Sweet Romance16 min read
“Dress the Part, Keep the Secret”
ButterPicks14 views
"Cut! Cut! Cut!"
"I said—change the extra. That one's overacting."
I blink against the hot light and the fake smoke, sit up straighter in the hard cinema chair and force a smile that looks like a woman's, not the tired boy I had been all night.
"You. You, change seats," the AD shouts, pointing at me like I'm a bug.
I stand, my waist tight in the skirt, hair heavy with a wig that itched my scalp. I walk forward and pretend to be the kind of woman they want on screen: soft, available, a show of trouble and heat meant only to stir two lead actors in the back row.
"You're up," the assistant says.
"Thanks," I say. My voice is smaller than I expect.
He sits next to me. The man opposite—my scene partner—smiles like he's done this a hundred times. "Don't worry. Close your eyes and pretend I'm your boyfriend."
"Okay," I whisper.
"Three, two—"
He leans in, warm breath sliding over my face. My heart twists for a microsecond. I squeeze my hands. The director counts down, and the camera rolls.
We move like they taught us: borrow, hide, fake. His thumb finds my lip, but he kisses his own knuckle instead. "We use an angle," he murmurs, voice low and steady. "Camera ain't on the lips."
After we cut, I breathe. He helps me up. I try to say thank you, but he is already gone—just a ghost on the lot that slipped away before I could properly thank him. I gather my things and change behind a tent. I slip out of the wig and the dress, into my flat shirt and loose pants, and for a second, I like the way my short hair feels against my neck.
"Hey, you!" A woman with sharp blonde hair appears at the tent and I freeze.
I press myself against the wall and hope the woman moves on. She stands in the doorway, looking like trouble in a designer coat.
I'm lucky. The man I helped is somewhere else, and the blonde leaves. I slip out, only to realize my phone buzzes. One new message: a transfer. I tap it open.
1,000 becomes 10,000.
My mouth goes dry. "No way," I whisper.
I'd been promised a thousand for that extra job. Had I misheard? Did he mis-enter a zero? I thumb the name to add to contacts, but he's already out of range. I tell myself I'll repay him. I tell myself the honest thing. But the money sits in my account and I let it stay there because rent, medicine, groceries, and the other bills need miracles.
That night I go to my usual job at the small bar in the alley—"Guardhouse"—and joke with the bartenders. Leftover energy translates into bigger smiles. I tell my co-worker, Left, "If I saved half of what I earn, I'd be queen."
Left laughs. "You're a king, Kin. Own it."
My name is Katalina Griffin. Everyone else calls me Kin. I sleep in clothes sometimes. I run errands with a borrowed jacket. I go to castings with my chest sewn down and my chest hollowed out. Being a girl on screen is a job, and pretending to be a boy is survival.
Two days later, I get a call. "Meyer Group? Secretary position. Can you come for a test?"
"Meyer?" I say to myself. The name is an iron gate in this city, a building that bakes glass and glass that stares down. I agree. I take the bus downtown and stand under the glass sky for the first time in my life.
The lobby smells like new leather and expensive coffee. Men and women pass like polished props. I pat my pockets for the admission sheet left by an overzealous friend and find nothing.
"You have no resume?" the front desk girl asks.
"I do," I say. "It should be—"
She shrugs. "We can't let anyone in without HR. Sorry."
I start to turn away when a man with a neat badge intercepts me. He reads my face slowly. "Katalina? Follow me."
His name is Everett Delgado. He looks like someone who eyes the world like it's a math problem. He walks me to the interview room where a dozen people already wait. Most of them are polished. My white tee and baggy pants look like a costume of survival.
Tests start. "Business etiquette." I guess. I click the wrong answers like a scared kid and laugh when the computer slaps a big D on the screen.
"Typing test," they say. I plod through. "Memory test" shows me five plates and three spoons and expects me to remember. I fail and feel my cheeks burn.
"Final round," Everett announces. "Physical test."
A room with mats and a man in a black belt. I think, "No big deal. I taught taekwondo to kids for cash." I step in because what else can I do?
He calls names. He's tough. He picks the ones that look easy and tosses them aside. Then it's me.
"Come on, show me what you got," he says.
I move. I fall. I flip. That man—the teacher—gets knocked to the mat more than once. The room goes quiet. A few people clap. The black-belt man mutters, "Good. Really good."
I leave with ink on my fingers and a tomorrow that might not run.
Three days later a message pops up: "Start Monday. Secretary Group. Two-week trial." Pinprick breath of air. I pack my bag and take the bus like a soldier.
