Sweet Romance15 min read
That Maybach, That Signature Photo, and the Night I Broke Everything
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"I can't believe your username is 'InvincibleDragonWarrior.'"
"I can't believe yours is 'PoopFairySama,'" I shot back.
He was taller than me by a head and a half, sunlight off the showroom glass making him look like he belonged to a poster. He wasn't a child—no pudgy, freckled elementary-schooler. He had short hair that fell over one temple, narrow eyes, and a mouth that didn't mind saying difficult things.
"You—are 'PoopFairySama'?" he repeated, very calm.
"I—yes," I blurted, trying to sound fierce. "And you are the worst teammate I've ever had."
He amusedly cocked an eyebrow. "You want to see me break my right leg and stuff it in my mouth?"
The sentence landed like a brick. I wanted to be furious, but the pressure of his voice—low, smooth—made me sheepish. I reached into my pocket and, with the best mock-heroic tone I could manage, put a hand to my ear.
"Mom? Tell me I'm coming home for dinner? Okay, I'm leaving now."
I had barely taken two steps out of the building when a hand grabbed the collar at the back of my neck.
"Where are you running to? Two hours of insults evaporated into a three-step retreat," he said.
My face hot, I could only glare. "Who calls themselves 'InvincibleDragonWarrior' and looks like that? I thought it would be a kid."
He laughed—short and indulgent—and then it happened: the Maybach pulled up.
We both turned. The doors of a shiny black car opened and he glided in like royalty. I sat in the passenger seat before I knew what I was doing, hands on my knees because I couldn't stop staring.
"You're going to a restaurant?" I whispered ten minutes later as we idled outside a place that, to me, screamed 'save up for a year if you dare to eat here.'
He held the door for me. "Yes."
Inside, he indicated two dishes to the waiter. "This and this."
"Are those the 'not too expensive' ones?" I whispered, relief washing over me.
He smiled faintly. "Everything else on the list, too."
My breath stopped. "Everything?"
"When we finish, if there's leftovers, the restaurant can box them," he said as if it were completely normal. "Unless your money's an issue."
The waiter looked at me. My stomach did a slow flip.
"Of course not," I lied.
We had matched in a shooter game that night. I thought I was careful—drop G-town, get supplies, fight, win. He followed me into every building, took every gun on the floor, and in one round where I cleared a squad, I downed and he... admired loot. He literally changed outfits in the middle of a firefight. I died because he was glued to a supply box. He called me names—"you can't find a date and you're broke"—little stabs that felt like mosquito bites but in a brain that was already angry.
When I dragged that rage into the real world and invited him to meet, I had meant to intimidate, to be loud. I had not planned on a Maybach, on him smiling in a way that made me forget the plan for a second, or on the waiter’s bill that later made me want to sink into the floor.
"I thought that drink was for rinsing your mouth," he observed when I knocked the disposable lemon water into my lap.
"That's washing water?" I sputtered, spraying droplets across the table.
He waved a hand at the waiter to change the setting. "It's okay. New cutlery."
I wanted to disappear. The humiliation that night pushed me into something stupid and brave at once. When the bill came and the waiter calmly announced, "Your total is sixty-two thousand five hundred thirty dollars," I heard a crack in the floor.
"What? No—" I stammered.
He saw the panic on my face when I checked my phone balance and realized I didn't have a third of that.
"Forgot your wallet?" he asked.
I nodded, and the romantic script in my head said: he would slide his black card across and save me. He smiled, a killer little smile.
"This restaurant accepts service in lieu of payment," he said.
My jaw dropped. "That's... amazing."
"Don't sound too grateful," he muttered.
In the dressing room I was told, "Miss, when your shift is over, you may leave." Which translated: one long night of serving equals the bill. I asked in a whisper, "Do we ever get cash for this?" The attendant’s smile cracked.
"No."
I had to work that night. I delivered plates, wiped tables, watched my knees get tired, and listened as the shift dragged on like an eternal essay. I cracked a plate and was told in a voice that was entirely the building's rule, "Break a plate and you'll be delayed an hour." My head pressed into my palms.
