Sweet Romance11 min read
The Scar, the Soy Milk, and the Birthday Candle
ButterPicks11 views
I wake up gasping. The knife is still warm in my teeth of memory, the light from the streetlamp like a blade. I press my palm to my chest and the rhythm of my heart answers me. It has been six years and a knife and a dream and a single face come back to visit me at night.
"Don't move or I'll kill you!"
The voice in my dream was drunk and merciless. I handed over my small valuables, hands shaking with cold. He laughed and spat. The blade came down. A man moved between us. I watched him crumble on the floor, blood like a strange, hot rain. He turned to me and said something I couldn't catch. Then black.
I sit up in my studio apartment and the room smells of turpentine and midnight. I am hadley andersen, an artist they call a "young genius," a name that hums on the internet like a quiet warning. My parents wanted me safe. My brother Daxton Larson wanted me closer. I wanted only to keep my hands busy with paints and my throat full of quiet.
I go to the market to buy toothpaste and a charger, to pull my mind from the deep water of that dream. At the register my phone is dead. My hands fumble and my face must have been pale because the cashier keeps glancing up like I might collapse.
"Scan mine," a low voice says behind me.
I think the night is reaching back for me. I turn and the man in the long coat looks like a face I have carried in my chest for nine years. His jaw is harder now, the eyes like winter glass, but their shape, the slope of the cheek—it's him.
"Maverick Hanson?" I whisper without thinking.
He arches one eyebrow. "Hmm?"
"It's me. Hadley," I say, and my tongue trips on the old name I never spoke. He glances at my little bag and the cheap makeup I used to hide the solitude. His hand is steady as he scans.
"You don't have to pay," he says, and there is no heat with the words. He turns and goes, leaving a small trail of dry soap scent.
I "forget" to be ashamed. "Wait," I call. "Give me your contact. Let me pay you."
He stops, looks back, and for the briefest second something softens in his face. He scans his phone and puts it in my hand. "No need."
I do something very bold. "Then eat with me. Please."
He hesitates like a man considering the weather, then says, "All right."
We eat in a restaurant that tastes of steam and delicious things. I order too many things because I have lived a life of small refusals and tonight I want to reverse them all. Maverick looks calm, polite, like a photograph come to life.
"What's your name?" he asks eventually.
"Hadley." I say it like it grows on my tongue. "And you?"
"Maverick," he answers, like a promise and a name both.
He tells me little about himself. He smiles sometimes and the corner of his mouth drops with a secret. When my brother Daxton walks in the room later—tall and brisk-eyed—the air cracks. Daxton's first look slides from friendly to something colder when he sees Maverick, but there is an odd ease between them.
"You know him?" I blurt.
Daxton gives Maverick a long look. "Maverick. Explain."
"Dining," Maverick says and slides a piece of stew toward my plate like an old habit. I feel very small and very bright at the same time.
After dinner we leave together, and on the steps outside he says, "Wait here." He comes back with a small pack of instant noodles.
"You eat instant noodles?" I ask, fingers bent around the plastic cup like a child's fist.
He shrugs. "I like them."
We end on a promise he never asked to make. He walks me home and stops at the door like a man afraid of weather he cannot name. "Good night, Hadley."
"Good night, Maverick," I say and my heart knocks loud enough I am sure the neighbors hear.
Days weave in a soft pattern. I lecture at the academy, I sign books, I avoid phone calls I don't want to take. But I find I am thinking of him. Every morning there is a small paper bag hung on my doorknob. A soy milk and a rice roll, my old convenience store breakfast. His handwriting marks the cup: "more sugar." I almost fall down the stairwell laughing. He remembers me like people remember notes inside a book.
"Do you live nearby?" Indie Sommer asks, perched on my bed. "Why hasn't he swept you off your feet yet?"
"I don't know if he even remembers me," I tell her. My voice is small. "I saw him in high school. He saved me. He disappeared."
Indie is practical and loud. "Well? Find out. Buy him a shirt. Buy him a puzzle. Do something dramatic."
I buy him a dark gray coat from a men's boutique, hands trembling as a man in the aisle stares at me with too much interest. He says things that make my skin crawl until a shadow steps inside the shop and the man's words stop like a tape player interrupted.
Maverick's entrance hushes the room. He stands like weather. "Hadley," he says.
The man bows in a shameless way and leaves, suddenly very small. Maverick and I walk out and he jokes about my reason for being there. I lie that the coat is for my brother Daxton. He doesn't argue. He is careful. He holds the coat like someone handling a promise.
That night I paint him—the way his shoulder lifts when he thinks, the scar I never got to see until the night he cooled his bathrobe and let me see the long white mark along his shoulder. The scar is a map of an old war. I touch the paper and it is heavy with memory.
"You're the one who was stabbed for me," I say once, voice a ghost.
He smiles then, as if hiding something inside of his sternness. "You were awake," he whispers. "You thanked me, then you went black. I had to leave."