My first day is a series of small cuts. "Formality. Your image is the company's image," Dax Carver says without lifting his eyes.
"Look professional," Dax snaps. He is the Group Secretary leader—thin-faced, shark-smile, someone who names his enemies on paper and keeps them there.
"I'm Kin," I say. "Katalina. Nice to meet you."
Dax eyes me like I'm a misfile. "We don't have women here."
"What?" I blink.
"Regulations. Hands on experience," he says. "You fit because—" He smiles venom. "Because the chairman wants someone who can work late."
Something in that sentence slams into my ribs. The chairman. A giant in this city of glass and light: Jin Meyer.
That afternoon I meet the scion I did not expect: Flynn Cervantes. He's a mess of a man in a designer suit that looks used. He walks like he's balancing a secret and a cigarette, with half-smirk and half-bored eyes. He limps a little—there's a bandage under his hair at his temple.
"Late?" he asks when he sees me.
"Not this time," I answer. "I took every bus."
He looks at me like he recognizes a costumed thing. He might. We had shared a scene under the cinema's fake light. The world closes in on that thought for a second, then opens again. He tosses me a thermal box. "Food," he says. "You look like you haven't eaten."
"Thank you," I say. "I'm fine."
"You're not fine," he says. "Sit."
We end up sharing a quiet carton of noodles. He talks about trivial things—how directors are stupid, and how his father breathes fire when things go wrong. He calls the chairman "Dad," like it's another word for a small storm.
"Who do you want to work for?" Flynn asks suddenly.
"Who hires me," I say.
He grins. "Smart answer."
Days fold into each other. I type, I fetch, I copy, I fold paper and tape it clean. I stay late because if I'm busy I can't go home and count the holes in my savings. Dax nitpicks everything. "Image. Image. Image," he says like an incantation.
One night, after a long day and a longer bow, I tumble into the staff dorm. My phone lights up. A simple message: "Come to the rehearsal hall. Be ready."
I go.
Flynn shows up with a roll of sushi and two coffees. He breathes like a man who's used to sneaking. "You good?" he asks.
"I will be," I say. "After I pass this two weeks."
"You will," he promises.
He does not mean it for me. He means it for himself.
We slide into a rhythm. He buys me coffee when I'm dragging. I learn the office's calendar, the names of men who make decisions, and the temperature of smiles that mean nothing. I learn that Dax is hunting for a reason to fold me.
Then the first accident happens.
The release of the new product requires perfect choreography. A senior manager's speech, the press, the cameras. Dax misplaces the flow sheet. The meeting spins into quiet panic.
"Who printed the flow?" Dax snaps.
"I did," I say.
"No," he says. "You took the only working printer."
The Senior—Forbes Vasiliev, the eldest son with a laugh that can cut—looks up and scowls.
"Forbes, it's fine," Flynn mutters.
"Is it?" Forbes says. "This is incompetence."
I go to the copier because someone has to.
I print the folder, the pages stack, and then we walk the files to the conference room. The receptionist's eyes are tiny slits. A small error, Dax says, is a big crime. He tosses the stack like it's a misfiled life.
"I'll take responsibility," I tell him. "If I made an error, I'll fix it."
"You're on thin ice," Dax says. "Remember that."
He makes me write the handbook forty times. He watches me, his eyes tasting vindication. He smiles when he thinks he has shredded me.
Flynn is different. He slips a chocolate on my desk and says, "Don't let him make you small."
People will say it's the tight corridors of corporate life. People will say the office grinds you until you're raw.
There is a night the chairman shows up at a rehearsal, not a man but a machine of authority. He walks down into the warehouse where we're arranging lights and stands with the weight of the building on his shoulders. He watches me. For the first time I meet his eye.
"You're the one who refused the wine at the dinner?" he asks.
"Yes," I say.
He looks faintly amused. "Bold."
It's not bold. It's instinct. I didn't want to obey a stranger who leaned on my throat.
After that, my life tilts.
The chairman orders an odd thing: one of his sons needed a shadow, a private secretary. It would be trial by fire. The office carriers twitch. "This is a favor," Dax says like sting. "This is a sin."
Yet the chairman sends a message: "Give her a chance." He says it like a judge who has already decided.
Flynn is quiet for a week. He will be my boss when he needs to be; when he wants me to be someone else, I am.
Work is a mosaic. There is humiliation and there is kindness. I learn to bow to both, like you breathe to live. I fail tests. I succeed when it counts. The company tosses me among men who size me like knives.
Then a night happens where I drink too much at a client dinner because pressure crumples my edges. They need noise and spectacle and a single gate to open for a contract. The client says, "She must drink," and because my mind is soft and my voice smaller than the room, I comply. The chairman watches. His son watches. I hate what I become and then hate that I cannot refuse.
