Sweet Romance11 min read
A Thousand Little Turns: Liking You Feels Like Candy
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I opened my phone and the photo of myself at ninety pounds stared back, like a stranger smiling through glass.
"You promised," he had said once, with a basketball spinning on his finger and the sun making a halo behind him.
"Calhoun, if you drop to ninety, I might think about us." He hadn't looked at me when he said it.
I remember the taste of coffee, three empty days, the way my stomach shrank into a fist. I remember the street light blurring until I blacked out. I remember waking up to dusk and finding my hands—soft, familiar, the weight I had once carried—suddenly there again. One moment I was fragile and hollow-cheeked at ninety, the next I touched my arm and felt the old roundness. One full, honest hundred and fifty pounds. I had been reset to the day I agreed to that stupid bet.
I laughed at the absurdity. Then I swore.
"Never again," I said to my reflection. "Not for him."
The first time I met Calhoun Boyle on campus—back then I thought he was a star I had to orbit. He tossed the basketball between his hands, not bothering to look at me. The light made him look untouchable. After he spoke the bet, his eyes never found mine. He treated me like air that could be dismissed.
I could have let the memory fade. I could have gone down the same narrow, dangerous path: emptying plates and stomach knots until my body owed me days of recovery. But this time I remembered everything—the weakness, the aching, the sound of my voice when it got hoarse from forcing myself to vomit. I remembered hospital lights, and shame in a stranger's eyes. This time I had a chance to do it differently.
The first morning I ran barefoot through the dew on the campus track I met him—the boy who would become my steady warmth. He caught me stumbling and offered a square of chocolate like a bandage.
"Hey, are you okay?" he asked.
"I—" I tried to stand, dizzy.
"Sit," he said, and guided me to the steps. "You look pale."
"Thanks," I muttered, embarrassed.
"I run here a lot," he said. "I'm Chauncey Cox."
"Giavanna." I didn't filter the tiredness from my voice.
He handed me the chocolate, and his smile was simple, like rain after a dry week. He spoke plainly, as if nothing about me was something to hide or to mock. He taught me small, sensible things: eat enough in the morning, add protein, stretch before sprints. He taught me kindness by being kind. I couldn't explain then why his presence felt like a promise.
"Don't binge on coffee," he warned once, handing me a cup of warm soy milk. "It makes everything worse."
"I always thought run or starve," I said. "I know now that's wrong."
"Good," he said. "Then don't do it."
We trained together in the mornings. We talked about nothing and everything—the way a song lyric could stick to the heart, what we missed from childhood, the stupid movies we loved. He asked how I felt about setbacks and listened like my answers mattered. He didn't say anything flashy. He just steadied himself beside me until my chest stopped feeling like a trapped bird.
There were days when my weight stalled and my old habits whispered. There were people who wanted me to fail—like Francesca Schulze, my roommate, who pretended to be sweet while making barbed jokes, or Katalina Cruz, the pretty girl who always had Calhoun's attention. They laughed and mocked. Once, in the cafeteria, Katalina snorted, loud enough to be heard: "You really think you can change that much?"
I kept quiet. I worked.
Weeks became months. The scale slid: 150 to 137 to 124. I learned to like the clean ache of muscle in my legs, the way my clothes fell differently over my hips. I learned how to take care of my skin, how to sleep and eat so my body could keep its balance. Chauncey cheered without shouting. He noticed the small changes—my lighter step, the brighter circle under my eyes—and his approval felt like a warm lamp.
Then the impossible happened: one evening he accused, quietly, "You don't owe him any answers."
"Who?" I asked.
"Calhoun." He looked at me like someone protecting a small, fierce flame. "Let it go."
"He's the reason I started this," I whispered.
"Exactly," he said. "So you can stop now. For you."
That was one of the small, sharp heartbeats: him telling me to choose me. Another came when he wrapped me in his jacket the night I fainted on the track and his hand brushed my forehead warm with care. A third came when, months later, he opened the package I'd bought for him—the same style jacket he'd left with me the night he offered me his sleeve—and grinned like a private sunrise.
Calhoun, meanwhile, kept his distance until my transformation became impossible to ignore. The campus noticed me. People I had never met turned to stare, and whispers followed like a breeze. Calhoun's silence shifted. One night he texted, "Can we talk?" and then stood under my dorm window, the way he'd stood under so many windows of girls who tried to look like a version he approved of.
"Giavanna," he said when I opened the door. "I wanted to say—"
"You said it was a bet," I cut in. "You said if I hit ninety you'd 'consider' me. You never even looked at me. You let others dare you."
He looked smaller than the memory. "I didn't mean—"
"Save it," I said. "I tried once to become a shadow of what you wanted. I nearly broke myself. I won't do it again."
"You should let me make it right," he said.
I didn't answer. I wasn't interested in his patchwork apologies. I wasn't that girl who wanted a star to notice her. I had Chauncey, who made me coffee and told me to sleep.
