Sweet Romance11 min read
The Boy Who Stayed: From Cradle to Civil Affairs
ButterPicks15 views
"Either we go to the civil affairs office together," he said at my front door, "or I bring the civil affairs office here."
I blinked at Sterling Berger and laughed, because that sounded like him—calm, a little ruthless, and entirely certain he could bend the world for me.
"You're dramatic," I said.
"You invited dramatics when you slept in my bed," he replied, eyes flat and funny. "Which, by the way, you did without permission."
"I didn't mean to—" I started.
"You always mean to," he said, and then he smiled. It was a small smile, not the public, careful one he wore at conferences. It was soft and private, and my stomach did a stupid flip. "Come on. Either way, we're doing this now."
I had known Sterling since before I could remember. We had shared diapers, secrets, and the same scratchy blanket in a small house where he was like the moon—always somehow more whole and brighter. From the beginning everyone said he was the gifted one.
"Why didn't you just fall in love with someone normal?" my mother would joke, and then apologize for the joke by bringing him dumplings when our family had trouble.
"Normal is overrated," Sterling once told me when I asked, as a child, why he always had a book in his hands. "Books are practice for life."
As if life itself needed practice.
When we were three he could recite whole poems and made the adults clap. I, meanwhile, learned how to make the neighborhood cats pay attention. I learned how to steal eggs from a henhouse and make bandages for hurt birds. I learned the taste of mud and the weight of being scolded.
"Why are you like this?" my mother asked him once, and patted my head like I was a problem she could fix. "You are the same age. How come you know so much?"
"Some people like to read," he said, polite and distant. "Some people like to live."
I had lived. I had been loud and bold and never quite graceful. Sterling had been steady and neat. He showed up to the small crises of my life like a quiet tide—there, patient, inevitable.
"Save my life," I told him once, and he did.
We were children when I choked on a date pit. The world narrowed down to a thin red tunnel. I couldn't breathe. I tasted metal and panic.
"Stay with me," he said, then did the thing a grown person should do and did it quickly. He held me, he slapped my back, he did every small motion he had watched in the movies and probably in a first-aid pamphlet. Then I vomited and coughed and the sky came back.
"Promise me you'll remember that," he said after. "Not like a bargain—you owe me nothing. Just don't be reckless where it matters."
"Can I give you my entire supply of bubble gum?" I croaked. "As thanks?"
He laughed. "I don't want your bubble gum. I want you to be alive for more stupid things."
Years later, on the train platform when we both had bags and futures, he said, "I will always be the place you can leave your mess. That's my job."
"I had no idea I had a job description," I said.
"You're terrible at applying for postings," he answered.
College was a theater of small dramas. We kept our old roles—Sterling the unruffled guide, and I, the chaos agent who always needed rescue. He tutored me through chemical equations and thermal curves, patient as a mountain. I pretended not to need help, but I followed him to the library like a rescued puppy.
"You're a wizard with those tubes," I told him once, peeking at his notes.
"I use logic," he said. "And math. Mostly math."
"Do wizards use math?" I asked.
"Only the responsible ones," he said. He pinched my cheek with the tip of one finger, an odd, gentle touch that always made me aware of how near he could be without tripping the world apart.
"Let me steal this moment," I said. "Again." I winked and he pretended to be annoyed.
We slept on the same childhood beds sometimes, because my home was a battleground of scolding and I would slip out and take refuge at his place. He disliked disorder, but for me he kept a corner tidy—an extra pillow, a mug with a chip, the crooked tree outside the window we had used like a ladder when we were five.
"You're my nest grass," he once told me without any flourish, as if that phrasing was perfectly normal and not something that should make me glow.
"Nest grass?" I said.
"Yes. You are the grass by the rabbit's bed," he explained, earnest as ever. "A rabbit eats the grass, nests in it, and still cares for it. You are my grass."
I wanted to be offended and instead I melted a little. "That's the weirdest compliment."
"You like weird compliments," he said.
When we left college, life shifted. He went to study abroad, bright and calm as ever. He asked me to be careful.
"Don't pick fights with every person who looks at you," he said.
"I can't promise that," I admitted.
"But try?" he pressed.
"I'll try," I said, which was the most adult promise I could make then.
He left and we began what everyone called a long-distance relationship. He was very good at video calls when he wanted to be. He was also good at small gifts that were never the same twice. Once he sent a box that wouldn't fit through normal doors, and I found him waiting beneath a crooked tree with his arms wide as if he had become the box himself.
"Open it," he said.
"I already know it's you," I told him.
"It had better be," he said. "I paid extra for the wrapping."
We had a rough, clumsy first kiss after a night where too much wine and the wrong words collided. I had been loud and silly, and he had been patient. Then I woke up in his bed, ashamed and glad at the same time. There was a bowl of instant noodles and a sticker on the bedside table that read "Don't tell our parents."
