Sweet Romance10 min read
The Dream That Stayed: How I Met My Director
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I woke up to a weight on my side and the pale moonlight cutting through the curtains.
"Move over," a deep voice said, quiet and rough.
I couldn't move. My arms felt heavy, as if the bed had grown roots into my skin. I watched the man by my side throw the blanket over both of us and push me gently, but firmly, toward the edge.
"Hey—" I tried to say something, but my mouth made no sound.
He laughed low and soft. "You sleep like a stone."
Then he kicked the blanket so I tumbled off the bed and onto the floor.
I stared at the ceiling and blinked until the room steadied.
"Mom," I whispered to the dark, because who else did people pray to about a man who kept stealing your blanket in the night? "What did you do?"
When I told Mercedes what was happening, she patted my back and smiled crooked. "If you can't fight him, enjoy him," she said.
"Mercedes," I warned. "You're encouraging me."
She shrugged. "I'm not. I'm advising."
The man in the dream came every night after that. At first he was a thief who stole my blanket. Then, one night, he did something else.
He wrapped his long arm around me and drew me up until my face pressed to his chest.
"Don't move," he murmured.
This time, when my face pressed to him, I could move. My fingers found his collarbone. I traced up until I found two little moles on the side of his neck, almost like a secret mark.
In the office the next day I pretended to work. But I kept hearing the voice from the night.
"Juliet, are you dating someone?" Jessica asked, smirking.
"No," I lied. My cheeks warmed like I'd been standing in front of a heater.
"Then what's the glow?" she teased. "You look like you swallowed sunlight."
I didn't tell her about the pillow thief. Instead I told her about the meeting, and she rolled her eyes. "You're always nervous. Just breathe."
That afternoon the company announced a new director. A tall man walked in and introduced himself.
"I am Esteban Ribeiro," he said, voice low and steady.
I froze at that sound. It was the voice from my nights. The same rough warmth. My eyes drifted to his neck, and there they were—two little moles at the base.
It felt like a slap and a song all at once.
"It can't be," I told Mercedes that night. "It's impossible."
"Maybe it's fate," she said, toothy grin and all.
The next week, Esteban made everyone do a round of presentations. My voice trembled. I read my slides like I was speaking through a wall.
Afterward he glanced at me, a cold, professional look. "Rewrite this and bring me the details tomorrow."
"No problem," I said, low.
When our eyes met for a beat, I thought he recognized me. He did not smile. He did not blink. He simply returned to the paperwork in front of him, like a man sliding a window closed.
That night in the dream he sat up and said, "Sorry, had to work late."
"You're working too much," I muttered.
He reached to touch my hair and I pushed his hand away. "Let's set some rules," I said. "You wear pajamas. You don't get into my covers. You don't touch me."
He laughed. "If you don't touch me, you can't move," he said, and his breath was a warm thing on my cheek.
I shoved at him and he pinned me back with lazy strength. "Be quiet," he said, grinning.
It should have been absurd. But I went to sleep every night hoping to bump into him again.
At the office this got messy. I found myself doing small things to avoid his gaze. I stepped into elevators with other people. I ducked in doorways. I avoided the corridor outside his office.
Then one evening I tripped in a crowded elevator and my heel found his shoe. Twice. "Sorry, sorry—" I tumbled.
He said, "Don't step on my shoes. They're expensive."
People laughed. His voice was like a low chord that made my ribs hum. He pulled me to steady me. "Are you okay?" he asked, calm.
"I'm fine," I lied.
He then asked me to redo my report, and I left, feeling both humiliated and strangely protected.
"You're being weird," Mercedes told me. "Either he's your dream man or an actual menace."
"Maybe both," I whispered.
At home that night I tried to be firm.
"Don't say anything that sounds like you belong in my dreams," I told him in the dark.
He made a soft noise. "I can say whatever I want."
"You can't," I said. "Because I'm going to make rules."
He reached for me and I put up my hand. "No. I'm serious."
He stroked my hair. "I won't come into your bed," he said. "I will sleep in my pajamas."
And yet he said things that made my chest flip. "I don't know why your face appears in my dream," he said once, voice rough with a strange affection. "But you do. You are there. All the time."
"Then why treat me like a stranger at work?" I demanded.
He sighed. "Because I don't want to mix dream and reality. I don't know which one will hurt me more if I lose it."
"Does anyone else see this?" I asked.
"No," he said. "I think it's only us."
We both paused under that truth. Then he asked, quietly, "May I hold you?"