"Oh—where'd my friend go?" I asked, trying for lightness.
"He left after you started working," the attendant said. The man who'd been my online tormentor had abandoned me at the mercy of a job and a bill. I wanted to be furious. I wanted to be proud. I wanted to disappear.
The next morning I came to work with the kind of bags under my eyes that tell the world you were running on empty. Jaylene Boyle came over and peered at me.
"What happened? You look like someone hit you with a pillow," she said.
"I played a stupid game," I said, sliding my head onto my desk. "It's nothing."
"Not nothing. Boss is back from abroad today." Jaylene dropped the gossip like a loaded tray.
By the second meeting that day, the auditorium in our company's HQ was full. Clement Nunez, the general manager, eased himself into the chair and announced, "Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome back our president."
A man walked in and it felt like the air tightened. My brain pretended it had never seen him—completely failed to match him to last night—until his face appeared in a slide on the screen. It wasn't a stranger: it was the "InvincibleDragonWarrior," the man in the Maybach.
The recognition was a physical hit. I blinked and felt like someone had turned up the volume. I passed out.
I woke up in a white hospital room, Jaylene shaking me awake like a rooster.
"Tell me. When did you and the handsome boss start?" she demanded.
"What—he shoved me into a service job and I fainted. I don't know why he'd come to the ER," I protested.
"He brought you to the hospital," Jaylene said, eyes wide. "He sprinted into the ER holding you like a novel hero."
When he walked in, he folded his arms and said, as if he had been waiting for decades, "You look better."
"Thanks for bringing me," I muttered.
"Don't pretend to be noble," he snapped suddenly. "Were you possessed? You left the front door open."
I choked on laughter. "My fly? You were the only one who saw it."
His face went crimson. He looked around, embarrassed. "Noted."
We left the hospital in a silence that buzzed. I expected, at the least, for him to be gone—like a prankster king who departs when the play finishes. Instead, he stayed. He handed me a promotion notice two days later that sounded like a prank.
"Clement arranged it," our director Henri Price whispered. "The president asked for Joy Johnston as his executive assistant."
"Excuse me?" I said. "I'm not an assistant."
"You're not just an assistant. It's a big jump. Four times your salary."
I blinked until the numbers made sense. I had gone from server trauma to a fourfold paycheck. My chest fluttered. People stared. Kiley Monteiro, who had laughed at me at the office that morning, made a face that read: "What are the odds?"
Graham Ivanov—because that was his name—sat at the huge window and watched me. He had a way of turning everything into a scene. The first week I learned that "assistant" to him meant being within arm's reach of his desk at all times: small table, minutes away from his leather-clad empire.
"Organize the files on my desk," he said, as if that described his entire desire.
"Sure," I said, immediately jumping into role. I learned logistics, filtered phone calls, and, between those tasks, we stumbled into a ridiculous rhythm. He warmed to people like an old radio warming up to a favorite song. In private, he softened until I could see the child he once had been.
One afternoon, bored and stupid, we made a bet.
"You can't spin your head and your tongue in opposite directions," he said.
"I bet you a thousand you'll lose," I countered, audacious and bankrupt of pride.
He took the bet. "Fine. Ten thousand."
"You—are insane."
He did it: spun his head, spun his tongue. I lost whatever dignity remained. He smirked, pocketed the money like a coin pocketed by a magician, and I walked away lighter by the sum and heavier by the memory.
Workdays blurred into small domesticities. He started stopping by for breakfast, which became a ritual. He would arrive like a cat intent on ownership and leave a trail of habit. I began to see him at his ordinary best: silly, impatient, addicted to games but terrible at them. We bickered like siblings. A simple grocery trip turned into an outing that left our cart piled high.
At the supermarket he picked up the weirdest items—matching toothbrushes and slippers bought in the name of a buy-one-get-one. When a restaurant manager named Chester Brandt appeared and called Graham "boss," all the files clicked into place for me: He owned that restaurant. The small indignity reversed. He wasn't mocking me to watch me suffer. He had orchestrated something I couldn't untangle.
On the way home a small truth surfaced. Graham asked, almost shyly, "Would you come back with me to my place for dinner? Or do my cooking make you want to cry?"
