Sweet Romance11 min read
Don't You Dare Peek at My Duck
ButterPicks14 views
My birthday started with a promise: my best friend would treat me to something special.
"I said I'd get you something good," Svea had sworn, eyes shining.
"Like cake?" I asked, and she laughed in that way best friends do when they mean mischief.
When I pushed open her apartment door that night, a man walked down from the hallway. He was nearly six foot two, pale in the right way, with a high nose bridge and gold-rimmed glasses. He wore a white shirt and black pants. He looked exactly like my taste.
"Happy birthday, Beatrice," he said, and the world tilted.
"Thank you," I managed. "Hello... duck!"
I meant to say "hey" but the last word was all I could think. Svea had told me the treat would be a live duck. I hadn't been literal enough.
He smiled and adjusted his glasses. "Are you Beatrice Montgomery?" he asked.
"Yes." I floated forward and impulsively kissed the corner of his mouth. He flinched and stepped back.
"Health code, please," he said stiffly.
I blinked. "…Health code?"
He looked at me like I was suddenly dangerous. "Please show me your health code."
I fumbled with my phone, the room wobbling. "I'm green, I swear."
"This is a fund app," he said, tapping. "You don't keep this on the first screen?"
I heard the reluctance in his voice and felt something like a bruise bloom across my pride. He made me sit on his friend's couch, polite but distant.
"Can we go to the room?" I whispered when he pointed to the hall.
"Whenever you like," he answered.
I threw myself at him, hands on his collar, daring and drunk. He pushed me gently away, like someone cautious around a live wire. He had a way of closing the space and then setting the rules.
"Relax. I'm gentle," I slurred.
He scowled and grew guarded. "What are you doing? Health code."
I stuck my phone in his face. He swiped, found the app, and finally nodded. He looked relieved as if the world had been classified again.
"You smell like rain," I said weakly.
"What did you say?" He looked at me, not laughing.
"I said—you're nice," I lied.
He did not take advantage of me, and I fell asleep where I had been placed. I woke alone on Svea's bed with only a Peking duck delivery on the door handle and a bruise of shame at the back of my throat.
I went to class, trying to untangle the night's fragments, when the tall man walked into my lecture hall.
"Good afternoon," he said from the podium. "I'm Wei Jorgensen, the substitute for Professor Chen while she is on maternity leave."
My brain hiccuped. The man who had made me dizzy the night before was now my new assistant teacher.
"Beatrice, stay," he said after class to the last student standing.
"You need to speak to me?" he asked.
"You left an earring," he said, holding up my little hoop.
"Thank you," I whispered, all warmth. He lowered his voice.
"About last night..." he began.
"It was nothing," I lied. "I won't tell."
He pressed his lips into a thin line. "Are you sure?"
"Yes." I tapped his shoulder like friends do when trying to seal secrets.
Later he surprised me again. At a department dinner for the New Year, a drama unfolded. My ex, Hayes Carpenter, walked in with someone new and attentive. He always had a talent for showing up at the worst moments.
"Beatrice," Hayes said too-large and too-smug beside his new flame. "Still single?"
"I have a boyfriend," I shot back. "He's busy."
He laughed the cruel laugh of exes. "When are we going to meet him?"
I lied: "He's tall, works in the public sector, drives a Mercedes."
At my clumsy bluff, a server bumped into me and I nearly fell. Wei steadied me in a single motion. The room hummed. One of the girls began to tease, and the chorus swelled.
"Is this your boyfriend?" someone whispered.
"Come on, are you two about to kiss?" another added.
My face reddened. I wanted to sink through the table. Wei looked at me like I had presented him with a paper star to sign. Then he did something that stopped everything.
He took my face in his hand, brushed my lips with his thumb, and kissed me ever so briefly at the corner of my mouth.
"That's extra," he said low enough for only me to hear.