Calhoun tried to force his way back in, and that arrogance became his downfall.
A week later, we had the punishment scene—public, raw, and irreversible.
It was the spring campus festival. I had been asked to help coordinate a "Real Beauty" segment: a short show celebrating health and confidence. I agreed, thinking it a gentle way to show what I'd learned. Secretly I planned something else.
The quad filled with people—students, professors, visitors, phones glinting in the sun. I walked the stage with a steady breath and a band of friends beside me. Francesca pretended to be supportive but stood at the edge with a forced smile. Katalina arrived in a sundress, heels clacking, crowd already clustered around Calhoun and his friends.
"Giavanna, you look great," Francesca called, too bright. "Who did your makeup?"
"Ha," Katalina said loud enough for everyone to hear. "Did you have a makeover or a miracle?"
Whispers rippled. Calhoun watched, muscles tensing, that closed look on his face. I waited until the host introduced me—"From hardship to health: Giavanna's story"—and the lights made the stage small and intimate.
I started to speak.
"I didn't do this for him," I said. "I did it for me."
A polite clap. Then I clicked a remote. The big screen behind me lit up.
First, there was a photo: me in a cafeteria, my tray full of sad choices. Next, a screenshot of a chat from three years before. I had found it—old messages someone saved, someone who was tired of cruelty. The screen showed Calhoun's message proposing the bet. The words were simple, cold: "If you can get down to ninety, I might consider it." There was another screenshot—Katalina's mocking reply: "She'll never do it. What a joke."
Silence spread like spilled ink. Gasps, a few laughs that died when they understood.
"I trusted a promise," I said. "I used myself to test someone else's affection. Do you know how that feels? Like you are invisible until you shrink."
"You're right," Francesca whispered, her voice brittle.
Calhoun's face went pale. He stood up, voice low. "Giavanna, you shouldn't—"
I pointed to a second set of slides. Audio played. It was that day at the cafeteria: laughter, the tone of derision, Katalina's snort, Calhoun's dismissive "roll." The campus could hear their private cruelty as if it were light leaking from a dark room.
Voices rose around us. People who had laughed at my clumsier days looked ashamed. Phones recorded; the first wave of viewers started livestreaming. Katalina's perfect face drained of color. Francesca's smile melted.
"How could you?" someone shouted. "You were mean."
Calhoun's mouth opened, closed. He tried to take the mic.
"Stop," I said. My voice didn't shake. "Hear this: I worked for me. I recovered my health. I did not do this so you would feel better about yourself, Calhoun."
"Giavanna," he started, pleading. "I—"
"You made it a contest," I said. "You bet on my pain."
The crowd began to turn. Students I barely knew voiced their disgust. "That's low," a voice said. "That's disgusting." A girl I didn't know held up her phone like a judge—recording, her face hard. Someone started a chant: "No more bets! No more bets!" It spread, a ripple at first, then a wave. People who once cheered for Calhoun looked away.
Katalina reached for Calhoun, clinging to reputation. "It's not like that," she sputtered. "We were joking—"
"Joking?" a boy shouted. "She was almost sick because of you!"
Calhoun's friends shrank into the background. One of them muttered something self-protective and then left. Another kept his eyes down. Their energy left the circle like a draft under a door.
Then things changed in a way I had not fully expected.
The professors who had been watching approached—Professor Leighton Lebedev among them. Her voice cut through the chatter. "We will not tolerate behavior that demeans students," she said. "This university is supposed to be a place of respect."
"Apology?" Calhoun tried, voice urgent. "I'll apologize."
"Apology?" Katalina echoed, then tried to laugh it off. "It was a stupid comment." Her facade fractured; students started uttering their own memories of cruel lines she'd thrown at others.
Apologies, when they came, sounded small. Calhoun's face moved from shock to denial to a thin attempt at contrition, then to pleading as the crowd's eyes bored into him. Katalina's privilege peeled away as her followers scrolled through the posted screenshots on social media. Comments multiplied: "She mocked a girl's health problem?" "How could they?"
It was public. It was immediate. It was not a courtroom; it was a campus holding up its own mirror. Calhoun tried to explain, to frame it as a joke, to be misunderstood. First he was annoyed: "This is blown out of proportion," he growled. Then he was shocked: "Why would someone save those messages?" Then he denied: "I didn't mean to—" Finally, he imploded inside a rising tide of people walking away.
People snapped pictures. A circle of classmates formed; some hissed, some applauded my decision to show the truth. I watched Calhoun's face rearrange—entitlement cracking into a kind of naked fear. He had relied on the armor of popularity; when that fell, the pieces hit the ground with a sound like crossing swords.
Katalina's punishment was different. Her followers—there were fewer than she thought—unfriended and un-followed. A short video of her mocking another girl surfaced and spread, and a chorus of comments called out her cruelty. She tried to keep a public smile but the messages piled like gray snow. Her reputation, glued to her looks and a cruel laugh, lost traction. People started whispering about her being jealous. Her posture shifted from haughty to small.
