Sweet Romance16 min read
Grapefruit Scent, White Dress, and the Fake Girlfriend
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I still remember the sharp, cold scent the summer air carried the first time I met him. It smelled like grapefruit—the kind my family teased me about when I was a baby—so people started calling me "Grapefruit." I am Annabelle Weiß, a freshman in the Advertising Department at Shenghua University, and this is the story of the winter I stood on a stage, got slammed by rumors, and then found myself pretending to be the girlfriend of the boy who had, without meaning to, become my whole small universe.
The day everything started, I walked up to a statue-like boy under the math department building and said what every silly, hopeful heart says once: "I like you."
"I don't remember you, sorry," he said.
He didn't raise his head. He sounded calm, polite, almost apologetic, as if rejecting me was the kindest thing he could do. Phones flashed around us. People laughed. My cheeks burned. I grabbed his sleeve suddenly, needing to breathe some life into my courage, and I blurted, "Senior, I'm from A City No.1 High too. We—"
"I have class. Please step aside, student," he said, looking at his phone. His voice was easy, but the cold in his eyes stung.
I stepped back and let go. In two years, the image of him—the boy from the summer who handed me a free drink and saved me from rude boys—slid past like a wind that never stopped. The campus crowd returned to their scrolling, to gossip that had run out of novelty.
Later, as the sky turned heavy and rain began, my roommate Ivy—sweet, loud Ivy Edwards—said what everyone tried to say: "Don't be so sad. Vincent Long is good with numbers, not girls."
"Thanks," I forced out, my voice small. "I must have misread everything."
I had not misread that summer. I had stood beneath the counter where he worked at the milk tea shop, had my payment fail, had him hand over a cup and say, "On me." I had gone back, again and again, because whoever that boy was, he had spoken with a voice that sounded like a song and had looked at me the second time as if apology itself were a bridge.
Two years later, I had worked and starved and run until I could fit the dream into my clothes. I lost weight for him. I pinned the memory of his clean smile into a corner of my chest and fed it loyally. I wrote "Shenghua University, Advertising" on my college application like a tiny prayer that might make him notice me again.
Then I saw him in the dining hall.
He was taller. He was the same cool presence. He saw me and the name I carried—Grapefruit—generated a pause in him, like a small bell. He didn't recognize me, but he remembered scent and certain small graces. The tiny, domestic crossroads of memory happened to him sometimes, and it sounded like my life depended on those little accidents.
"Do you have class?" he asked when I fainted over the long list of tables I was supposed to write.
"Yes," I lied and then told him the truth about the contest posters I had written. "I came to help the math competition promotion."
"You should go inside," he said. "Don't faint in the hallway."
A few days widened into a string of hours in the library aisles. He found me there one night, his hand cool on the stack of heavy math books I had tried and failed to read.
"Are you interested in math?" he teased.
"No," I admitted. "I put the word 'math' to make the poster exciting. I'm an advertising girl, really."
He read my draft as if he were tasting it. "This is good," he said. "It drew me."
"Really?" I whispered, heart pounding. "You liked it?"
"I liked it."
His thumbs hovered over the smartphone screen, and then he added me on WeChat. He said, "If you want to ask about math, ask me." His voice was something you could build a backbone around.
"I'll try not to bother you," I said.
"Don't worry about bothering me," he answered. "We're from the same hometown, after all. Call me if you have to."
He didn't look like a man who would be careless with words. He did not look like a man who would make my nights stretch thinner. He also said a thing people whispered about him in the corridor: "I have a problem with faces. I forget them."
"You're face-blind?" I asked. He shrugged, as if it were a minor challenge.
"Maybe. But I can remember voices. And smells."
That small confession felt like being entrusted with a secret. It made me strangely safe.
He is Vincent Long. He is the learning department head, he is the boy who carries stacks of papers and watches textbooks like pets. He is also easy and weirdly gentle.
Because he could not recall faces well, I had faith that frequent presence might make him remember me. "If he keeps bumping into me, he'll remember," Ivy told me as she helped me pin a nicer skirt and did my makeup in the dorm mirror. The truth is, Ivy cooked pep talks and defense moves.
"I'll just be myself and do my work," I told her. "If it happens, it happens."