"Your cooking?" I said.
"I'll cook tonight." His voice went soft.
At his place, he relaxed into an apron and made something simple but perfect. I watched him, grateful and still wary. It was during one of those nights that he told me about the girl in his apartment—"She's my sister—she needed someone," he said—and showed me an old family photo.
He unfolded the past in a few sentences. "When we were kids, I thought I could never forget you," he said one evening, voice like velvet. "You were a fierce queen. You beat me with a stick once. You were my first crush."
I stared. My memory unpacked and there he was: a small, teary boy who followed me in kindergarten and offered me his cookie. He asked me to be his wife in a conversation that would have made other kids laugh, promising me "a house full of candy." We broke like brittle paper when school changed our paths.
"You noticed me because I clung?" I asked, incredulous.
"Because of your bat," he said. "You held that bat when you were small and you swung at everyone."
He had recognized me the moment I whacked him with that same willful energy during our first real-world encounter. It was both ridiculous and the kind of intimacy that settled into bone.
"Will you be my girlfriend?" he asked suddenly, like the stakes were made of marshmallow.
"I'll think about it," I teased, playing high and mighty as if coronation were anything but a grin.
We curled around each other like two people trying on a life and discovering that it fit. He promised to let me manage his wallet. I promised to stop calling him names in public. We were childish and earnest.
At the company's Mid-Autumn event, the "prize" list was announced by Graham in his casual, chaotic way. "We are giving away a ten-year residence to a three-hundred-square-meter apartment in Coastal Bay," he said. My heart tumbled. The company handed out small envelopes to lucky people—Jaylene won cash and happiness. I opened mine and found a signed photo of Graham.
"A signed photo?" My mouth felt this soft, stupid cloud.
"Get up," Graham said, in that kind of voice that makes you choose between being brave and being ridiculous. "You're 'the winner.'"
I shuffled onto the stage, paper in hand, and he took my shredded scrap like it had just sprouted wings. "Give me the autograph back," he joked. "Kidding. Key will be handed out later."
It later turned out that the 'residence' in question was his own building; he had put his own apartment into the raffle to loosen something in the office. He moved in next door like an extremely handsome, slightly overbearing sitcom roommate and requested that I babysit his gaming career.
Days became domestic and then, tenderly, like a soft flood.
One afternoon, while carrying a steaming pot, I pushed open the door and accidentally walked into Graham and a girl on his couch. She was crying and he was gently dabbing tears away. I froze, stumbled, and covered my nose because the collision with the door frame had left a bruise.
"Are you okay?" he snapped into action, worry immediate.
"I'm fine," I said, keeping a distance. He grabbed his sister into a hug as if she were something precious.
I burst a vein of jealousy that I couldn't own. A stupid, hot, ugly jealousy rolled like a ball in my chest. He followed me home later that night.
"She is my sister," he said, as if that should settle everything.
I watched him produce an old family photo. They looked the same as the people in my childhood memory—just older, steadier, less like cartoons and more like a family portrait.
"You sure?" I blurted. "I don't like surprise guests who look like a second leading lady."
He said, softly, "Would you be jealous?"
I hated how easily I answered. "A little."
He smiled then like the sun cracked in half. "Does that mean you like me?"
"It's complicated," I said, but the warmth in my chest had an answer before my mouth.
He asked me to come back; we reconciled over absurd tickle fights and confession-like whispers. He said, "We were each other's first crush."
We wrapped ourselves in small public rituals. He began to hold my hand walking into work. People gossiped. Henri congratulated, and Kiley made faces but then clapped.
We settled into a life that felt improbable. We argued about games. He beat me at stupid tasks; I mocked him for losing weapons to cardboard boxes in battle. He stole food from my plate; I pretended not to see. He made moves that were small and stunned: rubbing my head when I was tired, handing me a towel when I'd been crying.
There was, though, a moment that popped like a bruise.
I came by Graham's place one afternoon and found him and a pretty girl—again, his sister—sitting close. I walked in the door and the sound startled us all. I bumped the frame. He rushed to me, concern raw, and for the first time I felt hollowed out by the fear that I was too plain for him.
