Sweet Romance10 min read
A Hundred Thirty-Four Wrappers and the Quiet Boy at the Window
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I was twelve when the world changed outside our window and Miles started asking me questions he had never asked before.
"Why are you sitting there like that?" he said, standing in my doorway, towel over his shoulders. I almost fell off the windowsill.
He never spoke when he could avoid speaking. He was the sort who kept words for important things. So when he asked, "Are you thinking about not living anymore?" the towel on his head looked ridiculous and serious at once.
I frowned and kept silent. Rain had started; it smelled like disinfectant and something sharp. My diary lay open on the desk, my worst sentences spelled in blocky letters where I had tried to make my feelings look neat.
"You have us," he said later, in a voice like gravel and sunlight, as if he were clarifying a fact, not offering consolation.
"I know," I answered, but my voice was thin. I was glad he was there. I was also furious that I was glad.
"Do you want to break that branch?" he asked another time when I tried to tear a tender sycamore leaf from the tree outside.
"Stop treating me like a child," I snapped, though my fingers still trembled.
He only smiled the smallest smile then, and in that tiny motion something in the room shifted. It became safe enough to breathe.
We grew up with the same little yard between our houses, with the same creak in the back gate that only we could hear at night. His family had two floors and a porch where his parents would leave the radio playing softly. My parents worked in the city; during that emergency they stayed away longer than anyone promised. For a while I lived with the Hamza family next door.
"You came here with my mom's soup," Miles said once, handing me a paper-wrapped candy. "Sign here, confirm receipt."
I had taken to bringing him sweets. Candy bars, soft cakes, the kind that melt under heat. "Today’s delivery," I'd say, smug and breathless, "please sign for happiness."
"You always say the same thing," he replied, voice flat, eyes almost laughing.
"But you always sign."
"Maybe I like signing." He kept that offhand tone. I kept giving.
"You've given me a hundred and thirty-four wrappers," he said once, counting the colorful paper on my desk.
"That's very specific." I tried to make my face unreadable.
He stroked the pile, then looked at me. "That's thirty-four more than you should need."
His hand came to my head as if on habit. He tapped me like one might tap a clock to make sure the minute hand hasn't floated away.
"Promise me something," I said then, but I said it like a dare.
"What?"
"If I don't make it where you are, don't forget me."
He looked at me for a long time. "You will make it," he said finally, and because he said it like it was a fact, I believed.
Years handed us a string of small, safe things. We were the kind of pair that other people pointed at and said, "They look good together." He tutored me in physics and rubbed my head when I pretended not to understand calculus. I baked him a burnt sponge cake once; he chewed through it and said, "You should buy one next time." I glared. He smiled.
"Why do you stay?" I asked in the quiet between one class and another, where the hallway felt like a river.
"Because you keep giving me things," he said. "And because you sit in that light and look like you are waiting for a secret."
"You say that like it's a crime."
"It is," he said. "You are terrible."
"Terrible how?"
"Terrible at pacing yourself," he replied, the tiniest grin.
When we reached university he studied mechanical things and I studied medicine. Our classes were in neighboring buildings, so we turned labs into accidental dates. He would patch my sleeve when it snagged, and I would hand him ointment after a small burn from solder.
"You're always rescuing me," he'd say, acting scandalized.
"And you fix my broken things," I would answer. "We're equal."
He blushed wherever his blush hides and then pretended he had a question about a gear or a theorem.
"Do you think I will be fine?" he'd ask in the middle of a long night in the lab, eyes tired and soft.
"You will do whatever you have to," I'd say, and it would surprise me how much his jaw loosened at that.
Three heartbeats that mattered—these are the moments that lived in my chest.
One: The night he came in smelling of wet towel and soap, asked if I was thinking of giving up, and then stayed.
"You're not alone," he said.
Two: The first time he kissed my mouth's corner in the almost-dark behind the lab building, a whisper of heat on my skin like someone turning on a small lamp.
"Keep that," he murmured, and I did—kept the memory like a small coin in my palm.
Three: The day he forgave me after I sent him a message in fury and ran away like it would solve anything. He came, stood in the shadowed sycamore light, and said, "I can forgive you. I will let you be dramatic twice, but not three times."
"I won't be dramatic," I promised, and he rolled his eyes.
Promise was a funny thing in our lives—soft and heavy at once.