I tried to bargain. "You could ground me."
"I would be the worst enforcer," he said. "I once locked myself out of my apartment."
"Then don't do that again, please."
He looked at me for a long time. "Try being nice to yourself," he said. "That's my ask."
We moved forward slow and careful. He asked me to be his girlfriend the way he made lists—clear, honest, slightly formal.
"Will you be my partner?" he asked, handing me a small ring that fit like a secret.
"You can't just do ceremony like that," I laughed.
"It's not ceremony. It's acknowledgment," he said. "I notice you. I will keep noticing you."
We went through strange little tests that life offered. There were fights over small things—the way I left dishes for days, the way he sent too many technical articles at midnight—and there were beautiful moments stitched between:
"You're the only one who eats snail noodles like a champion," I told him once.
"It smells like victory," he replied.
"Do not say that," I said, laughing. "You're supposed to be disgusted."
"I have learned to love your choices," he said, and folded his hands like a monk.
He watched me in private, close enough to shelter me. Once, after a long day at the office that had chewed up my patience, I found him waiting on the roof of his building with a thermos and two cups.
"Sit," he said.
"I can't, I have so much to do," I protested.
"No," he said, soft but firm. "Sit."
I sat, and he poured tea. "You look tired," he said. "Let me carry your weight a little."
"No," I insisted.
"Yes," he said, "you are allowed to be tired."
He wrapped a jacket around my shoulders in a move that looked simple but felt like a fortress.
"I hate that you made sense," I complained.
"I'm glad I did," he said.
We had arguments, of course. A small fire in the apartment building once made me panic, and I left things unsaid. He kept calm, made the calls, and when the smoke cleared he said, "That was loud."
"Am I loud?" I asked.
"Sometimes," he smiled. "But you're mine loud."
That answer solved a lot.
There were three moments that I think of as my heart's milestones.
"You're the only person who makes me feel less afraid," I told him on a bad night, and he smiled in a way that made space for me to breathe.
"I will protect your silliness," he promised one rain-soaked afternoon, when the street was slick and we were laughing like two kids with wet hair.
"Keep being with me," I whispered when he had to leave again. He looked like a cliff: firm and inevitable. "I will," he said. He always did.
We made a clumsy plan—marriage eventually; after careers, after steady paychecks had found their legs, after a ring that didn't feel like a surprise. He asked me then, before a long trip, to be patient.
"Don't close the door," he said. "If I close it or open it by accident, knock. I'll answer."
"That sounds like an instruction manual," I said.
"Maybe that's how I love you," he said.
On my birthday, he returned and did something ridiculous. He stood outside my apartment beneath a tree I had climbed as a child, arms wide. "Come sign for your present," he said.
"What present?" I asked.
"A lifetime supply of me," he said with earnest eyes.
"How is that even wrapped?" I asked.
He laughed. "Badly. Like me. Want it?"
"Yes," I said, and I meant it.
We fought with age and office demands. I became a manager—small victories and loud failures—and he returned to research. There were quiet days filled with practicalities: dinner, washing, the way he preferred his socks folded. We built a rhythm.
"Our lives are boring," I told him once.
"You say that like it's a crime," he answered.
"Isn't it?" I asked.
"It is ours," he replied. "And that's better than borrowed bright."
There were small sweet moments everywhere: him removing his coat to drape it over my shivering shoulders, him tucking my hair behind my ear and being patient when I was short with him, the time he laughed out loud at something I said and his mouth opened into a smile that felt like sun.
"You're the one who makes me protect you," he told me in a whisper one night.
"And you're the one who taught me not to be reckless," I answered.
He proposed properly once. Not with a grand performance but with a cup of coffee and a ring in a box like a quiet surprise. "Will you be my person?" he asked.
"Yes," I answered. "Will you promise to still like my noodle choices?"
"I will," he promised. "And I will learn to love the smell."
We married with both of our families making jokes and blessings and warnings. My mother, Flora Hicks, hugged me and said, "You finally got rid of that cotton jacket of yours," because she had loved him like a son long before I had been brave enough to say yes.
"Remember what I taught you," she told him as if he was the child. "Always keep snacks for her. Never hide the good pajamas."
"And don't let her starve on strange snacks," he said back, smiling.
The wedding was small and awkward and perfect. He called me "nest grass" in the middle of the ceremony and everyone giggled. "It's a weird compliment," I mouthed back, but my hands shook as I took his.
"I like weird compliments," he said. "They suit you."
We promised ordinary things to each other: patient coffee on mornings I had to leave early; a hand to steady on nights I felt small; permission to be loud sometimes and quiet others. We promised to keep our crooked tree by the window, the same tree that had been our ladder, our hiding spot, and the place he once stood with a giant present.