That night, alone with a bowl of overcooked duck, I told myself I would not cry. The first tear slipped out like a traitor. Graham walked in, sat down, and made a joke.
"You're eating alone? Don't you know how to save a portion for me?" he teased.
"Go find your sister," I snapped.
He looked at me, then at the bowl, and laughed. "Not her. You."
I almost told him not to lie to himself, but his hand found mine.
Later, one of our colleagues from the restaurant, Chester Brandt, who had been a little too eager that night I worked for pay, did something at our company's half-year celebration that I couldn't ignore.
He was in town, and because of an arrangement between his restaurant and our catering, he wandered into the ballroom. He saw me and his face lit up with evaluative hunger.
"That's the girl from the restaurant," he said loudly to a group of managers. "She scratched one of my plates and caused me an hour delay. She owes me."
A hush spread. For a heartbeat I felt the old shame creep back. Chester smiled with the kind of entitlement only people who own buildings think is charming.
At that moment Graham walked up, hand in mine. He didn't pull me away. He didn't hush. He did something else: he asked to speak.
"Gentlemen, ladies," he said into the microphone like a radio announcing a weather storm. "If we all have time, I'd like to address something I observed."
Chester puffed up. "And what might a company president have to say about my restaurant's operations?"
"Everything," Graham answered, clean and quiet. "Two years ago an employee here was forced to pay a sixty-two thousand five hundred thirty dollar bill by working a shift. She did the work of several people, broke one of your plates, and stayed to the morning because you let her. I consider that to be exploitation."
The room shifted like an audience hearing thunder. Chester's face, which had been insolent and smarmy, hardened. "That was—"
"—an arrangement," Chester admitted, the word falling like an attempt to catch steam.
"You call it an arrangement that leaves someone humiliated and without choice?" Graham's voice rose but stayed controlled. "This is a public event with colleagues who might soon be customers. You have staff who were pressured into excessive labor, and you claimed unpaid labor as a way to offset a bill." He looked directly at Chester. "We can call HR here and now. We can also choose to show you the kind of publicity that happens when a hotel manager treats employees like accounting entries."
"You're threatening me?" Chester said, affronted.
"I'm asking for accountability," Graham said. "If you refuse to make restitution, I'll put it in our corporate newsletter, and we'll discuss your practices with our clients. If you have a conscience, make good. If you don't, then you ought to find a new line of work."
Chester's mouth fell open. Around us, whispers became a hum. Managers exchanged glances. Clement Nunez, who had been in the front row, leaned forward. He was not only our general manager; he had been the one who'd once dined at Chester's chain. His expression looked less amused and more...calculating.
"You can't—" Chester sputtered. People with phones in their hands began to record. Kiley snapped a photo with theatrical gasps. Jaylene crossed her arms, proud like a friend watching a defense in a courtroom.
Chester's demeanor went through stages in a matter of minutes: smugness, defensiveness, flailing denials, then fevered bargaining. "It was just one plate. I told her the rules."
"You called it a rule, but your employee is still human," Graham said. "We will offer to reconcile—she wants a public apology, restitution equal to that night's bill, and a written commitment that such practices won't be repeated."
He paused as the crowd held its breath.
Chester's face flushed painfully. He glanced at the sea of faces, at the cameras, at his own brand's logo at the back of the hall like a watchful eye. He had a moment of being the man who believed his status insulated him. It cracked.
"No... no, we could—" He tried to speak, but the words sounded small. "I'll... talk to corporate."
"I'll wait for your immediate apology," Graham said.
Chester, who had relied on the low light of restaurants and the complicity of a few hands, could not recover. He shifted from defiance to pleading within three heartbeats, as if being publicly exposed was a new sensation of gravity. He stammered, "I—I'm sorry. I didn't—"
Around us, the crowd reacted. Some clapped quietly. A woman a few rows back shook her head and whispered, "About time." Someone uploaded video. Others murmured their solidarity with a woman who'd been used and then found that the world could tilt in favor of the underdog.
