Sweet Romance13 min read
The Summer I Stayed for the Drones
ButterPicks19 views
I was supposed to graduate art school and walk into the city life my grandfather had already written for me. Instead, I stood in mud up to my ankles, holding a ruined sketchbook and a dead phone, while a steady pair of hands smiled at me like sunlight.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
"I—" I blinked at Esteban Estrada, at the way his round glasses slid down his nose, the way his shirt clung to his chest from the rain. "I think my ankle's twisted."
"You sit," Esteban said. "I'll fix it."
He bent as if it were no trouble at all to set my foot on his knee. Rain pelted us. Children watched us, polite and curious. I tried to pull my hand away but my fingers were clenched around his arm.
"Don't move," Esteban warned gently, then smiled the small smile that made something in me quiet down. "This will sting."
"It already does," I admitted.
He wrapped and stilled and steadied. When his fingers pressed, I grabbed his shirt like he was an anchor and like I might fall into him without meaning to. The world narrowed: the small creek, the oily sky, the children, my ruined shoes, and Esteban, patient and warm.
"Your phone?" he asked.
"It fell in the water," I said. "And my shoes melted."
"You keep stylish shoes in the mountains?" he laughed, but not cruelly. "Come on. I can dry the phone and we can find something for your feet."
He offered me his old phone like it was a lifesaver. It was a simple thing, not a smartphone, but it was his, and when I took it I felt strangely defended.
"Why are you here?" I asked later, when the children had returned to their easels and Esteban had shown me round brush techniques between tending a dozen pairs of muddy shoes.
"I'm a teacher," he said. "Broad, patient, and stubborn. I bring kids out to sketch. They learn the world by making marks on paper."
"Where are you from?" I asked, which was ridiculous given we’d only met an hour ago.
He smiled like nothing but the question were ordinary. "Here. I stayed."
"You stayed? But—"
The invitation was silent. He had a small museum of drones in his room, little mechanical birds stacked on a shelf like a private constellation. When he talked about them his voice turned brittle and bright.
"They're old," he warned when I gaped at them. "I've not flown them in years."
"Can you?" I asked.
"Tonight," he said.
"Tonight?" I laughed. "It is raining."
"Rain makes good light," he said. "And you look like the kind of person who would learn to like messy things."
I decided then that I liked him already, though I had no right. I was a student from the city. He was thirty, a teacher, a man who smelled of wood and something honest.
"You're more than a teacher," I told him later when he strapped a splint to my ankle and hid it under a spare school sweater he offered me. "You draw like someone who remembers other lives."
"It's my refuge," he answered. "This place keeps me honest."
We stood under the thin shelter of his porch while his students ran home, and the storm turned the valley into a drum. "Stay," he said simply.
I tried to protest. "I can't stay—my practicum, my grandfather—"
"Jacob McCoy?" he asked, reading my face.
"Yes," I breathed. "How did you—?"
He shrugged. "I had a teacher who loved design." He laughed softly. "You have good company."
I wasn't supposed to be impulsive. My friends back home would have called me careful. Hayley Chaney would have rolled her eyes and lectured me until midnight. Maxwell Mendez would have delivered coffee and a smile and probably a bouquet if he'd caught wind. But the rain had my hair plastered to my face, and the heat of Esteban's arm around me felt like more honesty than caution.
"Can I sleep in your room?" I asked when the rain didn't stop and when the river's voice sounded like something waking in the dark.
"There's a bed," he said. "And a chair. I'll sleep in the hall."
"You're not staying in the hall," I said.
"I won't let you disagree," he replied.
He made me tea. He fixed my phone. He borrowed a bucket of rice and buried my dripping device in it until dawn. He sat outside my door with a flashlight until my eyes were heavy and then he sat some more, because "you said you were scared."
"That's ridiculous," I protested.
"Scared is a thing we do," he said. "It's fine. Lie down."
I slept. I dreamed of drones lifting phrases into the sky.
When I woke, there was a note on the table in his tidy hand: "Brush teeth with the cup. Don't cause any fires. Your ankle is still sulking. —E."
I laughed. He had left a toothbrush, a paper cup, and a small bowl of porridge, all perfect and thoughtful. He had also left the old radio on, bringing the city's voice into the valley like an unlikely guest.
He shuffled into the room when I was washing—sober, gentle. "My students were loud last night," he said. "They said you were like a guest queen."
"They said 'teacher's wife,'" I corrected, because children could be cruel in their simplicity.
He rolled his eyes and said, "Then be our guest queen. For a day."