The room emptied into murmurs, and my stomach floated. It was a trick—cheap and protective—but it made the table silence. Some students applauded; others gossiped. Hayes's face turned something raw and ugly.
On my way back to school, I found I had left money on Wei's phone. I had sent him 888—an offering, a bribe, and a shameful apology all at once—for reasons I couldn't fully explain. In the days that followed, he returned my messages with curt replies and the occasional smile.
"Don't expect favors," he told me once in the hallway.
"Why'd you come to the dinner?" I asked.
"For you," he said simply, which made it worse and better all at once.
He lived two lives. By day he was quiet and exacting—my teacher who annotated my worst sentences. By night, I learned that the man who drove the Mercedes and wore Armani to meetings was not as poor as I had assumed. I kept thinking he must be someone's son, paying the bill someone else wrote.
At a later student gathering, tensions reignited. Hayes and a brand-new girl, Sofia Matthews, started picking on me. Hayes sniped as if my happiness was his to rule.
"Is your boyfriend real? Or is he imaginary?" Hayes asked, his tone a blade.
I told a lie and then a half-truth: "We broke up. We just... don't fit."
"Are you sure?" Sofia asked, her smile thin.
It escalated. He provoked Wei, and Wei took it. Two grown men traded cheers and slammed drinks like swords. Then Hayes crossed a line. He lunged at me, hands going where they had no right.
"Get off!" I yelled, pushing him. He tightened his grip and laughed.
"You think you can humiliate me? Think again."
I can't persuade you how sick I felt—like my bones had been replaced with cheap glass. He smelled of alcohol and arrogance.
"Hayes, stop," someone called.
It was Wei. He had been drinking too, white-hot and steady. He shoved Hayes off, and Hayes spun and tried to strike him. They tangled under the cold lights and the watchful eyes of the restaurant staff.
"Let her go!" Wei snapped.
Hayes shoved him, then tried again toward me. That was when Wei stopped pretending he was a gentleman. He grabbed Hayes, pinned him down against the pavement outside the building, and held Hayes on the ground until the campus security arrived.
"Call the police," I heard someone say. "He tried to assault her."
People gathered. Phones came out. Voices rose in the thin winter air.
"Get off me!" Hayes screamed, struggling.
"It's on video," someone said. "We saw what you did."
"He touched me," I said to two officers who had arrived panting. "He tried to kiss me."
Hayes's expression changed. The swagger drained, replaced by an ugly surge of panic. His eyes darted toward the rings of recording phones, toward the faces that had been laughing moments ago.
I will not spare how that moment played out, because the story's truth belongs in the public details. The punishment he got was not the quiet justice of a court. It was a public unmasking in front of everyone who had ever watched him play the hero.
We were on the campus walk outside the dorms. The lights were sodium-bright. Students in jackets clustered along the paths. The campus security camera angled our way. The jolt of the crowd felt like electricity.
"She called the police," Hayes barked into the officer's face. "She's making things up."
"You assaulted her," another student snapped, already watching a friend's phone. "We saw you grab her."
A hand shoved Hayes's chest. He flared, eyes wild, and in that split second the crowd's mood shifted from gossip to condemnation.
"Enough," Wei said in a voice like a hand closing on a fist. "You want to prove something? Prove your courage by not touching her."
Hayes lunged again, and three students stepped forward and pinned him down. Phones circled and captured every angle. Someone shouted, "We have it all!" and another, "Upload it!"
Hayes's face went from anger to disbelief to fear. "No—no, you can't—" he stammered. "She's lying!"
"Stop screaming," the officer said. "You are under investigation for attempted assault."
The words hit Hayes like a physical blow. He looked to the crowd for rescue. There was none. Instead, whispers swelled into a chorus.
"That's the guy who always brags," one girl said. "He was such a player."
"Does he think he's untouchable?" another asked.
"Look at him," someone else giggled nervously. "He looks like he'll cry."
