Sweet Romance10 min read
The Suit in the Dark (and the Thousand Cranes)
ButterPicks14 views
I never planned to kiss a stranger in a movie theater.
"I said, don't move," I whispered into the dark, my heart drumming like a child jumping on a bed.
A voice answered, low and dry and somehow amused. "Little lady, you're kissing the wrong person."
Wrong person? I froze. My face burned all the way to the back of my skull.
"Who—who are you?" I managed. I wanted to slip under the seat like a mouse.
"You asking now?" he chuckled. "It's a bad habit, this. Kissing strangers."
"I am not little—" My voice trailed off. The film's on-screen couple was at the exact moment of falling in love. The soundtrack pushed the world out.
My phone buzzed. Davis Sullivan: The seat swap worked. I'll look for you after.
Of course. Perfect timing.
I glanced at the man beside me. He smelled faintly of cologne and coffee. He had an angular face that looked too sculpted for his age. Old? Definitely older than me. I don't do old men.
"Looking," he said, tilting his head. "Sneaking a peek?"
"I—" My leg lurched forward and then back like it had a mind of its own. "I want to—leave."
"You want to leave?" He studied me. "This time there's a fee."
"A fee?" I whispered. I wanted to crawl into the armrest.
"Call me a gentleman tax," he said with a tiny smile. "And you should ask permission before you—"
"I swear, don't tell anyone," I said. "Please."
He leaned in close just to whisper, and the warmth of his breath made my knees weak. "Do that again and I'll tell stories," he threatened jokingly.
I couldn't deal. Eventually the movie and my shame pushed me into sleep.
When I woke up, a dark suit lay over my legs. The man was gone.
I bolted, taking the jacket with me like a relic, and ran into the lobby. There was Davis, calm and annoyingly handsome.
"Why'd you leave?" he asked, peering at the jacket in my arms. "That was hilarious."
"Um," I said. "I'm hungry."
He squinted at the jacket, then at me. "It's a gift?"
"It—probably is." I heard how ridiculous that sounded. "Anyway, happy birthday, Davis." I said the wrong thing at the wrong time.
"Thanks, Kaley," he said, and then he frowned: "You look weird."
"Shut up." I tried to joke my way out and failed.
At home that night, my father—Clayton Gunther, loud and practical—found the suit in my closet.
"You bought a suit for your old man now?" he laughed.
"Dad, please," I protested. "I didn't buy it."
He squinted, suspicious. "You didn't rip it off someone's shoulders in the dark, did you?"
"I would never do such a thing!" I lied.
I hung the suit in the back of my wardrobe and tried not to think about the man's eyes.
Two days later, at eight in the morning, someone knocked and walked in while I was still half asleep. He sat on my couch like he belonged. He made toast, cleaned the counter, and said nothing until I stared hard enough.
"Hi," he said. "I'm Dominic Busch. Your father asked me to help out here for a while."
"You—he's your friend?" I asked. I remembered my father's text: "A friend will help with dinners, he's reliable." I hadn't expected a man who looked like the cover of some "distinguished men" book.
"Your father didn't mention I smoke?" he asked mildly.
"You smoke?" I cried. "You smell like an ashtray."
"It's a bad habit." He didn't look offended.
"I like spicy," I offered, as though culinary preferences could save me. "You should make—spicy things."
"I only know tomato and egg," Dominic said, as if that settled everything.
For five days, I ate tomato-and-egg. For five nights, I practiced keeping my hands to myself. For five mornings, Dominic was there, quiet and occasionally twisting a smile that nearly undid me.
One evening while I fended off Davis's texts—Davis and his mother, Margaux Maldonado, had the knack of showing up like bad weather—Margaux found me at a tea shop.
"You're Kaley Eaton?" Margaux sniffed me up and down. She looked at my cheap drinks like she sold proper taste.
"Yes?" I said, polite and wary.
"You brought down my boy," she said theatrically. "You, of all people."
"I brought him—" I started. "What did I—"
"Apologize," she demanded, a public brandish. "Right now."
Davis panted behind her. "Come on," he begged. "Say it."
"What did I do?" My chest contracted.
"You act like a spectacle." Margaux preened. People around us paid attention. I could feel eyes like pinpricks.
"Say it!" Davis pushed.
I lost it. I dumped my drink—it's a small thing, watery and stupid—and it splashed down his shirt. The world turned into a smear of shocked faces.
"You're disgusting," Margaux hissed, flinging a rumor like a spear. "Who raised you?"
He tried to clean himself. "I didn't mean—"
"Don't touch me." I pushed past them and ran, everything hot and sticky.
