Sweet Romance9 min read
Open the Bow: My Birthday, the Drunk Boy, and the Mess He Made
ButterPicks9 views
"I told you the gift is in your room. Unwrap it yourself." My mother was a woman of decisive acts, even when they were ridiculous.
"Mom, if it's a bag, tell me the brand," I slurred into the phone. It was my birthday and I was drunk enough to think new bags were life-changing. Lucia Brown laughed on the line.
"You asked for a boyfriend. I fulfilled the wish," she said, calm as a lottery winner.
I pushed open my bedroom door and blinked at a person curled on my bed like a misdelivered package.
He was wrapped in my pink towel.
"Mom," I said, turning the phone up to my ear, "this is—"
She cut me off sweetly, "You're welcome."
He stretched. Long legs, hair damp with water, eyelashes that made me think of bad decisions and good stories. I swallowed. My towel had failed as a blindfold.
"Who are you?" I asked. My voice betrayed the word "guest" and "crime" equally.
He opened one eye, slow and patient. "Gustav," he said. "Gustav Fischer."
"Gustav what?" The name sounded like it belonged in someone else's life.
"Gustav Fischer. You can call me Gustav." He smiled in a way that did something dangerous to my stomach.
"Mom," I whispered into the phone. "How much did you pay for this?"
"You asked me to give you a boyfriend. I gave you Gustav," she replied, and hung up.
I did what any person with dignity and no alternatives would do: I tried to make the best of the situation. I fetched him clothes, which at first he refused, then accepted like a treaty signed under duress. He teased me in low, delinquent tones.
"How old are you?" he asked as I fussed with a T-shirt.
"Twenty-six," I said, proud and petulant.
"Too old," he said, then blinked as if worrying he had been rude. "Okay. Twenty-two."
"Twenty-six," I insisted.
"Gustav," he said, "for the record, you are very shameless."
"Shut up." I shoved him playfully. He laughed and that laugh—low and almost embarrassed—made me want to be the kind of person who lets bad things happen.
"Can I sleep?" he mumbled later, voice a cracked violin.
"Fine," I answered. "But if you leave, you're on your own."
"Promise?" he asked. He sounded like a child.
"Promise," I lied.
Night blurred. I woke to my father knocking on the door.
"Did you see my boss's son?" he asked, rubbing his face.
My heart slammed into the floor. "Boss's son?"
I glanced at the bed. White towel. Empty.
Panic turned into a plot: I bought him underwear, T-shirts, a sweat suit from the downstairs shop, all while crafting a story where I was not complicit. "He's my cousin," I told the cashier. "Really," she smiled like it was a TV show.
He returned shirtless. I shut the door in a frantic attempt at honor.
"Don't go out. Lock the door." I ordered. He looked at me, half amused, half bored.
"Fine," he said, and then he called me "Auntie" the next morning.
"Auntie?" I spat. "You said 'sister' last night."
He shrugged and leaned into my personal space like helium does to balloons. "I remember different things when I'm sober," he said. "You were bolder."
"Shut up," I repeated.
He was both infuriating and infuriatingly handsome. At breakfast my father poured congee into his bowl like a host pouring oil. The man's manners made me simultaneously ashamed and grateful. He pushed the soy milk my way and said, "Take this."
"How kind," I said.
He smiled. "Do you want more bread?"
"My dad introduced me as your sister," I told him, the blush refusing to leave my cheeks.
He studied me. "You're older," he said, as if that meant anything.
After a week of "stay until you sober up" which stretched into "stay until your dad gets a promotion," he began to sleep in the guest room, come to my room for comics, and ask offhand about my math—"Because your college stories claim you were top in calculus."
"I'm not," I said.
He flopped in my chair and read my manga like it was a confession booth. He tormented me and then, in the quiet, asked me to teach him integrals in a voice that made me almost forget his charm was a deliberate weapon.
"Why are you even here?" I asked one night. "If you're engaged."
He looked at me like it was a joke. "Because I wanted out of home for a while," he said. "Because I like the quiet."
"You're twenty," I reminded him. "He's promised to someone."
"I don't want what's promised to me just because it's promised," he said. "Don't say anything. Please."
He was small when he slept and devastating when he smiled. He also refused to answer if he loved his fiancée, Kynlee Jensen. He had a fiancée because his family arranged it—Brantley Fischer's plan for alliances—and he had been forced into that role like a puppet made of privilege.
