Sweet Romance12 min read
Our Many Summers — and the Cat Who Knew Too Much
ButterPicks10 views
I met Corinna one summer when I hadn't learned how to hide myself from the world yet.
"You're late," my sister, Journee, said the moment I stepped into the living room, and then she turned to the girl on the sofa. "Corinna, this is my brother. Kai, meet Corinna."
"Hi," I said, and bowed so hard I almost hit my forehead on the coffee table.
"Call me Corinna," she laughed. "No formalities with friends."
"Call you Corinna," I repeated, and felt stupid and enormous at the same time.
"I swear you look like you crawled out of a nest," Journee scolded, with the exact expression she used for me since childhood.
Corinna turned from the window like the world slowed down for her motion. Her hair had that shine that made even the cheap lamp in our living room feel polite. She smiled the kind of smile that was easy and rare at once.
"You must be the famous student," she said, teasing.
"I'm not famous," I lied, which felt worse than my messy hair did.
"Just Kai is fine," she said. "So, what are we starting with?"
"I brought the first book," I announced, trying to sound like the tutor I was supposed to be.
"You?" Corinna sounded surprised, and that little surprise looped through me like electricity.
That first morning, every rule I had about acting bored and dumb evaporated before her. "Do you understand this step?" she asked, pointing at a math problem.
"Yes," I said.
"Explain."
"Well..." I inhaled and then let the numbers come out. "If you move this term over, the rest follows."
She listened as if that sentence was the best thing ever. Later that day Journee pulled me aside.
"He's not as hopeless as I said," Corinna told Journee while stirring the noodles. "He's actually—"
"Smart?" Journee finished for her, incredulous.
"Very," Corinna said. "He asks the right questions."
"That's not his style," Journee muttered. "He likes to pretend."
After that, my life turned into a string of small decisions that always bent toward Corinna.
"Are you coming to the library?" I asked one night when I could hear my own heartbeat loud enough to worry me.
"Only if you promise to stop making those faces when you concentrate," she replied.
"Deal," I said.
We talked about everything—bad movies, songs with bad hooks, the stupidest things we'd done as kids. She told me about the time she got lost trying to find an art studio, and I told her about the time I tried to make ribs and almost burned the apartment down.
"You're a disaster in the kitchen," she said with a grin.
"But an honest disaster," I countered.
"That's a compliment," she said, and it felt like sunlight.
The summer I met her, my grades were a mess and my parents were worried. "We need someone to help Kai," Mom said.
"Do you think she can handle him?" Dad asked, folding a paper map like it was still the important thing.
"She'll be fine," Journee said, and that was the end of it. Corinna came, and something in me, something that had been lazy and indifferent, woke up.
"Study with me," I said, out of nowhere on a bus ride.
"Why?" she asked.
"Because you make everything reasonable," I confessed.
She looked at me like I was a weird coin she wanted to flip. "That's a first."
"You laughed," I said, and I couldn't stop smiling.
"You always smile like that when you remember something," Corinna said softly. "What do you remember?"
"I remember the first time I saw you," I told her.
"And?"
"I don't know the right words," I said. "How do you say 'I fell in love at first sight' in English?"
"You really need help with that?" she teased.
"I do," I said.
"You just said it," she told me. "You just said, 'I fall in love with you at the first sight.'"
That sentence became a private bad translation that belonged to both of us. Sometimes I'd repeat it in my head like a spell and smile like an idiot.
"You're serious?" she asked once, when the world felt small and the two of us were closer than the rest.
"Yes," I said. "I mean it."
"Why would you tell me that?" she asked, pretending to be mad.
"Because telling you made it true," I said. "Because I couldn't carry it alone anymore."
"Then why didn't you tell me sooner?" she asked, and for the first time I saw a flicker of something like fear cross her face.
"I was scared you'd laugh," I admitted.
"I would never laugh," she said.
"You weren't a date," Corinna added later, when we were under the amber leaves along the campus walkway. "You were a friend. And I like what we've had."
"Can what we had become more?" I asked.
She hesitated, then said, "Are you ready to be more complicated?"
"Yes," I said.
"Good," she said. "Because I like complicated things sometimes."
