Sweet Romance13 min read
The Cat Ears, the Stocks, and the Coffee Shop
ButterPicks15 views
I remember taking off the cake-smeared dress in my friend's bedroom and thinking the party had swallowed up half the city. I remember the cake on her couch, the laugh that sounded like money, and me darting upstairs while everyone was busy smearing frosting into faces.
I didn't notice the phone at first. I thought the room was empty. Then I saw the small light and the phone screen propped up on the vanity like a little window.
"Who's there?" I asked without meaning to. I already knew I was the only one there.
The note on the video said: Brother.
The face on the screen was too handsome to be casual. He looked like someone who never smiled because he saved that for money. He looked like he spent his life looking at numbers and angles. He looked like he would never look at me—except he did, in that video, with a calm, almost bored attention.
"Hey." I said, playing at being casual. "What are you watching?"
He blinked in the video, then still voice came from the other side of the room.
"In the video? Stocks." He said it like it was a grocery list.
"You were watching stocks while I was half naked in your sister's closet," I wanted to say.
Instead I faked a laugh and walked out, holding the new dress I had grabbed, hair stuck with frosting and all, and met my friend's little grin as she slid into the doorway.
"I knew you'd hide here," Caroline said, tapping my shoulder. "You go right to my wardrobe every time."
"Of course. This is the deluxe wardrobing." I smirked. "Also, your brother is on your phone. Thanks for the private screening."
Caroline's face went sly. "Oh, that. He just came back in town. He'll crash here till he sorts his place. You two should—"
"Should what?" I prodded.
"Meet," she shrugged. "He thinks of work. He thinks of stocks. He's never been in love. It's a shame."
"Sounds like a project." I said it before I could stop myself.
It started as a dare. It became a plan. I told Caroline, in whispers and giggles on her bed, "I want to marry into this family."
She laughed so loud she almost woke her expensive rug. "You're ridiculous."
"I'm serious." I sat up and put on my best persuasive face. "If I get him, I get money. If I get her, I get the house. It's efficient."
Caroline shook her head. "He only cares about numbers."
"Perfect." I grinned. "Numbers can be my route to his heart."
The next week I moved into Caroline's big flat for "a while." She handed me the spare key like a lord giving out favors. "Stay as long as you want," she said. "Bring back three men a night if you want. Just don't break anything I care about."
I promised I wouldn't. I kept my promises about the things that mattered and broke most of the things that didn't.
Aramis came the day after I settled in. He arrived with wet hair, towel crooked over his shoulder like he thought only a fisherman's wetness could be natural. He had the kind of body movie directors sigh over but the kind of face that held no invitation. He moved like someone who kept his feelings on a very short leash.
"Hello," I said, trying my breezy voice. "I'm Blair. I'm your sister's friend."
He looked at me the way he did stocks—calm, as if computing risk. "Aramis," he answered. Then he added, dry, "I'm staying a month."
I pretended to be offended. "One month? That's not long enough to learn my morning coffee preferences."
He blinked. "I cook. I leave next month."
"Too short," I said. "Besides, I'm paying rent in evenings. I have the rights to call you 'brother' too."
He turned, the corner of his mouth giving nothing away. "Call me by name."
"Deal. Aramis." I said it like a challenge.
Every day I nudged. I cooked breakfast when I didn't know how. I made him food that tasted better than it had any right to. I left silly things around the kitchen: a cat ear headband in the bowl, a maid outfit folded like a secret. When Caroline sent a package the first week, it contained a black-and-white maid costume and opaque stockings—two things completely at odds with my usual thrift-store taste.
"She sent you that?" Aramis asked with a small frown when I opened it at the kettle.
"Cooking clothes," I lied. "It's practical."
He hesitated, took the cat-ear headband from my hand, and tossed it back to me like a hot coal. "You wear that, I'll leave the apartment."
"Then you must be serious about leaving," I teased. I tied the headband anyway, because why not make the market take a risk?
He began to stay longer. He began to look up from his graphs more. He began to tolerate late-night noise and my messy things. He left Post-it reminders for himself in the living room. He sent one-word messages like "Food?" and "Towel" and "Leave." I learned his routine until I could predict which stocks would make his eyes narrow.
One night, after a department party where my boss Franz Schmitz had made an unwelcome attempt at a touch that sent me sideways to the back of a police station and then later fired in an argument where he tried to smear my name, I fell apart in the dark stairwell and Aramis found me.