I wanted to say no, because it felt wrong to take what might be an illusion.
But I wanted yes, even more.
He wrapped his arms around me like he had a map of me memorized. "You are mine in the night," he said softly, "and maybe you will be mine in the day."
After that, everything wobbled. Some days at the office he was cold, by habit. Other days his smile slipped and his eyes warmed like he had a secret. Once, in the elevator, he steadied me and said, "Your shoe looks like it hates me."
"Stop," I told him. "I will not fall for you twice."
"Why not fall at least once?" he asked.
We both laughed, and the laugh dissolved all the rules for a few heartbeats.
Then came the date arranged by my mother. I went because I had to. Mercedes was sick that night, so I went alone.
He started talking in the rude, mechanical way that men on bad dates do. He told me how he could "help" me, how he knew the right people, and how women were silly if they spent time dreaming.
"What a kind man," I thought, twisting my napkin.
"I imagine you dream about handsome men," he said, flippant. "You should wake up and meet the world."
I bristled. "Do you know what you sound like?"
He leaned closer. "You look like someone who needs to be told the truth."
"Franklin," a voice said behind him.
I turned. A shadow fell across the table.
Esteban stood there like a storm. "Leave," he said.
"Who are you?" Franklin glared.
"Juliet's escort for tonight," Esteban replied. "Now leave."
What happened next lasted longer than what I had rehearsed in my head. It was not a quick flicked-off insult and a hasty exit. Esteban stood, and then he spoke—slow, controlled, with a voice that filled the restaurant and made the slow music shrink.
"Sit down, Franklin."
Franklin laughed in a brittle way as if he had paper armor. "I'm speaking to her—"
"No." Esteban's voice cut in. "You're speaking over her. You call her dreams silly from your chair. You said she should wake up and meet the world. You told her that dreaming is a waste."
Franklin's face flushed. "She should wake up."
Esteban didn't smile. "Then listen while I wake you up." He walked around the table and leaned so close to Franklin that I could see the tiny movements in his breath. He spoke now in a tone that was quiet, but the restaurant, which had been low murmur just moments ago, tilted its focus toward their table.
"Do you know why we dream?" Esteban asked.
Franklin's answer was a snarl. "Because people like her need fantasy—"
"Because sometimes life is too lonely," Esteban finished, voice still steady. "And sometimes when life is lonely, it gives you a soft thing to hold at night. If you have never had that, maybe you cannot understand. But that does not give you the right to deride anyone who does."
People at neighboring tables had halted forks. Someone shifted in their chair. Phones made soft clicking sounds, recording not on purpose but because attention has a habit.
Franklin opened his mouth to retort. Esteban didn't let him.
"You think your words are sharp," Esteban said. "You think they cut like a blade. But your words are more like cheap glass—fragile, and when they break they only show how empty you already are."
A man at the next table coughed and said, "Hey, keep it down."
Esteban turned to him and smiled with the lightest of edges. "This is not for the walls."
Franklin's mouth worked. His face had turned a nasty purple. Sweat started on his upper lip. He tried to stand, but his chair scraped loudly on the floor and heads turned.
"You used to brag of knowing people," Esteban said, calm now. "You told her she needed access to men like you. You said she has to 'wake up' and stop dreaming. Do you know what that really is?"
Franklin spat the word "Yes" like it was a coin.
"It is a hunger," Esteban said. "To take what you want from others to fill yourself until you rot inside. And you took it with your words tonight. You bit her down. That is cowardice. At least if you acted and took with your hands, you would have a scar from the fight. But you take with your mouth and pretend it's virtue."
Around us voices had grown. Someone whispered, "Who does he think he is?" Another phone camera shone.
Esteban leaned in and placed his palm flat on the table, so that everyone at the restaurant could see. His hand was steady. "Apologize."
Franklin sputtered. "Apologize? For what? I said the truth."
"The truth?" Esteban laughed, and it sounded like pity. "The truth is that you are afraid. The truth is that you have made a life of climbing over small people and calling it success. The truth is that you are the kind of man who will be alone in a big house with no one to laugh there with him."
People began to mutter. A woman at the bar whispered, "It's not polite to shame a man." Her voice shook.
"But I will do better," Esteban said quietly. "I will show you what a man can be: someone who protects the people he cares about, who apologizes when he is wrong, who learns."
"That's not—" Franklin began.
Esteban steadied his eyes on him. "Apologize to Juliet, or you will leave with everyone here knowing what you are."