We didn't scream it from rooftops. We didn't plot dramatic entrances. Half of our confessing were small fights about who should carry the bag, who forgot to return a borrowed book, who texted first in the morning. But at the center of every small argument and every quiet meal was the fact that we chose to keep showing up for each other.
"Do you think I can be your girlfriend?" she asked once, during a late-night study break, as if a piece of chocolate could carry the weight of the question.
"If I had any sense I'd have been your boyfriend already," I said.
"You mean you didn't know how to say it," she smiled.
"I said it," I protested.
"You said it like a Google translation," she teased, and kissed my temple.
"Deal," I said.
When high school ended, I tried for a university far from home because I thought distance was a map to adulthood. "Where are you applying?" Corinna asked.
"To the city," I said. "To be near you."
"That's terribly convenient," she said, and it felt like a prayer answered.
My parents complained a little, but then, surprised, they accepted. Journee teased me mercilessly all the way through the application process.
"Studying to impress a friend?" she mocked.
"I'm studying to not miss a chance," I muttered.
The day results came, I sent a screenshot to Journee.
"Where are we going?" I wrote.
"Wherever you want," she replied. "But take Gavin with you," she added.
"Who?" I asked.
"Your friend who never lets you be alone," Journee said.
"Gavin Contreras?" I said.
"Yes," she said. "He keeps you human."
So Gavin came on the trip. He talked the whole way, telling stories like he had a dozen lives. "Kai, you get to be someone else in the city," he said. "Don't waste it pining."
"Easy for you to say," I replied.
"You're not the only one who watches her from across the table," Gavin said, grinning. "We all watch you sometimes."
"You're a traitor," I accused.
"Only because you're my friend," he said, boasting.
On the boat in West Lake, I asked Corinna to help me write a ridiculous love letter.
"Write it like a primary school assignment," I said.
"You're going to make me do your homework?" she smiled.
"Yes."
She laughed, and then she looked at me seriously. "You don't need a letter. You have nothing to prove."
"I do," I said stubbornly.
She gave me an ice cream to celebrate whatever nonsense that was. "Promise me you'll stop pretending to be small," she said.
"I promise," I said, because promises in lakeside air sounded like music.
At university near hers, the jokes continued. People assumed we were dating because we ate together, which was true in one way and not another in another way. I was still the brother in her friends' eyes, and sometimes that made me ache.
"Is he your boyfriend?" a dorm mate asked Corinna when a guy tried to chat her up.
"What?" she said, surprised.
"You two seem like boyfriend and girlfriend," the girl said.
"We're friends," Corinna answered.
"Not to us," the girl said. "You look like you belong to each other."
That comment made Corinna study my face for the rest of that night, checking the way I looked at her, trying to catch what others saw.
"Does he always stare at you like that?" she asked once later.
"Always," I said.
"Then maybe he thinks you're his," she said, and I realized I wanted to prove it.
"Then prove it," she challenged.
I did. I showed up at her dorm door with pizza and the worst pun jokes I owned. She opened the door with a hairband in her mouth and a surprised softness that made my heart feel ridiculous.
"You're terrible," she said, but she smiled.
"Terrible, yes. Persistent, also yes."
She let me stay. "You can be my terrible," she said, and I thought I could live through that.
We fought sometimes. The fights were small and close, full of the kind of petty cruelty that lives only where people care. But every fight ended with the same slow making-up: a hand finding another hand, the soft muttered apology, the ridiculous memory that started both laughing.
When Gavin teased me about being jealous of a guy who flirted with Corinna, I said, "He can't look at her the way I can."
"He can try," Gavin said.
"Then he will fail," I promised.
Corinna's friends, including Journee, watched us with the contented surprise of people seeing a painting come to life. "He looks at you like you're a secret he keeps," one of them said.
One night, when the campus was quiet and the lamps were the only beacons, Corinna said, "Do you ever think about how we started?"
"All the time," I admitted.
"Wasn't it strange?" she asked.
"Not strange. I think it was meant to be," I said.
She laughed. "You sound like a cliché."
"I am your cliché," I said.
"Fine," she said, and kissed me.
