Sweet Romance15 min read
"Salary Card, Sleepless Nights, and a Boss Who Won't Let Go"
ButterPicks15 views
"I hate you," I said the first time I met him face to face as my new boss.
"Do you?" he asked, looking exactly like the kind of person who could make a room go quiet and make me forget three whole breakfasts.
"I mean it," I repeated, brassier. "You've been my college nightmare."
"Did you used to throw hotpot seasoning at people?" he asked, amused.
"Once." I folded my arms. "It was therapeutic."
He smiled in a way that was almost dangerous. "Good. Keeps you honest. You can start by keeping these honest." He slid a file across his desk.
"I was told there'd be no overtime," I whispered to myself as I left his office, the words clinging to me like steam.
"You're not leaving, are you?" HR insisted by the elevator, cheeks pink.
"I'm not leaving," I lied.
"Why are you still staring at him?" Blair asked when we texted later.
"Because," I typed back, "he's Jack Russo and he's exactly the kind of tyrant who ruins lives."
Blair replied with a string of laughing emojis and then: "He'll be your office hobby. Don't die."
That first month, he made me do everything but juggle flaming torches.
"Why does the font matter?" I asked on day three, voice thin.
"Because presentation is respect." Jack's fingers tapped his temple like a drum. "And because someone said it matters to me."
"Someone?" I echoed.
He looked at me, very seriously. "Me."
"Of course." I felt my patience fray. "And when did I become your font police?"
"When you started working for me," he said. "Sit. Fix it. Then sleep less."
"Sleep less," I repeated, as if it were a commandment.
When he asked where I was from and whether I had a boyfriend, my heart did that stupid jump it never did for boys like Zaid Cooper.
"Do you have a boyfriend?" Jack had asked, leaning back in that leather throne that swallowed him.
"No," I said, too quick.
He smiled like someone who'd won a small war. "Good. Convenient."
I resented his convenience the way you resent a persistent itch. He was the campus bully turned CEO, and I was the plain girl who had sworn to get even in those wild and private vows people make at twenty.
"I will make you pay," I muttered to the empty corridor once, a ritual oath. "Not with violence. With resignation."
"Don't quit," Blair warned me over beef slices and gossip. "This company's benefits are a treasure chest. One month and you're a legend."
"I'll be a legend who sleeps twelve hours on weekends," I said.
Jack had other plans. He liked me to work late. He liked pointing out the tiniest mistakes in the budget like a general pointing out fallen soldiers.
"Your margin calculation here is off by 0.23%," he said one night, eyebrows strict.
"Sorry," I whispered.
"Not sorry enough," he said, softer than any reprimand should be.
I learned his rhythms: the way he corrected, the way he moved files, the way he called me "Rabbit" the first time he teased me in front of an entire meeting.
"Rabbit?" I asked later, when my brain had boxed it into a safe drawer.
"Rabbit," he said, simple. "You hop into corners and then surprise everyone."
"That's the insult?"
"It's an affection," he said. "Don't worry."
I didn't want affection. I wanted neat columns and weekends.
Then one night, a drunken twist turned my world upside down.
"I need the paper printed," he said at eleven-thirty p.m.
"At this hour?" I blinked. "The print shop's closed."
"I have a printer," he said. "Next door."
I stood in the doorway and froze because Jack Russo's apartment looked like a magazine. And there, in the middle of his living room, was Wells Bruce in nothing but sleep shorts, all wrong and perfect and very much alive.
"Who is that?" I whispered.
"Friend," Jack said, tired.
Wells yawned and said, "Hi, Rabbit," and my brain did something unsightly with past and present.
"You two—" I started, absolutely unprepared for the embarrassment of being a supporting actor in my boss's late-night life.
Wells rubbed his shoulder like someone who'd been in a boxing match. "I'm tired. Bye," he said, and wandered to his room.
I stayed for the printing because my head was stuck on the absurd. I printed the sheets and handed them across that huge desk, and he stared at my small nervous hands and then at the page.
"Come to the meeting at nine," he said.
"Okay," I managed.
Then he took my salary card — his kindness or manipulation, sometimes the difference was only the volume he used — and he said, "Keep your phone on. I might need you."
I left thinking my life was a buoy and he was the storm.
"He touched my hand," I told Blair the next day.
"You mean when he palmed the printouts?" Blair laughed. "Jess, be careful."
"I'm careful," I lied.
At work he became worse and better at the same time. He roped me into site visits, made me walk heat maps at dawn, and scolded my line spacing at dinner.