At home, I counted the cranes. A thousand cranes were supposed to be a promise; I had nine hundred ninety-nine folded, and the last ten trembled out of my fingers. On impulse I walked to the pond and threw the cranes in, one by one. A security guard scolded me. "Don't feed the fish your trash," he said, and I wailed that love hurts, and he looked at me like a strange child.
Dominic found me there, as if on cue.
"You okay?" he asked softly.
"I ruined everything," I said.
"You made a spectacle," he agreed, but his voice was warm.
"You're not mad?"
He smiled a rare, full smile. "Only a little." He handed me a handkerchief.
"You're different with me," I said.
"I like different."
He put a jacket over my shoulders once when I sneezed. He stopped someone from cutting in line for me once at the bookstore. He passed me a cup of coffee without a word the night I couldn't sleep. He touched my hand lightly to steady me when I fell. Once, when a heavy rain started and I made a fuss about carrying an umbrella, he shrugged off his jacket and draped it over me, saying, "You will catch a cold." My heart seemed to forget how to beat.
"You're never like this to anyone else," June Buck, my loud friend, whispered once, eyes wide.
"Because you're on the wrong side of the theater," he said once, catching me looking.
Three times, in small moments—he smiled at me like he'd stored it for birthdays, he took off his coat before I could protest, and he brushed a tear from my cheek in a room full of strangers—I felt a flutter like a bird testing its wings.
Then came the night of the worst kind of humiliation.
At my father's birthday, many neighbors and friends gathered. My father had always liked a crowd. Dinner passed with small talk until Margaux rose, glass in hand, and announced a "truth" about me across the shabby table lights.
"She stole a suit at the cinema," Margaux said sweetly. "You heard right." Whispers spread like spilled tea. Davis stared down at me, shocked into silence. Margaux smiled cruelly.
"That's not true," I said in a voice that cracked.
"Oh?" she turned to the room. "Someone else say it if I'm wrong."
My father bristled. "Margaux, enough."
"I'm sure of what I saw." Margaux's lips were a shark's fin.
At that moment, Dominic stood. He had been quiet all night, a shadow at the edge. He walked to the center of the room with a calmness that made everyone hush.
"Excuse me," he said. "I have something to read."
He pulled out his phone and tapped. A video started playing on the big screen—sudden, crisp, undeniable. It was footage from the theater lobby: a tall woman in a leather jacket—Margaux—arguing with a man in black, who then followed a girl out. Another clip showed Margaux in an alley talking to the same man. The room's murmurs rose into a confusion not unlike a storm.
"What is this?" Margaux stuttered, color draining.
"You hired someone to make trouble for my girl," Dominic said. "You paid to create a scene, to make her look like a common seeker of attention." He spoke slowly, each phrase a hammer stroke.
Margaux's face, once slick with triumph, crumpled. "You can't—" she gasped.
"Show us the messages," someone yelled. "Show us proof."
Dominic scrolled and played the recorded bank transfer. He played an audio file where Margaux's voice arranged payment. The room went very still. People leaned forward like they might catch the sound better.
Margaux's initial smirk dissolved into flailing disbelief. "This is—this is a lie!" she cried. "You're making this up!"
"Lie?" Dominic's voice sharpened. "You told a man to follow her. You told him to scare her. You told him to humiliate her for us to see. Why?"
"Because—" Margaux's voice broke into sobs. "Because she took my son's attention. Because she—she ruined my plans."
"Enough." My father had stood up, rage cutting through his confusion. "Margaux, you and I will speak—later." He looked at me over the crowd, ashamed. "I'm sorry, Kaley."
Davis's face turned, from anger to humiliation to panic. "Mom—" he started, but she shoved past him.
"You're a liar, Davis!" she shouted. "Don't act like you didn't see her faking it!"
The crowd turned on Margaux like a tide. The neighbors who'd once smiled grew rigid and moved away. A woman from the other end of the table pointed and hissed "shame", while a young man started recording with his phone.
"Please!" Margaux begged. "I didn't—"
"Please what?" someone asked. "Please stop lying?"
"No, stop—" she broke off, throat working. Tears and mascara ran in black tracks. "You can't do this to me. My boy—"
"Margaux Maldonado," Dominic said, and the room seemed to hold its breath, "you paid someone to stalk, to threaten, and to humiliate a young woman for your entertainment. I have copies of everything. I have witnesses. I'm turning this evidence over to the authorities."
The neighbors leaned in. "Call the police!" someone ordered. Voices multiplied. The party turned raw and public.