That summer of learning and laughing bled into years. I called her when I was unhappy. I called her when I was triumphant. She was steady and sometimes infuriating and always there. I learned the small language of care: warming her hands before she could take them, taking off my jacket and handing it to her when she said she was cold, staying silent when she needed space.
"You take everything too literally," she told me once.
"You take everything too seriously," I replied.
She hit my arm. "That's not a fair fight."
"Fair fights are boring," I protested.
"Aren't we lucky to have each other?" she asked, one night when we were staring at a cheap little ring I had found in a shop.
"I am," I said.
"Then don't do anything stupid," she warned.
"Only stupid things that make sense," I promised.
Life moved on, in both big and small ways. There were exams and internships, new friends and old conversations. The promise Journee had made—to take me on a trip if I did well—stayed in the background like a small lamp; I worked for it because in my head it was tied to her smile the day we had our results.
"You're relentless," Journee told me when I trained that hard.
"I'm focused," I corrected.
"Focused sounds nicer," she said.
The city became our home for a while. We argued about small things and loved each other for bigger ones. Corinna's eyes became map markers for where I belonged.
One afternoon, while walking home under trees that made the street glow like old film, Corinna stopped and looked at me.
"Do you still say that weird line we started with?" she asked.
"I do," I said. "Do you remember how bad it sounded?"
"It sounded like us," she answered.
"I love you," I said.
"I love you too," she said.
The seasons kept time like a metronome. We learned to be steady. I learned to be less of a boy and more of a companion. I learned how to be present.
"Promise me one thing," she said one rainy evening.
"What?"
"That you'll still be ridiculous sometimes."
"I promise," I said.
"Good," she smiled. "I like ridiculous."
We kept choosing each other in the small and mundane ways that don't make headlines but make a life. And I kept thinking that telling her "I fall in love with you at the first sight" was the first honest thing I had ever offered.
— — —
"Hey, Kai," Journee said a month later, dropping by the office where I was interning with Gavin. "You remember Felix? He's back this summer here for an internship."
"Felix Duke?" I asked.
"Yes," she said. "He's staying in our building."
"I remember him," I said. "He's loud."
"Very loud," Gavin confirmed, sticking his head over the cubicle wall. "And he has a soft spot for the office cat."
"Office cat?" I asked.
"Yes," Journee said. "The cat runs this place."
She told me the story like it was sacred. "He calls himself the boss," she said. "He's always around the meeting rooms. He lets some people pet him and not others."
Gavin leaned in. "Who does he let pet him?"
"People who respect his hours," Journee teased.
Felix was younger, a knobby-kneed luck of charm with a tendency to carry a sandwich like it was a prize. He said hi to everyone in sorts of jokes and half-songs.
"Which cat?" I asked when we bumped into him in the hallway.
"He's got a name," Felix said, lowering his voice like he was telling me a secret. "Everyone calls him Tigo."
"Who's Tigo?" I asked.
"Basically the office's little judge," Felix said.
Felix had the nerve to grab my arm and drag me toward the meeting room. "There's a woman in there who's not from our company. You're going to meet her."
I met her—Corinna—again in that fluorescent office light. She walked like she belonged to a place that knew how to give proper attention. She smiled at me and said, "Kai."
"Corinna," I breathed, which felt wrong because I wasn't in a coffee shop but in a workplace. Still, her presence smoothed the edges.
Felix spun like a weather vane and then, like a fox with an unexpected treasure, he fumbled toward the kitten-courtroom and locked the door. "Why are you pretending not to know me?" he demanded.
Corinna's hair fell slightly over her eyes like a curtain. "I'm not pretending," she said.
Felix took a breath. "I missed you."
Corinna looked at him like she was trying to remember a lullaby. He persisted. She pushed him gently away and then his hands found her shoulders and their mouths met.
I felt a moral alarm in my chest like a bell. The office cat—this Tigo—felt it too. He jumped off a desk and planted himself on Felix's shoe, meowing a complaint like a judge clearing its throat.
The cat made a fuss. I laughed because the scene felt absurd and beautiful at once.
"Your cat is dramatic," Corinna said when she bent to pick him up.
"He's the boss," Felix said.
