Sweet Romance13 min read
He Called Me "My Wife" — So I Took His Phone
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"Get up, Kiana."
I almost tripped off the speaker's platform.
I was six feet from falling and one second from dying of embarrassment. I smoothed my skirt with shaking hands and forced my voice to be steady.
"Good morning, I mean—" I cleared my throat. "Good morning, everyone."
The sun made the school tiles hot. The LED board in the courtyard said "Opening Ceremony" in big red letters. I wrapped my notes into a tight cylinder and tried to breathe like a normal person.
"You're the top student," a girl behind me whispered.
"Shut up," I hissed back without looking.
After the speech, students broke into groups and moved into the building. Pilar tugged my sleeve like a kid with an energy drink.
"You did great," she said, hugging me. Pilar Jaeger has always believed in fanfare.
I told her I had homework to do and tried to go.
"Wait." Pilar stopped me and pointed. "Someone's in the office. Your rescue mission."
I froze without meaning to. The memory of the last three days came back like a loud ringtone.
Three days ago I had been squatting in the school garden tying up tomato vines for the horticulture club. I didn't want to be there. Pilar had dragged me because she said I needed fresh air.
A pack of boys cut through the jasmine bushes like they owned the school. The leader wore a black jacket with a white skull on the chest. He smelled faintly of smoke and he moved like he didn't care.
He looked over and his eyes slid right past me.
Then I tripped on a root and fell forward, right into his chest.
He grunted and wrapped an arm around my waist before he could think.
"Whoa, look at you," someone laughed. "Lance, lucky day."
I tried to get up. I said, "Let go."
He tilted his head, chin on my hair. "You fell into my arms," he said. "You were trying to seduce me."
I slapped his arm. He didn't look angry. He just smiled like a cat.
"She fell into my arms," he told the principal with an easy smile that made the office even quieter.
Later, in the hall, he followed me. "What’s your name?" he asked.
"Kiana Cole," I said too fast.
"I’m Lance Fontana."
He leaned down and announced, in the voice of someone making a radio ad, "I'm Lance Fontana — Lance who stands on cliffs and stays cold."
I did not laugh out loud then. I wanted to. I wanted to do a lot of things that would have been awkward.
After the office scene I thought I would never see him again. He was the school troublemaker. He was the kind of boy the principal called in every week. He had a famous temper and a sharper reputation.
Two days later, the rumor spread that Lance had been in a big fight at the mall and someone had a knife. I tried not to care. I failed.
My classmate Duncan Stewart and a few boys made a joke that Lance needed a hero. They nudged each other and laughed. I stayed quiet.
That afternoon my friend Pilar came over to my desk and said, "He wants you to wait outside after evening self-study. He said he'll walk you home."
"No."
"Why not?" Pilar widened her eyes. "Maybe it's romantic. Maybe he's into you."
"He's not 'into me,'" I said. "He's just noisy."
Pilar rolled her eyes. "Or he wants drama."
I left for class. At lunch I stood in line and a boy from his group, Zachary Nilsson, texted me from across the room: Is she in your class?
I felt a small prickle of something I did not name.
That afternoon, after a long string of warnings about my "too calm" face during tests, I finished and walked toward the exit. Lance was there. He stepped out of the crowd like someone who controlled the air.
He didn't say hello. He reached over and took my backpack strap.
"Give it back," I said.
He held it steady. "Boyfriends carry backpacks for their girlfriends."
"We are not—"
"Then stop denying me," he said and winked.
I yanked. He pretended to be reluctant. He said, "You're my girlfriend."
I twisted his wrist. He winced and then smiled like he'd planned it all along.
That night my phone vibrated. A new friend request. Lance. The message underneath read: add me yet?
I waited before replying. I told myself I would not be drawn in.
"Add him," Pilar said when she saw the screen. "He's trouble."
He texted again. "You see me at the mall tonight?"
"No."
Lance is like a storm. He comes in loud and leaves marks.
I did not expect that he would pay to transfer to my class. He did. One morning he showed up and sat behind me. The boys around us fell silent like the sea freezing.
"Move," the teacher said. "Lance, sit at the back."
He pretended to obey, and then he took my seat.
"Hey," I told him. "There is someone there."
"Not anymore," he said. "I'm here now."
He called me "my wife" out loud once, to a roomful of boys who laughed and pretended not to be jealous.
"Stop it," I said.
He bumped my knee under the desk. "Do you have plans this weekend? Want to come out?"
"No."