"You're drunk," he said, like it was a clinical observation.
"I am not dating a real man who arrives to check the pulse on my dignity," I muttered and stumbled.
He lifted me into his car without fanfare. "You should sleep."
He smelled like wood smoke and coffee and something quiet. He smelled like someone who saved everything in case of emergency, including emotion. He carried me home like I was a thing he had put on his shelf and found he liked more than he'd expected.
At the door, he half-dragged me up the steps. "You can't walk like this."
"I prefer to walk," I slurred.
He set me on the couch and watched me like he was reading the seed catalog of my life. "You should be careful," he said.
"I always am," I lied, but then he stood and the room felt too small for words. He looked at me differently—no longer as a curiosity but as a variable he wanted to control.
"Get in the shower," he said suddenly. "I'll make food."
"You're domestic now," I teased.
"I am domestic when I want to be," he said. "And I want to be."
He sold me half a dozen small favors after that: a bowl of cereal on the table, a message checking if I took my meds, a hand to help me up when my ankle twisted. These were the things that shifted the ledger.
My plan, stupidly and wonderfully, worked. He softened. He blinked at me across the table like someone who had discovered a small, unexpected dividend.
"You should not be alone at night," he said one evening when I slipped into his apartment wearing the maid outfit Caroline had sent, ridiculous and triumphant.
"I live with you," I said. "And I intimidate you."
"You intimidate me," he corrected.
I was winning. I felt it in the small ways: he stopped correcting my music, he stayed to eat, he argued for me in a way that was not about stocks.
Then the boss incident happened.
"Stay late tonight?" Franz asked at my desk. His smile was greasy in the fluorescence.
"No, thanks," I said.
"Come on. You can finish at my place. You owe me." His hand hovered a little too close to my arm.
I reported it. I walked out of the building with a policeman on my left and a trembling sense that I had done the right thing—and then, like a storm, the firm pulled in its rope.
Franz branded his dismissal as my fault. He screamed and said I was lying. He demanded names and made threats that sounded like he wanted to finish my life.
Aramis found me near the stairwell and took me away.
"You're going to be fine," he said.
"Am I?" I asked.
"You're not alone." He drove me home while the city went by in a smear of tired lights. He held my hand in the dark. Later he said, softly, "You were brave."
"What about him?" I asked. "Will he be punished?"
He looked at me with measured care. "We will see."
What happened next was theater and justice in equal parts. Franz Schmitz was the kind of man who assumed the room belonged to him. He was used to doors opening at his will. When the firm called an "emergency meeting," I expected lies, threats, and whispered collusion.
Instead, on Tuesday morning, the conference room filled with every level of the company—managers, assistants, interns—with eyes that had been turned toward quiet conversations in the hallway all week.
"Before we start," I heard a voice say, and it wasn't the CEO. It was Leon Romero—my father—and then Colette Sanchez—my mother—standing at the back like two people who had come to see their child defended. Caroline was there too, glancing sideways at the male cluster.
I didn't know why my parents came. I hadn't invited them. They were probably curious worryplants.
"Franz Schmitz," the CEO said, "we have complaints. But we also have evidence and witnesses."
Franz's face was a color I had only ever seen after taxes: pale and furious. "This is a smear," he barked. "Who called this meeting?"
"All of us," a woman from HR said, "and several people who will not remain silent."
I sat and felt my pulse in my throat. People I didn't even know stepped up one by one. They told stories that added, piece by piece, into a map. Each testimony was small but precise: a hand on a knee in a meeting, a message in the middle of the night, a corner grabbed at a work party. It painted the picture of a man who thought himself entitled.
When it came to the proof, HR stood and projected a folder. Private messages. Recorded times. A security camera that caught Franz entering a stairwell after a party where a woman had been followed.
Franz sputtered. "Photos? Proof? These are taken out of context!"
"They are not," said a quiet man from legal. He opened an email thread with messages Franz had sent to multiple women in the company. The tone was the same. The voice was the same. There were enough witnesses.
Then we played the security clip. I listened to my breath stop as the image bloomed on screen: Franz stepping closer to someone who tried to step away, his hand reaching, and the woman's quick, sharp movement. It was there, awkward and obvious.
