Sweet Romance12 min read
The White Dress, the Little Ghost, and the Watch
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I was wearing the white dress because he liked white dresses.
"Hank, are you sure this is the right place?" I asked, clutching my phone like it was the map out of a maze.
Hank Wallace glanced up from the messages in his hand, only the corner of his mouth moving. "Yes. We booked the next room. Come on."
We had been together for a year. I had tracked him across campus for a year. For a year he had been that unruffled, distant god who looked as if feelings were an optional app he never installed. So when he suddenly suggested an escape room, my chest did a stupid, happy flutter.
I had gotten up early. I had spent two painstaking hours on my eye makeup, building the soft, crescented look Hank had once said made him pause. I had packed a small, secret hope that this would be our little surprise, something that meant more than locked doors and timed puzzles.
We reached the storefront, and the smile lodged in my throat. There was another girl in a white dress in front of the door. The wind lifted her hair and she tucked it behind her ear like she was waiting for applause.
Hank shadowed forward before I could think. He smiled like he did when his defense was down: full and unpracticed.
"Stella, you're here," he said.
The girl turned. "Hank, hey." She stepped close to him, and he leaned in like they shared a private radio frequency in his chest. I felt my smile crack.
"You're late," she teased, "but I brought snacks."
"You're perfect," Hank replied, the words too light and too familiar. He didn't notice the way my fingers went white on the strap of my purse.
I wanted to disappear.
I said I wouldn't go in. Then the small, funny part of me—too invested to quit—pulled me in. I followed them into the dim hallway hung with spooky portraits and cobwebs and an NPC who looked ready to be dramatic.
"Lisa," he said, slipping into his role as the actor-narrator, waving a gloved hand. "You made it."
"Colton," I answered, because his name tag said Colton Ewing. He was the little ghost from the script, the head NPC who walked like he'd slipped on sunshine.
"Stick with me if you get scared," he said, which was the kind of thing people said in movies.
I was thinking less about the room than about Hank and the girl in the white dress.
Halfway through, in a corridor that smelled faintly of damp paint and orange peel, I bumped into Stella. I didn't mean to. My heel caught on a loose tile and I lurched forward.
"You pushed her!" Hank's voice was sharp as a crack.
"No, I didn't," I said. "My knee—"
He didn't look. He took a step, shoved me aside with one smooth motion, and bent to scoop Stella up, as if she were a porcelain prop at the center of a stage.
"Let me help you," he murmured to Stella. "Are you all right? Do you need me to carry you out?"
He called her "Stella," like it was a private song that only he and she knew the melody to. He never said a single pet name to me, not even "Lisa" without my last name glued to it like a school roll call. His nickname for me had always been three syllables: my full name.
I stood on the strip of carpet and watched him cross the room with Stella tucked against his chest, less like a boyfriend and more like an offering to someone else.
A costumed NPC fluttered up behind me, hands hovering like paper fans. "Are you okay, ma'am? Do you want me to get—"
"I'm fine," I murmured, wiping my hand on my dress because the costume makeup on the actor had left a smear on my sleeve.
They left me in the dark corridor with the sound of Hank's voice tidying the space where I should have been.
I hadn't noticed my knee until the NPC said, "You're bleeding." I looked down. A thin line of crimson spread across the hem of the dress. The makeup I had fought to keep in place blurred at the edges.
"Let me take you to the hospital," Colton said. He was suddenly not an actor but a person who smelled faintly of orange cleaner and had a phone with a case full of stickers.
"I don't need—" I began, but his hands were warm and steady at my waist. He carried me like he was holding something precious and fragile.
At the clinic, the doctor—Aiden Chambers, with a narrow face and patient eyes—squinted at the paper napkins I'd used to press on my knee. "You came in time," he said. "If you'd waited another hour, the bleeding would have clotted badly."
Colton hovered. He asked all the polite things: "Do you want me to wait? Are you cold?" His presence was like a soft blanket.
"He's so attentive," I told the doctor absently.
The doctor grunted. "Good, then. Keep it clean. Don't be reckless."
Back outside in the harsh noon, Colton bought me a ridiculous amount of greasy comfort food and insisted I try everything.
