Sweet Romance13 min read
My Shoes, My Rules
ButterPicks18 views
I remember the winter light that morning—soft and polite, like someone who knows how to be kind without promising too much. I remember the airport noise, the small smells of coffee and cold leather, and the crowd that had decided I was worth their attention for reasons I did not understand. Mostly I remember the boy with the crescent eyes who smelled faintly of tea.
"We're not standing in the VIP line, are we?" the rookie paparazzo whispered beside me, voice small and eager.
"Imagine that," my manager snapped, "she's a sea cucumber. She won't move unless the ocean rolls her."
I pushed my manager's arm when she started to brood theatrically. "Katelyn, don't," I said. "If there are no cameras, it's a blessing."
Katelyn Battle harrumphed. "Amy, if you don't generate a headline soon, I will literally—"
"—I will do what?" I asked and let my finger draw a rude shape in the air behind my back.
She laughed despite herself. "Never mind. Just—smile when needed."
"Got it." I kept my eyes on the terminal door, not because I expected anything, but because people like me tend to look for stray sparks.
Then someone laughed. A ripple of quiet amusement that turned the group into a small pack of cameras pointed at the doorway. They moved like predators who had suddenly smelled a better feast.
"Showtime," Katelyn muttered.
I turned. There he was—wrapped in a long coat, beanie low, only his eyes visible above a mask. The cameras didn't breathe; they inhaled. The crowd moved like a single organism, pressing forward to capture him. "Phoenix Brown! Over here!" someone yelled.
The rookie pap grabbed a voice recorder and thrust it at me. "Amy Larsson, about the Golden Star—your friend took your man, what do you have to say?"
I surprised myself. I should have been bitter, or embarrassed, or quiet. Instead I felt small as a matchstick and just naughty enough to strike. I leaned forward, lowered my mask deliberately, and said, "Because I can't curse on record, I have no answer for you. And also, keep your voice down, I'm afraid of dogs."
Silence hung for the length of three camera shutters. Phoenix Brown blinked at me, those moon-curve eyes crinkling behind his mask. He walked slower, as if savoring the scene. He didn't know me, not really. But when he stood just a few feet away, the world rearranged itself into a line of two.
"Thank you," I said, half a wave, half a goodbye.
He kept walking. The paparazzi surged after him, leaving a wake of broken attention behind us. Katelyn stared at me, astonished into silence.
"You're a handful," she said later in the car, but it wasn't anger. It was the kind of exasperation you expect from someone who loves a stray pet and doesn't know how to control it.
I had been a handful for five years. I had learned to be quiet on set, to let the camera love me or ignore me, whichever paid the rent. I had learned to let my heart knot for a man who never saw the knots I tied. I told myself I could be practical. I told myself I could turn my longing into work.
"You got Best Supporting Actress at the Golden Star," Katelyn said, flipping through the day's messages. "That should get you calls."
"Maybe," I answered. "If it's meant to be."
"Don't be a sea cucumber," she said again.
*
"Phoenix, you're late," Jayden Willis said when he saw the half-open studio door.
"Traffic," Phoenix said, shrugging. He leaned against the wall, arms folded, and I felt like the room had a heartbeat and he had set its rhythm.
I was there because I had a hobby no one expected: dancing. I had loved movement since childhood. My mother, Karla Burns, had clipped a costume and told me to rehearse while I learned scripts. We had both learned how to survive in a world that measured value by headlines.
"You here for the show?" Jayden asked me, face bright. He had the breathless charm of a friend who'd seen me at my worst and still stuck around.
"Sort of," I said. "I'm here to not mess everything up."
"That's your specialty!" Jayden grinned.
"He saved me from falling," I told Jayden when he pointed at Phoenix.
"He saved you halfway." Phoenix happened to be right there as if he'd overheard an important plot point. "You fell because you tripped over my shoe."
"You left me halfway saved!" I said.
"It was intentional," he answered with a voice that could have been a threat and a joke at once. He reached out, lifted my elbow, and steadied me. "This is the proper way to topple."
It was the first of many things he would teach me, though he didn't know it then: how to stand when someone else wanted you steady, how to let your weight rely on someone who had gentleness in his fingers.
"Do you always rescue girls and then leave them on the floor?" I demanded.
"Only the interesting ones," he answered. "Now, let's not be late for rehearsal."
*
People started calling me a background piece on a show called ZG Street. They wanted "a face" and "someone to fill the frame." I knew that was harsh. I also knew how to use a moment. When I stepped into the center square, lights warm on my skin, the music hit the exact bone in my chest, and something unwound. I danced like a flame that had finally learned not to be small.
