," Ivan interrupted. "You targeted a colleague and created public speculation. That's not a private joke; that's a smear."
"She did it to me," someone whispered.
People were already watching with their phones half-raised. Office news travels fast.
Cora tried a small laugh. "It was for attention," she said. "I didn't think it'd become—"
"It will," Ivan said. "Because people believe what they read. You created a hazard to the team. We will treat this with transparency."
An HR representative read from a folder. "Cora Luna has been found to have posted anonymous defamatory comments about a colleague. Evidence includes timestamped access logs tying the posts to her device. As a result, she will be suspended pending formal disciplinary action, and the company will issue a public statement clarifying the facts. Additionally, Cora will write a formal apology to the affected parties and attend mandatory training on workplace ethics."
The crowd shifted like a wave. Murmurs became a chorus. I felt heat rise to my cheeks though I hadn't done anything wrong. People looked at me with curiosity and pity and the hungry sparkle of gossip that makes strangers become a jury.
Cora's expression didn't fall into defeat so much as surprise. For a few seconds she tried denial. "You can't prove—" she started.
Ivan slid a printout across a table. "The access logs."
She looked at the paper, breathless. Her eyes slid like a trapped animal's. "That's not mine," she said, voice cracking.
"It is," the HR rep said. "We also matched writing style and IP addresses."
"Someone framed me!" Cora blurted. "I'm being set up. This is—"
"Enough." Ivan's tone was unyielding. "Cora, you must accept responsibility for the intent and impact of your actions. You are a member of this company, and we expect professionalism."
"Do you understand what you did to Leoni?" Ivan asked.
Cora's face registered something like a shift from flame to ice. "I didn't think—" she began.
"You humiliated a student," someone in the crowd cried. "She is just starting."
Cora's denial crumbled. First a tremor of anger—at being caught—then the pleads, the protests. "Please, I didn't mean to ruin her," she said, the edge of panic cutting into rehearsed cool. "I— I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
Faces in the room changed. Coworkers exchanged looks—shock, disappointment, smugness. Phones reached for record buttons. Her voice cracked anew. "I was stressed," she said. "I wanted attention. I didn't think— Please!"
"No," Ivan said quietly. "You thought, and you acted. There is a cost."
A dozen people who had once been friendly to her looked away. Some of the interns who had cheered a week ago at campus gossip were now whispering about loyalty and rumors and the kind of shame that sticks. A few colleagues who had previously accepted her smiles crossed their arms.
I watched as Cora's composure unspooled. Her confident mask broke. Her hands trembled; a half-started apology sat like an unfinished sentence in her mouth. She tried blame, then denial, then begged. The steps in her expression were human and pitiless. At first there was swagger—"It was only a post,"—then bewilderment—"They can trace it?"—then fury—"This is unfair!"—then a hollowing shock when people around her began to distance themselves.
"Why would you do it?" someone demanded.
"I wanted to... to gain an edge," she said. "I thought people would sympathize—"
"Sympathize by hurting someone else?" another colleague said. "That's not sympathy. That's cruelty."
The murmurs turned into a chorus of disappointment. A receptionist who had once complimented Cora's hair walked past without greeting. Two interns who had smiled at her earlier now politely declined to step into the same elevator. The punishment was not only the official suspension; it was the social freeze that isolates you without mercy.
I felt a strange tug: pity for a young woman whose insecurity exploded into malice; disgust at the needless harm she'd caused. I had imagined revenge as something bright and satisfying, but this public reckoning felt like a slow, necessary cleansing. People watched; she shrank; the damage was visible. That was the point—her actions had to be undone publicly, and so they were undone in a room full of witnesses.
"Leoni," Ivan said, stepping toward me. "We will ensure the company makes a statement clarifying the facts. We do not tolerate malicious behavior."
Caspian squeezed my shoulder. "Are you okay?" he murmured.
"I'm fine," I said, though my heart fluttered. "Thank you."
Cora's reaction went through the expected stages. When she realized the evidence tied her to the posts, her face crumpled into disbelief. Then she denied. Finally she broke—husky, small voice, pleading. People recorded. A few applauded quietly when the HR director described the company's stance. Some employees whispered their own stories of online nastiness as if the room had become therapy.
"Is she fired?" someone asked in a low voice.