Franklin's mouth opened and closed. Around us, people exchanged glances. A teenager at the next table snapped a photo and uploaded it.
"No," Franklin growled, nose flaring. He shoved his chair back. "Fine—fine. You—"
He turned and fled, shoving through the doorway as if the exit were a weapon. The restaurant buzzed like a hive.
People clapped, softly at first, then with a slow rise. Some whistled. A woman near the back yelled, "Good for you!" and the shout caught up.
Franklin stood outside under the neon and made a little scene, angry and red-faced, while people watched him on the sidewalk through the glass. He staggered to his car and sped away.
Inside the restaurant, I sat frozen. Esteban came around the table and sat opposite me.
"Are you all right?" he asked, matter-of-fact.
"No," I said. "I was not."
He smiled, but it was a very small thing, like a moth's wing. "I thought not."
"Did you have to—" I started.
He shrugged. "Some things are about boundaries. You do not owe anyone your humility."
People around us were still talking. The staff came over and offered coffee, then plates. A man excused himself and offered, "If you want to call someone, now is the time."
I looked at Esteban. "Why did you help me?"
He looked down, thoughtful. "Because you deserved better than that man's mouth. Because I did not like how he spoke to you. Because sometimes you meet a person in a dream and you are willing to do more in the day."
VOICES: A child at a corner table mimicked, "You're hero." Laughter bubbled. Jessica later said, "I told you you'd be safe."
That public moment changed everything. It was not only the humiliation of Franklin's retreat, but the way people watched, the way their phones had recorded his cowardice, the way conversations inside that restaurant switched from normal gossip to tellings of his smallness.
After that night he was on the internet. He had posted an angry video decrying "cancel culture," but people had already recorded his insults and posted them. At work the next day, my mother even sent me a screenshot: "Who was that man?" she texted. "Glad someone stood up for you."
Franklin's friends unfollowed him. The company he had mentioned in his bragging—someone called them and asked about his claims. They didn't answer. People at the restaurant talked about how rude he was. A comment thread of his own photos was filled with mockery.
He lost invitations. People in our building shrank away. He tried to come back into his usual haunts and found the door slightly closed. He called once to apologize to me. I didn't pick up.
That public unmasking was not violent or dramatic in a physical way, but it was worse to him because it took the stage from him. He had built himself on small cruelties. When they were mirrored back at him, he fell apart.
He ended up apologizing in a short message that he thought would fix things. It didn't. People who had seen his behavior already refused to accept the apology. He called his friends. Many didn't pick up. He posted long social parables about "learning and growth." The reply was a string of quotes from people who remembered his words.
Watching him collapse publicly, someone said, "He looks smaller."
"He is," said another.
It didn't feel triumphant. It felt necessary. Like a window that had been kept shut finally being opened because the room needed air.
After all that, Esteban took me home. He held my hand in the car as if we were a single thing. The sky was very dark and the city was quiet. When we arrived at my building I hesitated.
"Please don't be vague," I said. "Don't say things that mix dream and day."
He smiled. "I wore pajamas. I won't steal your covers. But I will still say the things I feel."
He looked down at my throat and then away. "I like you," he added, like a small admission.
"I like you," I said too, because I had loved him in private already for many nights.
We became a quiet pair in the office. He kept his watch from his wrist, but sometimes he wore a thin band of leather around it that had my scent. Jessica teased me but kept quiet otherwise.
Once, at the company retreat, I sang in the karaoke room and could feel his eyes on me, steady and soft. After the song, he said, "You were beautiful."
"You were there," I said.
"Yes," he answered, smiling like a boy. "I wanted to see the person in daylight."
We had private moments in the lobby, in elevators, in the small spaces where two lives touch. We joked about how both our mothers prayed at the same old temple. It was a small, strange shrine, almost forgotten, where we'd both once gone to ask for things we could not name.
One evening I asked him how he had recognized me in the elevator the first day.
He bit his lip and said, "Your shoulder looked like it belonged to someone I had held for a long time. The hand felt familiar."
"Your answer sounds like nonsense," I said.
He smiled. "Hand sense. Maybe it is nonsense. Maybe it's the proof."
Later we found the temple together and laughed at the small wooden statues and at ourselves. He told me, with a mock grand voice, "You are my eighth suitor."
I shoved him. He picked me up anyway.
At the top of the hill, when the world looked small, he said, "I want a real chance."
"Then take it," I said.
And so he did.
The End
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