Sweet Romance13 min read
The Night I Kicked Him and Found My Hugo
ButterPicks14 views
I left the lab late, my hands still smelling faintly of cleaner, my notebook full of data that could make my thesis sing. I was tired but precise. My phone buzzed in my bag like a trapped insect.
"Emerald, your phone's been buzzing," Denise said, tapping my desk.
I pulled it out. Forty-one unread messages. All from Bear West.
"Emerald! Why won't you answer?!"
"Are you with that Yang guy again?"
"You promised you'd never hang with him—are you cheating on me?"
"Why didn't you answer my question last night?!"
"Are you on your period?"
"I can't stand this. So many girls liked me and I chose you and you give yourself to someone else!"
"I love you! How can you do this to me?!"
I sat very still. The lab hummed around me. The messages were not new. They were a pattern; a net tightening.
Denise watched me. "That looks… bad."
"It is," I said. "We're done."
I tapped his name, and Bear's voice filled my ear immediately, loud and belligerent, like any bar fight. "Emerald, are you playing dead? Pick up!"
"Bear," I said, calm as if I were reading results aloud. "We're breaking up."
Silence. Then a different tone: pleading, then rage. "You—you bastard! You heartless bitch! Seeing me lose my mind makes you happy, right? Come meet me! Don't hide! Face me!"
"I won't meet you," I said. "I don't owe you anything. You are manipulating me."
"Are you trying to get me to kill myself? I'm at Tonight. If you don't come, I'll die for you!"
I stared at the phone. Then I said, without mercy, "Fine. Then die."
He sent a photo. A hand on a fruit knife. Then another: a smear of red. The world went oddly slow.
I thought of ignoring it. I thought of calling 911. I thought of engaging Bear and letting him win. I gathered my bag and took a taxi to Tonight.
Inside, the air smelled of spilled beer and perfume. Bear lunged at me before I could think.
"Don't drag me to the VIP," he hissed. "We can't talk here. Come."
"No," I said. "We talk here."
He grinned like a fever. "I want pictures."
"What pictures?"
"You gave the most precious thing to another man. You owe me photos. Naked. Only for me."
My skin went cold. I knew his type: the man who used threats as currency. I couldn't deal with his panic and his demands. I acted before I thought—a kick to his shin, hard. He doubled over, wailing.
I bolted into the emergency corridor. The light there was dim and the paint smelled like old cigarettes. I stopped. I was not alone.
A man leaned against the wall. A cigarette smoldered in his hand. He wore a loose shirt, sleeves rolled, the sort of shirt that looked fine unbuttoned at the top. In the dim, his face was a map of angles. He looked like someone trouble would follow and then apologize to.
He kept talking on the phone. "If marriage is so urgent, I'll just drag one off the street tomorrow and make it legal."
He hung up and stepped into the light. "You look like Tang Wan," he said, as if that explained everything.
Tang Wan—an actress. I had heard the name. People had called me the "little Tang Wan" at university. I had never used it.
"Who are you?" I asked, suddenly defensive.
He didn't walk away. He smiled the kind of smile that made it hard to be angry. "Hugo Brooks," he said, and I heard the name and felt something like a return address in my chest. "You know me?"
"I go to the same university," I told him. My voice sounded small. He studied me for a long second.
"I remember you," he said, and that one line cut through a lot of fog.
Bear rushed at us. "She is my girlfriend!" he shouted, finger pointed like a weapon.
Hugo did something I didn't expect. He kicked. A single, swift move. Bear rolled on the floor, stunned.
"Where are you spraying?" Hugo said, voice flat, turning to Bear like the world had taught him how to make trouble kneel.
Bear found his feet and ran. I stood there with my heart in my throat. Hugo handed me a tissue like he'd been storing politeness for me.
"He spit on you," Hugo said, in what felt like an explanation and a verdict. He looked at me then with a new air, as if the world had rearranged around me.
"He's not my boyfriend," I said, and the word "ex" felt cheaper than it should.
"Hug me," Hugo said suddenly, in a voice softer than I'd heard from him so far. "You're shaking."
I did, because my knees no longer had an opinion.
We spoke for maybe five minutes. I called him by the only thing that felt right in that moment. "Hugo—"
"Call me Hugo," he said. "But please, small sister of Tang Wan, call me if you get stalkers."
He left me to an odd warmth. I didn't know then that I'd snatched a future by the sleeve and held on.