One by one, the room processed the same thing I had felt that night: anger, betrayal, relief. "Shame," someone said. "Heads up," another muttered. Phones came out. People filmed. The office, which had been Franz's kingdom, turned into a gallery of watches and phones.
Franz's color shifted again, this time from rage to a stunned, animal panic. He tried to laugh it off. "Planted evidence!" he cried. "She's lying. Someone set me up."
"Is this how you treat colleagues?" the legal head asked softly. "Have you thought about how many people you have hurt?"
He shouted then. "You can't do this to me. You can't ruin me."
"You're the one who ruined yourself," said the CEO.
The thinness of his defenses became obvious. Middle managers who had been silent for years cleared their throats and spoke. A junior analyst described how Franz had cornered her at a drinks mixer. A senior director explained how he had been warned and did nothing. The room filled with voices that had, until now, been drowned by Franz's volume.
I watched the transformation in Franz's face. First he was angry. Then he was incredulous. Then he flailed, looking for the old tools: charm, threat, bribery. They failed. The witnesses remained steady. The evidence remained clear.
"You're fired," the CEO said at last. "And we will assist any women affected in pursuing legal action."
Franz's knees went weak. He clutched at the table. People in the room, who had been his team, began to unbutton the reverence they had shown him for years. They stepped back. Some whispered curses. Some filmed as he packed his things. The employees waited with that public hunger that comes when a bully falls. One woman clapped. A man muttered, "Finally." Someone else said, "Good riddance."
Franz pleaded. "I'm a family man. Please. This is my livelihood."
"Then remember how you used that livelihood," the CEO said. "You chose to make enemies by your choices."
At the doors, security led him out. He stopped once and looked at the room as if expecting a rescue that would never arrive. A cluster of coworkers followed him out, not to comfort him, but to see the spectacle of his exit. A few took photos; some posted them with dry captions. The sound of the elevator closing was the sound of his life being sealed.
The cloud of relief that entered me felt like air after a long dive. My hands were trembling. People gathered and whispered and offered me their phones. Caroline hugged me with a squeeze that hurt. Aramis stood near the back of the room. He didn't look triumphant—just present. Later he told me he had helped gather evidence, quietly and methodically, because he thought justice was a better investment than silence.
After the meeting, strangers stopped me in the corridor to say, "Good for you." I heard one woman say, "We need more of this." People who had ignored me before now said, "Are you okay?" They offered numbers, lawyer names. It felt like a tide had turned.
Franz never returned. He tried to call, to send messages, to make threats. Those were saved and forwarded to HR and the police. The firm issued a clear policy change. It was small and public and necessary.
That day, in a bright conference room, a fat man learned what it meant to be alone with his misdeeds. He waved his hands and yelled, and the room recorded it. People in the corridor whispered. Someone had the courage to slap a "Do not hire" note in the company's shared drive. He went out into the city and felt the weight of being watched.
The best part—the part I will not forget—was not just his exit. It was the moment when one of his former assistants walked to the front of the room, looked him in the eye, and said, in a voice that was steady as a steel cable, "You took my friends' safety as an entertainment. You are not allowed to pretend you don't know what you did."
Franz's face fell. He tried to defend himself. Then he left. People applauded. It felt like an offering.
Some days later, he posted an apology on social media. It was scripted and hollow. He tried to play the martyr. The comments did the rest. Someone had saved screenshots of his messages. The screenshots circulated like wildfire. People shared them with the text, "This is why we teach our daughters better than this."
Public humiliation spread through feeds and halls. It is an ugly thing but sometimes a necessary cleaning. Franz's reputation, which had been his armor, cracked in the light. He attempted to secure legal action but the evidence was dense and his allies scarce. Friends that once lined up to please him now unfollowed. His phone calls went unanswered. His name became shorthand for what not to be. He lost clients, invitations, board seats. It was not a pleasant revenge—revenge rarely is—but it was fair.
Aramis and I took long walks after that. We held hands and did not talk business. We did not talk about the meeting. We talked about small things: the film I wanted to see, whether the city would open a new park. He learned to cook my favorite soup without checking a stock app.
"You were brave," he said once while watching me stir sugar into a cup.
"I tried not to be a coward," I corrected.
"You've been much more than brave," he insisted. "You were right."