I wake up in the staff dorm with someone covering me with a coat. I smell like the night's mistake. I open my eyes onto Flynn's face close to mine.
"You're sick," he says, and his hand is on my hair, gentle as a question.
"Sorry," I whisper.
He looks at me like he's finding pieces of a map. "You always need saving?"
I don't answer. Instead, days later, curiosity eats at him in private. He pulls open a drawer and finds a tiny note I'd tucked under a pen holder: "Money is the candle that keeps the family warm—$5,000 rehab, $2,000 living, $9,000 debt." Everything in plain handwriting about my life balanced like a shopping list.
He closes the drawer and for a while does nothing.
At the launch rehearsal, Dax—like a man who sharpens knives in daylight—gets his chance. He calls me a liability in front of the team and then tries something I did not expect: he scans my file, finds the "male" marked on my ID, and whispers loud enough for a few to hear, "This one—male—how did she get through?"
I feel it: the coldness of being exposed, not for lying, but because being outed in a room full of people is a kind of death. I look at Flynn. Flynn stands, a small wall.
"You're crossing a line," he says to Dax. "She does the work."
Dax sneers and tries to push back. He gathers people. "She's here because of the chairman," he says. "Favor hires mean one thing."
Forbes leans in. He has the look of a predator with the wrong script. "We can't have this."
The room hums. Snap decisions fly.
I want to run.
Instead I speak, because acting taught me to be loud. "You can fire me tomorrow. But you're not allowed to strip me of who I am in a room of strangers."
It's his fault I can't control my face. He laughs as if the joke is on everyone else. "You can't be a secretary if your ID is wrong."
I twist. I reach into my jacket and pull out my old passport, the one that says Katalina. I throw it on the table. "This is me. I applied. I was honest about everything but the costume. Are you going to fire the waiter who made me serve drinks? Are you going to fire the people you hired with a smile?"
The room goes quiet. Dax looks humiliated. He had planned to humiliate me, not be called out.
My voice stays steady. "I cleaned my mother's place of vomit last week. I carried someone else's trash so he could keep his shoes clean. I took jobs you would not touch. If that makes me unfit then you can call it what you like. But if you first humiliate a person in front of everyone—if you try to make them small—then the company is not a family. It's a machine."
Forbes pushes his chair back, irritated. Dax calls for order.
Flynn steps forward. He is small but his feet are planted. "She works," he says. "She saved my script last week when you forgot it. She hadn't slept for two days and still came. She's more committed than half this room."
Forbes scoffs. But in his eyes, I see a ripple—uncertainty. The chairman is nowhere but his influence is a low echo. Dax, humiliated, whispers, "I can dig."
He does. He scans files, searches for hidden things. For a week he pours through my life, trying to find a reason to throw me out. He pries and tries to make any small misstep feel like rope.
I try to hide my fear. I sign, I fetch, I photocopy, I escort. But Dax waits.
Then I find evidence. An email thread—Dax forwarded an expense to a vendor's friend. Receipts with maker's name. A shadow of bribe. A name that shouldn't be there. I paste the files on my desk and pretend to be humble. People think I'm a fool; no one thinks I'm cunning.
A week later, the release day arrives. The hall is full of cameras, of lights like fireflies in trained lines. The room smells of polished wood and fear. Dax tries to push me into a corner, but I sign for the flowers and the press kits. He tries harder.
When it is the right moment, I step up. I walk to the place where Dax usually pronounces verdicts. I call for the stage manager.
"Everyone watch the screen," I say. "This is public."
The big screen lights up. A file load. Dax's name appears with the vendors and the transfers. The emails play like a chorus. People click. Questions rise.
Dax's face goes pale. He tries to laugh it off. "This is—"
"—a breach," I say. "You tried to hide payments for personal vendors inside the company budget."
He stammers, his practiced veneer cracking. People gather phones. The chairman, Jin Meyer, stands with arms folded and watches. Not much moves with him like a mountain moves.
"Is this true?" he asks, and his voice, from the back of the room, is an ax.
Dax cries out protest and calls it theft. He pleads that it's a misunderstanding. He stomps up and down like a dog trying to command the room. The cameras find his face and feed it live. His colleagues who once stood near him hold their breath and then turn away.
"I never—" Dax says. He looks as if someone pulled a curtain off his chest and all the dirt spilled. He begs. "You don't understand, I had to—"
People begin to record. A man in finance taps the table and says, "We will audit."
