Sweet Romance13 min read
Green Bean Cakes, Hospital Room 415, and the Very Loud Truth
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I still remember the first day I became a rumor.
"Leticia, your name is everywhere," Gabrielle grabbed my phone and shoved it at me.
"Why?" I asked, puzzled.
"Look." She swiped. "Someone posted: 'Who is the girl Elton delivered tea to today?'" She laughed and kept showing me more screenshots.
"I... that's me?" I said.
"Of course it's you! The whole confession wall is spamming." Gabrielle's eyes were bright, her grin wide.
"I didn't mean for any of this," I murmured.
"I know," Gabrielle said, tapping a comment. "Some people even made up stories — 'childhood sweethearts,' 'she followed him to university for love' — all of it."
"I only moved into this university because my brother insisted I would be safer here," I told her. "The rest is fantasy."
"You should reply," Gabrielle urged.
"I will." I typed, hands a little shaky. "I am Leticia Ferguson. Elton Herrmann only came because my brother, Antonio, asked him to check on me. He was helping. Please stop spreading rumors."
"Smart," Gabrielle said. "You handled that well."
A month before, I had confessed. I still remember the exact words. I remember the way my throat closed and the way Elton's face became a polite blur.
"Leticia, you're young," he had said. "You might confuse dependence with love."
It was the worst kind of refusal — not angry, not cruel, just careful. He made it sound like my feelings needed protecting from myself. I blocked him after that. I told myself he was a "past tense," but I didn't delete the memory.
On the second day of military training, my heart stung in a way that felt both physical and childish.
"Leticia!" Elton was suddenly there, kneeling in front of me. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," I lied.
"Don't lie to me." He pressed a hand gently to my forehead. "You looked pale."
"Just a little chest tightness," I said.
"You are not going to continue training." He pulled out forms, papers already filled in.
"You didn't even ask me," I said.
"I signed for you," he answered simply. "I did it because your brother asked me to help, and because I'm not going to watch you force yourself to collapse."
I wanted to be angry, but he had already turned and walked to the instructor.
"Is that... normal?" a girl in our group whispered later. "He just filed everything for her."
"I guess so," I said quietly.
From then on the rumor mill only accelerated. People assumed things that did not exist. At times I wanted to laugh; other times I wanted to shout. I kept one truth: Antonio was my brother, and he had asked Elton to bring me a tonic in a thermal flask — not milk tea, please — because he'd worry.
"Are you sure you don't want to reply differently?" Gabrielle asked that night.
"I'm sure," I said. "If Elton saw all that, he'd be annoyed."
"Then we leave it," she said. "But..."
"But what?" I asked.
"He's not the usual kind of guy."
Her meaning hung between us.
One afternoon during classes, the professor singled someone out. "Fifth row, green clothes, answer this."
My heart stopped. I sat exactly in the fifth row. I squeezed the pen until it hurt.
"Choose C," Elton mouthed, a tiny hand signal.
"Thank you," I answered aloud, voice thin.
He looked at me across the room like nothing had happened, and something in me loosened. There it was again: the smallness of his care that made my chest breathe.
Days passed in awkward warmth. He came for class. He brought snacks. He walked me back. The world around us spoke in whispers and likes and posted photos. I smiled when he held my hand when no one was looking. I scolded myself for the small joys.
Then photography club started. "We should both join," Gabrielle said. "It'll be fun."
We joined, and the club was louder than classroom whispers. At a welcome dinner, there were three tables. People played games and laughed. I ate quietly and watched.
"Leticia?" someone sat down beside me — not Elton — a boy named Mustafa Devine from a different department. He smiled too close.
"Hi," I said.
"Are you alone?" Mustafa asked, eyes that never seemed to blink properly.
Gabrielle moved away to play. I ate my food, trying to ignore him. Then, out of nowhere, Mustafa reached to wipe sauce from my mouth.
"Don't touch me," I snapped, jerking back.
He laughed, oily. "Relax."
"Gabrielle!" Kaylie Ayers, the vice president, called. "You okay?"
"I'll leave," I whispered.
At the restaurant door, Mustafa fell in step. "Hey, pretty," he said. "When you're free, we're always around."
I said nothing. He followed.
"Stop following me," I hissed.
He smiled. "Come on, let's have fun."
I tried to walk faster. He grabbed my arm.
"Leticia!" Gabrielle called, but she was a step behind. Mustafa's grip tightened. My heart hammered against my ribs like a caged bird.
"Leticia, don't move!" he warned, his voice low.
I kicked him as hard as I could. He doubled over, and in those seconds I ran. The bar smelled like spilled beer and cheap cologne. I fumbled my phone, fingers hitting the emergency call. My thumb pressed automatically.