The next morning the gossip rolled like the tide. Cassandra Serra—Tang Wan—hit the trends with photos at the airport with a man. My colleagues at the hospital whispered like wind through curtains.
"Isn't that Hugo Brooks?" Denise asked, between giggles in the changing room.
I felt something blunt drop into me at the sight of the photos. Hugo was there, side profile, and he looked like a postcard. All my private memories of the night went public in the form of three jpeg files.
At home, my small apartment smelled like the soup the housekeeper left every night. Ava Black, who worked for Hugo when he was out of town, greeted me as usual. She wore a black dress too polished for her job; she was someone who loved the limelight. Behind her, the bathroom door revealed a silhouette. I paused.
"You're back," I said.
He was in the shower. I felt ridiculous and jealous and warm all at once. He stepped out, water beading down his neck to rest on uninvited collarbones. He had a way of taking a room and making it his.
"Welcome home," Hugo said, like I had been away on a long, dangerous mission.
"Hi," I said, and the single word threatened to betray my whole private life.
We had an hour that felt like a day. He kissed me slow. I called him "husband" once, and it landed right into his hand.
The next morning I found Ava trying on a gift I had given her: silk sleepwear. She smiled like the cat who'd swallowed the bird and then tried to hide the bones.
"Thank you," she said, but it wasn't gratitude that trembled in her voice. It was calculation.
"I have to go to work," I said. "Please look after the place."
Ava took it as permission and, in a whisper loud enough for the walls, started plotting.
At the hospital, the rumor mill churned loud. The star’s airport photos made things worse. I tried not to care. But Finbar Schmitz—our senior in medical aesthetics, usually a smirk in a white coat—had other plans. He teased, he judged. He had the kind of stare that weighed you like an experiment.
"You should be careful, Emerald," he said one morning. "Men like Hugo spend their time picking the finest fruit."
I told myself it was fine. I told myself to be professional. He pushed. He started to plant “evidence” that I was unprofessional. A patient who claimed the stitches were mine. A mother who came in furious about her son's nose. Finbar didn't just make suggestions; he set traps.
One morning I caught Ava sneaking souvenirs out of my apartment. She had always been a little rough, claiming the house belonged to Hugo. She told the other staff things that were half-truths dressed as gossip. That day she was wearing the sleepwear I had given her. That cut more than I expected.
"Don't be naive," Finbar whispered in the corridor. "Work hard. Be humble. Men like Hugo burn bright and leave ashes."
I started carrying a small recorder tucked into my blouse. It felt paranoid at first. I told myself it was prudence.
"Why do you smile like that?" Hugo asked one night, holding my hand, fingers warm and sure.
"I have a case of an annoying colleague," I said.
"Bring him to me," he answered.
I didn't think he could change the world, but Hugo had muscles that understood trouble. He also had a head cold for scheming I hadn't anticipated.
One day, a patient stormed into the director's office. "That intern who stitched my nose did it wrong!" the woman shrieked. She had videos. She had allegations. The room hummed with the energy of a small mob.
"I didn't do the suturing," I said calmly to the director, Grayson Clayton. "I assisted, I prepped, I disinfected. I did not suture."
Grayson squinted at me, the way elders do when they need to know whether to toss you into the deep end or keep you on the shallows.
"Give me time," I said, and I handed the director the recorder.
"You recorded them?" Grayson asked, surprised.
"I recorded his voice," I said. "He admits to behavior. He also misassigned the procedure."
He played the file.
"—the intern will take the fall," Finbar's voice said on the tape. "She'll be the scapegoat. No one will suspect the senior."
The room exhaled. The patient's anger turned into stunned silence. Nurses, like a chorus, looked around to find the villain.
"You can't do this," Finbar snapped. He tried to laugh it off. "This is—this is manipulated."
"Is it?" the director asked. "Doctor Schmitz, do you have anything to say for yourself?"
And then the hospital started to hold meetings. Denouement is never neat. Colleagues whispered about evidence. Two supervisors, led by Emilio Corbett and Grayson Clayton, convened an internal hearing. I sat at the end of the table with Hugo's hand planted on my knee like an anchor.
"This hospital will not tolerate misconduct," Emilio said. "We have a recording and testimony. We will form a review committee."
People filed in. Nurses. Administrators. Patients. A crowd gathered outside the glass doors. The news spread like spilled ink.
They asked Finbar to step forward. He stood at the podium like a man who had convinced himself of his own courage. He tried a hundred strategies: denial, minimization, jokes. His face shifted from confident to brittle.