"If you don't eat, the world will think you're sad and might stage a protest," he said, which was not a useful or true fact, but it made me laugh, and laughter is better than sinking.
"Hank called," I told him when he was pouring tea with too much sugar.
Colton's face went quiet. "What did he say?"
"He asked if I pushed Stella," I said. "And then he said, 'If you don't apologize, we'll break up.'"
Colton's jaw tightened. "What did you tell him?"
"I told him I didn't. He hung up."
"You should not have told him that."
"Why not?"
"Because he gave you a test."
"A test?"
"He picked a phrase he knew would make you bend. He wanted to see if you'd bow."
Of course. I had been treating everything like a negotiation with a man I'd been trying to convince of me for a year. It had been exhausting pretending my tenderness was quiet proof.
That night the city smelled of wet pavement. I was drunk in a way that made the seams of my life peel—too much anger, too much sadness. I was thinking of a dozen revenge stories when Colton half-carried, half-guided me into a hotel lobby.
"We're not—"
"We're just getting water," he offered.
We ended on a squeak of something awkward. He was gentle and sincere and flushed. He was not the terrible white knight I had conjured as punishment; he was a person who liked me and did not expect me to be something else. The moment he kissed my forehead when I slumped on the bed like laundry was not an act of conquest; it was a promise to be kind.
I woke to toast and a small paper bag with a white T-shirt and jeans. He'd lied about M sizes with an embarrassed red face and a ridiculous pride.
"Those are mine," he confessed. "I bought them this morning because you were bleeding on your dress, and I didn't want you to feel like you were wearing a costume of someone's favorite."
"Thank you," I said. "How do you always know when someone needs plain clothes?"
He grinned, which made the world tilt in a better direction. "Because plain clothes make honest people."
Later he handed me a small box. Inside was a plastic electronic watch with a cracked face. "It's cheap," he said. "But it's mine. I used it in drill to wake up when I wouldn't otherwise. You helped me when I was that lost soldier the first week of college. This is a thing that marks time I've kept because of you."
I stared at it. It was ordinary. It ticked.
"Everyone needs a clock," Colton said. "It helps you know when it's time to get out of the past."
He told me, between mouthfuls of toast, the story of the first week of his freshman year: how he'd been late to formation and how I'd stepped in calling the captain's attention away by explaining a scheduling conflict. I'd given him the watch then, messy with sweat. He'd held on to it.
"You changed me," he said. "I decided to grow up because someone took the time to help me. I want to be someone who helps you."
I swallowed. "Colton, I just broke up with Hank."
He blinked. "He's the one who asked you to apologize to someone you didn't hurt and then threatened to break up with you?"
"Yes."
"That is the most cowardly use of a word I've ever heard."
There were three things that happened over the next few weeks that hammered at my chest: a smile when he caught me in a T-shirt and said, "You look like sunlight;" a moment he wrapped his jacket around my shoulders because I said I was cold; and a tenderness when he touched my hand under the desk during a chaotic shift and didn't let go until I looked up.
"Do you like me?" he asked one evening, the way one asks a question that wants to be true.
"I might," I said slowly.
"You might?" he parroted with mock offense.
"I'm keeping my options open for stupidity and joy," I teased.
He laughed. "Then let me be both."
I tried to make a clean break from Hank. But the universe, or fate, or the internship office didn't let me. I and Hank had applied for a single retained position at the company where we interned, different departments but the same job pipeline. The head office had cut one slot. It would be me against him.
"Let's not compete," Hank suggested one morning over coffee. His voice had that calm steel he used when discussing calculus.
"This is my chance," I said. "I'm going to interview."
"I can step back," he offered. "If it helps."
"I can't let you decide that for me," I said.
The day of the final interview, the building smelled like new paper and expensive coffee. We sat in a glass room with five executives who looked like they'd been forged from suits. My mentor, who had once told me to stop shortening English phrases with abbreviations, praised my diligence. Hank's mentor, who turned out to be the girl in the white dress, Stella Wood, commended his execution and sharpness.
Everything felt tight. Then Hank stood up in the middle of the panel and made a choice that would ricochet.
"In my opinion," Hank said, voice low and proud, "honesty about personal situations matters to this company. It is unwise to have someone who will soon be married and have children as a primary hire. Ms. Cordova, didn't you say you were single during the application?"