"Jazz Funk!" Jayden shouted, whistling.
"You surprised us," Katelyn breathed beside Phoenix. "My sea cucumber grew teeth."
I bowed. Cameras loved me for that second. It surprised me mostly because Phoenix watched as if he could map the curves of my spine.
After the set, while everyone ate hotpot, they asked if I had a boyfriend.
"Not anymore," I said. "The man I liked is now married to a friend."
They winced like it was everyone's favorite soap opera. "Are you okay?" Jayden asked.
"I am now," I said, because there was someone in the corner of my life who had begun to warm the air.
Phoenix leaned back, thumb on his cup. "Are you sure?"
"Yes," I said, because I wanted to be brave and because lying felt thin. "I'm fine."
He watched me, not with pity, but with attention, the kind that balanced.
*
We shot a music video. The director wanted a sweetness, a soft echo of young couples, and I was absurdly nervous. He dressed Phoenix and me in the same greenish sneakers and the same neutral palette, as if he wanted the camera to read our silhouettes together.
"You're lucky," Phoenix said softly in the makeup room, pushing a stray hair behind my ear.
"What?"
"You get my shoe today."
"That's not how a present works," I said.
"It is," he replied, and opened a box. Inside was a pair of women's sneakers, the green matching mine.
"Birthday gift," he said.
I blinked. "How did you know...?"
"Small details," he smiled. "Now stop being dramatic and put them on."
He called me "sister" in public once, jokingly. He called me "Amy" softly in the dark. He left me clues smuggled in cups of warm water and a shoe box. None of it made sense in the world of my head where someone else had once been the final line.
"Action," the director said on the day of the MV. We danced scenes, the camera feeling our steps. When we reached the part where he held me, I felt my heart miscount.
"Can you kiss?" someone asked, the word laughing around the room.
"I don't kiss on command," I said, then giggled because that sounded like a line in a play.
Phoenix looked at me with a patience I'd not seen in anyone. "Then I will teach you."
"You're skilled at this?" I asked.
"Yes," he said. He smiled like a boy who already knew the answer.
We practiced, fake and real blended in rehearsals. He made me laugh and then quieted me with a whispered question at my ear. He taught me how to close, how to be still when mouths expect movement, how to be given, not taken. We made a scene that people on set whispered about later as "warm and honest."
"Thank you," I told him, face damp with real emotion from something the camera could never capture entirely.
He smiled. "You deserved the shoes before you deserved the words."
At night, he drove me home. We had matching motorcycles, both black and insistent. I had trouble starting mine. He pushed his helmet back and said, "I'll go with you."
"You'll get in trouble," I told him.
"I like trouble."
We arrived at a hotel where my friend Evelynn Petersen was scheduled to promote her film. The entrance was a live wire of fans and flashes. As we walked through, fans swarmed—loud accusations flew at Evelynn. Someone hurled a bottle inside the hall toward her.
"Don't do it," I heard myself say. I ran between the thrower and where Evelynn stood with confusion blooming on her face. I used the helmet to block the bottle, then put my weight against a man who had tried to get violent.
"You saved me," Evelynn whispered. "You didn't have to."
"It's our thing," I said. "You're my friend."
Then a voice—Lorenzo Hill's—callous and measured, cut through. "Amy, you there?"
He had been my moon once. He had been the man I folded toward with a foolishness the world rewarded. He was older, polished, and comfortable in the spotlight. He had chosen another; he had announced that he and Evelynn were together.
"You're the reason the rumors began," an angry fan shouted.
"Stop it. Stop," I said into the microphone the host handed me.
"I need to set things straight," I told everyone. "Lorenzo and I have never been together." I turned to Evelynn. "Eve, you on my side?"
She sobbed and nodded, then I said something that felt like a line and a spear: "I'm her friend. When she needs me, I'll be there. And to the fans: love their work, not their lives."
The press ate it up. Clips spread. My "defense-of-my-friend" moment was framed as courageous. Phoenix watched from the edge of the lobby, jaw still, and later he walked me to his car.
"You're hard-headed," he said.
"Thank you," I replied.
"Stay away from him," he said this time seriously. "From Lorenzo."
"You mean the man who was never mine?" I shot back.
"He's steeped in… things that aren't for you." He didn't spell them. He didn't have to.
*
The next week, the internet became a tide. People swarmed over the video of me rescuing Evelynn. The rumor mill that had once whispered about Evelynn and Lorenzo stalled when footage of them on stage together at the promotion—wobbly, rehearsed—made netizens suspicious. Did he choose Evelynn? Or had Evelynn always been a friend who found support?