Hayes's mouth worked. He tried to smile, to shuck off the accusation, but the patchwork of videos already told a different story. His past allies, who had once followed his lead, edged away. Phones rang. Some people started recording his pleading. Faces that had once flattered him now recorded his fall.
He started to plead. "Please—I'm sorry—I'll apologize—"
"Apologize to who? To me?" I said, my voice brittle but steady. I stepped forward so everyone could hear. "You tried to make me kiss you. You forced yourself on me. Stop pretending you were some victim."
His eyes flicked to the videos on hundreds of small screens. They showed him grabbing at me. They showed me slapping him. They showed Wei yanking him off me. They showed his arrogance dissolving into panic.
The crowd's reaction changed. Faces hardened. Comments traveled faster than anything in my head. People who had laughed at his jokes now posted the clips with captions of their own. Texts buzzed through groups. By the time campus security led him to a patrol car, hashtags were already forming.
He was not arrested that night for a felony; the police made a note and took a statement. But the public punishment was merciless: his name attached to his deeds, his image replayed on dozens of phones, messages from friends turned cold. His confidence had been displayed and then cut into pieces in front of everyone—parents, classmates, club members, baristas, dorm RAs.
He went through a spectrum of reactions as the world watched.
At first, he tried to be defiant. "You can't do this to me!" he cried, eyes blazing. He spit words at those who recorded him.
Then a thin hope flared. "My friends, tell them it's a mistake," he begged a boy who had once drunk with him. But the boy's eyes slid away. The crowd did not rally. The recordings did.
Next came denial. "She wanted attention. She set me up," he blurted to any microphone in front of him.
"Prove it then," someone jeered, pushing a camera closer.
When proof was shown and a dozen witnesses corroborated the same sequence, denial crumpled into rage, and rage became hysteria. He lunged at someone trying to film, and that only increased the footage of him being restrained. Then the meltdown. He began to bargain, offering secrets and money, cursing names, trying to drag others into his collapse.
"Make them take it down!" he shouted to no one in particular. "I'll… I'll pay anyone to take it down!"
Phones simply kept rolling. Comments lit with disgust. Some students whispered that Hayes had been losing standing for weeks, that his charm had been used like currency and now it had an overdraft.
Then came the most devastating change—the people who once crowded around him stepped back and whispered. His ex-flame, who had laughed when he sneered at my clothes, said nothing. The new girl, Sofia, looked away, unwilling to share the camera's light. Teachers were asked about his behavior and loomed like a verdict.
Hayes went from being the hunter in the story to being the hunted. When the campus bulletin finally posted a short note about the incident, the reception was not the protective silence he'd expected. Instead, there were messages about consent and respect and community safety. No one defended him. He had become, in the eyes of many, the kind of man who used charm as a mask and hands as entitlement.
That night, I watched him carried off by security, breathing hard, cheeks wet with more than alcohol. Students who had once liked his jokes were the same ones uploading the clips. The footage spread and comment threads grew merciless. People called him names in captions. Some invited legal consequences by posting still images to the student forum.
That public collapse was a punishment in itself: the loss of audience, the loss of reputation built on small cruelness. He had always relied on people to shape his story. Now people shaped his story into a cautionary tale.
When the dust settled, the next days brought consequences: Hayes was suspended from some of his campus roles. Rumors said his scholarship application for a leadership seat was denied. The group texts that had once cheered him on were silent. He had to answer to more than his bruised pride—he had to answer to the record, to the videos, to the law.
As for me, the crowd's reaction changed as well. Where hemming and hawing had been, there was now sincere support. Friends brought thermoses of tea. Professors asked if I was all right. My phone buzzed with messages calling me brave. I did not feel brave. I felt raw and oddly light, as if something had been cut away that had never belonged to me.
We never wanted the humiliation he received. We wanted safety. The public unraveling that night was messy and imperfect, but it put the truth where it belonged—on open screens, in the view of enough people that his harried lies couldn't hold. He had reason to fear, and he now lived with that fear in plain sight.