"She's suspended," Ivan said. "There will be a full review."
That night, before the city lights dimmed, I walked home with Caspian. "That was heavier than I thought," I said.
"It had to be done," he said. "Silence shields hurtful behavior."
"Did you—did you expect that the company would act so publicly?"
"I expected Albrecht to protect its employees," he said. "You are part of that team now. I don't want you to have to carry this alone."
"I don't either," I said.
The weeks that followed were a different kind of story. The forum cleared. People apologized for sharing the post. Some colleagues reached out to me privately, embarrassed they had laughed. Cora kept a low profile until a formal hearing decided her fate. The public punishment had two effects: it punished her and cautioned others. It also pulled me into a world I had only touched lightly before: corporate politics, compassion, the messy ethics of being young in a place that values image.
Caspian and I never rushed anything. Our days were filled with small tendernesses that felt huge to me. He opened doors for me not as favors, but as normal courtesies. He teased me about being dramatic. He insisted on walking me to the dorm when school started. He picked up phone calls and left little notes.
"Leoni," he said one afternoon while we sat on a campus bench, "I like being with you."
I blinked. "Like?"
"I like how you talk," he said. "I like that you are not afraid to be loud. I like that you will tell me when I'm being aloof."
My heart did a weird, flapping thing. "You like me?"
He smiled, the small, private kind that had become ours. "Yes."
I laughed, sharp and happy. "Then promise me one thing."
"What's that?"
"Don't ever act like you don't care."
"I won't," he said, in the simple, certain tone of a contract.
We grew into a quiet intimacy: study dates, shared coffees, the odd argument about who ate the last dessert. I taught him to find joy in small mischiefs; he taught me that steadiness could be a kind of warmth.
One night, months later, as the city slept and we walked beneath streetlamps, he stopped and looked at me directly. "Leoni," he said, "would you like to come to dinner next weekend? My mother is hosting something small."
"My mother—your mother?" I asked.
"Lenore will be there," he said.
The idea of meeting his mother made me strange with nerves. But then I thought of my own: my parents who had worried and fussed and tucked me in, who had once threatened to send me to bed for punching a boy. They had always wanted me safe, and now a new family—Caspian's—beckoned. Maybe safety could also mean being chosen.
"Yes," I said. "I'll come."
Dinner was a proper affair. Lenore Martinez welcomed me with a warmth that felt like a borrowed quilt. The night hummed with safe chatter—recipes, books, trivialities. At one point, when the room filled with laughter, someone mentioned the mango incident in a way that made me blush. Lenore reached across and squeezed my hand.
"You're doing well," she said. "We appreciate you."
"We're lucky," Caspian murmured. "We found each other."
Luck, choice, stubbornness—they braided together. I had always believed men were all the same: loud, messy, unreliable. But here I was, with someone who disproved my rule in the quietest ways.
I had a new truth: men weren't all one thing. People were complicated. Sometimes they were kind. Sometimes they were cruel. Sometimes value is measured in how someone insists on staying by your side, even when storms come.
Later, in my dorm room, when the campus was a soft silhouette of light and dark, I pulled out the pale-blue dress—the one with the sauce stain—and pressed my fingers to it. The fabric held a memory: the night of the sauce, the jacket, Caspian's easy kindness. I smiled.
"I'm not a queen," I whispered to the dress, because I had once called myself that in a defiant mood. "But I am myself."
The city outside went on. My internship continued. The scandal faded. Cora was given a warning and had to perform community remediation at company workshops; people forgave and forgot at different speeds. I learned to stand differently, to choose often, and to speak less like the plucky girl I once was and more like someone who could hold herself steady.
One late afternoon, I was folding laundry in my dorm when my phone buzzed. It was a message from Caspian.
"Are you free?" he asked.
"For you, always," I replied.
He came by, holding a box of mango-free pastries. We ate on my threadbare couch, laughing at the trivia of our lives. Outside, the sun dipped below the campus rooftops, and I felt something rare and honest settle into my chest.
"I like being with you," he said again, and this time, it was not a confession but a promise.
"I like being with you too," I said.
Then he put his jacket around my shoulders the way he'd done months earlier and tugged me a little closer. The world shrank to the warmth between us, and I knew, for the first time, that being brave didn't mean being alone.
The End
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