After marriage we lived our messy, lovely normal. We took vacations that turned into work calls and then turned into quiet moments when we turned our phones off and played like children. We fought about the time he fell asleep with the news on and left me to make dinner. We made up with better bread.
One evening, while the twins were napping—yes, ten months later we shocked our families and had twins; the doctors called it a miracle and my mother called it "economical"—I made myself a bowl of snail noodles. My mother had told me to be a little less messy in public, but this was our kitchen, and I loved the soup for reasons that felt like ceremony.
Sterling came in and sat at the counter.
"You eat that again?" he asked.
"I do," I said proudly. "It's my favorite."
He took a careful bite, then another. His face softened. "It's weirdly good," he said.
"Weirdly is my middle name," I replied.
He laughed and kissed my forehead. "You are my nest grass," he said again.
I smiled. "And you are my rabbit who keeps stealing things and making a mess but who I still love."
He hugged me in a way that was just steady. "I will always be the person who comes back for you," he said.
"And I will always be the person who cries when a cat leaves," I said.
He rolled his eyes with mock patience. "You are dramatic," he claimed.
"So are you," I shot back.
"Maybe we're a dramatic pair then," he said, and I liked the sound of that.
We grew together, like the crooked tree outside his window. We changed, but in small sweet ways that meant everything: him learning to cook stinky tofu without gagging, me bringing a thermos of tea to the roof when I thought he needed rest, our children asking who the silly people in our old photos were and laughing when we told them the stories.
At our tenth anniversary, Sterling stood beneath the crooked window tree and said, "Do you remember when I blocked your door with that terrible civil affairs joke?"
"I remember," I said.
"You were a mess that morning," he said.
"You saved me from choking on a date pit," I reminded him.
He looked at me and for a second his face was bright with something I hadn't seen before—a softness so wide it could be a shore. "I will move mountains for you," he said simple and straight.
"Then I'm going to ask a favor," I said. "If you ever try to move the civil affairs office, please ask for directions first."
He laughed, wide and content. "Deal."
That night, in the dim light of our living room, when the twins were asleep and the house hummed, he wrapped his arm around me and pulled me close. "You know what I love?" he asked.
"What?" I asked.
"The way you eat snail noodles." He kissed my hair. "The way you get fired up about nothing. The way you fall asleep with your mouth open. The way you are messy and fierce and loud."
"And you?" I said.
"I like your steady things," he answered. "The lists. The tests you give me that aren't actual tests. I like your hands when you cook for us, and I like that you still climb trees even if you say you won't. I like that you're the only person I could ever try to surprise with a box too big for a door."
"Now hush," I said, because the words were too big and warm. I pressed my face against his chest and felt the steady, reliable beat.
Outside, the crooked tree's branches scratched the window like memory. Inside, the lights were dim and the world felt quiet. He smiled in his small, private way.
"I'm not moving the civil affairs office," he whispered.
"Thank goodness," I said.
He kissed my temple like the closing of a circle.
We had our small rituals: tea on cold nights, him always folding his socks in a ridiculous way I pretended not to notice, our twins naming a frog they could not keep because their father couldn't be trusted not to leave the lid open and let it go. We made a life that wasn't perfect, but it was ours.
"One day," I said, "we'll tell the kids everything."
"Yes," he said. "We'll scare them with how young we were and how stubborn we both are."
"Good," I said. "They need to know what devotion looks like—loud, messy, and oddly practical."
He laughed. "You describe my love like an appliance manual."
"Maybe it's because you love things that work," I said.
"Maybe it's because you love things that smell like victory," he teased.
We joked and we promised and then we simply lived. If anyone asked me what growing up next to your first love felt like, I'd tell them it felt like sleeping on the same bed for years and slowly realizing who puts out the light and who keeps it on. It felt like being rescued and rescuing back in different ways. It felt like the crooked tree that both hid and held us.
"He moved the civil affairs office," my mother liked to joke at family dinners with her eyes bright, and we would all laugh because she liked the idea that the world could be rearranged for love.
"Maybe we did," Sterling would say, and look at me like we were conspirators who had found the best hiding place.
I would squeeze his hand under the table. "You are my rabbit."
"I am," he said. "And you are my grass."
We would eat snail noodles. We would argue about how to fold a fitted sheet. We would go to the crooked tree on summer nights and watch the stars. We would sleep in the same bed, old and new, like the same story told in different voices.
If I had to sum it up in one sentence: we grew up like two halves learning to match, like a house that was messy and real and filled with people who loved us. And when he blocked my door that silly morning, that was only the start of a life where he kept moving the world so that I could rest.
The End
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