Some people called me brave. Others called me dramatic.
We all went to the label the next day—Preston Davidson, my new recording producer, had arranged for Phoenix and me to record the duet we had shot for. We were supposed to be a professional team. On the way there, my phone rang. Katelyn's voice vibrated with news.
"Amy, you have to watch this," she said. "There's a press conference three days from now. Lorenzo Hill will be there. He dares to show his face."
"Show," I said. "I'll show him."
"Don't go to war with him," Katelyn warned.
"I don't go to war. I set boundaries."
"Those two are public wolves. They'll pack."
"I have boots."
She laughed. "You have shoes and a crew of two boys who adore you."
"They're not my bodyguard team," I said, but it wasn't a lie either.
Three days later, the hall was already filled. Reporters clustered like a shivering thing. The light felt like a business loan; you might not get paid back.
Lorenzo Hill walked in with a smug little wave, the kind a man gives to indicate he has a story already planned. Cameras turned. People leaned forward, hungry. He had endorsements; he had a reputation for composure.
"Mr. Hill, you will address the Evelyn rumors," a reporter demanded. "Is she involved with you?"
He had a practiced smile. "I'm here to promote my film. Personal questions are for other occasions."
"Razors come out," Phoenix said beside me under his breath. He held my hand under the table like it was a small, calm animal.
Evelynn stood nearby, her agent Imelda Weaver at her wrist. Her eyes were enormous before the world. She looked like someone offered a famous painting a glass of tap water.
"Mr. Hill," I said softly when the floor opened. "I have something to say."
"Amy Larsson?" someone delivered my name as if it were a brand. I felt the pressure of every camera like a skinless touch.
"Yes." I stepped forward. "I know how carefully you can schedule your truths. You like to put pieces in places where they look like meaning. But I also know this: a truth unspoken still exists."
Lorenzo lifted an eyebrow. "Keep it brief, Amy."
I let a breath fill me. "You chose a role in public that didn't reflect the person you were with me." It was the simple accusation of betrayal and the weight of it. "You let the idea of us be turned into something you could claim to others. You let fame and the stories be more important than the respect we owed each other."
"Now, Amy—" Lorenzo began.
"Wait." I held up my hand. "You stood beside Evelynn at the Golden Star and you announced something like affection and you called it truth. But truth is not a press release. When you stood with her and declared something for an audience, you chose a version of love that never asked the other people in your life how they felt. You used the spotlight to reframe our story."
"That is a lie," Lorenzo snapped. "You—"
"No." I smiled without pleasure. "We were never lovers, not lasting ones. You knew I liked you. You let that knowledge be a ladder you climbed over other people's feelings."
The press leaned in. I could feel the cameras burning small holes in the air like frost.
His expression changed. "You're accusing me—"
"I'm accusing you of being a man who picks people like props when it's convenient." I turned so the cameras took every angle. "I'm accusing you of choosing stories over people. You're very good at choosing an image and making it stick."
There it was: the change. The tightness at the corners of his mouth. The flicker in his hands. The thing I had seen once in private: arrogance sliding into panic.
A young reporter raised his voice. "Mr. Hill, people are saying you used romantic signals to boost your profile. Are you worried about losing sponsors?"
Lorenzo's composure cracked into a shaving-thin line. He looked out at the cameras as if they were hungry dogs. "I'm an actor," he said at first, then sharper, "I am not responsible for how people read things."
"But you are responsible for what you choose to say," I replied. "And you chose to mislead."
I had prepared a folder of messages—emails where he had been warm and then cold—the kind that read like an instruction manual for anyone who needed proof of duplicity. Katelyn slid them across to the editor-in-chief who squinted and passed them to others. People started to whisper. Someone recorded a clip of me speaking; it uploaded within minutes. Comment sections filled with stunned punctuation. The room swam.
"Why is this happening?" Lorenzo asked, and the voice was smaller.
Fans nearby recorded and hissed both disbelief and delight. Some defended him. Others began to mutter about truth. A PR man beside him tried to interject with a practiced smile. "We will be clarifying—"
"Clarify in front of everyone," I said. "No managed statements. No controlled press release. Say it now."
He looked at me as if the ground had dissolved. He was used to choosing statements that contained his meaning. He had not expected a person to choose him back.
One by one, people who had once embraced his image—publicists, small-time collaborators—shifted their gaze away. A sponsor's representative rose. "We need to review this matter," she announced, voice crisp. "We can't be associated with manipulation."
"Manipulation?" he said, shocked. He tried to laugh. His laugh stuck in his throat.