The years brought ordinary dramas. His family ran into money trouble. We shared food when his house fridge was low. He stopped giving me the extra practice sheets. He began to look tired in a way that made me want to fix him. I tried. I saved coins and handed them like coins of war, like they might win him time.
"You can't buy someone's peace," he said, when I laid stockings and a jar of savings on his table like an offering.
"I can try," I answered.
"That isn't how peace works," he sighed.
Our lives moved around exams and hospital shifts, around solder fumes and stitched wounds. Then a small thing broke me: I decided to apply to graduate school — and to do it alone.
"I want to study more," I told him between night shifts, my words trimmed thin with exhaustion. "I need to apply. I can't keep leaning on you for your answers."
He hummed and said, "Then do it."
"I'll have to leave the city for review courses and libraries," I said. "You make it too easy to be distracted."
"Go," he said. "I'll manage."
I sent him the coldest message later because I thought being cold would make me strong.
"I'm leaving you," I typed, fingers shaking.
His reply was a single word: "Why?"
"Because I'm studying. You are a distraction," I wrote and then cursed myself for sending it.
The phone rang instantly. I hung up by accident and told myself I'd be brave in the morning.
"Are you serious?" he asked when I avoided him and then he found me.
"I need to focus," I said, voice too loud and too brittle. "I can't have you in my head."
"You want me out of your head or out of your life?" he asked.
"Both," I said, because a break is a clean start, I thought, and I wanted to be clean.
He didn't break. He only looked at me until the anger left my face and something softer took over.
"You can't make a person disappear by saying so," he said. "If you leave, you leave a hole. I don't want to be the hole."
"I don't want you to suffocate my plans," I said. "I need space."
"Then take space," he said. "But don't tell me you need me to go."
So I left. I packed my books like a shield. I announced to the world, on that small public forum where everyone performs sorrow for applause, that I had dumped a long-term relationship for the sake of study. I braced for pity and the hollow satisfaction of being admired for sacrifice.
Two days later I stopped studying entirely.
"How did this happen?" my father asked, hands on his knees, the way men get when they are trying to be gentle and failing.
"You tell me," I said. "I gave it up."
He looked at me like I had handed over a secret map. "You gave up your exam?"
"Yes. I did it for the wrong reasons."
"Why?"
"Because I couldn't have him in my life the way I wanted and also be heroic in the way I planned."
He frowned. "You gave up because you thought 'dropping him' would make you brave?"
I buried my face in my hands. "I thought if I left, I'd be better. I thought the story needed a clean cut."
Miles found out soon enough. He found me one evening standing outside the lab building holding a jar full of wrappers and a list of all the practice questions I had never answered. He approached, hands in pockets, and watched me fumble.
"You quit," he said.
"I did." My voice was small.
He looked at me for a long time. "You always said you'd rather burn the page than hold the page that burns you."
"I thought I could save both," I admitted.
He crouched, put his hand on the jar—one hundred and thirty-four wrappers inside like little flags—and then lifted his head. "You don't have to choose between yourself and me," he said. "You can change the question."
"Can I?" I asked. "Can I have you and still have my future?"
"You won't know unless you try," he said.
So I tried. I returned to the routine of hospital rounds and late-night revision, but it was different now. We were different. He was not just my study partner. He stopped being the cold boy who guarded words; he let them come out messy sometimes.
"Why did you come back?" I asked one night as we walked home under neon signs that reflected like small, broken stars.
"Because I didn't like the light without you in it," he said. "And because your jar looked lonely."
I laughed then, a wet sound. "You came for wrappers."
"I came for you," he said, simply.
He did things for me that were small and private. He would slip his jacket around my shoulders when I forgot to close my coat. He would stand between me and a crowd until I could breathe normally. He made a face only I had seen, and when he did it my stomach did a small, traitorous flip.
"Once," he whispered in the spring when the sycamore was full and our shoes were muddy, "you told me you were scared I'd get tired first."
"I said a lot when I was young," I replied.
"You said that then, and I kept it like a promise. You said 'you have us' when you meant to say 'I am alone.' I kept it the wrong way for a while."
"Which way is right?"
He grinned. "The way that keeps you."
There were three moments that always pressed under my ribs like a tender bruise of sweetness.
One: When he smiled at me in the doorway that first rain-night and said, "You have us."
Two: The kiss at the lab building when he said, "I only like taller girls" and then pressed his mouth to my cheek as if to prove he was joking and not joking.
Three: The forgiveness on the hospital rooftop when I said the stupidest words of my life and he came and caught me and said, "I can forgive you."