Margaux's reactions were a study in collapse. First, stupefaction: her mouth hung open, like she hadn't expected her performance to fail. Then outrage: "You're lying! You're lying!" She stamped a foot. Next denial: "They forged it! That video is forged!" Then pleading: "Please, I didn't mean—" Then a raw, animal panic as she realized how small she had become.
"How could you?" Davis blurted to her, his voice half a child's whine, half a grown man's scalded surprise. "Why would you—"
Margaux clutched at him like a drowning person, "You owe me, you owe—"
The crowd's response was immediate and loud. An aunt slapped a palm to her mouth. A neighbor started whispering into a phone. Someone laughed, short and ugly. Some people nodded and murmured approval at Dominic. Others took sides, but most turned away from Margaux. Their faces were an inventory of judgment.
A cluster of teenage kids took out their phones. They recorded, they texted, they sent the video out like a flare. Within minutes, phones around the room showed small glowing screens repeating what we had just seen: messages, transfers, recordings. Margaux's face streamed across the phones' screens, magnified and shamed.
"I never meant to get caught," she squeaked. The sound was small, ridiculous.
"What did you think would happen?" my father demanded.
"I thought—" she sobbed. "He would apologize. He would—"
"He would what?" someone shouted. "Fall into your plotting arms?"
"You wanted to control your son," Dominic said. "Now you are in front of your son, and everyone knows."
Davis looked at his mother as if seeing her for the first time. The tremor in his jaw was new. His supporters were gone; the only person near him now was embarrassment. His eyes met mine for a second—no pity, only confusion—then he shoved past and fled to the backyard.
Margaux's composure shattered. She lunged for the door and tried to leave, but my father blocked her path. "You're not going anywhere," he said.
"Call the police," someone else insisted.
Soon, headlights and sirens came. The officers took the statements. Margaux screamed and claimed it was a conspiracy, but every piece of evidence was stronger than her shouts: the recordings, the transfers, the messages. People who had initially laughed now stood with still faces, the room's atmosphere changed from entertainment to cruelty.
By the time the officers led Margaux away—sobbing, struggling, then submissive—she had passed through every stage of collapse. First denial, then anger, then bargaining in quick, desperate sentences, then pleading. The neighbors gathered around in a circle, shocked, in whispers and open mouths. Cameras in pockets flashed. Some people clapped like spectators at a play; others shook their heads in quiet disgust.
Dominic stayed by me the whole time. He put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed once, quick and discreet.
"You're okay now," he said simply.
"I'm not," I admitted. "But I don't need them."
"You don't," he echoed. His voice was steady and soft, like a blanket.
After the party, the video and the messages spread through our small town like a stain. Margaux's name became attached to whatever cruelty she had sown. Davis's phone kept ringing—someone recorded his mother's fall and posted it; people were cruel now that it was clear who had been cruel first. He wasn't arrested, but his social life changed like glass breaking: sharp, irreparable.
The punishment had been public, messy, and devastating. Margaux had gone from confident, to frantic, to broken. She had begged, pleaded, denied, raged, and finally slumped into a shape of someone who had been unmasked. People watched her crumble, some with disgust, some with glee, some with pity. No single reaction was the same, and that was part of the punishment: she lost the private theater where she had directed other people's pain.
After that night, I stopped being the girl who chased one boy's attention.
"Will you come back?" Davis messaged a few days later.
"You were cruel," I texted back.
"I didn't know—"
"You did. You stood there."
"Can we talk?"
"No."
I closed my phone and walked to where Dominic was pruning the small tree by the porch.
"Thank you," I said, because the words fit and because not saying them felt worse.
"For what?" he asked.
"For believing me," I said.
He smiled that lazy, infrequent smile that had loosened my chest for weeks. "I like being right."
Summer rolled into a new season. I finished the thousandth paper crane—three extra, neat and small. I kept the black suit in the back of my wardrobe. I learned to make food that wasn't just eggs and tomatoes, but still, the simple dish remained my comfort. Dominic taught me a few tricks in the kitchen and a few more about life: to call when I felt unsafe, to fold a proper shirt, to stand in front of someone if they tried to shame me.
He was patient and plucked and quiet. He surprised me by wearing my lipstick once because I had smeared it on him accidentally one night and then refused to look at him. "You leave marks," he said, and my ears burned.
My final act that summer was to go back to that theater, sit in the dark, and press the black suit to my chest like a talisman.
"Do you miss the girl who folded a thousand cranes?" Dominic asked.
"No," I said. "She was a brave little idiot."
"Then kiss me for real this time," he said, because in the dark he had learned to say things that used to be impossible.
I did.
The End
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