The room wasn't quiet, but its warmth changed. Cameras angled like jury benches. Phones went up like small flags. Lorenzo's lucky composure unspooled.
"I... I was wrong," he began, the sentence like a spoonful of cold oatmeal. "I didn't mean—"
"You meant what you did," I said. "You used another human's kindness as a storyline. You've been careful to maintain a public image at the cost of people who trusted you."
He looked around. People were already live-streaming every cracked syllable.
"You have endorsements," I said calmly. "You have a brand. Do you want them to be tied to someone who mistreats people?"
The sponsor representative stood forward. "We will be freezing any new contracts," she said.
He paled. The smile was gone. People began to clap—not the polite clapping of a staged applause but a patchwork of different hands acknowledging a verdict. A small group of fans started booing him, at first meek, then gathering like a small storm.
Lorenzo's face moved through stages I watched with a strange clarity: disbelief, anger, denial, then the slow collapse of an actor who realized that the audience had turned on him. He slumped, tried to call his publicist, but the calls rang through a ring of small devices and the publicist's voice could not reach the concentrated silence. Reporters pushed microphones forward and asked for a statement; his answers were breathless rehearsals and fragments.
"Please," he pleaded finally, the man who once wore confidence like armor now unclad. "I can explain. I'm sorry."
The cameras didn't need more. They had everything: the smallness of a man who had been king of his own stage. People stepped closer, recorded, took photographs that would live forever in the algorithm. A PR rep handed him a card as if it were a life preserver. He tried to take it but his fingers shook.
Someone shouted, "Apologize on video!" He did. It was thin and rehearsed and even that failed to fix what had been set loose.
By the end, he sat down with his head in his hands as if the spotlight were a physical weight. People whispered, others snapped photos, phones flashed. I left the stage holding Phoenix's hand and felt like a woman who had been given a sword then had to learn to use it.
It was not a violent downfall. It was worse for him: the slow, public, social unweaving. Sponsors backed away. Directors who once smiled at him now nodded in careful distance. The world found new narratives that did not include him at its center.
He was not jailed. He was not hit by a single dramatic blow. He was—quietly—made to see that the performance had consequences.
I walked out into the winter light and thought about shoes. I swallowed a laugh that had nothing to do with happiness and everything to do with relief.
"Are you okay?" Phoenix asked.
"I'm fine," I said.
"Good," he said. "Because I owe you a drink."
"I owe you a lot more," I told him. "You saved my shoe. Then you taught me to stand. Then you taught me how to kiss. You did all the work."
"Then I'll keep doing the work," he said, and kissed me on the brow like a small sentence of truth.
I kept my sneakers. I wore them like a talisman. I kept the red cup he gave me and carried it into the recording booth, and I learned my rap lines. Sometimes I still tripped, but Phoenix caught me. Sometimes I still failed, and friends like Evelynn were there to brush off the dust and hand me a hairpin.
We recorded our duet, and the music told gentler truths.
"Do you remember the first time you tried to step on my shoe?" Phoenix asked one night, when the apartment felt like a quiet island.
"Of course," I said. "You let me."
"No," he said, soft. "I wanted you to try."
"And?"
"And when you did it right, you laughed like the world made sense," he said. "It did for me."
"Stubborn," I teased.
He pressed our fingers together. "You make stubborn beautiful."
"Now," I told him, "don't let me put our beginnings in a press release."
"I wouldn't dare," he promised.
We had each other and a great many ordinary things: a duet, shared sneakers, little gifts that became proof. We had a parking lot, a studio, a kitchen that smelled of garlic and chaos, and two friends who could be ridiculous and brave in equal measure.
When my name flashed on screens and people wrote about me as "that actress with the shoe and the heart," I thought of the ways small mercies and small rebellions had built something firm.
We grew. Phoenix kept his cool, but for me he warmed like soup. Jayden kept making jokes. Preston Davidson booked our sessions. Eben Finch threw in a choreography twist that made the crowd go wild. Karla Burns served dumplings and knitted patience into my mornings.
At night, before I closed the door to the day, I would place my green sneakers beside his and say, "We own these. We earned them."
He would smile, sleepy and satisfied. "No one can take your shoes," he would say. "Not really."
We learned to be brave without loud proclamations. We learned to hold people accountable. We learned to love where there was choice.
And sometimes, when my cheek still remembered a certain kiss on set, I would press my thumb to the scar behind my ear and whisper, "Thank you."
The city outside roared and flickered. Inside, the warm cup steamed slow. My shoes sat by the door like quiet trophies. I laced them up because walking forward was the only honest thing to do.
The End
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