Sweet Romance11 min read
The Monthly Salary, the Contract, and the Weird Kind of Love
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I never thought my life could change because of a plastic bank card.
"Hey, the girl on the bike—stop," someone called.
I stopped. He was a stranger: all black, left ear with a small stud, eyes sharp like someone who studied other people's faces for fun. He handed me a card and said, "Be my girlfriend. I'll give you two hundred thousand a month. Do you want it?"
"Uh?" My laugh came out flat, like I was reading a joke in a notebook.
"Do my girlfriend. Two hundred thousand every month. Final time, yes or no?"
He repeated the number like it was a spell. My fingers did the rest. I took the card, and before I could think straight I said the only thing that felt right in the moment.
"Husband!"
He smiled in a way that made the air thinner. "Good girl."
He put his arm across my shoulders and looked at the woman standing by him. The woman—tall, flawless, Freyja Bauer kind of perfect—glared at me like I was trash under her heel.
He held up his phone and tapped. A notification pinged on my phone five seconds later: "Transfer from 130xxxxxxxx: 200000.00 CNY. Note: voluntary gift."
"See?" he said to the woman. "I could give her to dogs and it wouldn't matter, but I gave her this. She doesn't deserve you."
She went pale. I went home with the card clutched like a talisman. That night I checked the bank machine three times. Two hundred thousand and some change sat on screen: 200803.02. For the first time, I felt like the world might be kind.
My life, before that, had been a series of gig shifts, a notebook I kept called "landlord notes," and a stubborn belief that money and dignity could be parted if need be. I liked to work. I liked not to ask. I liked to keep my head down so my heart would not trip over someone else's shadow.
I sent him a message that night—"Hi, boyfriend"—and half an hour later my blank-portrait contact replied, "What."
"Card password?" I typed.
"001223," came the string of numbers. Then a short, loud voice clip: a noisy, celebratory four seconds. "That's my birthday. Remember. I'll quiz you."
"Got it," I wrote, slapped on an emoji I hadn't used in years, and went to sleep feeling a little like a thief with a map.
He called me at 3:50 a.m. "Already asleep?"
"Otherwise what?" I said. My voice was all asleep sand.
"Don't be rude."
I softened. "Baby, I wasn't rude."
"You know you're my girlfriend, right?"
"Yes."
"Then the things other people's girlfriends have, you should have. Or don't expect me to renew."
"Renew?" I blinked. "You sell boyfriend subscriptions now?"
"Just behave," he said and hung up.
The next morning I stood at his dorm with a breakfast tray, staring at every guy's ear in the crowd like I was hunting for a clue. He finally strode out in black and I rushed forward.
"Good morning, husband," I chirped.
He froze. Around us, the boys started to mock. "Wow, Jiang—when did you get a girlfriend?"
He was called "Sage" by friends, but I learned his full name later. He moved toward me and slung an arm over my shoulders. His jaw was lean, his mouth wry. "That's my boyfriend," he said to the teasing boys, and then he turned to me, and in private voice: "You sure you can tell me apart from other boys?"
"I can't," I admitted. "You could carve your face on a cigarette and I'd still lose it."
He laughed and called me cute in a way that made me melt. "Don't call other people husband again," he said. "Or I'll deduct your salary."
"Understood, boss," I said, and we were off to classes. He called himself宋砚 once, then Sage; I started calling him "husband" in secret messages. I found myself writing down everything of his taste into a battered spiral—I titled it "Benefactor Likes." Dumplings plus one, pancakes minus one. He found it and laughed, called it "VIP profile." I called it "my job sheet."
He was never sweet the way novels taught. He was sweet in private places: when he fiddled with my notebook to make a joke about dumplings; when he ticked off little things I could do to "improve customer satisfaction"; when he did not like another man to speak to me in ways he didn't approve of. He pulled me close sometimes in crowded halls, and one day, perfectly absentmindedly, took off his jacket and draped it around my shoulders.
"You're freezing," he said.
I felt like a secret photo taken in my chest.
"Do you—do you really give people two hundred thousand?" my roommate Laney Popov asked in our room later, eyes the size of saucers.
"She should sign a contract," added Fallon Dickson, always practical.
We typed up a contract that night—"Service agreement: boyfriend in exchange for monthly stipend." They helped me print it. I fussed with clauses like a lawyer on three hours sleep.
"It's ridiculous," Laney said, but she printed the pages in a relief that made me grin. "But if he's a scam—"
"He's real," I said, but that was the exact moment Sage texted: "You're supposed to be my girlfriend. Come downstairs tomorrow with breakfast."
The "jobs" were strange and comfortable. I went to his classes with him sometimes, sat at the back like a small luxury, made his favorite soup, let him practice leaning on me when he was tired. He taught me a private language without using many words.
"Why do you do all this?" I asked him once while we watched a movie on his large screen. The house smelled of popcorn.
He didn't answer instantly. His hand found mine in the blanket. "Because it's you," he said.
I swallowed. "Because you pay me."
"I pay you because you make my life better," he corrected gently. "Because your jokes are funny. Because you sign my contracts like a professional."