And it did—sort of. On a damp evening in the auditorium, the math competition's opening ceremony was a mess. The original host—the confident sophomore Anastasia Giordano—was suddenly out; she had injured her stomach. Someone needed to fill the slot. Time was ticking. The show must go on.
"Annabelle," someone said. "You wrote the script. You could read it."
"I can't. I would be terrible," I stammered.
"Just read what's on the page," Vincent said, eyes calm and sincere. "Look at the mascot in the first row if you get afraid. I'll be sitting there."
I laughed at myself. "Who brings a toy plush to a math competition?"
"Not anyone," he said. "I do."
He meant it. He placed a small plush mascot with a mortarboard—the competition mascot—front and center in row one and told me to find it when I needed a point of focus. I think he knew I could do more than I thought.
"All right," I told him. "If you believe it, I will try."
When I walked on stage the first time, the auditorium felt huge. I forced my voice to steady. I fixed my eyes on the plush dog and read the words I had sown into the script. The words came alive, as if they belonged to me. I ended with, "Enjoy the contest; enjoy the fight for ideas. Let your small sparks be lanterns." People clapped. People smiled. Vincent's eyes met mine, and then he mouthed, "Good job." My knees felt light as clouds.
You would think that was the end of it. Normal life would slide gently on. But in college, nothing truly tidy happens.
A week later, a forum post exploded: "This year's freshman is a green-tea manipulator." The post stitched together three moments—my awkward refusal in a game, the white dress I wore when I filled in for Anastasia, and a photo at the victory banquet where I sat near Vincent. The post accused me of scheming, of playing at innocence to get close to Vincent, of pretending to be self-effacing in order to climb into position.
People believed it. Screenshots multiplied. Hushed whispers turned to pointed stares in hallways. Some classmates who had smiled at me avoided me suddenly. Gardeners across campus looked at me like I had once stolen their seeds. The comment threads were vicious. I did not sleep. My chest hurt with every new accusation.
I did not sleep because I also was terrified of what Vincent would think.
Ivy stormed out. "We're going to find the author," she said with the kind of conviction that smells like war paint. "We will tear them down."
"Don't make a scene," I whispered, but her feet already found thunder.
We marched to the lecture hall, and there, as if in a cruel comedy, we found Crystal Nicolas and Anastasia Giordano with school friends outside. Crystal laughed too loudly, and Anastasia's smile looked strained like someone who had forgotten a line.
"Crystal!" Ivy shouted. "You made that post!"
Crystal's face changed in a moment. She tried to toss the blame. "Who, me? No. I just shared a thread. People are crazy."
"You just shared it?" Ivy's voice broke through the crowd.
I felt my face flush. People gathered. Phones came out. I wanted to melt into the pavement.
Then Vincent stepped from the edges of the crowd like someone who had reached his limit. His face had that same calm firmness he always had, but his voice when he spoke was not gentle. It cut through the chatter.
"Everyone, stop," he said. "Let me make something clear. Annabelle is not what these posts say. She was not trying to take anything from anyone."
People turned. "Vincent?" Anastasia's tone changed.
"Anastasia," Vincent replied. "We are not in a relationship." His words felt small. "I don't date the person I work with just because they stand near me in competitions. I do not have a usual type."
Anastasia's face lost the warmth it had worn like armor. "What is this? Are you saying—"
"Yes," Vincent said. "I am saying that these accusations are false." He paused as a silence thickened around us. "And I think the person who started this knew exactly what they were doing."
Crystal's jaw went tight. Someone recorded. Someone streamed. People breathed fast. The crowd lengthened like a ripple.
"We have evidence," Vincent said. "Not only do these posts get facts wrong, but timestamps and IP traces show that certain posts originally came from an account tied repeatedly to Crystal's phone activity. She posted from campus, during class time. The screenshots and the sources are messy if you try to manufacture a smear."
"That's a lie," Crystal snapped. "You're lying."
Vincent stayed steady. "I've checked. We checked with the student affairs office. When rumors go around and hurt someone, we can find who started them. If the person who started it cannot account for their actions, we must trust what the data shows."
The crowd was restless. "Stop it! This is private!" Anastasia cried.