"Why did you pick only one backup hotel?" he said once, quietly fierce.
"I forgot." I looked at the steaming bowl between us and tried to act like my stomach wasn't turning.
"Because you never plan for failure," he said.
"Because nobody told me I'd be planning miracles for a tyrant," I replied.
He smirked and then put his phone down. "Good answer."
It was confusing because he pulled contradictions like a magician pulls scarves: cruel trick, then a dove.
One night, after a long day of numbers, I was pushed into a corner of a banquet room by a famous teacher who'd always had opinions like polaroids.
"He's so perfect," she cooed to everyone. "What luck to have such a boss."
"Please," I mouthed to Jack, meaning "Save me." He took my glass and downed it like a knight finishing a toast.
"He's protecting you," someone said.
"He just wants you for himself," the teacher purred.
Jack's chest rose. "Protecting," he said. "As in... not letting other people drag you away."
The whole night, people complimented me as if I'd performed a trick. My contributions to the budget had been solid; their praise made my cheeks hot. Jack's hand found mine on the table and squeezed.
"Don't spill," he said.
"I won't," I said.
The trouble began at a hotpot restaurant with Blair. We were singing about revenge on exes when Olivia Tucker and Zaid Cooper appeared like bad weather.
"Look who's eating," Olivia said, perfect hair and a face that got the sun's permission to shine. "The invisible girl from college."
Zaid scoffed. "Still rad for leftover glory, huh?"
Blair smiled like a warrior about to draw blood. "We were just talking about you two. Wishing you a long honeymoon with your poor taste."
Olivia's eyes slit. "Who are you?" she asked, syrupy.
"Jess," I said.
"You?" Olivia sneered, standing like she already had a crown.
"Blair," Blair said. "And I eat garlic like a queen."
The table turned; whispers fluttered like terrible birds. Zaid tried to take my hand then, too casual in his arrogance.
"Jess, you never told me you were at that company," he said, trying to flirt through the wound he'd made two months earlier.
"Because I didn't want to watch you get jealous," I said, flat.
Olivia threw a thin smile at me. "Poor thing, couldn't keep a boyfriend. Honestly?"
"Funny," Blair said, handing me a plate of tripe like ammunition. "Tell that to the mirror."
Zaid spluttered. "You have no idea—"
Jack arrived like dusk arrives, sudden and unavoidable. He wrapped an arm around me and then asked Zaid a series of questions no one expected.
"Do you own property?" he asked, everything slow.
Zaid blinked. "Yes."
"How many cars?" Jack asked.
"One," Zaid said.
"Salary?" Jack asked.
Zaid finaled on a sputter.
Jack's voice lowered into a calm I'd seen at company crisis meetings. "So you expect the woman you dated to return to your arms? Why?"
"Because—" Zaid started.
"Because you like drama and posters of yourself?" Jack said. There was no sarcasm in it, just economy. People who listened nodded. The scene shifted.
Jack left with me, saying, "Rabbit, let's go."
"Wait," I said, embarrassed. "You don't have to do that."
"I do," he said. "Now go."
I didn't expect to be kissed by him at the door. It was brief and absurd, a proof that he wanted to own the scene.
"Don't forget," he murmured. "You belong to me on paper."
"What?" I said.
"On paper." He tapped my contract. "And in my head."
I could laugh then, but the laugh lodged in my throat.
The days changed. He brought me noodles and scolded me for not eating scallions. He teased Wells in the hallway. He defended me in public and criticized me in private. He asked me if I liked modern or traditional weddings. He began to show up nightly with small things: a ring I didn't understand, a folder of wedding invites, a draft of vows that said things a man in love shouldn't say so soon.
"Do you want to get married?" he asked one night, like a child asking permission to keep a firefly.
"No," I said, meaning "Not now. Not like this."
He kept at it, gentle and relentless.
"Say yes or no," he demanded one evening, face lit by the TV glow.
"I need a minute," I said.
"You have many minutes," he said. "But I will not make you choose because of embarrassment. Decide on your time."
He was stubborn and ridiculous and frightening, and I found myself saying yes after months of strange, small, honest gestures. He asked my mother and she spoke into the phone like she knew the story years ago.
"You're marrying him, aren't you?" she asked, as if the world had been moving in that direction long before I had.
"I think so," I said, unsure whether I was surrendering to love or to a very good actor.