He begs for leniency. He asks for forgiveness. The investors who watch the livestream feel their stomachs drop. Dax's partner in the vendor chain sends a blurred text; lawyers call. The next morning his name is a headline: "Secretary fined? Possible corruption at Meyer."
The chairman decides fast. "You will step down," he says. "Do not come to the office again."
Dax is escorted out. People film him leaving. Some clap quietly as the elevator doors close on him. He cries and screams names; everyone films, everything recorded. He loses his job, his reputation collapses. A supplier who relied on him pulls out his account. His old friends remove him from their contacts. People he thought loyal turn their faces. The crowd's applause is not of joy, but of the kind of satisfaction that comes when a predator is taken down.
I feel the rush of it, the bitter flavor of victory. I do not dance. Instead, I go home, to the small flat with curtains that never fully block the city. My mother is there. I set the wooden comb back on the dresser, the one she loved for years that had been accidentally snapped. I had lied and said her room was tidy when it was not. I had yelled and apologized by accident. I had found the comb, fixed it with glue, and left it because in the days we have, small gestures mean everything.
Flynn shows up at my door that night with a notebook and a bag of instant coffee. "They asked me to be part of the press set-up," he says.
"Why would you do that?" I ask.
He sits across from me like he's deciding whether to tell me something risky. "Because you had to fight the right way. Because somebody needed to stand up and stop someone who made the rules mean."
I pour coffee. My hands are steady. The fight was ugly. The company is messy. But Dax is gone.
Then comes the thing that makes my stomach drop differently: people from the company start to treat me politely. They reserve chairs for me in the meeting room. The chairman walks past my desk and nods, a small motion like a stone thrown into a pond. Not a big wave, but something.
Flynn's gaze on me grows complicated. Sometimes he is sharp and short—like glass that could cut. Other times he is quiet and present, like an armchair. One night he stops me in the hallway.
"You act as a good liar," he says.
"What?" I laugh.
"When we kissed in the cinema," he says, "I thought you were playing the part. You were very convincing."
"I was playing the part," I say. "That is what I do."
He lifts his chin. "Will you still play it for me if I ask?"
I turn away and say nothing. The hallway hums.
One week later the truth spills like rain. A tabloid gets wind of Dax's fall and backtracks to look for a story. They find my history in a mix of clickbait and sympathy. They write, "Secret Secretary: The Company Who Hired a Cross-Dresser." Phones light up. I brace for people, for the old horror of being made small.
Flynn stands with me as people come with questions. He turns to me and says, "You don't owe anyone an explanation except yourself."
But the world is not that simple.
I get pulled into HR. The CEO—Forbes—looks like the world has been heavier on him. "You're a risk," he says. "Your safety is a risk to the brand."
"Or their insecurity," I reply.
He smiles like a man who is far from maternal. "You have to understand the optics."
"Optics?" I say. "Are we making stove tops or people's lives?"
He is quiet. "Policies differ," he says finally. "But a rule is a rule."
Flynn grabs the chair and leans in. "With all due respect," he says, "this one is not about optics. This is about the work she does. She kept the show on the road."
Forbes looks at Flynn for a long time. He seems to weigh two small things in his palm—some speculation and a possible benefit.
Finally, Jin Meyer, the chairman, speaks. He is rarely seen. When he does, the room listens. "We will keep her," he says. "She proved herself when she had to. That is the kind of person we need. And if any of you have an issue with that, bring it to me."
The room folds like a book. Some staff applaud lightly. My throat is dry.
After that, things change.
Dax is gone and so are most of his small-minded rules. Some people still stare. But more people nod hello. The chairman gives me a new badge that says "Assistant to Flynn Cervantes." Flynn calls it "the title no one understands," and he is right. But the badge means a salary that keeps the fridge full, a chance to be seen by ones who decide things.
Flynn and I move closer. I realize he is not the boy I thought. There are thin slices of his life that he keeps to himself—old radio shows he listens to alone, a journal of ideas he never says. He is not cruel by design, only by defense. When the cameras are on he is a shade, when they are off his laugh is a thing that fills small rooms.
One evening, as we walk past the pattern of lights that outline the Meyer building, Flynn stops. He looks at me and says, "Did you ever want to stop pretending?"
"I pretend all the time," I say. "Smiles. I perform to pay bills. I am tired."
He takes my hand—not loudly, not like some grand gesture but as someone who crosses a threshold and wants the other person to step over with him. "Do you want to stop with me?"
My body contracts and then opens. It's terrifying and, for the first time in a long time, it feels like a choice rather than a trap.
"I don't want to give up my edge," I say. "Acting is part of me."