"Why?" My voice cracks like thin ice. "Why did you go?"
His eyes go wide like the horizon. "It wasn't the time to explain. I had to go fix things."
"Fix what?"
He does not answer. He treats the question like a fragile glass. Later, at my small birthday party for him—my poor attempt to make daylight live inside him for a night—he laughs, and later, in the dark, he says, "I have something I need to tell you."
It is not long after that the first real shadow arrives at my door.
A man with a cold face—the kind who has practiced cruelty—calls me. "Ms. Andersen? I am calling about some business matters with your neighbor."
I know before he finishes that the man is from Maverick's old life. My mouth goes dry. I run next door.
"Maverick!" I pound the door and it opens. The apartment smells of coffee and old paper. There is a sound like a window breaking.
"Get out of here," I hear.
It's his brother, Gerardo Thomas. Gerardo pushes and shoves and tastes like money. He is dangerous because he has the habit of thinking he owns the world.
Maverick blocks a blade as Gerardo moves too close to a painting on the sideboard—my painting, the dark one. Gerardo laughs and the blade comes down. "This is nothing. A ruin, that's all."
Maverick moves before I can think. The knife flashes and his arm is cut. Blood soaks his cuff, and at that moment the room is a little world of red.
"Call an ambulance," I hiss and grab a towel and bandage. His blood on my fingers warms them like something alive.
Maverick's face is white. "You should go," he says to me, voice cracked.
"Not without you," I tell him.
We drive to the emergency room. The hospital is bright, smells of disinfectant and small, brave things. They clean and stitch. We sit in the waiting room like two conspirators.
"Why did Gerardo do that?" I ask.
"He is my brother," Maverick says, jaw tight. "He will send men. He thinks he can hurt anyone who is near me."
"Why?" I press my nails into my palm. "Because of the painting? Because of me?"
"Because," Maverick says softly, "because in some houses, love and pride are punishable."
When the story hits the morning sites, it's louder than either of us expected. Photos of us at the hospital travel faster than rumor. My family calls. Daxton calls. The world that used to surround me like a warm blanket pulls tight and bobbles like angry waves.
People speak quickly and loudly. I tell Daxton everything. He is not surprised. He holds me like a boat.
"You like him, don't you?" he asks finally.
"Yes," I say in a small voice.
Daxton sighs. "Then I will help."
The thing with men like Gerardo is they like public scenes. So we give them one they will not forget.
We plan a gallery night that builds like a quiet storm. I call old friends, old students, curators. We invite collectors, professors, writers. The gallery will open with my small show, the dark painting included. The invitation is gentle but impossible to resist.
Gerardo accepts. Pride makes him a coward who likes the smell of other people's envy. He comes, slick as oil, eyes bright with the idea that he will make me small before all of them. He does not know we are ready.
Maverick moves through the room like a quiet storm. He wears the gray coat I bought. He smiles at the old professor and says nothing. The lights are warm and a soft crowd gathers.
"Hadley, this was all your idea?" a reporter leans over and says.
"Sort of," I answer, and my voice is steady. "I just wanted a show where painting speaks for itself."
Gerardo moves to the center of the room and into the small cluster of cameras. He raises his glass with a calculated smile. He wants to own the night.
"To the artist!" someone calls, and a clink of glasses rings like little knives.
I step up to the painting, the thing they scheduled to open. I have waited my whole life to have this voice in public.
"Ladies and gentlemen," I say. "I painted this after a fight. It's about things that hurt and don't die."
Shots, cameras, applause. Gerardo's smile is a thin wire.
"I'd like to show something else," Maverick's voice says from the crowd. The room hushes. He walks forward with a man in a dark suit who looks like an IT worker and a small laptop.
Maverick presses play.
The projector blooms. It shows the blade slashing in my living room, the exact moment Gerardo lifted his hand. The footage slides into a series of messages: contracts, bank transfers, details of the harassing calls, the texts where he organizes his men. Then a new file plays: a hidden camera from the boutique, showing him coaching a man to mock and touch me in the dressing area. His confident smirk breaks into a shadow.
The room hums. Phones rise like birds. Someone gasps.
Gerardo's face drains.
"What is this?" He laughs too loud. "This is fake."
Maverick's voice is gentle and terrible. "You made sure those videos existed."
Gerardo steps back, then lashes out. "You can't show this—this is slander!"
"Is it?" says someone nearby, and a hand opens a social feed where a hundred people have already started streaming. "Who recorded that first phone call?" The curator raises his phone. "It's been verified."
The crowd is watching now in a way that changes the air. A woman records with a steady hand. A man whispers to the reporter, "He threatened several women in the district." Another voice says, "I filed a report a week ago."
Gerardo paces, then tries to laugh it off. His laugh becomes a whimper. He turns to the nearest camera and shouts, "Delete that! Delete it now!"