Weeks turned into our awkward engagement. People whispered. Wells gave me a signed photograph and an arm around my shoulders. Blair cried and called me brave and a fool in the same breath.
"What if I change my mind?" I asked Jack one rainy night.
"Then I'll adjust," he said. "Marriage is practice. We practice being selfish and then we practice being two."
I laughed at that even though I was terrified.
"What if he turns out to be wrong for me?" I asked.
He looked at me, surprised. "When has being together been about being right? It's about being together."
I had practised independence for years, a shield I polished when Zaid had left me and Olivia had sneered. Now I was deciding if being soft was a new strength.
The wedding never happened the way they'd prepared. At the civil registry, Blair launched into a dramatic monologue about my sanity. Jack squeezed my hand like a prayer and I squeezed back.
"You're taking her from me!" Blair shouted, pretending to be the hero of some tragic play.
"Then climb over me," Jack said, grinning. "I'm heavy."
We laughed and the officers closed the door because the noise had become ridiculous.
Two weeks later, catastrophe curated by the universe came like stage lights falling. Zaid decided to show up at the company gala where the client who had been wronged by his small-time schemes would be present. Olivia came too, draped in a dress that announced her arrival before she spoke.
Blair was at my side and Wells had promised to be invisible until needed. I was in my glittering dress — the one Jack had said made me look like moonlight spilled over paper — and Jack was beside me, impossibly calm.
I did not expect the speeches to turn.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the emcee said, beaming. "We have a surprise tonight. A guest attendee, who's been misrepresenting himself in our industry."
Zaid laughed and stood, brazen.
"Let's hear it," he said, confident and oily.
The projector clicked. Behind him, slides lit up: bank statements, fake contracts, messages that put Zaid's lies in neon.
"Zaid Cooper," Jack's voice cut through the room like a knife. He was not on the stage, he stood beside me, leaning in my ear. "You have been lying to everyone. You told this company you had partnerships. You told investors you had funding. You sold dreams to people who trusted you."
"He's lying!" Zaid cried, sweating.
"What did you sell?" Jack asked, placid. "Promises. A future with a false salary. You sold affection as leverage. You used Jess."
"That's not—" Zaid started.
The room smelled like cheap perfume and regret. Phones rose like birds, cameras flashing. People murmured as slide after slide unfolded. Olivia's face, which had been a mask, flushed because her name appeared in some messages, an accomplice in the whispering.
"You used Jess to get to your connections," Jack said. His voice was patient, like someone reading a boring list. "You told our partners you were engaged to her to gain trust. You told investors you had a salary I wasn't ready to give you. You lied."
"You're lying! That's defamation!" Zaid yelled.
"Speak to the evidence," Jack said. "Or speak to the truth."
People gathered close. I saw my colleagues' faces — Jenna Rocha, Jewel Roy, Constance Britt — they were the chorus, a thousand small judges.
"How do you plead?" someone shouted.
Zaid's bravado wavered. He looked suddenly small, winded.
"Not guilty," he croaked.
"Then why did you wire transfer our project money into your account?" the emcee asked, voice sharper.
Zaid's eyes went blank. "I—"
He tried to charm the room. "It was a misunderstanding," he offered. "I meant to—"
"You transferred one hundred thousand," Jack said. "Into an off-shore account that traced back to your profile. You promised our client advisory services and provided nothing. You hurt people."
People gasped. Olivia's head turned away. The room redistributed itself like a tide.
"Zaid, you're done here," Jack said, and more than a sentence, this was a sentence.
"Wait," Zaid begged, "I can fix it. I can pay back—"
"Do you have it?" Jack asked.
"No."
"Then you can't."
The crowd started to speak. "Shame!" someone shouted. "Liars out!" said another voice. Cameras clicked. Someone recorded.
It was public, immediate, and measured. The punishment wasn't a jail cell; it was the stripping of the carefully constructed persona. Zaid's network evaporated. Sponsors who had laughed with him left the room in silent rows. Emails arrived like small storms. Recruiters shook their heads. People who had called him proud now called him a lesson.
"How does it feel to be exposed?" a woman asked, voice cold.
Zaid's mouth opened and closed. He tried to smile. No one applauded.
Then Olivia stepped forward, half to make herself central, half to help him.
"She was my friend," Olivia began, voice shaking. "He never—"
"He used you," Jack said, blunt. "He used both of you to build a narrative."
The crowd turned to Olivia. Phones lit as if absorbing sunlight. "How could you help him?" people asked.