He leaned closer and put his hand on the back of my chair. "Come watch me play basketball."
"I don't like basketball," I lied.
"You will watch me," he said softly, like it was a suggestion and also a rule.
I went because I had said I would. Pilar had talked too loudly about it and I had said yes to stop her.
He played like wild fire. He scored a three that made the crowd shout. He looked like someone made of motion.
After the game he tossed the black jacket he'd been wearing to me. "Hold this," he said. "Don't get cold."
Later, on the second-floor landing, he pinned me to the wall like a boy in a movie.
"You didn't shout when I scored," he said, close enough that his breath warmed my cheek. "You promised."
"I said sorry," I stammered.
"Only a little," he said. "So for that, you owe me a punishment."
"Like what?"
He smiled the smile that says he has dangerous ideas. "A kiss."
I grabbed for my phone to call the principal and almost dropped it. "I'll scream," I said.
"You won't." His hand cupped the back of my head until he let me go. "You always sound cute when you're mad."
I ran. I could not help it.
Every day after that he found small rules and broke them. He put candy on my desk like a bribe. He sent me one small wrapped lollipop and called it an apology after the exam where he kept kicking my chair.
When he started to change—when he brought me sugar, when he sat at my desk to play dumb and listen—I thought maybe I had been wrong about him. Maybe he had a softer part inside.
One night, in a mall brawl that halved a shop window and broke a jaw, he came away with a scratched cheek and an angry police escort. He had been accused of starting the fight. He had been accused of carrying a weapon.
The school's head of discipline—Mr. George Castillo—called him in. He looked tired like a man who keeps cleaning up the same mess.
"Who did this?" Mr. Castillo asked Lance.
"It wasn't me," Lance said.
I sat outside the office and watched. Someone in the hallway hissed that Lance was trouble. I left my lunch and went in.
"I want to say something." I walked in and my voice shook. "Lance did not cheat. He didn't start that fight. He didn't carry the paper. I was in that test hall. I saw—"
Mr. Castillo looked at me like I had walked into the wrong movie and then like I had just given him the script.
"All right," he said after I told the truth. "I will check the footage again."
Later, when Lance came out, he smiled at me like a kid who had just been rescued.
"Beautiful rescue," he said and grabbed my hand and pulled me sideways like we were a secret.
"You called this a rescue?"
"Yeah," he said. "You stood up in a place where everyone would have been quiet. That is noble. That is hero stuff."
"Stop being cute," I told him, though I liked the way "hero" sounded.
He did not stop. He called me names that only he could use. He called me "my wife" again once and then, one afternoon, he slid a small wrapped lollipop onto my desk and said, "Sugar for the hero."
I did not take it. He took the lollipop back and opened it and put it in my palm himself.
"Okay," I said. "You win."
He touched the ribbon of the small rabbit keychain on my bag like it was a talisman.
Weeks moved like seasons. He came when I had tests. He messaged me late about words I said were confusing. He asked for help like a kid with a math book and then he tried again on his own and smiled like the sun came.
One cold morning outside the gate it started to snow. I borrowed a big red umbrella from the corner shop. The umbrella snapped on a gust and I was soaked.
Lance just walked by with a black umbrella and a bored look. He stopped, took my broken one, tried to fix it, swore quietly, then shoved his umbrella over my head and walked me to school, arguing about who owed who.
"Return it to the shop," I said.
"No," he complained. "You owe me more than that."
I said no, and he said he did not care. He called me "little bad egg" and "little silly." He called me both carefully and without apology.
He walked with me to buy a new one and refused to let me pay. "I bought one," he said, handing me a transparent folding umbrella with a little rabbit printed on it.
"Fine," I said, because I did not like arguing and I did not want to be the girl who refused everyone.
"Now you owe me more than sugar," he said as if it were a private law.
At school his cousin Zachary and my classmates teased him and made faces over how soft he had become.
"You're like a puppy with a bone," Zachary said.
"Stop, Zac," Lance muttered but he kept his eyes on me when he could.
He told me something one night as the cold moved into his voice.
"People think I am a mess," he said. "My father ran away when I was young. My mother left one day too. I changed my name because she told me to stop living in the old life. I don't like to talk about it. But when I see you, everything is easier."
I did not know what to say. I thought of all the time he had been mean and all the times he had been soft. I nodded.
"Friend," I said finally. "We are friends. You can tell me if you want."
He smiled like the sun had a voice. "I like you," he said, not grandly but real. "I like you a lot."