In the weeks that followed, there were three moments my heart took and didn't return.
First: When he tucked a stray hair behind my ear and said, "You shouldn't let men call you 'auntie' if they can help it." His fingers lingered. "Not that they can help it with you."
Second: The night he stood in the doorway while I argued with my mother and said softly, "If they treat you like a problem to fix, you let me fix them." It was a childish offer but it felt like shelter.
Third: On a rainy day, he stole my scarf and wrapped it around my shoulders. "You look cold," he said. "You look like you could use holding." His hands were brief and careful, like someone who had practiced being gentle in a world that demanded rage.
I knew it was wrong. He had paper promises with Kynlee, and I had a life that would not survive mediocre scandal. But he had those bright, small moments, and they added up to something like gravity.
Felix Le—my friend and the sensible alternative—came into the picture with bandages and a calm voice.
"Let me see," he said the day I injured my foot in a rush away from an awkward birthday kiss.
"It's nothing," I said.
Felix shook his head. "You idiot. Let me treat you." He took my foot and cleaned the wound like it was a small altar. "Why didn't you get comfortable with someone your own age? Someone stable?"
"Because I'm not a checklist," I said.
He smiled, then looked at me with the kind of serious that doctors carry. "Jessalyn, you're lovely. Any man should be lucky." He added, quieter, "Try not to fall in love with a storm."
I laughed until I nearly cried. Felix and I grew close. He was steady—intelligent, kind, exactly the man you introduce to a mother—yet when I thought of him, it was like thinking of a perfect umbrella on a day without rain. Safe, practical, and unable to make my heart sprint.
The trouble began when the arranged marriage came crashing like winter wind. Brantley Fischer—the man who brokered deals and bent people—was furious at his son for failing to comply. He came to our building one evening with a letter and a face like a judge.
"You brought disgrace," Brantley said, addressing Gustav like a traitor. He eyed me with the contempt of the man who considers me a bargaining chip. Around us the neighbors listened and judged like the slow drip of a faucet.
Gustav, who had always been half-sardonic and half-child, cracked in front of his father. He had been beaten—by words and, once, by hands—and left with a decision: go, or stay and lose everything. He chose to leave for abroad school rather than marry for convenience.
After he left, the apartment felt like a stage with an actor missing. Days stretched. I missed the small wars and the ridiculous affection. Felix stayed close; my parents watched the drama like it was their own investment.
Then the scandal: photographs, a leaked chat, and the rumor mill's masterpiece. Brantley was caught—on camera—berating a young assistant at the company banquet the week after Gustav left. In public. So public that the boardroom watched, suppliers whispered, and his carefully constructed mask cracked.
"And you think you can order me about?" Brantley roared. "You think I will lose because my son won't obey?"
A murmur rose. Phones glanced. Someone filmed. The assistant—a woman whose eyes didn't hide the fatigue of being invisible—stood like a small statue and then, without provocation, slid her phone across the table and played a recorded conversation.
"What you see here," she said, voice steady, "is how he speaks to people he calls 'lesser.'"
The video's sound filled the banquet hall. It was Brantley, in private calls, explaining how marriages "solidified ties" and how dissenters should be "handled." He had been charming in public, relentless in private. The room chilled.
"Everyone, step outside for a moment," someone said, and the hall emptied into a courtyard like a rehearsed exodus.
The punishment unfolded like theater.
First, the reveal: The assistant stepped forward and read aloud the messages that showed Brantley had ordered men to threaten and even physically intimidate—details that made the crowd's breath hitch. He had been a king, pointer and finger, until someone turned the mirror.
Second, the reaction: People gasped and some covered mouths with napkins; a few began recording and the recordings spread faster than heat. "I can't believe it," whispered a supplier. "He seemed so polished."
Brantley's face reddened—not with anger but with sudden exposure. He tried to sidestep, to apologize, to call it "misunderstanding." The audience changed. Faces that had been deferential became icy. The board members shifted in their seats, their loyalty fracturing.
"This is a private family matter," Brantley started, voice thin. "We are—"
A young manager I had briefly tutored stood up, trembling. "You told me to threaten vendors," he said, voice loud in the courtyard. "You told me to break promises to close deals. I did what you said. And then my sister couldn't find work."
The courtyard filled with murmurs that turned to statements. More people came forward—an ex-driver, a former assistant, a distant cousin—each describing small cruelties that pooled into a river. Each pulse of testimony was a stone thrown into Brantley's armor.