I froze. The room tightened. Someone clicked a pen.
"I didn't lie," I said. "I answered that I was not comfortable disclosing my personal life."
Hank's jaw worked. "You misled the company. That shows character flaws. If she is inclined to hide significant aspects of her life, who can guarantee her priorities? I'm merely looking out for the company's needs."
Stella left her coffee like a ship letting down its anchor. "May I?" she asked.
She walked to the center and looked at Hank in a way that let no one in the room miss the meaning.
"You and I know each other," Stella said. "Not intimately, not romantically. But I've watched him cringe when you bring up your 'relationship' with this woman. His moral compass is calibrated to advantage. He uses personal facts as weapons. He presented this idea as if it were policy, not personal."
Hank's face did a small and rare thing: color drained and then flared.
"But if you want evidence," Stella continued, "I was present when you told Lisa to avoid disclosure during the recruitment. You didn't do it for the team; you did it because you wanted to pair her career arc with advantages for you. That is manipulative."
Hank's mouth opened. He tried to say, "You're lying," but his voice cracked like glass.
The senior woman at the end of the table raised an eyebrow. "Do you have proof?"
"I—" Stella looked to the group. "Yes. I have screenshots where he instructs her. And one more thing." She clicked a small handheld recorder. "I recorded him discouraging open talk about relationships, telling her it would be better if the company didn't know."
Hank went from anger to denial in a blink. "You can't—"
"Watch me," Stella said mildly.
She pressed play. Hank's voice filled the room, not polished, not practiced. It said, "When they ask if we're together, say it's not convenient to tell. Trust me, it'll be better for both of us."
Heads turned to Hank. The executives' eyes sharpened into instruments.
"You advised someone to deceive during recruitment," the senior man said, tone flat. "That is a serious matter."
Hank's nostrils flared. "It was—"
"A tactic," Stella finished. "And he used it to manipulate outcomes."
At that moment, Colton stood from the back. He had come to support me, a silent boy in a too-big coat, cheeks pink from running.
"I have something too," he said. He held up his phone. "I happened to have a voice message where he—" He swallowed. "He told her to apologize to someone she didn't hurt to avoid embarrassment in front of his friends."
The room shifted. Colton's record was small but true. People leaned forward. The executives consulted one another with thin lips.
Hank's face folded through a dozen expressions. First, he was indignant: "You—" His protest crumpled into the raw sound of a man losing control. Then came fury. He stood, chair scraping. "This is a setup! She—" He pointed at me. "She wore the same dress as Stella intentionally so—"
Stella lifted a hand. "I don't know her motive. I only know I didn't want to be part of something with a man who would play with people's trust."
Hank's breath came hard. "You all think I'm manipulative? I am only—"
"A leader," the senior woman suggested, voice deadly soft.
"A leader does not advise dishonesty," one of the executives said. "A leader signals safety. We are not hiring someone who weaponizes personal relationships for career advantage."
People in the room shifted into spectators. The junior employees in the back leaned in, whispers picking up like a rumor on the wind. Someone pulled out a phone and, in a second, there were heads bent around screens.
Hank's posture changed. He went from outraged to bewildered to plaintive. "You don't understand. My intentions were practical. A relationship could complicate scheduling. I was trying to—"
"Control," Stella said. "You were trying to control."
He took a step toward me, the old way he always tried to fix things with swift words. "Lisa—"
I didn't let him finish. "Don't," I said, quiet and pointed. "Don't speak for me in this room. You tried to make me into an asset you could schedule around. You failed."
For a full minute the room did not move. Air hung heavy. The executives looked at the files. The senior woman folded her hands.
"Given the facts presented here," she said, "we must consider what values we want in our hires. Honesty. Respect. Emotional maturity." She looked directly at Hank. "Your behavior demonstrates a willingness to use others for advantage. That is not acceptable."
Hank's expression went from disbelief to a dawning comprehension of the damage. His face was a map of loss. People who had nodded in polite approval at his presentation now looked at him as if they'd found a hole in his suit.
He tried to defend himself, to make excuses that sounded like calculations, but each word fell on the room like a stone. Someone in the back—one of the other candidates—shook his head and muttered, "Wow."