I thought I saw another shadow come forward — and then Elton's voice like glass breaking: "Leticia!"
He moved with a quickness that undone every polite façade. He hit Mustafa with a single, hard shove that made him drop back.
"You leave her alone," Elton said.
"Why do you care?" Mustafa sneered.
"Because I don't like cowards," Elton answered, and his voice was a kind of cold I've never heard on him.
They tussled. Someone shouted. A barman grabbed a crate. In the chaos someone had recorded a clip and it went viral in minutes. People yelled. I clung to Elton.
"Don't worry," he whispered. "I won't let you go."
I fainted.
When I woke up, I was in hospital room 415. The fluorescent light hummed. Elton sat in a chair as if carved there.
"You're awake," he said when he saw me open my eyes.
"Oh my god," I croaked. "Did I...?"
"You scared me," Elton answered. "That's the truth."
He took my hand, thumb rubbing my knuckle. "You're very stubborn," he said, smiling.
"You're standing by me again," I said, tears never quite far.
He bent closer, checking my bandage. "Always," he said simply. "I came because your brother told me, but I stayed because I wanted to."
"You could be anything to anyone," I whispered.
"I want to be nothing to anyone but you," he said, and kissed me, soft at first, then with a hunger that made my eyes water.
I asked him the question I'd been keeping like a splinter.
"Do you like me?" I heard myself ask.
"Yes." He met my eyes. "I like you. I like you a lot."
"Then why..." I hesitated. "Why did you say I was young?"
"I was trying to be careful," he said, rubbing his thumb over my wrist. "I thought if you had time, you'd see all the choices and not bind yourself to me out of convenience. I was selfish in my silence because I didn't want to lose you."
"That's the worst and the best answer," I breathed.
From that day on we were together. The world had more photos, more whispers, more people taking our side. My brother Antonio called once in a panic over a photo that showed Elton kissing me outside the dorms.
"Leticia!" Antonio blew up the video call. "Are you keeping to my rules?"
"Antonio, he came to help me at the hospital," I said. "And he kissed me."
"He is a distraction!" Antonio scolded, then softened. "Okay, okay. But promise me — don't let anyone spend the night in your room."
"Antonio!" I groaned. "I am a legal adult."
When the post that exposed that little kiss reached the confession wall, I braced myself for gossip. Instead the post was a strange kindness; someone had written, "Their love makes everyone seconds better."
"Your brother's texting me non-stop," Elton grumbled.
"He has every right," I said, but I was smiling.
Then came the next storm. Kaede Case appeared on campus like a gust of frost. She was both polished and pointed. She sat across from me in the dining hall and said, with the kind of smile that cuts: "Leticia, I think you and Elton are not the same world."
"What?" I froze.
"You know my background," she continued. "I just want what's best for Elton. You know about heart disease, right? You really should consider if you're fair to him."
"I don't follow," I said. "Fair?"
"Have you thought about children?" Kaede asked softly. "Some people with heart conditions shouldn't risk pregnancy. Isn't that something you should think about?"
Panic bruised my chest. Kaede's words found a hollow I've always feared.
"Are you saying I'm a burden?" I whispered.
"I'm saying be realistic," she said. "For his sake."
That night I couldn't sleep. I looked up doctors and articles and tried to calm the pounding inside my ribs. I wanted proof and I wanted the truth: did Elton want me even if I could never give him children? I found an appointment. I went.
"Leticia, medically," Dr. Chen said, folding my report. "Your condition means pregnancy will be more difficult and risky. But it's not impossible. You can have children, though the chance is lower and you'd need careful planning."
I could not breathe. The news was both a window and a wall. I wanted to tell Elton, but I also wanted to hide. The idea of being a problem for him sat in my throat like a bitter pill.
That evening I told Elton everything. He listened in the way he listens when he wants to understand, his whole face still.
"Do you want children?" I asked him, voice small.
He smiled that soft Elton smile. "Do you want to be mine?"
"I want both," I admitted, then laughed and cried at once.
"Then we make our life," he said. "If it's hard, we'll make it through. If it's impossible, we'll still make our life."
We grew closer. He took over nights of worry like a coat he could carry. He learned my medication schedule. He walked me to class and he insisted on learning my favorite pastry: the green bean cake from South Street.
"You're obsessed with that cake," he teased one afternoon.
"It's comforting," I said.
"It's a ritual," he answered. "We'll keep doing rituals even on hard days."
He was right. He kept rituals, and I kept breathing.
But Kaede did not stop. She arranged casual meetings at the exchange event. She asked pointed questions. She slipped a photo to a private account — a crude angle of me with a club member, a flash frozen into something scandalous.
"Why would she do that?" I demanded.
"Because she thinks she can frighten you away," Elton said. "Because she thinks she can decide what's best."