The school, Broadfield Hope, was a patchwork of rust and sun. Principal Mark Braun greeted me like a returning celebrity. He clasped my hands and almost cried in front of the children.
"It is a pleasure," he said. "We are honored. It's been years since we saw city painters."
I taught a simple class—how to mix color with dirt, how to draw what you remember, not what you see. The kids were bright and hungry. They drew me a rabbit and a rain umbrella and a parachute made of kites.
Esteban watched from the back, quiet as always. Once, mid-lesson, I looked at him and he looked at me and he held up his camera and pressed a button. He gave the thumbs-up sign like a secret accord.
"Stop," he whispered afterward. "You make us look good."
"You should be the one teaching everything," I said, laughing.
And then, because rumor is a small animal that finds a crack and squeezes through, the students started whispering things like "teacher's wife" and "will you stay?" I teased him, and he feigned outrage and then sternness until they quieted down.
"You're not his wife," he hissed in a stage whisper.
"I know," I shot back. "But maybe I could be something else."
We were both lying then. Or not. I couldn't decide.
When I finally agreed to help for a week—"to clean, to teach, to eat your terrible porridge," I joked—Principal Braun clapped like fireworks. "You'll teach them art," he said. "My children will grow like you."
There was a simple rhythm. Mornings were lessons. Afternoons were sketching. Evenings were a ritual that belonged to Esteban alone: in the rain or the blue of early night he took the drones out and arranged them like a constellation.
"Do they still fly?" I asked once, shaded by a tree.
"Yes," he said. "They're tired. They remember the sky better than I do."
He set them into the wet air. They rose like a remembered chorus, lanterns in the rain. For a long time I sat and watched them paint his dreams against the dark. They spelled out a welcome, then a silhouette that looked like my face under an umbrella. I clapped until my hands hurt, and when I drifted off I felt his arms slip under me and carry me to bed with the careful grace of someone who had done it before.
When I returned to the city to fix the trifling paperwork of my identity and to reassure my grandfather Jacob McCoy, I carried the smell of porridge with me and a series of photos Esteban had taken—of kids turning pages, of the drones like fireflies, of a man with his face turned to the sky.
"Who is he?" Jacob asked, looking at the photos after I had told him the story. He is both a businessman and a man who knows the names and faces of a generation of engineers, and his fingers trembled as he set down the coffee cup.
"Esteban Estrada," I said. "He teaches in Broadfield Hope. He was my rescuer."
Jacob's face shifted in a way that made me nervous. "Esteban Estrada?" he repeated. "I knew a student with that name. He was brilliant. I remember recommending him to a firm. Why would he be...?"
"He said he couldn't leave the children," I said. "He loves them."
Jacob frowned. "He was a star," he said. "A promising engineer. He could have run any lab."
"He chose this instead," I said. "He is stubborn and he's good, and—" My voice softened. "He is kind."
Jacob kept looking. He is a man who builds fleets of drones and designs swarms, and he had once opened doors for men like Esteban. He called him. He got a voice on the line that sounded like morning light.
"Jacob," Esteban said when Jacob introduced himself, "yes, sir. I owe you an apology for wasting your time."
"You left engineering?" Jacob demanded.
"I stayed," Esteban answered simply. "For the children."
Jacob was furious in his way—the way fire looks when it hesitates—but he softened when Esteban explained that leaving had meant finding a new way to do the same things, that the drones were still there and still beautiful but his life had a new gravity.
"You're a fool," Jacob said finally. "But I always liked fools who build things. Come—if ever you think of returning, the doors are open."
It was ridiculous to feel so much pride at being able to place a name in a voice. I felt like a traitor and a bridge at once. Esteban and Jacob talked like two worlds meeting at a kitchen table. After that call, Jacob wanted to visit the school. He wanted to see the drones I kept gushing about.
I returned to Broadfield Hope and there he was—my grandfather stepping into the yard like someone who owned the map of the world. He moved carefully, attentive, and the students stared in awe. Esteban watched from the doorway as if the afternoon had folded into a new page.
Jacob walked to the edge of the field, to where the drones were stored under a tarpaulin. He looked at them, then at Esteban, and then at me.
"You have something rare," he said. Then he looked at Esteban with a curiosity that most people reserve for engines and children. "Why did you stay?"
"Because I couldn't leave them," Esteban answered. "They needed a hand."
"And yet you made these," Jacob said. "You could have taken them anywhere."
Esteban's voice quietened. "I thought I would leave," he said. "But the sky is wider than one place."