"Why are you doing this?" a nurse asked.
"You're ruining my career," he snarled. "I was protecting standards."
The director looked at him over his glasses. "Standards do not include scapegoating young staff. Do you deny telling an intern she would be the scapegoat?"
Finbar's voice cracked. "I—I didn't know—"
The crowd reacted like a tide. Phones came up. People began to film. Some whispered "finally" and some looked shocked. I could see faces I'd once thought neutral tilt away from him.
"You're suspended pending review," Emilio said. "And the licensing board will be notified."
Finbar's face flickered. For moments he grabbed for control. "You're all being dramatic," he said, but his voice was thin.
Then the charge pages arrived. Patients came forward: the woman with the nose. A man who claimed his face had been ruined. Each testimony was a nail. The public reaction in the hospital lobby turned into a chorus: shame met shame.
Finbar shifted from anger to pleading. "I didn't mean—" he said, and the recorded clip of his own voice, the very clip he had used to confess to a plan, played for everyone to hear.
My stomach clenched when I see the change. He went from a man of arrogance, to a man of sputtering denial, to a man of desperate pleas. He tried to attack the method: "It was edited!"
"Do you deny the content?" Grayson asked.
"No!" He flinched, as if the syllable had landed him.
Patients snapped photos. A nurse began to cry. The murmurs turned into loud, biting commentary. I felt ugly joy, a quick bright light of relief.
Finbar's wife—who had never been to the hospital—walked in. She had a look I will not forget. She had read the posts. She went ghost-white, then grabbed her bag and left. The watchers muttered. A supervisor handed her a quiet exit and her phone shook.
Finbar realized he was losing more than position.
"Please," he said, raising his hands, "I can fix this. I'll apologize. I'll take a leave. I will—"
"An apology will not unmake what you did," one patient said, cold and real. "You used your position to punish. You lied on tape. You tried to ruin a girl's life."
There were snaps. Someone in the waiting area started to clap. It grew louder—an odd kind of cleansing applause.
Finbar's last stage arrived quickly. He moved through indignation, refusal, fear, and finally collapse. He sat down on the edge of the podium and covered his face. He tried to call lawyers. He tried to reach hospice--no, not hospice—some colleague—anyone. People recorded. Clips leaked to the social circle. Within 24 hours, there were comments, public posts, and the hospital bulletin that he had been suspended. My recorder had done its job.
Hugo held me when I felt hollow. "You did the right thing," he said. His voice was low, steady. "You didn't let him win."
I had a few hours of peace. The hospital's PR people turned the incident into a lesson on ethics and patient safety. The board notified the licensing committee. Finbar's license, already shaky from old complaints, was reviewed. The hospital statement cleared me of wrongdoing and confirmed Finbar had misused his authority.
That public moment—an auditorium of doctors, staff, and a dozen phones recording—felt like a courtroom without the legal script. It was messy, human, and real.
But there were other fires.
Word of my marriage to Hugo—or to "Hugo's woman," as some tried to say—had crept around the hospital. Wilma Durham, Finbar's scolding neighbor, had nothing to do with the scandal but everything to do with gossip. She had come earlier, stormed my apartment and accused me of being a home-wrecker and a kept woman. I had ended that day by handing her a hotel key and leaving her out—only for her to return to haunt the corridors with accusations. She had called my managers and shouted about "wild women" and "loose morals." When Hugo came back, he shut the door and told her: "You have no right to judge what's within my marriage."
There was one other person who had tried to laugh me out of the room: Blair Ashford. She had leaned on the gossip like currency, telling people in the staff room that I was a "2.0" of a famous actress and that Hugo's marriage would not stick. She called me a "replacement" with a laugh that wanted a crowd.
I decided to make a different sort of public punishment for her—one that didn't need official seals.
"She called me a replacement," I told Hugo quietly one night. "She said I was nothing."
"Let me handle it," he said. He didn't mean lawyers. He meant presence.
At the hospital's small staff party—an evening meant for bonding—Blair found a microphone and made a joke: "Some people wear wedding rings for the camera, you know? Some do it for the pictures."
A room that was clapping went silent. A few people chuckled. I stood up. "Blair," I said, putting my cup down like an assignment. "Do you want to expand on that?"
Her laugh froze.
"Name one thing I've done for that camera," I asked. "One job I've taken for the spotlight. Name one time I abused anyone."