It should have been the end of everything, the straight line between two people who say the word and prepare for everything that comes next. But life kept polishing small complications.
There was a rumor—Sancho Moller, the boy he had fought, was a troublemaker. He and his friends staged a setup that made it look like Lance had thrown a paper with answers. The school wanted to mark him zero on a test and call the parents in.
I knew the truth because I had been in the next room. I went to Mr. Castillo and I told everything calmly. I told him who threw, who reacted, who didn't open the paper and who threw it back.
"It takes courage to do that," Mr. Castillo said when he watched the footage again. "Good job."
Lance hugged me on the spot like a man who had found shelter.
"You saved me," he said, voice small.
"I did not save you," I countered, "I told the truth."
"So it's the same thing," he insisted.
In return, he tried to do everything right. He started to study in bursts. He had a late-night habit of calling me to ask whether a word meant "pre" or "re." He called and asked what 'preview' meant and what 'review' meant. I told him with the patience of someone trying to memorize other people's hearts.
"You said you'd be mine if you aced the midterm," he said one night over the phone. "So don't let me down."
"Stop making promises," I said. "You just be you."
But he kept promises in his own way. He took my small hand in the hallway and said, "If I do well, will you be my girlfriend?"
"No," I said.
"Why not?"
"Because it is not fitting."
He gave me a list of reasons that made me laugh.
"I already have the first reason," he said. "I am a male. Second, I'm handsome. Third, I might be annoying. Fourth, I will try to be a better student."
I laughed; he leaned his head on my shoulder and pretended to be hurt.
"You are impossible."
"I am choosing you," he answered one afternoon when the classroom was too loud and the teacher said to keep quiet. He had a quiet smile like someone making a small decision. He was not loud. He said it like a fact.
A lot of small things happened after that. He lost his phone. He asked whose birthday I kept secret. He had found out because he'd seen the physical forms in the teacher's office. He teased me that he might find my birthday and then use it to unlock his phone.
One icy night a senior girl from the upper year found me and shoved a black phone at me. "Is this yours?" she said. "I think it's his."
"I don't know," I said.
It was his phone. The lock screen was my photograph—an angle I didn't know he had taken: me bent over my book, hair loose, light catching the tip of my nose.
My heart did a small painful jump. I had never expected him to have that picture. I still did not know when he'd taken it. I opened my own phone's recent call log and dialed the school office.
"Is Lance there?" I asked.
"He's asleep, I'll go," Zachary said. He sounded small and amused.
"Tell him thanks," I said. "Tell him I'm holding his phone."
There was a pause. Then Lance said: "You have my phone?"
"Yes."
"You're a thief," he said in the sleepy voice.
"You are rude."
But then he called back and we spoke in a series of small conversations: "What's the difference between preview and review?" "Preview is to see before. Review is to see again." "Right." "Study, Lance."
He told me his mother had a lead—someone from a town called South River had called his aunt. He was trying to decide whether to go and see. I told him to go.
"You'll come with me?" he asked.
"No," I said. "I can't. My parents—"
"Then tell me you will be safe," he said.
"Promise," I lied softly.
The midterm came and we both sat in a hall that felt like something we had to survive. On the second day I tripped on the edge of a desk and half fell. He caught me, and we ended up close enough that my breath caught like a small thing burning.
"You smell like sugar," he said. "You are like candy."
"If you don't let go I will scream," I told him.
He laughed. "I was only going to hold you."
After the exams the results hung for the next day and students crowded the board. I wanted to see everyone's faces when the list came down.
Lance came by and stood next to me. He squeezed my shoulder and said, "You are still the top, right?"
"Yes," I said. "Still first."
"You still look the same," he said.
"Stop saying things," I told him.
He watched me until I walked away and then, for the first time, he took out a thin silver chain I did not expect. He put the small rabbit keychain I owned on his bag and winked.
People laughed and teased. "You two are a show," they said.
The winter came and the school had a match. Lance played like someone made of motion. After he scored he ran back, breathless, and leaned on my shoulder like a bandit.
That night we walked a short way together. He told me, "If you are my something, I will try to be better."
"I don't want you to change because of me," I said.
"I don't want to be the boy who only fights and breaks things," he admitted.
"That's not how you started. You've been both since the beginning."
He kissed my forehead once in the street, quick and honest and small, and then he said, "I might not be good at school, but I am good at choosing."
"Choosing what?" I asked.
"Choosing you," he said.
Time, which is always testing, put us in a contract made of walls and homework and other people's whispers. His old girlfriend Lucia Benjamin tried to make things awkward. There were jealous girls and there were boys who thought they could own the space near me.