That was the first heart-fluttering moment: he gave me permission to be more than a worker and called me important because I made him feel better. He smiled once in front of me—an expression I had only seen once before—and it landed like a small comet.
Then came the night when his phone buzzed: two messages popped on the screen during a horror movie. "I'm pregnant." "Due in a few days."
The theater room fell into a weird silence. I stared at the words as if they could rearrange themselves into something kinder.
"Maybe I should go help her with postpartum care?" I said before I could stop myself. The sentence tasted like betrayal and logic at the same time.
Sage's hand left mine. He watched me over the rim of his cigarette smoke. "Do it," he said. "Pack. Tomorrow. Go help her. I want you there."
I thought maybe he wanted me to prove something to him, or to myself. I bought baby clothes at the mall with numb hands. At the checkout, I cried for no reason. In the street, Coen Rose—kind, quiet Coen—found me with carrier bags.
"You okay?" he asked. He had always been the kind who could make a stranger spill secrets by being quietly steady.
"It's for his friend's... sister," I said. "I am going to help with postpartum care for the baby."
Coen's face changed in a way that hurt and warmed me. "If he treats you badly, let me know," he said softly.
"He's not bad," I lied. "He's... complicated. He pays well."
Coen didn't say more. For a long time he did not say more. He became—quietly and insistently—someone who was there. He helped carry my packages, held an umbrella over me, and once, when I cried in the supermarket, he wrapped his long coat around my shoulders and refused to let me go home alone until I stopped shaking.
That was the second small heart-flutter: he leaned in, protective and gentle, without strings. I felt my chest unfasten a little.
The postpartum job turned out to be a scene from a misunderstanding play. The "pregnant woman" was Sage's cousin, Isabel Lehmann, and the man with her—Dempsey Bishop—was her husband. Sage had introduced them like a man who knew exactly how to defuse a bomb.
"Are you sure you don't want to stay and talk?" Isabel asked kindly as I arranged the diapers. She was luminous in a way that made my own hands feel clumsy.
"It's fine," I said. "I'm here to help."
Sage came home later and found me arranging milk bottles like a methodical librarian. He watched me, something like regret and pride swimming in his face.
"Why did you come?" I asked that night when we were alone.
"Because you said you would," he answered simply, softening. "Because I wanted you there."
We found a rhythm after that—jokes about contracts, nights when I would fall asleep in his arms, mornings when he would wait at the gate for me with coffee. Once, when I was cold and clumsy and had mascara smeared because I had cried over nothing, he marveled at me the way a cat marvels at sunlight.
"You're stubborn," he murmured. "And honest in all the wrong ways."
"That's my job," I said.
He kissed the corner of my mouth. "That's my favorite job."
The third heart-fluttering moment was small: he noticed I changed my hair, and instead of a quick compliment, he wrote on a napkin: "You look like you just walked out of a story. I like it."
I kept that napkin in my diary.
Not everyone saw us through rose-tinted glass. Freyja Bauer, the woman who had stood beside him on the first day, kept showing up. She would cross our path in the mall, in class, and make faces like she had swallowed a lemon whenever I came near Sage. She liked to whisper things like, "You don't deserve him," loud enough for lunches to hear.
One evening the university hosted a charity gala, a grand affair with banners and music. I had been asked to help—my landlord-modeling days made me useful—and I went with hesitation. Sage was there. Coen was there, quietly in a corner. The room smelled of perfume and perfume of secondhand pain.
Mid-gala, I noticed Freyja whispering into the ear of a man who looked older—thick hair, cufflinks, the sort of smile that buys people silence. My throat tightened.
Later, during the auction, Freyja stood at the microphone to boast about her charity work. She spoke with practiced warmth. "I've always believed in honesty," she said. "You can't fake roots."
Curious faces turned.
Sage stood up suddenly and walked to the stage. He raised his voice, steady and cold. "I'd like to ask Freyja a question."
A hush. Microphones clicked. I found my hands clenching.
"You told everyone you were single and working on campus projects. Who did you say gave you that expensive birthday gift last week?" he asked.
Freyja's perfect smile faltered. "I—"
Sage held up his phone and tapped. "I have a message from the city contractor you have been publicly praising. It is dated three days ago. In it, you thanked him for 'making me feel secure' and asked for a loan to pay him back for a trip. You told him you couldn't afford the designer bag you were auctioning tonight."
"That's private—" she snapped. Her voice lost the polish that had kept it on the surface.
"You also told my friend that you'd prefer men who buy your life for you, and that you 'wouldn't settle' for someone without a fat bank account."
There were gasps. Freyja's face drained color. A few people started to murmur, phones lifting.
"You've painted yourself as grassroots while taking money to dress your story," Sage continued. "And when you told our girls you 'couldn't compete with an old contractor,' you weren't scornfully moral—you were bartering your dignity for a new bag."
"That's a lie!" she cried, and for a second the voice broke into pleading. "You can't—"
"Freyja," someone called, "the contractor is outside right now." Heads turned as Dempsey Bishop, who had shown up earlier with Isabel, stepped out from the crowd with the older man she had been seen with.