She stammered. "It's—it's not like that—"
"Because your words matter," I said. "And people hear you. You should be precise when you speak about others. Or you can be precise when you apologize."
I had a small folder. A set of messages, proof that Blair had texted Cassandra and suggested they stage an incident to embarrass me. I had taken care not to film their private conversation, but screenshots existed. I passed them to the party's organizer. People read. Faces shifted. The room turned on Blair not with knives but with ice. Sponsors present made sideways calls. An editor in the corner quietly messaged for copies. Within the week, Blair found invitations drying up. She had thrived on gossip; the world simply stopped showing for her.
Her reaction was different than Finbar's. She tried to charm and then deny. She posted a weepy "I've been misunderstood" note online. She tried to stand in the center of every social circle. But the people who had once clapped for her looked elsewhere now; some made small gestures of comfort toward me. Sponsors were cold. The industry steals gossip as profit, but it also punishes direct mischief. Blair's public circuit withered like a plant cut from its stem. She begged for meetings and got polite letters instead. Her change was not as explosive as Finbar's, but it was decisive and public.
I did not dance on either fall. I watched and learned. I felt a strange, steady mercy.
Hugo held my hand even when the internet made my work public. He didn't make grand declarations—he did practical things. He whispered in meetings. He quietly corrected a manager who asked me to "stay humble." He began bringing me to his offices and introducing me as "my wife" in front of colleagues. He put his life—his time, his respect—into the small acts that add up.
We had arguments. Of course we did. He was often blunt in ways that were not gentle, and I had an instinct to compare myself to Cassandra, though the comparisons were stupid and unkind. Sometimes he would say something like, "You are not a version of anyone else," and other times he would forget to notice the small things I needed.
"Why did you not come and pick me yesterday?" I asked once after a staff dinner when he had been out of town.
"I thought you wanted to be fine on your own," he said. "I thought you needed space."
"Sometimes I don't want space," I answered. "Sometimes I want you to show up and be visible."
"I will," he said, and he did. He began showing up in small ways. He filled my days with the little proofs of care a marriage needs: he bought me a book I wanted, he noticed when I was tired, he sent me a text with a stupid emoji. He also fought for me in meetings and whispered discharge notes into administrators' ears like a secret weapon.
Cassandra kept coming by the hospital, sometimes for routine treatments, sometimes just to say hello. She and I spoke slowly at first, then like friends who had both been boxed into a story about looks.
"You're tough," she told me once after a session. "You don't let people press you down."
"You're lucky," I said. "You're used to cameras."
She laughed, honest and soft. "You can't imagine how lucky and unlucky that is."
In the months after Finbar's fall and Blair's cooling season, things changed. The hospital treated me with more careful respect. Patients started to ask for me specifically. Offers to speak at student events came in. Grayson and Emilio made sure my record was clean.
I kept a small ritual. Every night Hugo came home, I would tuck an embroidered strawberry into his pocket—a thread from a cheap souvenir. One night, after too many meetings and an exhausting PR cycle, I found Hugo staring at me while he cleaned glasses in our kitchen. He wore an odd expression.
"Why the strawberry?" he asked.
I shrugged. "Because it reminded me of the time I asked you to be my husband in a fire staircase, and you said yes." I smiled; the memory tasted oddly sweet.
He walked over, kissed my temple, and said, "You are not a replacement. You are not an idea. You are my wife, Emerald Russo, and I am lucky."
I looked at him—the man who had been a stranger in a corridor—and let all the small, earnest moments settle between us like new furniture. We had trouble ahead, as all couples do. His mother still had cold days. The internet still churned. But we had made a set of proofs: recordings, witnesses, a public hearing where a man who used his power to harm others had to answer to those he hurt, and a quieter, personal justice where gossip lost its teeth.
Once, on a quiet night, I pressed my forehead to his and said, "I am still afraid of being nothing but a face."
"You are the woman who records the truth," Hugo said. "You are my wife. You saved yourself; you saved others, too."
"Promise me you will not let them treat me like a toy."
He laughed, a sound like a promise. "I won't. I may kick a few knees if they annoy you."
I remembered the little kick that had started everything. It had been a small, furious thing. It had pushed me into a life that was messy and raw and real. I looked down at the little embroidered strawberry on the table, a ridiculous tiny thing, and knew our story would always smell like the smoke of small fires and the salt of the sea—unique, stubborn, and strangely ours.
The End
— Thank you for reading —