"I—" Olivia stammered, eyes wide. "I didn't know—"
"You were his public face," the emcee said. "You posted his lies. You smiled on camera while the truth was someone else's suffering."
The audience shifted from curiosity to outrage. "Unfollow!" "Fraud!" "Shame!" The words thudded like soft hammers.
Olivia retreated. Her manager tried to salvage something with a statement but the room had already decided. A sponsor who had been considering her for a campaign left the gala with a brisk nod. A gossip writer took one photograph and wrote a piece that made Olivia's endorsements evaporate within hours.
Zaid's face crumpled. At first, there was disbelief — an old arrogance wobbling like a house of cards. Then came denial, a faucet of flimsy excuses. "I can explain," he pleaded, voice thin. "I was—"
"Enough," someone said. The crowd hummed in agreement.
He begged for forgiveness. "Please. I can repay. I'm sorry. I—"
People recorded. Someone shouted, "Say it to her!" meaning me. I stood with Jack, feeling small and odd and immune.
"Jess," someone called from the crowd. "Are you okay?"
"I am," I said, and the word felt like a mirror polished clean.
Zaid's face contorted through stages: arrogance, confusion, denial, then a slow, catastrophic collapse. He pounded the podium like a child who has lost his toy. People started to whisper about his debts, about messages that sold a false future. Sponsors cancelled contracts. His phone rang and rang and then went silent. He sat down and put his head in his hands.
Olivia's knees gave beneath her and she leaned on a stranger. Her manager's face went white. Someone near the buffet muttered, "She always liked the spotlight."
The crowd began to disperse, gossip snapping like small twigs as they left.
That was one punishment. Public. Clean. Social ruin.
But there was more, because in my world punishments had to be full-bodied.
Months later, at the autumn charity event where the city spotlighted the best and worst in one crash, Olivia tried to speak onstage for a beauty brand that had promised her a relaunch. The curtains opened and the microphone was warm.
"Ladies and gentlemen," she began, voice syrupy, "growth comes from—"
"Sit down," a voice said from the back.
It was Wells Bruce. He had come to support me that night, true to his quiet code. He strode up onstage, all solemn strength.
"You used vulnerability as a prop," he said to Olivia, voice calm and clear. "You smiled for cameras while others paid the price."
People looked. Olivia's manager said furiously, "Who are you to—"
"Wells?" Jack asked, surprised.
"I'm her friend," Wells answered, though our friendship had always been a strange, soft thing.
"Let the stage have patience," the emcee pleaded.
Wells didn't move. "You owe people apologies in public, not rehearsed speeches about growth."
Olivia teared up. "I—"
"Apologize your way, then take time away," Wells said. "No contracts. No relaunches without accountability."
The audience cheered; social managers counted the return of an old morality. In front of cameras and donors, her PR was gutted — sponsors withdrew, the brand issued a statement that promised no further work until a credible apology was made, and Olivia's social manager's phone exploded with angry texts. She watched her brand evaporate like fog.
The two punishments were different: Zaid's was financial and public exposure; Olivia's was reputational and career-ending, staged in front of the exact audience she'd cultivated. Both were witnessed by peers, documented and viral, their faces a case study in fall from grace.
I watched from the side, feeling strange energy: not joy, not pity. The justice was not glee; it was a conclusion.
"Are you happy?" Blair asked me later, voice low.
"No," I said. "But I feel lighter."
Jack was silent beside me, his hand finding my waist like a compass.
"You did well," he said.
"I had you," I said.
"You had yourself," he corrected, kind. "Mostly you had yourself."
We moved forward. The consequences for Zaid and Olivia rippled through their lives. Zaid couldn't find the investors he hoped for; doors closed. He patched a job in a small firm that made him stare at his past like a foreign country. Olivia took months off, the public's attention a sore place. She returned timidly, doing community service and awkward apologies, learning the contours of humility.
My life became ordinary magic: spreadsheets that balanced, nights where Jack would bring delivery noodles and sit quietly, Wells sending me a funny gif—sometimes, a message of support: "Hold on," he'd type, "I saw you. You were brave."
"Did you ever love me?" I blurted to Jack one night, because we had moved beyond contracts and into hospital corners of truth.
He paused, surprised.
"Yes," he said simply. "Before I knew why. I only knew you were important."
"Because of grief?" I asked.
He shook his head. "Because of you. Because you are fierce and clumsy and stubborn. Because you ate my noodles even after I told you not to pick the spicy toppings."