Outside, conversation erupted like a spill. People pulled their phones and filmed the retreat, their whispers forming the first threads of rumor. I could feel eyes on my back as we left: some sympathetic, some calculating, many just curious.
In the weeks after the interview, the fallout accelerated. Hank tried to write clarifying messages, to explain how he had "meant well." He called me to beg me to "not make this dramatic." Friends texted me with judgmental gifs and confused questions.
At the company, the decision was swift. They offered me the position. Their letter was a businesslike, clean articulation of faith in my skills and in my integrity.
Hank's answer was a phone call that contained a new tone: contrition, edged with a sense of wronged pride.
"Lisa," he started. "I think we can talk. I didn't mean for—"
I had heard every version of his reasons before, polished for different audiences. None of them ever centered me.
"You used me," I told him. "Not because you loved me; because you calculated me."
He went white on the line, then red, then small. "You don't understand—"
"No," I said. "You never did."
There was a pause in which I could hear the muffled sound of him breathing. Then the telephone clicked as he hung up.
Later, he tried to come to the office, to speak in the halls, to make grand gestures of apology. He stood outside the café where Stella sat with colleagues and tried to push his way into their conversation. She looked up, bored and decisive, and refused. He tried to explain in public, for those acquainted with his face, that he had been misunderstood.
People in the café turned toward him like a wave turning on a rock.
He thundered his accusations; he waved a hand toward me. For a moment he looked like a king storming a village, and then, suddenly, the spectators turned. A cluster of interns stood up and left their seats in disgust. One of his friends took out a phone and started recording, not to support him, but to capture the spectacle. The manager of the café asked him to leave.
He went from in-control to unraveling in a matter of breathless heartbeats. The red on his neck flared. His voice shook.
"Please," he begged a group of strangers who had seen him the way they see a weather event: briefly, and then with relief when it passed.
A woman at the counter said, "Stop yelling," and the words were a tribunal.
He hadn't intended to end like that: a man alone on a sidewalk, his polished face now an open map. People stopped to take pictures, and the pictures found the internet; friends he thought he'd had turned their backs; applications he'd written for sake of future claims were withdrawn. The company's HR wrote him a polite but firm letter about professional conduct. The world moved on.
Meanwhile, Colton and I unpacked the strange aftermath like two people opening a box of fragile things. He moved in as a steadying presence. He sketched out resume changes with me, wrote cover letters, and asked me questions with the sort of intensity that made me feel seen.
"I don't want you to ever feel like you need to shrink to be accepted," he said.
"You make me want to be bigger," I told him.
We had small, ridiculous rituals: coffee at the corner shop where they burned the beans on purpose; a three-minute dance in the rain when the mood asked; him pretending to lecture me about the strategic placement of spoons in the sink. Once, he bought me an identical cheap watch and said, "Now we both have timekeepers."
People asked me if I felt triumphant. I felt clearer than that. I felt relieved and less small. I had wanted him to feel guilty in front of everyone, yes, but the better victory was not his humiliation; the better victory was that I had the job. I was also, quietly, receiving a love that was soft, not calculated.
We started to date, with all the fumbling gestures that is—phone calls after dark, a kiss that was more like a question and then an answer.
"Colton," I said one afternoon, sitting on a park bench with our hands laced, "why did you keep that watch for so long?"
He smiled, eyes squinting. "Because the time we measure matters. Because you helped me set it when I didn't know what time it was."
The cheap watch ticked on his wrist. It was not elegant. It was honest.
One winter evening, months after the interview, we stood outside the same escape room. The sign flickered with goofy light. He slipped the watch off his wrist and pressed it into my hand.
"Keep my time," he said. "I want you to know I will be watching the seconds you choose to spend with me."
I clipped it on. It was snug. It ticked.
Hank's name became a story people told like a caution. Stella and I met sometimes for coffee; we never spoke of him like a wound, only as a rehearsal for who we didn't want to be. Colton and I made a small life that smelled of burnt coffee and the smell of old books in libraries.
When I wore white again—on an ordinary day, because the color looked nice—I did not feel like someone competing with a ghost. I felt like someone who had the right to decide her own story.
The cheap watch on my wrist ticked. I listened. The sound was ordinary and honest: a small, steady promise.
The End
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