"Then don't," he says. "Be who you are in your own way. I'm not asking you to change."
We keep our secret from most. I am Katalina Griffin on paper, Kin to friends. I keep my short hair and my second-hand shirts and my limp faith in a world that forgets to be kind. Flynn stands at my side when the glare gets too hot. He sends instant coffee and has a talent for knowing which things will make me laugh.
Weeks fold into months. The company rolls out the new product with a clean slate. The press almost forgives the hiccup; Dax's scandal becomes another story in a pile. My life steadies.
Then the big reveal happens—one I did not plan, but it fits like a glove.
At the annual charity gala, when the chandelier in the hotel ballroom is a sun and the room smells like the sea of perfume, someone recognizes me from the cinema extra days. A beat reporter pulls at a thread. I feel the thread. It will unravel in front of hundred lenses and seven hundred people sipping drinks.
They ask me in the middle of the gala, "Are you the one who acted that scene the other night?"
I look at Flynn. He gives me a slight nod. I step forward. Lights glare.
"Yes," I say. "I am the one."
A thousand phones point. A thousand people ask me for a version of myself that fits into their neat categories. It is exhausting and electric. I decide to be honest.
"I grew up acting," I say. "I did extra work, cross-dressed for roles when we couldn't afford a wig or a dress. I did it to eat. I did it to keep a roof. I'm here now because I work, not because I fit a label."
Someone in the crowd coughs. Applause begins—not wild, but steady, honest like people who recognize a simple truth.
Then Dax—now a broken man trying to claim moral high ground in the press—arrives with a camera crew to accuse me publicly. He steps on stage and cries that I am a fraud, that the company is collapsing under this lie.
"For trying to hide who I am?" I ask. The microphone picks me up.
"Yes," Dax spits. "It's deception."
"Then call a meeting for the rest of your life," I say. "I'm not hiding. I'm living." I reach for the wooden comb in my pocket—the one my mother loved. I brush my short hair with it, the motion childish and calm.
Flynn steps forward and says, "You can play your games, Dax. Or you can face the fact that you were wrong."
The chairman, in a suit like midnight, steps up. "Dax, you know the rules," he says. "You used your position for selfish gain. You are no longer with us."
Dax collapses into a heap of pleading words. People point. Cameras catch his knuckles white. The social media hounds do their work. He is gone like a bad stain.
I walk out into the cool night. Flynn is there. He takes my hand in front of the building of glass and says, "You were brilliant tonight."
"You just like the theater," I say.
He pulls me close. "No. I like that you're brave."
We do not move forward like people in novels. There are no grand declarations the way the movies want. There are slow mornings with coffee, and there are small crimes of kindness. There are nights in the dorm where he hums while I read, and there are mornings we steal croissants and share them on rooftop terraces.
I never give up my acting. I volunteer at a community theater and teach kids who look like me to be loud, to keep their hands callused and clean.
One day, months after Dax's fall, I walk into my mother's small room with a tiny wrapped present. "This is for you," I tell her.
She opens the wrapper. Inside is the wooden comb, fixed and polished. "Where did you get this?" she asks. Her eyes are old but kind.
"I never left it," I say. "I kept it."
She runs the comb through her hair and smiles for the first time in years. "You're kind, Kin."
"I try," I say.
Flynn stands in the doorway, hands in his pockets. He looks at my mother and nods.
"I think," he says to me quietly, "you belong here."
"Where is that?" I ask.
"Where you choose," he says.
I take his hand. It's warm and steady. It feels like a thing you can rely on.
Later, that night, when the city is quiet, I go to my desk and look at the little sticky note I keep on the corner: "Money is the candle." I smile. The debts are smaller. The bills are paid. My mother laughs more.
I didn't become someone else. I became someone braver.
"Do you ever regret it?" Flynn asks as we stand on the roof and the skyline is a row of little fireflies.
"Sometimes," I say. "But not the important things."
He laughs. "Good answer."
We look at the comb on the dresser, the badge on my desk, the tiny things that make up a life. In the end, I keep acting. I keep pretending when it's necessary. But the best part is that now I choose what to pretend for and what to be.
I lay down on the roof bench and say, "One day I'm going to open a small theater. For people like us."
He squeezes my hand. "I'll be your first ticket buyer."
I close my eyes and let the light of the city wash over me. The comb rests on my mother's dresser like a small trophy. The company is still loud, and people still judge. But I'm here. I have a name, a job, a person who cares for me, and a comb that fixed the memory of a little girl who loved a simple thing.
The rest is the kind of life you build one honest scene at a time.
The End
— Thank you for reading —