Chester tried to regain control, but the room's verdict had already formed. He went from red-faced to pale to shaking. He begged—first to Graham, then to the room, then to the cameras—asking for mercy, for a second chance, for a private conversation. The more he begged, the less the crowd softened.
By the time Clement stood and said, "We will monitor his business practice and ensure restitution is made," the social atmosphere had condensed into a public shaming. Chester could no longer insist upon the power he'd once had. He left with his dignity in tatters, his attempts to repair thin and local. Cameras had caught the entire exchange.
The punishment was more than spectacle; it was process. Chester's reaction had moved from arrogance to denial to bargaining to collapse. As people who'd watched the event later said, they had seen a man forced to confront the human cost of a decision he had long treated as trivial. Watching him reduced, pleading, while his business logo remained in the lights, was a corrective the ballroom had not planned but deeply anticipated. For me, the scene lifted a weight I had been carrying. It was sudden and full and real.
Afterward, people came up to me. "Are you okay?" they asked. Jaylene hugged me and said, "You did it, Joy." Kiley, who had once whispered about my 'fast decline' at the office, looked ashamed and offered a clumsy apology.
Graham squeezed my hand under the table. "You didn't have to—"
"I did," I said. "Because it was mine."
Life calmed, as life does. We navigated our awkwardness—his quirks, my pride. We learned to make each other coffee the way the other liked it. We fought about trivialities and then made up, each apology sealing the ordinary life that made the extraordinary feel like furniture.
We married after two years of dating, three since the first nights of chaos. Game nights continued. He never improved much, but he never stopped being the man whose elbow I leaned on in elevators, whose ridiculous bets turned into story material, whose little domestic rituals were now mine.
On a quiet morning three years into our life, I sat on a couch playing a game, Graham lying with his head in my lap. He screamed as he ran into a house in the virtual world.
"Don't go in there! That house is taken!" I yelled.
Too late. He went in. Two shots. A thin green smoke puffed somewhere on the other screen. He lunged up like a small dog and flopped onto me, "I lost! I'm so sad!"
"You are an eternal child," I scolded, but my hand rubbed his shoulder and my voice had pity now, warm and fond.
He was the one who, one hour later, would hand me a plate and ask if the stir-fry needed more salt, the one who would fold laundry with a ridiculous solemnity, and the one who would always, always be surprised when I made a face at him for being too sweet.
When I became pregnant, a panic griped him for a beat and then melted into a tenderness that made me laugh. "If there's a child, you'll take over the money?" he asked seriously in the hospital after the positive scan. "I can't lose you."
"I won't let you," I said. He kissed me then, fierce and amazed. "We'll be okay."
We were. We learned how to be tender to each other, how to fight and then fold into the same space again. He was ridiculous, obstinate, brilliant in his own small ways. I was loud, stubborn, and terribly human.
The Maybach sometimes sat in the driveway. The signed photo hung in our living room. We kept the ridiculous, the tender, the humiliations, and the triumphs as proof that we could survive both. When he cooked and his hand trembled at the stove, I did not make him feel small. When I misplaced my pride and cried, he let me.
In the end, our life was nothing but the accumulation of small mercies: the way he mixed my noodles wrong and then corrected it for me every Sunday; the way I would make him pockets of snacks for his games; the way we would laugh until we couldn't breathe over the memory of a lemon water bottle in a fancy restaurant.
One night as we sat on our balcony eating food he had actually managed not to burn, I pressed my forehead to his and whispered, "Remember when I thought you were a kid?"
He snorted. "You think that now?"
"No." I smiled. "I think you were always taller on the inside."
He kissed the top of my head. "And you were always brave with a baseball bat."
We both laughed as the city lights blinked on. The Maybach glimmered below. The signed photo on our wall looked cheerful, almost smug. I picked up a game controller and passed it to him.
"Play," I said.
"I will," he vowed. "But I'm terrible."
"So am I." I met his grin.
We played until we fell asleep, living a life stitched together from ridiculous bets, apologies, and the knowledge that when the world tried to embarrass one of us, the other would always—publicly and plainly—stand up and make sure the scales tipped back to right.
The End
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