No one touches their phones. The sound in the room has the shape of a courtroom. People murmur, some shake their heads, some clap softly like the end of a bad song. Someone says, "He is ugly inside."
"You're lying," Gerardo cries, and the color drains from his face like wax in a flame. He spins, eyes bright. "This is—this is revenge! He sold lies!"
"No," Maverick says, step by step, "this is the truth. And it's been kept quiet long enough."
Gerardo tries to pull a security guard into the fray, but the guard hesitates. He knows who has the money and who has the moral weight of a thousand videos. The crowd grows, forming a ring like a living verdict.
"You're finished," someone says behind him, and a man in a cheap suit starts reciting charges. The perfume of outrage blooms.
He realizes the cameras are merciless. He goes from meek to frantic, from furious to broken. "I didn't mean—I'm sorry! Please!" His voice climbs and cracks. The security guard who used to take his orders cannot anymore. He backs away. Gerardo sinks down onto his knees in the center of the polished floor, the most vulnerable posture a man of his type can have. His expensive coat scrapes the tiles. His hands reach out and tremble.
"Please don't, please—" He pleads, voice small. "I can pay. I can pay anyone. I can make this go away."
People with phones keep filming. They crowd and whisper. A woman near the front records a live video, her caption simple: "He tried to hurt my friend. Now watch." It flares. Comments bloom like a swarm.
His face, from triumph to doom, enrolls the whole room. He says names, he begs. His voice is raw with denial until he runs out of breath.
Someone shouts, "Call the police!" Someone else laughs. A man claps slowly, like an old judge. The crowd begins to chant a thin, terrible chorus: "Justice. Justice."
The manager of the boutique—one of the men Gerardo tried to silence—steps forward. "You harassed my customers. You touched women without their consent. We have statements."
Gerardo's face collapses. He starts to cry, the kind of crying that has no pull left. He clutches at his coat and then the floor. His earlier arrogance has dissolved. He thrashes his hands in supplication. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I'll go. I'll leave. Please—"
The police come, drawn by the murmurs and by a woman who does not let this go. They lead him out with a calm that comes from complete evidence. The crowd parts, not with pity, but with a strange quiet, like the settling of dust.
He is taken away with cameras on his back and a broken dignity on his knees. People shout things, record things, and a few clap. A dozen people follow with their phones, streaming as if a cathedral has been found.
It is public. It is loud. It is precisely the shame he had meant to scatter. The man who thought himself untouchable is on his knees in fluorescent light, pleading while the world records every last syllable.
Maverick sits beside me afterwards. His hand finds mine. No words are necessary. I close my fingers around his and feel that scar beneath his cardigan, the scar that made me love him and frighten me both. He looks at me, his eyes fragile and fierce.
"You didn't have to do that," I say.
"I couldn't have you fearing the world because of me," he replies. "I won't let him touch the life I want. Not yours. Not mine."
Days slow down into the rhythm of bandages and small chores. My parents come to the city, worried and sharp. We talk. I tell them everything: the hospital, the videos, the gallery. My father is silent, then he says only, "If anyone makes you feel small, we will make them small instead."
Maverick laughs at that, and later, in the domestic quiet of three a.m., he holds my hand and tells me about those six years: his mother's death, the gamble he made with his father, the nights he worked in convenience stores and the nights he took cold buses to meetings. He says, "I wanted to be someone who could stand beside you without being ashamed. I wanted to be someone who could keep his promises."
I breathe in the truth of him. "I waited," I tell him. "Six years is a long time to carry a face."
He squeezes my hand. "I never stopped thinking of you."
We are small among the rumor and the bright lights, but the knife in my dream is duller now. The scar on his shoulder is a kind of proof, a crooked medal. We are not safe—no one is—but we are together.
On his birthday he comes over. I try to be brave. I hide a small cake and a single lit candle in the dark. He walks into my blacked-out apartment and sees the light.
"Happy birthday," I whisper.
He closes his eyes and makes a wish. When he blows the flame out it goes fast and clean. He thanks me and calls me by the name he said once in the dark, the way only people who have known a long time can say.
I give him the coat. He laughs and hangs it on his wall like a trophy. Later he tells me he will leave for a meeting abroad, to fix what he can and to make sure his enemies do not hurt anyone else. I nod. He is not a man of easy words, but he is a man of hard promises.
At the gate of my building he says quietly, "You don't have to hide anymore. Call me. Anytime. Directly."
I smile, heart loud. "I will. And you—don't leave without saying goodbye again."
He looks down at me, both amused and serious. "I won't."
After he leaves, I sleep with the painting on the wall and the smell of soy milk in the fridge. The stairwell of my life no longer seems so steep.
In the end, when the world wants to scream and tear and pull us into rumor, we learned how to fix each other and how to set the liar on his knees. The scar, the soy milk cup with "more sugar" written on it, and the candle that blew so easily—those are the small things that will remind me forever that courage is often just standing up in public and letting everyone watch you be human.
The End
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