"I would like to be loved for the way I pick scallions," I said.
"You are," he said. "I like your scallions."
Sometimes love was ridiculous. Sometimes it was a quiet protection that felt like sharpening a pencil so another could write. We had arguments — about work-life balance, about the small tyranny of contact hours, about the idea of ownership — but every argument ended in a truce created from two people bending like reeds.
"Will you still correct my margins?" I asked.
"Always," he said.
"And my layout?"
"Always," he said again.
"And me?"
"Only if you ask for it."
Once, the city ran an article on "Corporate Romances That Survived." They picked our story apart, called it everything from toxic to cinematic. I read it with a cup of lukewarm tea and felt both cringe and comfort.
"If this is a saga," I told Jack later, "we should write footnotes."
He kissed me, small and sure. "Let's write the appendix," he said.
In the evening he would stand by my door with a small box, usually something ridiculous — a tiny tin of the spicy snack I loved or a new pen that meant he thought I deserved better.
"How did you find this?" I asked once.
"You're easy to find," he said. "You leave tracks. You are loud and small at once."
"That's me," I said. "A rabbit with a salary card."
He laughed then, not cruelly. "Excellent. Let's keep the card. It pays for our life."
We married in a quiet room later, with Blair complaining about the lack of drama and Wells taking perfect photos that didn't capture how much my hands shook. My mother pronounced herself delighted, and Jack's mother cried in a language I didn't always understand but felt anyway.
People still asked me about that night in the banquet hall, about the punishment, about the fall of youthful arrogance. I told them the truth: "It hurt. But it needed to be seen. People must understand that actions have consequences."
"Do you regret doing your job?" Blair asked, years later, as we walked through an autumn market.
"No," I said. "I don't regret it. I regret I didn't stand up sooner in some cases. But I learned that justice can be public and still be merciful."
"You're very grown-up," she teased.
"I'm still clumsy," I answered. "But now I have fewer secrets."
Jack pressed a hand to my back and murmured, "We're both still learning."
"And you," I said, "still scold me about fonts."
"I will forever scold you about fonts," he vowed, dramatically severe.
"And I will always correct your dates," I said, because he once forgot an anniversary and I had to remind him gently.
We argued like a married pair of editors, trimming excess and polishing the rough. When people asked about the nickname Rabbit, I told them the short version.
"He called me Rabbit because I kept surprising him."
"And you didn't run?"
"No," I said. "I stayed long enough to find the person who brought me soup when the night was too hard."
"It seems easy," he said.
"It wasn't," I said.
"It was worth it," he countered.
"It was," I agreed.
At the very end, at the dinner table lit by low lamps and the smell of garlic and a quiet TV, I pushed a plate of scallions to him and grinned.
"You still don't like scallions," he said.
"I like them when you bring them to me," I answered.
He paused, then looked at me, earnest. "Jess, hand me your salary card."
I laughed and handed it over.
"Keep it," I said.
He smiled and slid it into his coat. "For emergencies."
"For when you need to bribe me," I said.
"Or when you need to buy your favorite hotpot seasoning and throw it at someone," he replied.
I blinked at him, remembering the first time I did that fury-and-sauce act.
"Don't throw it at anyone who hasn't asked for it," he warned.
I nodded and raised my glass. "To messes and miracles."
"To margins and scallions," he toasted.
We drank. The city hummed. My life was not perfect; the past had creases that didn't smooth out. But I had a job, a partner, friends who bit and loved in equal measure, and the small pleasures: a signed photo from Wells tucked into a drawer, the smell of noodles when Jack came home, and Blair's relentless cheer.
And when anyone asked about the punishments for those who had hurt me, I would tell them honestly, because truth made things smaller and safer.
"Did that make you feel better?" someone asked me, once.
"Yes," I said. "Because it meant the world was less easily fooled. Because it means the next person won't get tricked. Because we watched each other wake up."
Jack squeezed my hand, then tugged my sleeve toward him like a student with a teacher's stubbornness.
"You belong to me in the most ridiculous ways," he whispered.
"And you," I said, "belong to me in the way you make fonts feel important."
He laughed, the sound that had made me both furious and safe for years.
Later, when the soup cooled and the night got honest, I laid the little salary card on the table and watched the light make a small shine.
"Keep it," I said.
He looked at it, then at me. "Always," he answered.
And in my head, I kept a single small promise: that if anyone ever tried to sell me a fake future again, I would stand on a stage and hand the microphone to the truth.
The End
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