Francesca, who had laughed with the others, now felt exposed as a petty snacker of other people's faults. A group of roommates confronted her gently and then sternly about her passive mean streak. She stammered, defensive at first, then started to cry, embarrassed. The crowd's reaction varied—some were merciful, others cold. Her punishment was being called out by people she respected. She could apologize and try to change, or hide.
Calhoun tried to hold onto something. He turned to me, and his face was raw. "Please," he begged. "I can fix it. Give me a chance."
"Fix what?" I asked quietly, looking at him for the first time without the fog of wanting him to like me.
"You were my friend," he said, as if the past could be folded into a neat package.
"Then you would have treated me like one," I said. "Not a bet."
The crowd grew quieter, sensing the closeness of the moment. Some cheered at my refusal. Someone started clapping slowly. Then applause swelled. It felt absurdly good.
Chauncey had been at my side the whole time. He put his hand over mine, simple and steady. "You didn't owe him anything," he said softly.
"Thank you," I answered, my voice thick.
Calhoun stood there while the campus reoriented. He wasn't hauled away; he wasn't publicly humiliated in a savage way. Instead, he lived the sting of watching people step back. His friends stopped texting him back. People I had seen laughing at his jokes now looked at him like a boy who had learned something too late. Panic flickered across his face: he had to rebuild trust he had burned. That slow, inevitable solitude felt like a punishment he couldn't spin into a victory.
Katalina's world crumbled in a different way: she saw her popularity dissolve as likes dwindled and whispered reputations spread. Francesca now faced the awkwardness of being called out by those she shared a room with. Each punishment matched the nature of their cruelty—social exile, exposed hypocrisy, the slow erosion of the easy comforts they once took for granted.
The festival ended with people talking, phones still open. Some came up to me—students I had not known—telling me their own stories. I listened. Then I looked at Calhoun once more.
"Don't try to win me," I said. "Do better. For others."
He opened his mouth, then shut it.
After the crowd dispersed, I saw messages pop up: people thanking me for speaking up, people who had felt weak telling me they found courage. Chauncey squeezed my hand. "You were brave," he said.
"I was nervous," I admitted.
"So I was proud of you," he said, simple and warm, and that was the fourth small, steady heartbeat: being seen by someone who stayed.
Calhoun's reaction changed through the scene. First surprise, then denial, then attempts to explain, then pleading. Katalina flitted from smugness to panic to a fragile attempt at damage control. Francesca moved from sarcasm to shame to a quiet, messy apology. The crowd's reactions moved from shock to anger to applause. Phones recorded, eyes stared, and the campus—our campus—forced a public reckoning.
In the days after, life went on. Calhoun tried to apologize again, but his words hit a wall of quiet. Katalina retreated from the main groups. Francesca began to talk less cruelly and more honestly. People who had been mean thought it over. Nothing was theatrically punished by administration, but the social penalties were real and corrective. I wasn't gloating. I wasn't trying to ruin lives. I wanted honesty. I wanted truth.
Chauncey stayed. He never demanded anything dramatic. He showed up with soup when I had cramps, lent me his jacket when I was cold, and told me I looked good without meaning to flatter. When he told me he had his own past—he had been heavier once, too, mocked and pushed—he did it in quiet confession.
"I remember you once," he told me one night as we walked under lamp light. "You shoved a bag of chips into my hands in high school when people were being mean. You were fierce even then."
"I—" I blushed. "I don't remember. But you—"
"I watched you from afar," he said. "I wanted you to choose health this time, not because of someone else, but because you deserved it."
"Why did you stick around?" I asked.
He smiled, that slow, soft smile that had become my shelter. "Because I like you," he said, as simply as a fact.
It was not the fireworks I had once imagined. It was steadier: the hand that steadied me on a bad day, the voice that told me to eat, the laugh that made my chest warm. Three small heart beats collected into a calm hum that filled ordinary days.
We didn't need a cinematic ending. I wasn't chasing the boy on a pedestal anymore. I had gone back in time with the hard-edged knowledge of what broke me, and I used it to build a better hollow: a healthier body, clearer boundaries, friends who meant what they said.
At graduation, I walked in a dress I had chosen because I liked it, not because anyone else would. Chauncey stood in the crowd, the one who had stayed. Calhoun sat with his head bowed, learning slowly what it meant to be seen. Katalina's laughter had quieted into something shy and smaller. Francesca apologized and then, slowly, changed.
When someone asked me later what the turning point was, I always said the same thing: "The moment I stopped dieting to please someone else."
That night, after the ceremony, Chauncey and I sat on the dorm roof and ate instant noodles. He laughed at the way I blew on the hot broth, and I laughed at him for pinching off a piece of my seaweed, then handing it back with a grin.
"I like this version of you," he said.
"Me too," I said. "Me too."
The End
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