The photos reached Elton before they reached me. He was furious. "Who sent you this?" he asked.
"It was a private post," he said. "A fake account."
He went to find the source. I wanted to stop him. I knew that walking into a confrontation had a price, but the truth is I wanted him to fight for me.
What came next was not just a private scolding. The university made a mistake — and then a right.
At a student forum on campus safety, Elton, with unexpected backing from the journalism club, pulled a thread until it unraveled. They traced the account to Kaede Case. A crowd gathered in the lecture hall because someone had whispered: "They're exposing the girl who spread the photos."
"Kaede!" someone called. "You here?"
Kaede sat with a composed mask. She had not expected a public forum. She expected private whispers and private damage; she did not expect every whisper to turn into a recorded accusation.
Elton held up his phone. "This is her account," he said loudly. "You can see the timestamp and the source. She and her friends edited photos and sent them to my account."
"You can't do this," Kaede said, voice thin. "It's just a joke."
"Is this a joke?" a hundred voices demanded. "Is your reputation more important than someone else's dignity?"
A student in the front row projected the chat logs on the big screen. There were messages and laughing emojis. There were lines where Kaede asked others to 'help ruin' a girl and to 'make it weird enough he'll be mad.' There was an audio file too, where someone described the scene to a friend as if it were sport.
"What do you have to say?" a moderator asked Kaede.
"I... I didn't think it would blow up," she stammered.
"It blew up because you lit a match," someone shouted.
"You ruined a girl's night because you were bored," another student said.
Kaede's smile faded. Her composure began to crack, the careful armor of a social climber proving thin under light. People took out cameras, not to gloat, but to record the testimony. Students who had once tried to be her friend shuffled, eyes wide at the realization of being party to a cruelty.
"Why did you do it?" Elton asked.
She opened her mouth. "Because I thought he'd notice me."
"For what?" a girl yelled. "For hurting someone who didn't deserve it?"
"I wanted him to... to choose me," Kaede said, voice small. "I'm sorry. I was jealous."
"You're sorry now," someone said. "What about sorry when she was drowning?"
"Apology is not always enough," the moderator said quietly. "The university has a code of conduct. We will review these actions."
They did more than that. The photography club revoked Kaede's volunteer privileges. Her scholarship committee called for a review. The club president stood to say: "We cannot have members who profit from humiliation. This is against everything we stand for."
The crowd had no mercy, and not because they wanted to break her, but because they had seen the harm and could no longer stand quiet. Kaede sat down. Tears came not from contrition but from sudden real fear. Her phone buzzed; there were messages from parents and mentors and old friends asking if it was true.
"It is," she murmured. "I was the one who did it."
"Kaede, you will meet with the conduct board," the moderator said. "And we will have witnesses. You have to answer for what you did."
She had imagined private whispers, but not a public reckoning. As she stood to leave, the hall was quiet except for the slow clicking of cameras. A girl in the back, who had once been a target of Kaede's gossip, stood up and said, "Good luck. I hope you learn what cruelty feels like when it's pointed at you."
People murmured. Some applauded softly. Kaede was escorted out, and as the doors closed she turned and looked back at me. For a moment our eyes locked.
"You broke me," I said to myself, because the scene was bigger than her. It was redemption.
That punishment lasted in different shapes. The official investigation found Kaede had orchestrated the posts. She lost a leadership position. Many who once wanted to be seen with her slipped away. Her social invitations fell away like leaves. Her father, who had always smiled at school functions, avoided the campus now. The humiliation was not a maligned spectacle; it was a dismantling: friends who had laughed were embarrassed to stay, mentors called to say they had been misled, and the circles Kaede had used evaporated.
For Kaede, the worst was not the formal punishment. It was the way people looked away when she tried to speak in a corridor. The message boards where she had once posted selfies now accepted her posts with silence. That silence was heavy. It is easy to be cruel when others applaud; harder to be cruel when they look away.
Her own reaction went through stages. At first denial. "It was only meant to be a prank," she insisted to anyone who would listen. Then anger: "You're all overreacting." Then shame: the voice that used to make jokes became thin, brittle. Finally, a small, private begging that no camera could capture. She begged for forgiveness in private messages I refused to accept. When she sought to rejoin any club, she found doors closed.
I watched her unravel not with glee but with a sobering sense of balance. People who were hurt had gained a voice, and that voice called for consequences. When punishment is public, it can be cruel; but when it's measured, it can be corrective.
As for Mustafa Devine, his punishment was louder in a different way.
The bar had CCTV. The police looked at the footage and, after interviews and a crowd giving statements, called him in. But the university too would not ignore a man who violated a student's safety. There was a "campus safety day" scheduled soon after — an event where the administration invited students to bring concerns.