He looked at Freyja with a mix of pity and contempt. "You billed me for charity work I didn't approve," he said flatly, and his voice rolled across the room.
The crowd split into ripples of conversation and record-button clicks. People took out phones, faces sharp with curiosity. Sage's tone softened a fraction. "You told everyone you're genuine. You told the freshman that the poor are sacred. But you were selling a masquerade with other people's money."
Freyja's face went through stages—shock, denial, rage—each faster than the last. Her hand flew to her throat. "No—no, you can't—" She screamed. The older man's friends started to laugh, cruel and quiet.
"Look at her," a woman near me hissed. "She stood over lunch and told Eliza she had no dignity for taking money. Now look."
"She's always been like this," someone said, eyes bright. "Pretending the world is hers."
Freyja's mouth opened and closed like she was trying to catch a lie and spit it back. She paced, each step making a little storm. "You are all—" She stopped, looking for air to fill the silence. For a moment she seemed to cling to a memory of control. "You're lying. This is a set up."
"It's on your own messages," Sage answered. "You can deny it. But the contractor has receipts. The audience has recorded you. You're the one who told us who you were."
She tried to laugh, a brittle sound. "They—these are—taken out of context."
A dozen phones raised and chimed in chorus. "We have the context," a student shouted. "You told a group chat you begged him for designer shoes."
Her face collapsed. The staccato of whispers grew loud enough to be a roar. "Please—please—" she begged, sinking into her chair. "I didn't—"
People moved away. Someone snapped a photo. Another started a live video. "She's splitting herself between versions," said a woman with dark hair. "First she lectures the poor; now she's exposed." Someone clapped—sharp, the sound of justice or cruelty, I couldn't tell.
Freyja's proud posture crumpled into shame so public and obvious it felt like an arrow in slow motion. She tried to speak, to claw back the authority she'd crafted, and the words were flakes of ash. "I—I'm sorry," she offered, tiny, unmoored.
The crowd reacted in a dozen small ways—some whispered sympathy (for what? the spectacle of humiliation?), some turned their faces away, some pulled their phones closer. "You deserve this," said a girl who had been Freyja's rival weeks ago. "You said mean things to people who were really struggling."
Her change went from outrage to pleading to bargaining. "I didn't mean—I'll give the money back!" she cried. "I can make it right!"
"No," Sage said, and in that quiet single syllable the entire room seemed to hold its breath. "You can try. But the people you insulted know now. You called names; you taught girls to despise. You're going to lose a lot of the easy applause you banked on."
Freyja's face became a map of defeat. Her hands trembled. She stood up slowly, put on a face of dignity like a costume and walked out. People watched. Some shook their heads. Others filmed. Some whispered, "Karma," as if the word explained everything.
It was a punishment that unfolded like a slow, public fall. She had had fans; she had had stage presence. Now, in front of a room full of people who had listened to her moralizing, her image lay in pieces. She had begged and scolded and traded looks like currency. Now those trades were counted in receipts.
After that night, the chatter changed. Freyja's lectures became background noise. Her sponsors grew quiet. The men who had once smiled at her moved their chairs. The world she had sold was no longer buying.
People looked at me differently, too. Some with a little more respect. Some with the same curiosity. Coen said nothing the next day, but his hand found mine and didn't let go.
Time did something odd to us. The contract—both literal and the abstract one that said I would be his girlfriend in exchange for a living—migrated into a softer place. We still wrote things down. He still teased me that I had a "VIP" notebook. I still signed receipts with a smile. But sometimes he would pull me close for no reason and say, quiet as dust, "Stay."
I found a note he'd scribbled years ago when he was too shy to say it: "First time she called me husband, I felt like the floor had been pulled to let me fall and then put back."
We married quietly later, paperwork signed, assets arranged in trust, my name on deeds and his name in my phone with a peanut emoji—something small, private. We kept some of the jokes, the sticky little rituals that made two people into a "we." He still liked to slip a jacket over me when the wind hit. I still signed silly "renewal" texts when he asked. The money never stopped being a fact; it was not everything. Sometimes we paid for babysitters. Sometimes we paid for silence.
In the end, what felt permanent wasn't the two hundred thousand. It was the list in the battered spiral notebook—the "Benefactor Likes"—that he once read and laughed over until he choked. I kept that book like a feather in a hat. I kept the napkin with his compliment folded into it. I kept Coen's steady presence as a warm little bruise of gratitude. I kept Sage's odd, jagged, honest ways like a spare sweater I could cling to on cold nights.
One night, years later, while packing for a move, I opened the back drawer and saw an old paper clip holding the contract we had printed for laughs in a dorm room. I touched it and smiled.
"Keep the contract?" he asked.
"No," I said. "I don't need it anymore. But I will keep the notebook."
He kissed my forehead. "Good."
I slid the notebook into the top of the drawer where it would not be found by anyone who didn't know its language.
And when I closed the drawer, the little paper clip clicked like the second hand of a watch.
The End
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