"No," Vincent said. "If someone spreads lies publicly, we have to correct the public record."
You know how people pause before a performance and feel nothing but the stage under their feet? That's what it felt like then. The crowd was not neutral: some watched like they'd been waiting for release; some whispered like vultures; some clapped once, uncertain. Crystal went from fierce to shrinking; Anastasia's face crumbled.
“What did you do?” I demanded before I could stop myself, my voice threaded with fear and something like accusation.
Crystal's eyes flashed. "She deserved it," she said. "She took my job."
I looked at Anastasia and wondered if she had arranged the small coup backstage when she said she was sick. Her hands trembled.
Vincent continued, "Anastasia handled pain and should have communicated. Should we make a circus? No. But the message is this: if you hurt someone with lies, you must answer."
The punishment that followed was not a private scolding. This was public and precise.
First, Crystal's original posts were pulled into the open by the student affairs IT team—timestamps, IP logs, screenshots, the works. The administration called for a campus meeting the next day in the main auditorium. It was scheduled for noon. Everyone who had been involved was called to sit on the stage. The dean asked Crystal and Anastasia to explain.
At noon, the lecture hall filled like a tide. Phones on stalks recorded every moment. The dean's voice was steady. "We have called this meeting to address the digital harm done to a student." She went on to describe how misinfo harms the campus body. She asked for truth.
Crystal's mouth quivered. "I... I reposted something." Her voice was small. "But I didn't make it up."
"Crystal," the dean said calmly, "our IT investigation found that the original rumor was compiled and released using photos from your phone album and comments you posted in private group chats. You then shared and amplified these statements in multiple forums with a caption inciting others to 'see the truth.' Your actions led to harassment. Do you understand the consequences?"
A hush deeper than midnight fell. Crystal looked out at the sea of faces: professors who had nodded at her in class, friends who had laughed with her in corridors, and the students who had called her brave only days before. She realized the scale of what she had done.
"What consequences?" she whispered.
"The student conduct board will review your case," the dean said. "But beyond formal discipline, there are immediate effects. You have encouraged a culture of online harassment. Today, you will stand and apologize in public. You will answer questions from those you harmed. The school will publish the findings on the official forum so the record is corrected."
Crystal swallowed. She had been confident in her echo chamber. Public pressure is a different beast. She stood slowly, and the microphone felt like the head of something hungry.
"I... I didn't mean—" she began.
"You will explain why you posted it, in your own words," the dean prompted.
Crystal's face went from defiance to denial to shaky rationalization. "Because I thought people knew the truth," she said. "Because I felt pushed out. Because she was taking things that should belong to other people."
People in the crowd reacted—some gasped, some murmured, some took pictures. "You thought you had right to tell lies about someone's life?" came an angry whisper from the back row.
Anastasia slumped. Her protest that day—claiming stomach pains—had been real. But her reaction to the rumor? She had misread motives; she had not done anything cruel herself, but she had not corrected Crystal either. She had comforted the audience but had not spoken up sooner. Her punishment was different.
The dean then turned to Anastasia. "Anastasia, you called a meeting to explain you were unwell and then returned to a performance perfectly well shortly after. There are questions about your handling of responsibility. You will step down from public hosting roles pending review and you will complete a mediation program with those affected. You will be required to attend the campus digital ethics workshop."
Anastasia's eyes widened like someone seeing a building fall. Her world, built from neat lines of achievements and approved reputations, trembled.
The dean looked back at Crystal. "Crystal, we will also require a public apology. You will remove your posts and make a public retraction on all channels. You will pair with the university's counseling team to learn the ethics of online speech. You will assist Annabelle in organizing an official public clarifying statement. The conduct board will decide further sanctions."
Crystal's reaction traveled across multiple stages of emotion. At first, she was surprised—"They can't do that," she mouthed, as if her belief in immunity had been a shield. Then she shifted into denial—she tried to blame others on stage. Then, when the evidence was presented and her peers' eyes filled with judgment, she crumpled. Her posture became small and fragile. She wanted to run. People took out phones. Some students approached to shout at her. For the first time, her edifice of social proof collapsed. She looked around for allies and found only thin nods and stiff shoulders.