Elton stood up during the open forum. "I want to speak," he said.
Everyone listened.
He played the video from the bar on the big screen.
There was Mustafa's hand grabbing me, there was the shove, and there was Elton's intervention. The footage was cleaner than memory, but each action was still raw.
"That man tried to assault my girlfriend," Elton said. "I want him banned from campus events. I want an apology. I want safety."
Mustafa, who had as yet offered only smirks and slurred denials in private, sat in the audience. He had never expected his behavior to be replayed in public.
He rose and, with the same attempt at swagger, said, "I didn't mean to—"
"Don't," someone shouted. "You've already had your day."
The dean announced immediate steps: a campus ban pending a hearing, mandatory counseling, and a restitution requirement. A student committee took the case, and Mustafa was called to answer. He tried to look defiant, but the cameras, the students, the faculty with their stern faces — all weighed on him.
"What do you have to say?" the dean asked.
"I... I'm sorry," Mustafa muttered. "I didn't mean to—"
"That's not enough," the dean said. "You attempted to harm a student."
Around the room, students murmured. A woman stood up holding a small sign: "No more." Another student recounted being followed once by Mustafa in a nightclub. He had been emboldened by a culture of jokes and tipping.
As the meeting progressed, Mustafa's reactions changed in a visible way. First defiance, then confusion, then denial. When video evidence and multiple eyewitness statements were presented, his face paled. He tried to laugh it off: "You all are overreacting." The laughter died. He tried to say it had been a misunderstanding; the room did not care.
Then came the moment that mattered. A girl he had harassed before stood and told her story. Her voice trembled. People looked around, anger replaced by empathy. Mustafa's shoulders sagged. He was not physically punished then, but he was stripped of the social cover he had worn. Students who once joked with him avoided him. Clubs rescinded invitations. The bar that had allowed his behavior was fined and ordered to improve security.
Mustafa's expression moved through stages that were grotesquely human. Pride, then denial, then a brittle attempt at blaming others, and finally panic. He pleaded for mercy in an awkward, rushed way: "I didn't mean it—I'll change—"
"Words are cheap," one student said. "Show us."
The public punishment had teeth: he was banned from campus, had to attend mandatory respectful behavior courses, and his name was on a list of those prevented from volunteering with student events. More importantly, the campus community had turned on him. Whispers followed him. Once-friendly faces avoided the corridor he walked.
The difference between Kaede's punishment and Mustafa's was the form: Kaede lost status and friends because of calculated cruelty; Mustafa lost social freedom and had to face the consequences of violent behavior. Both punishments were public, both had the stages: arrogance, shock, denial, collapse, and finally, the pleading. Both had witnesses: the students, the faculty, the club members. Both provided what we needed — a sense that actions had costs.
After the dust settled, Elton took my hand in public again. "You okay?" he asked.
"I am," I said. "I feel... safer."
"Good," he smiled. "Also, you will never go to a bar alone ever again."
"Promise?" I asked.
"Promise." He kissed my forehead like a benediction.
Our life was not drama-free. Antonio kept calling, Gabrielle kept teasing, and professors kept assigning work. But the rituals grew: green bean cake on a Friday, midnight study sessions, tiny notes left in pockets.
One rainy night, Elton said, "Leticia, will you marry me?"
"Yes," I said, smiling through a tear. "Yes, of course."
We married years later. We promised everything we could promise. I kept thinking of the doctor's words and the small, steady hope that had lived inside me for years.
"You're pregnant," Elton said one morning the way people say the weather — quietly, finally.
I laughed and sobbed and then laughed again. We called our son Lele when he finally arrived. He had Elton's serious eyes and my rounded cheeks. The hospital staff joked that we had chosen the loudest, most stubborn baby on record.
One afternoon, years later, Lele sat on my lap, smearing green bean cake all over the table.
"Mom," Elton chuckled. "Do you remember the first time you asked me to go get that cake?"
I looked at him. "Room 415," I said.
He nodded. "I remember."
Lele dropped a piece of cake and clapped.
"Green bean cake forever," Elton said, and kissed my temple.
I laughed. "And room 415 too."
We had a life stitched from small things: hospital rooms and green bean cakes, public reckonings and private apologies, the slow mending of scars. I kept a note in my wallet from Antonio: "Keep her safe," and a scribbled recipe for green bean cake in Elton's hand.
When I tuck Lele in at night and his little fingers curl around mine, I hear the faint echo of a crowded lecture hall, of a bar that changed me, of a dean's announcement, of Kaede's eyes falling. I do not say I am perfect. I say simply: "We grew this life together."
"Always?" Lele asks, in the short breath of a child.
"Green bean cake," Elton answers from the doorway, winking.
We all laugh.
The End
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