After the police left, after statements were filed and texts were sent, Wei and I sat in a quiet corner and breathed.
"You were brilliant," I said, voice small.
"You were brave," he answered. "You should never have had to be."
"I owe you again," I said.
"You don't," he leaned close, thumb brushing my ear. "You already sent me 888."
I flushed and swatted his hand away. "That's not how debts work."
"It can be dog's breakfast and romance," he said, with a crooked smile.
The university did their slow, careful procedures. The people who had recorded the event uploaded footage with care for privacy. Hayes apologized to cameras sometimes, then retreated. The rumors chewed up his pride and left him standing hollow.
My life did not become a parade. There were DH (digital harassment) messages for a while and whispers at crowded tables. But an unusual thing happened too: people who had once mocked me reached out to help. That was a punishment Hayes could not take away.
Days later, when things had begun to settle, Wei and I stood under the dormitory lights.
"Why did you come?" I asked.
"Because you were right there," he said simply.
He tasted like winter and mint. He had the clean, careful hands of a man who knew how to hold himself in public and how to hold someone out of reach of other people's hands.
"Money?" he asked, and I laughed.
"No. I meant—why protect me like that?"
"You were mine that night," he said simply.
"You don't own people," I protested.
"No," he said. "But I don't like the idea of anyone touching you without asking."
After that night, everything moved forward in fits and starts. I tried to repay Wei in ways slightly more dignified than wiring him cash. He taught me English in the afternoons and graded my paper with a sternness that softened when I did well.
"You're improving," he said once, flicking a red pen.
"You owe me free tutoring," I retorted. "You charge too much."
"Payment in kind," he said. "And not all kinds accept money."
"Then what do you want?" I asked.
"A conversation," he answered, sitting across from me with his hands folded.
"A conversation? You're terrible at them," I said.
"So are you," he replied, and the room filled with laughter.
We kept fumbling at the lines between student and boyfriend, between teacher and protector, between the man who was an heir to a complicated family and the man who claimed to do everything on his own. His cousin, Aurora Dumont—a sharp, rich woman with a laugh like a shutter—occasionally appeared with a crisp suit and a softer smile. Aurora had the kind of high life that made us a little dizzy: dinners in private rooms, a calligraphed invitation, a polished kindness.
"He's sensible," Aurora told Svea one night over tea. "He does what he must."
I thought of the Peking duck on Svea's door, of Wei asking for my health code, of him insisting on rules in a world that otherwise felt like chaos. We leaned into each other, making silly bargains and private jokes, catching one another in the dark.
At the end of the semester, Wei surprised me.
"Do you remember the earring?" he asked, holding a small silver hoop.
"Of course," I said.
"Keep it," he said. "It was my excuse to meet you."
I told him not to be silly, and he kissed my forehead like someone who wants to claim something more tender than a contract.
There are things I still cannot explain—why I transferred 888 that first night, why I thought he sold access, why I so often thought the worst of people. But the funny thing is this: the health code that made him suspicious that night, the duck on Svea's table, the transfer I sent in panic, the Mercedes I rode in once—all of those small things became part of the map of us.
"Promise me something," I said one evening, as we sat on the dorm steps watching lights blur into a city map.
"What?" he asked, voice low.
"Don't ever let someone make me feel small again," I said.
He looked at me, then away, then back.
"I won't," he said.
I slipped his arm through mine. The world hummed around us: messages, gossip, the faint clack of shoes on pavement. When I thought of that night when he first asked to see my health code, the absurdity of it made me smile. The memory of a red light and a green screen had become part of a much larger story—one where respect and boundaries mattered more than rumor and performance.
And later, when I finally handed back the ear-ring I'd claimed as a joke and took up the small silver hoop he gave me, the two tiny circles felt less like jewelry and more like a contract written aloud between two people who decided to look after each other.
The End
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