We kept growing, misplacing the small parts of ourselves and retrieving them. He applied to jobs; I applied for a posting in a hospital nearby. We stitched our days together with small acts—different classes, the same coffee mug, the jar of wrappers that sat where my books were stacked.
When I finally told the forum where I had made my confession that I had thrown away my exam plans for false bravery, someone replied with a small, gentle comment: "Then what happened?"
I wrote back, because the story had finally stopped being about sacrifice and started being about choices.
"I stopped the plan." I typed. "And then I started again. This time I let Miles be part of the mess."
He read my messages in the lab quietly and then came over and closed his laptop with a face that smoothed into something kind.
"You're ridiculous," he said. "You dramatize every paragraph."
"I do not."
"You do," he said, and his hand found mine under the desk like it had a map.
"Will you still help me?" I asked. "If I go again, will you be the one who waits and signs receipts and counts wrappers like a tax collector?"
"I will," he said. "I'll sit outside every test center if it makes you happy."
"And if I fail?"
"You won't," he said.
He said it like a fact. I believed him like I believed the sycamore would leaf. I believed him like I believed the jar would keep count.
Years folded the same way—less dramatic, more everyday. I didn't become famous. He didn't open a giant factory. We both took small steps toward the lives we wanted. He got tired sometimes, and I learned to sit with that tiredness. I put down my stubbornness and learned when to ask for help.
Once, in a public courtyard filled with people and new faces, someone pointed and said, "You two always look like you belong in the same picture."
Miles looked at me and ruffled my hair in front of strangers. "Yes, we do," he said, with the casual ownership of someone who had loved a person for years as if he had been saving a seat.
I laughed. "Don't make a speech," I ordered.
He ignored me, of course. "We make a good photo," he added.
"I don't like photos," I muttered.
"But you like the picture," he countered. He leaned in and kissed my temple in the open air where the world could see and the world did nothing but let them be. People smiled around us, and some took pictures with their phones and then shrugged and moved on.
We lasted, not perfectly, but well enough. He stayed when I got scared. I stayed when he worked late and missed dinners. We had arguments that ended with tired apologies and with wrappers being counted again like small talismans.
And at the end, when I typed into the forum the truth—"I gave up an exam, then changed my mind, then came back"—I didn't feel the need to make a show of heroics. My life had stopped being a performance.
"Are you writing about me?" he asked once, peeking over my shoulder as I composed a reply.
"Only the good parts," I said.
"No fair," he grumbled.
"You're fair game," I answered, grinning. "You are the best part."
We sat together with the jar of wrappers between us. One hundred and thirty-four, he said, counting from memory.
"Keep them," he said. "One day you'll want to see how silly we were."
"I already see it," I replied. "I see that I would choose you again."
He kissed the tip of my nose then, quick and hot and ridiculous.
"Good," he said. "I would choose you a thousand times. Even if you rage-quit on exams."
"I won't rage-quit," I promised.
"You already did once," he said. "It made me run."
"Which is a good thing."
"It was," he admitted. "You gave up a dream and then came back to it. That is the kind of person I like."
"What kind is that?"
"The kind who learns."
We closed the jar and walked home under the neon lights. The wrappers made a soft crinkle in my bag. The night was ordinary and perfect.
When I answered the forum that originally asked "then what?" I wrote one honest line:
"I put the wrappers back in a jar and kept walking toward the next exam. Miles waited and counted them with me."
It was true. He had signed receipts, sutured small wounds, and caught me when I fell. He was not perfect, but he was patient. He was not a knight, but he was a man who kept his word.
Sometimes, when rain begins and the hospital smells of disinfectant, I think of the towel, of the window, and of a boy with a jar. I think of the one hundred and thirty-four wrappers and how ridiculous it is to hold on to paper and memory. And then I smile, because I know why I kept them.
I kept them to remind me that choices are messy, that love is not a clean equation, and that you can still be brave after you make a mistake.
"And if I forget how brave I can be?" I asked Miles once.
He slid the jar toward me. "Count them," he said.
"One hundred and thirty-four," I recited.
"Keep another one," he said. He put his thumb on the lid and screwed it tight.
We walked home. The window where I used to sit was quiet, but the house next door had light. I could hear him humming something that smelled like home.
I learned the answer to the forum's question in small, stubborn increments: I did something foolish. I left. I came back. I learned to ask for help. I kept the boy who kept me. That was enough.
The End
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