Lance pushed, pulled, bluffed, and mostly he tried to be patient. He watched me for small signs. He read my notes when I fell asleep. He asked for grammar help and then he came back with a corrected paragraph.
The school's principal, Mr. Castillo, called Lance once into his office and told him, "You are reckless. But you have someone who can steady you. Do not waste it."
Lance did not listen to others unless they were important. But when I was important he listened.
On the night of the year's big winter festival he asked me to meet him near the ice rink.
"Why here?" I asked, breath fogging.
"Because it is cold and you wear a big coat," he said. "Because you make the crowd quiet."
"You're dramatic."
He laughed. "Am I?"
He took my hands and made me stand still. He had that small paper in his pocket—the same one he had made me promise to keep earlier. He opened it.
"Will you be my girlfriend?" he said. He didn't make it a dare. He didn't make it a bet.
I hesitated. I thought of school, of my future, of the way he had given me sugar and an umbrella and his time. I thought of the nights he'd called me to practice words. I thought of the way he looked at me when he was calm.
"Yes," I said, and the word came out like a small bell. It sounded right.
He smiled in a way that made me believe the sun could be concentrated into a grin.
We put our signatures on small postcards we made ourselves like kids in a treehouse.
Later, when we were alone, I found his phone on the table. It had been by my bag since he left it. I remembered the photograph on the lock screen—the photo of me reading, the one I didn't know he had. I traced the screen with one finger.
"What's the password?" I asked him later.
"Yours," he said. "Your birthday."
"You used my birthday as your password?" I said, blinking.
"Yes," he replied simply. "I don't trust myself. I wanted something that meant you."
My heart bumped like a small drum.
I pressed his thumb to open the phone. The device asked for the birthday. I typed it and the screen opened. A picture of us together at the basketball game popped up as the background. The rabbit keychain was visible on his backpack. He had pinned that photo with his thumb and smiled small.
He watched me the whole time, eyes soft as milk.
"Are you serious?" I asked.
"Yes."
"You put my birthday as your code."
"Yes."
I dropped my head and laughed. It sounded like snow.
He took the phone back and, in one quick move, bent and kissed me. It was not the push of a command. It was not a bet. It lasted three seconds and stretched like a long ribbon. When he pulled away his face was sheepish and a little proud.
"That's the best bribe I've ever gotten," he said.
We walked home that night under the rabbit umbrella he had bought. The snow fell like something soft. For once, Lance's storms felt like shelter.
"I asked my aunt about my mother," he said quietly. "She is out there. Maybe soon I'll go. Will you... come with me?"
"I will not run away," I said. "But... I have my tests and my life."
"Then we'll go later," he promised. "When you can come."
On the day his mother was finally tracked down, Lance left for a week. He held my hand once before he left and said, "When I come back, I will be the kind of man who stands steady."
"You don't have to be different for me," I said.
"I will be different because of me," he said, smile honest.
When he returned, there was a small scene behind the school gates. Sancho tried to stir trouble. He and Lance walked toward each other and, for the first time in months, there was a clean, sharp line. Lance did not throw a punch. He spoke.
"Stop," he said. "Leave it."
Sancho stared. The boys around them dispersed. It was not a dramatic fight. It was a surrender to the better thing. Lance had not been perfect, but he had learned the quiet rules that make fights stop.
Later he sat me down and showed me his phone. He had changed the lock screen to our photo, the rabbit charm in the corner. He had a new background of the mall night where I had first caught him slipping into the bad end of trouble.
"I keep it here," he said. "So when I doubt, I look."
I touched his hand. He squeezed mine and didn't let go.
On a small Tuesday after a rainy weekend, I went into the little corner shop and returned the red umbrella. The owner smiled at me and said, "You kids are a bore. You stay together."
Lance was waiting at my doorstep with a hot paper cup and two ticket stubs.
"For a movie," he said. "And then ramen. And then you can call me an idiot if I fall asleep during the movie."
"I will," I promised.
He took my rabbit keychain and clipped it to his bag and then to his jacket in a present exchange that was silent and complete.
"Stay," he said.
"I will," I answered.
As we walked out the gate, I put my small hand into his. He squeezed and said, "I choose you."
I looked up at him. Snow had stopped, but there were white little petals on his shoulder like confetti.
"I choose you too," I said.
He kissed me again, and this time the whole world shrank to the size of two smiling mouths and a steady heartbeat.
The End
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