When it was my turn to speak, I found my voice steady because Vincent's presence steadied me. "I never intended to be anything other than an honest person," I said. "I was hurt. I want to ask for civility."
The crowd did not erupt into cheers. But the record was corrected. The university published the investigative findings the next day: the posts originated from Crystal's device and had been embellished by private messages. The thread was labeled "disinformation," and the dean's public statement carried weight. Crystal's posts were deleted, and she was required to attend ethics training. She apologized to me, awkward and small, flanked by the dean's staff. Her apology, broadcast across campus and recorded for the official site, sounded raw and practiced all at once.
But public punishment is not a clean broom that clears all dust. Crystal left the stage with a different gait. Some people who once counted her as a friend gave hard stares and walked away, rethinking everything she had ever said. People who had never spoken to me now offered a hand, or a look of apology. Some were sincere; some wanted to claim they had always known the truth. The "punishment" spanned many small ways: a lost invitation to a research group, a canceled collaboration, whispered doubts that made meetings feel colder.
Anastasia faced a different decline. She had been, by many accounts, the school's image of gentle competence. Now the rumor had made her fragile. Her class club wanted her to step away from public roles. The boy who had taken photos with her started to avoid the faculty events. Her public admirer base thinned. She cried when she told me she was sorry in a small voice. "I didn't expect this," she said. "I didn't want to hurt you."
"It hurts," I answered honestly. "But don't let this define you forever. Be careful. And be honest."
Crystal's trajectory was the harshest. The alumni newsletter that featured her a month later was canceled. Her name stopped being on the list for party organization. She lost favor with the group that had once applauded her. She posted a long apology and showed up at the ethics workshop with a downcast face. People filmed her leaving the building. The sight of her being photographed and losing friends was very public. In the crowd, some people cheered justice. Others watched and felt uncomfortable at how much cruelty can lurk in accountability.
Vincent's punishment for some was to be revealed as the person who would take action for me. People who had assumed he would stay aloof saw him stand up and deliver the facts. That alone cost him some "popularity points" with the cliques who'd liked his calm distance. He accepted that. To me, he looked like a man who could balance fury and fairness. He also had to explain himself to people who expected a certain public persona. He did.
In the end, the public scene satisfied the readers of gossip but also made a lesson: rumor lives quickly, but truth, when marshaled carefully, can be louder.
After that day, campus life scrubbed itself raw and started again. I returned to meetings. I rewrote posters. I learned how to speak firmly and clearly. I also learned the dangerous joy of being noticed—how quickly attention can turn to heat.
Vincent stayed close in a carefully casual way. We kept up the fake relationship for awhile because it worked—vanquished the rumor and shielded him from other messes. "Just for a while," he said. "To stop the noise."
"Okay," I answered. It felt unreal. "We will be actors."
And yet that fake romancing was full of small true things.
We walked together through wind-blown afternoons. "You look cold," he'd say, and hand me his jacket. He never called me anything weirder than "Grapefruit" in private, because he'd learned the old, embarrassing story. Once, at night, he said, "Your scent is a thing that makes me remember." My chest stuttered. "I remember the summer more clearly when you're near."
We sat by the library window. I brought energy bars, scarves, and a thermos. He taught me math puzzle tricks. I wrote slogans. We fell into a rhythm like two pieces of music.
"I think it's easier for me to be your boyfriend in public than not," Vincent told me by the campus gate under the streetlamp.
"Me too," I said. I meant it. The fake filled a space in me that felt like healing.
Our faux status had side effects. People curated their perception of us. Some cheered us on loudly, some sniffed and said we were just a convenient story. But we found ways to love the thin moments of truth in between.
Then a day came when the drama looped and bent and shifted. At the big campus festival, all the departments displayed booths. The math team and advertising had a joint tent—they had to because of the competition. Anastasia came by, red-faced, and apologized again. Crystal tried to avoid sight. The crowd swelled. There was a moment when Vincent pulled me aside and said, "Will you come to the library with me after this? I want to show you a lecture."
"Yes," I said, because I wanted to be near him.
He squeezed my hand, just a small, human press. "Thank you for standing," he said. "You were stronger than you thought."
"People helped," I said. "You did too."
He smiled, and for a while, the sun felt warmer.