"Then he should judge fairly," Corinna replied.
Felix and Corinna's moment didn't scare me. I had learned to be secure in small things; yet something in me tightened. I stepped back and let them be. I had learned to accept that people we love will sometimes travel other paths for a moment. Corinna's hands—warm and familiar—still felt like home when she adjusted the cat's collar to purr him into safety.
"Don't be a fool," I told Felix later, half-joking. "People who love someone don't hide behind doors."
Felix grinned like he'd been caught. "You sound like a married man."
"Shut up," I said.
— — —
One afternoon, Journee told me the cat story in full because she thought it was too rich to leave unshared.
"He narrates everything as if he's a CEO," she said. "He patrols the corridors and expects doors to open."
"Does he have a favorite human?" I asked.
"Yes," she said. "Corinna. And Felix tried for days to court her, but the cat—" She made a low, dramatic noise. "—he intervened."
"Intervened how?" I asked.
"He refused to be petted by Felix sometimes," she said. "Or he'd suddenly demand attention of Corinna when Felix leaned in. The cat had timing."
"Animals have spirits," I said.
"They do," she laughed. "And the cat knew the space between people's hearts."
I told Corinna about that scene later, because it was too precious not to tell. She laughed until she had to hold her sides.
"He thought he was protecting you," she said.
"No," I said. "He was simply being a cat."
"And cats are honest," Corinna said. "They don't pretend."
"Maybe that's the lesson," I said. "Be honest. Even cats are better at it than some people."
She smiled sadly. "I like that about you," she said. "You learned honesty from a cat."
"Don't credit me," I said. "Credit Tigo."
We both laughed.
— — —
Years passed. The little ritual of small promises and quieter fights shaped something steady. We learned how to disagree and still keep each other. We built a life of small moments—ice-cream spoons shared, the holding of hands in crowds, the way she read my face like a map she had memorized.
One evening, while the city went about its tired business and the moon made the river look like silver thread, we sat on a bench and listened to the world.
"Do you remember that ridiculous sentence you taught me?" I asked.
"The one about first sight?" she said.
"I still have it," I told her.
"You never lost it," she said. "You kept all the awkwardness alive."
"I like awkward," I said. "It fits me better than smooth anything."
She leaned her head on my shoulder. "Then keep the awkward," she said. "Keep the small, odd things that make you you."
"I will."
"Because I like you," she said. "Everything—awkward and all."
"I like you," I said.
We sat there and let the city sound weave around us. The cat's memory—the way a small animal could be generous, selfish, dramatic, and honest—came to mind and made us smile.
"Remember the cat's wink?" I asked.
She grinned. "He winked like he knew the punchline before us."
"If a cat can be honest, then what's our excuse?" I asked.
"None," she said.
"I will be honest, then," I said. "I did fall in love at first sight, badly translated and direly phrased, but true."
"You did," she said. "And it was the most honest thing."
We stayed there until the streetlights turned off one by one. The phrase we started with had become a talisman. It had been clumsy, but it had been ours.
"Promise me one more thing," she said in the dark.
"What now?"
"Promise me you'll always listen to the small things—my jokes, my bad puns, the way I worry at night."
"I promise," I whispered.
"And promise you will listen when the cat has an opinion," she said, half-serious.
"I promise that too," I said.
She sighed like relief and closed her eyes. I knew that honesty could be simple and stubborn, like a cat who refuses to let a door close on a truth.
"Good," she said, and the world narrowed to the rhythm of our breathing.
That night, as I walked home, I thought of the first insult-turned-promise I'd ever made: to stop pretending to be small. I decided to keep that promise for the rest of my life.
We learned, slowly and beautifully, that love isn't fireworks all the time. It's a list of tiny agreements. It's shared umbrellas and bad jokes and a cat that judges us for being naughty. It is a string of summers stitched together with small, stubborn stitches.
"I fall in love with you at the first sight," I murmured to the empty street, and it sounded exactly like our beginning—the same silly sentence, the same honest heart.
And behind me, for a moment I could almost imagine it, someone—maybe Corinna, maybe an office cat—would wink, because sometimes truth wears a grin.
The End
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