That night the whole school watched a drone show that Jacob insisted on funding. The drones rose in tight formation, drawing petals and rain and—at the end—my face in the sky, wreathed in light. That was when I knew something had shifted.
"You made my face," I told Esteban later, when the children had been scolded and sent away.
"Not just yours," he said. "Look."
He put his hand over mine, not shy now, but steady. "You are stubborn."
"And you are stubborn too," I said.
We moved slowly, like two people who had learned to be careful. We spent afternoons teaching, evenings planning small inventions. We called each other for advice. I pretended to be bold; he pretended not to notice when I left my sketchbook on his desk so he might discover a page with a private drawing.
Back home, Maxwell Mendez—the boy who had always been more like a brother than a suitor—called and worried and arrived with bouquets more insistently than I liked. He had always believed in buying back trouble with grand gestures. He wanted what men like him always wanted: to be the answer to the question they themselves posed.
"Who is he?" Maxwell asked when I sidestepped his question and told him very little.
"A teacher," I said.
"A teacher? That's—"
"That's who I like," I said. "He is stubborn and he is kind."
Maxwell tried a few times to show me he was reliable. He also tried to discredit Esteban once, in a bounding, foolish way. He met Esteban at a conference dinner where Jacob had arranged for Broadfield Hope to have a visiting delegation. Maxwell thought to show he belonged, to show he could protect me.
"You shouldn't be here," Maxwell said loudly in front of everyone when he found Esteban alone by the display of drones. "You should be in a lab, with proper equipment. What you do here is—quaint."
Esteban's jaw tightened for a moment, then he smiled. "We teach," he said simply.
"Your grandfather knows better than most," Jacob cut in, before things could get ugly. "He says these are his best work. You owe this place respect."
Maxwell reddened. He hadn't expected Jacob to speak up. He had expected attention. He had expected me to look at him and forget everything.
He didn't. He stammered and left. He was not a bad man. He was a boy who had not realized what humility looks like until it fell out of his mouth. I forgave him small things. I did not forgive the arrogance of thinking the world bends to one's will.
There were other small dramas: my friend Hayley Chaney who showered me with protective questions and bribed me with cookies; Principal Mark Braun who loved the way my voice lingered with the students; little savage moments when gossip swirled and children misread our quiet into stories.
I stayed longer. I found then that living on a schedule not my own was an education. The children taught me to laugh without planning. Esteban taught me that silence could be an offering. Jacob watched, sometimes with approval, sometimes with a businessman’s impatience, but always with an old man's surprising tenderness.
"Why won't you come back to the city?" I asked Esteban one evening, when the drones drew a slow ouroboros above us and the lightning made their lights seem more fragile.
"My life is here," he said. "And yet knowing you makes me think of other possibilities. But I do not want to be a man who demands you give up your life for me."
"You aren't asking me to," I said. "But I could stay."
He looked at me like I was a stubborn, beautiful bird. "The world is bigger than one place," he repeated. "But I can't promise I will chase you if you run home."
"Then don't," I said. "Run with me."
He laughed. "You are impossible."
"I am," I admitted. "But—"
We stayed together. It was not dramatic. There were no immediate grand confessions. He taught me to pilot a drone. I taught him how to smear paint. He left messages in his camera for me to find: a photo of my hand, a video of the children cheering, a clip of a drone spelling out my name in wavering light.
Once, Maxwell tried again. He blundered into a ceremony at the school where Jacob was honored for funding the new lab. Maxwell planned to make me the centerpiece of a scene. He thought the grandeur of the crowd would make his confession possible.
"What are you doing?" I hissed, seeing him stride toward the podium, bouquet in hand, while Esteban stood unaware in his usual place among the crowd.
Maxwell climbed the stage and began to speak. "Evangeline," he boomed into the microphone, "I have loved you since we were children. You will be mine—"
The crowd was a small field of faces. There were children, parents, local officials, Jacob, and a dozen journalists Jacob had charmed into attending. They turned. Silence fell.
Esteban's eyes were glass-clear. He stepped down from where he stood. For a terrible moment I thought he would turn away.
"I do not want spectacle," I whispered, stepping forward. "Maxwell, please—"
Maxwell didn't stop. Some people, in the strain of wanting to be heroic, step on the people they love. He grabbed my hand like an anchor and pressed. "Say yes," he demanded.
Esteban moved like a slow tide. He took a single step into the open space near the stage and faced Maxwell.
"You do not speak for me," Esteban said quietly. His voice did not shake. "And neither does public theater decide the terms of a life."
Maxwell's face went through something like triumph, then confusion, then a sharp awareness. He tried to laugh off his discomfort, but his laugh was brittle. The cameras had started to pan, and the murmurs grew.