Days turned into projects, and projects into months. We kept the arrangement mostly quiet. We would walk together, study together, and sometimes slip into laughing fits under the library lamps. I sent him silly drafts; he sent me math riddles. The documents of our pretense became a soft net that caught us both.
Then one winter afternoon, as we walked from the gym, I remember thinking the world had become simpler and more honest than it had any right to. Snow was starting to fall. I could smell grapefruit cigarettes—no, not cigarettes—my own citrus perfume. Vincent placed his hand on the small of my back and guided me to the dorm steps.
"Will this be fake forever?" I asked because the worry pressed like a pebble in my mouth.
He looked at me with an attention I hadn't seen before. "I don't know," he said. "But I don't want you to be unhappy because of me."
"Me?" My voice cracked.
"Yes, you," he said. "You look good with messy hair."
We laughed. He is not a man prone to flowery words. That was why the small ones mattered so much.
One night I fainted again—this time from beating stress and exhaustion—and he carried me. We ended up in the hospital because the concussion check was necessary. The doctor wrote out a list of instructions. The night pulled in around us heavy and strange.
"No hotels," Vincent said at the receptionist's counter when staff suggested a temporary room. "We can get her home."
"Her dorm is locked? Are you sure?"
"It's okay," he said. "I'll wait."
I remember the taxi smell of leather seats and a hiss of cold air. When he insisted I rest, he looked so shatteringly like a guardian and so mortal at the same time. People who saw him carrying me ran with their phones out. Some later joked I'd got 'kidnapped' by the math minister. The jokes were small things. But to me it was a life-changing thing. He sat in the waiting room with my head on his lap like it was a book. He told me nothing, and yet everything.
Rumors sometimes make monsters out of real people. They also make heroes out of small things. The public humiliation of Crystal and the consequences that followed were harsh. They were humbling and educational. People whispered that we had won the narrative war, as if life gave medals to those who suffered less.
Time went on. The math competition had a trophy. Vincent's team won. I kept my seat in the Advertising Department. We walked to classes. I found a voice for myself on campus. I joined small events, gave talks, and learned the joy of being seen, not as a target but as a person.
One evening, months later, I sat at our old library window spot. The plush mascot still sat on the chair where Vincent had kept it for me. I picked it up. It had a small stitch at the seam now—an invisible mending.
"Do you remember the first day at the milk tea shop?" I asked as if testing a spell.
"Every detail," Vincent said, and his breath was near enough to warm my cheek. "You were brave then. You've only gotten braver."
I smiled. It is strange to go from being invisible to being the thing people talk about on the forums. It is stranger to be called someone's girlfriend and mean it. It is a miracle of small mercies that a rumor can be stopped, that a person can be seen in the right light. And it is a lesson in how public spectacle exposes the worst impulses in some and the best ones in others.
When the semester closed, we gathered for a quiet celebration. I wore nothing dramatic—just a simple dress—and Vincent winked at me from across the room. Someone took a photo. The plush mascot sat in the first row like a small judge of fate. The grapefruit scent lingered on my coat.
Sometimes I think about the moment of being on stage with the plush animal between me and the crowd and Vincent watching from the first row. That smell—the grapefruit scent—became something like a signal light. Whenever I feel small or ridiculous, I remember: the small, honest moments are the ones that make a story worth telling.
And even now, when someone asks me—someone who has only ever seen the internet version of me—if I regret anything, I say, "No." I do not regret the fear; I do not regret the conviction; I do not regret the nights I learned how to stand. Because whatever else happens, I still have the plush mascot and the memory of a boy who saved me from the hard crowd and then quietly helped me build a life.
We stopped pretending when the storm cooled. Vincent and I never announced anything spectacular; we simply stayed near each other in the small worn ways that counted. Once or twice, someone still muttered that the "fake girlfriend" had turned into something honest. I smiled. Maybe it did.
The grapefruit scent still hangs around me sometimes. The plush mascot is still on the first row in my mind, and when I walk past the entrance of the old milk tea shop, I breathe in as if to measure a before-and-after.
And every so often, on a cold night I find myself telling people, "Look at this small, stupid mascot," and I tell them the truth: "It reminded me to speak in the voice that belonged to me."
The End
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