Brantley moved through stages like a bad actor: first outrage, then denial, then frantic bargaining. "I meant to protect the company," he said. "I've given my life—"
"Protect?" the ex-driver barked. "By stealing destinies?"
Cameras flashed. A supply vendor, once someone who smiled and called Brantley 'sir,' now spat his words. "We will not be your shield," the vendor said.
Brantley tried to recover with a rehearsed apology. He increased his volume like one who believes sound equals humility. "I am sorry. I will compensate. I will step back—"
"No." A woman in the crowd—Gustav's former tutor—cut him off. "You will face the board. You will face the law if necessary. We watched you shame people in private. We will not applaud at your expenses any longer."
It felt like watching a tall wall crumble. Brantley, in the center, lacked his usual retinue. His eyes sought allies, found none. Investors shifted their weight, and in corporate limbo, there is punishment worse than gulps of shame: the slow, quiet removal of trust.
By the end, the banquet had become an inquest. The board convened the next day and removed Brantley from decision roles pending an investigation. The media had a field day, but the real punishment was social—and it was long. His partners asked for a statement; some whispered they would no longer associate. The assistant who triggered the cascade received both wrath and gratitude. She stood tall, no longer invisible.
Gustav heard about it. He called me from the airport.
"It was brutal," he said. "But it had to happen."
"Is he—" I tried.
"—he's not my father anymore," Gustav said simply. There was a hollow in his voice. "He is an old machine they unplugged."
I thought of the way Gustav had been both tender and defiant. He was not a saint; he had flirted and he had left, but his courage to choose his life away from his father's plan made him human.
After the scandal, things shifted in small domestic ways. Brantley no longer attended family dinners like a king. Gustav's freedom was messy. He returned briefly to apologize, to stay close long enough to understand who he was outside the family shadow.
"You know I told your dad once," I said to Gustav one night, honest and raw, "that your behavior was selfish."
He smiled, tired. "I was selfish. I am still selfish. But I also don't want to be someone who does things because someone else signed a contract."
"And what about Kynlee?" I asked.
Kynlee had been young, earnest, devastated—but not villainous. She cried when she learned the truth and was humiliated less by him than by the circumstances. She forgave him enough to avoid public hatred, and when things calmed she chose a quieter life, away from spectacle. She was not a bad woman; she was a girl asked to carry an arrangement like it was a badge.
"Do you love me?" Gustav asked one night, quietly, while we sat under a thin moon.
It was the question that could start wars and also end them.
"I don't know how to say it without sounding like a fool," I replied.
"Say it like a fool," he answered. "I like fools."
So I did.
"Maybe I love the way you make me feel foolish," I said. "Maybe I like being a fool with you."
He laughed and it was the laugh that had started everything in the first place.
We dated, quietly and loudly both. Felix stayed steady as ever—"be careful," he'd say—but when he saw how Gustav would cradle my fingers in public like we were fragile things, his eyes softened. He wanted my happiness, even if it wasn't with him.
There were many small, heart-stopping moments after that: the time Gustav paid for a cheap midnight cake and wrote "HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AUNTY" in lopsided frosting; the night he turned off every light except for a single lamp because I had once said I liked shadowed rooms; the morning he defended me fiercely at my father's office luncheon when someone joked about my age. "Jessalyn is fierce," he said, and his voice matched his hands—steady.
"I never want you to feel like you must apologize for being twenty-six," he whispered once, and I realized how much the world expected apologies.
We kept it our own: my older, his younger, Felix the reasonable, my parents the entertained and sometimes worried audience, Kynlee an unfortunate chapter who became a quiet friend, and Brantley a man learning the cost of wielding control. The company reshuffled. Brantley learned to live in a smaller space. The public punishment had wounded his pride, but it had also allowed other stories to live.
"Are you happy?" Gustav asked me one humid summer night as fireworks stitched the sky.
"I am with you," I said, and the words were both answer and promise.
Sometimes the bow needed untying to reveal what was always tangled underneath. Mine had been a mother's mischievous gift, a towel, a drunk confusion—and in all that mess, I discovered a reckless kindness that went both ways. We were ridiculous, inconvenient, and mismatched—but we were real.
When the bow finally came off for good, it wasn't the end of a story. It was the start of living, which felt like a better kind of danger.
The End
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