We built a quiet life from there. I opened a tiny coffee shop, because the world needed another small oasis and because I wanted a place where I could make a mean espresso and a good pastry. Aramis invested. Caroline invested too—like the kind of sister who buys you a stake because she likes the idea of owning you as property.
At the shop, I learned how to pour slow milk and write your name properly on a paper cup. James Woods came in one afternoon. He had an easy smile and the sort of eyes that made people relax. He ordered an americano and asked, shyly, if I would help him with a ruse: he had a date with a woman his family approved of and wanted to say he was "already seeing someone" to avoid the awkwardness.
I agreed. A fake girlfriend could be helpful. I agreed and told James to wait. He sat at the bar and watched me with such focused adoration that my cheeks warmed.
"Would you like to pretend you're my girlfriend?" he asked when I returned to the counter.
"Depends," I said. "Do you plan to buy the shop?"
He laughed. "No. But I will come back."
We staged the scene. I gave him a wink and called him "my James." He left with a wave and the promise to return. He did. He brought a friend. He became one of the men who sat in the back and read the paper, leaving space for us.
Aramis came every morning without fail. He sat at the same seat and kept an eye on the stocks. He would glance up and sip, and then smile at me when no one else expected it. He told me one evening, hands around a cup, "I like this. Your hands make things better."
We dated in the patient way of two people who had known each other's edges. He met my parents, Leon and Colette, who turned out to be quieter than the stories said but fierce for their child. They liked him because he had options and used them well.
Caroline was ridiculous in her approval. She bought tiny pink shoes the day I told her I was pregnant, two months after we were married. "It was always me," she said, preening like a peacock. "I was doing the selection."
Pregnancy was a strange calculator. It made me tender and furious and foolish and proud. Aramis walked me to doctor visits. He learned to tie my shoes when the belly got heavy. He carried grocery bags. He talked to the baby in a voice that sizzled like numbers and warmth.
When the baby arrived—our small, surprised girl who came like a declaration—our life widened. We painted a blue-gray nursery because I liked the way it looked against sunlight. We bought a tiny cat-ear headband and kept it in a drawer like a relic.
The years that followed were a mix of soft mornings and loud family dinners. Caroline and Wilma came and cooked and fussed. My parents visited and marveled at how the family tree had made new branches. Franz's smudge in our lives became an anecdote in the telling, a lesson in boundaries and courage.
Once, on a rainy afternoon, I sat in the back room of my coffee shop. The cat-ear headband sat on the counter, a small joke between a wild night and a dignified life. Aramis came in, dripping, and set the baby on my lap. He bent to kiss my forehead.
"Do you remember the video?" he asked, smiling.
"I do." I touched the headband. "I remember thinking you were colder than stocks."
"And now?"
"Now I think you are my market." I laughed. "Predictable, but profitable in a way that matters."
He pulled me close. "Then invest in me."
We did. We invested in a messy, true life that had cake on the couch and cat ears on the counter and a coffee shop that smelled like sugar and hope.
The public humiliation of our old boss changed many things. It taught me how to ask for help. It taught Aramis to say what he felt. It taught Caroline that money can buy fast things but not the quiet ones. It taught us both that a small headband, a maid outfit, a fake girlfriend scene, and a single, brave complaint can pivot an entire life.
"Are you happy?" he asked me one evening as the baby slept and rain tapped the shop windows.
"I'm good," I said. "Better than good. I'm full."
He kissed my forehead and said the thing he had once said when he tucked me into bed like a secret. "We're a weird team."
"Best team," I whispered.
We kept the cat-ear headband in a small box behind the counter. Sometimes I would take it out, slip it on, and look at Aramis across the room. He would roll his eyes and then, without missing a beat, kiss me in front of customers.
Our ending is not a tidy line. It is a drawer with a headband, a coffee stain shaped like a heart on a napkin, and a lollipop wrapper stuck to the bottom of my shoe from the night he first let me kiss him in the dark. If you asked me for the proof that life had turned, I'd hand you the headband and tell you to smell the coffee.
I am Blair Turner. He is Aramis Xu. We own a small coffee shop, a baby girl, and a long ledger of small kindnesses. We keep the cat ears. We laugh when Caroline brags. And when someone asks about Franz, we tell them the truth. He was punished in public. The city still remembers.
Sometimes, late at night, I take the headband out, set it on the counter, and let the tiny plastic ears catch the light. It is ridiculous. It is ours.
The End
— Thank you for reading —