"Who are you?" Maxwell demanded. "Do you even understand what she is to me?"
"Who you are does not give you ownership," Esteban said. "You love her—good. Then love her without destroying what she chooses."
The crowd started to murmur. Someone in the back began to clap slowly, curiously. Then other hands joined until the applause was a wave more like support for what Esteban had said than anger at Maxwell.
Maxwell faltered. He looked smaller. He tried to reclaim the moment by dropping to a knee, as if kneeling could make another man vanish.
"Maxwell," I said, holding my hand out to his face to stop him. "Stop."
His eyes shone with desperate pleading. He whispered, "I—"
"Enough," Esteban said, but not cruel. "You are loved when you learn humility. If you want her, learn to be a man who knows when to listen."
There was silence like the breathing of the valley. Then the students, bright and brave, started to clap. Someone took out a phone. Someone else recorded. Maxwell stood up slowly and left the stage with his bouquet wasted and wet. He had the decency to avoid making a scene, but he did not leave without trembling.
Later, when the crowd had dispersed and the words had run like ripples out into town, Maxwell returned. He stood at the edge of the yard and we talked. He was contrite. He apologized. He said that he had wanted to show me the value of his love and had failed at the only thing that matters: respect.
"I was foolish," he told me. "I used the crowd to demand something that isn't owed to me."
"You were loud," I said. "But you're also my friend. I forgive you, Maxwell. But you must change the way you love."
He nodded. It was not a scene of humiliation designed to punish; it was a scene that stripped away illusions. The crowd's reaction—some giggles, some cameras, some kindly hands—had been public and judgmental in a way that hurt him. He experienced shame and then, humbly, acceptance. He begged forgiveness. He was not broken to the bone—just humbled—and he sought to be better.
That was enough. He left with his pride pricked and his heart appointed to a better course. Later he found someone else and learned to be gentle.
As for Esteban and me, the way forward was quiet and full of small mercies. We learned to argue without wounds, to show affection without spectacle. We practiced with drones and paint until the two art forms blurred: his lights and my color merged into nights where the sky felt like a private exhibition.
There were nights when I would wake and find Esteban sketching in the dim. He would look up, blink, offer the paper. One night I found a faint note tucked into my pocket.
"Stay," it said.
I did. I taught at Broadfield Hope. I learned to cook porridge without burning it. I learned to fold my life around the school days and the children’s laughter. Jacob visited, sometimes with offers—jobs, labs, contracts—and sometimes with no more than a warm look and a hand on my shoulder. He never tried to push us apart.
"Love is not a strategy," Jacob said one evening when Esteban had fixed a drone and left it humming like a small comet on my desk. "It's a choice. If he chooses the children and her, you will both be hard to stop."
We chose. We did not announce it in fanfare. We staked our claim in daily rituals: a coffee, a text, a camera shutter, a small call at noon. We made plans we did not need to justify. We kept the promise of the valley's crooked light.
Once, in the middle of the season, a journalist asked me, "Why stay?"
"Because here," I said, and looked at Esteban, who was adjusting a rotor with the tender competence of someone who loves their work, "the sky listens."
We married in a small, earnest way months later. The school hall was a scattering of flowers. The children made us paper crowns and insistently brazen promises to attend our every show. Jacob clapped the loudest. Maxwell stood to the side and smiled with a grown softness. Hayley cried at the front and hugged me until we both laughed.
We did not have a grand ceremony in a cathedral, nor a list of guests that required rehearsals. We had the people who mattered. We had an audience of bright faces and wet hands. We had drones to light the field in the night. We had a future that had space for both paint and gears.
On the last night before I began my tenure as a teacher at Broadfield Hope, Esteban asked me as we stood under the drone-lighted sky, "Are you sure you want to stay?"
I squeezed his hand. "I am sure," I said. "You and these children are my world now."
He laughed. "So dramatic."
"Maybe," I said. "But it's true."
He kissed my forehead. "Then let us build things together. Let us make lights and lessons, and stubborn birds that remember how to look up."
"I will teach them how to see," I promised.
"Then let the drones write stories in the sky," Esteban whispered.
We watched them. They made a heart and then a small sun. The valley held them like a secret. The children cheered. The night felt like a promise.
And whenever I doubt—the city calls sometimes, Jacob sends a proposal, the old life rustles like a letter—I look up to the drones writing my name in light and remember how rain, a broken phone, and a pair of steady hands gave me a new beginning.
The End
— Thank you for reading —