Sweet Romance11 min read
how a stupid fart and a public stunt made me fall for him
ButterPicks13 views
I never thought a single ridiculous day could change everything.
"I told you to run faster," I muttered to myself as I sat on the cold toilet floor, willing my stomach to stop twisting. "Great start to university."
"You're going to miss assembly," my roommate warned at the dorm door.
I bolted. Of course, I was five minutes late.
"Report!" the drill sergeant yelled when I finally arrived, cheeks flaming.
"Report!" I repeated, embarrassed.
"Sing!" he barked. "And you," he pointed to the tall boy from the neighboring class, "twenty push-ups."
The tall boy glanced back at me and raised one eyebrow.
I sank inside myself. Then he did the unexpected.
"Make it twenty, and she sits on my back," he told the sergeant in a tone that somehow sounded like mischief wrapped in calm.
"No," I wanted to object. "No, that's—"
But the sergeant liked drama. "Do it."
So I climbed onto his back like an idiot, holding onto the collar of his uniform as he started doing push-ups. He sang—loudly, off-key, like he was auditioning for a silly play.
"♪ Sister sits on the bow, brother walks on shore—♪" he boomed.
Everyone laughed so loud I forgot to breathe.
Fatigue, nerves, and my stomach protested at once. I froze, mortified when something escaped me.
Silence for a beat. Then he, whispering just under his breath, said, "Classy lady—give me a clap."
"......" I wanted to sink into the ground.
He kept doing push-ups anyway, and kept singing. I ran back to the line when the punishment ended, hot and certain my life had taken a turn for public humiliation.
Later that afternoon, my stomach settled, but the world didn't forget. My face felt raw every time someone looked my way, and yet everyone seemed to be talking about him, not me.
During the next day's drills, I spaced out, thinking about how he had made our punishment into a show. I forgot to move my left hand with my right foot—my old childhood habit returned, the "wrong limb" walk. The instructor yanked me to the front. I walked clumsily. Laughter rolled like distant thunder. I could feel myself collapsing inward.
"Report, I also march wrong!" a voice called.
It was him.
He stood, went to the instructor, and announced he too had the problem. The instructor frowned but made him walk. He marched with such exaggerated wrongness that everyone focused on him. He grinned at me briefly and mouthed, "Don't worry."
Later, he asked for my contact.
"Name?"
"It's Dylan," I typed. I typed slowly. He typed back, "Dylan-dylan, I'll remember."
He saved me as "Blackie" and I stared at the screen. He'd called me "Small White" earlier in my head. He messaged the whole night. He's called me constantly—too chatty, too lively. I didn't know how to respond. He was a storm.
"Do you have a boyfriend?" he asked one moment.
"Do you recite the core socialist values?" he asked the next.
"Do you need stomach medicine?" he asked again.
I answered, "My name is Dylan, not Dylan-dylan," and "My stomach's fine."
When our training ended, the whole campus had seen our push-up-and-fart video—yes, my video. Our advisor posted it to her circle and the campus forums did the rest. People shipped us—not me and him romantically, but the internet did what it does best: gossip. I wanted to die.
Then one Saturday our dormmate dragged me to the roller skating club. I barely knew how to skate and figured I’d cling to the wall and survive. The universe had other plans.
A clumsy skater crashed into me and sent me sliding across the rink. I slammed into him—literally into his lap—and landed between his legs. It was humiliating. All eyes.
He coughed. "Are you—"
Someone burst out laughing.
He said, "Looks like that part won't grow."
I shoved him away, half furious, half wanting to vanish.
A minute later I was surprised to hear him apologizing, fussing, and then—he lifted me onto his shoulders.
"Ten laps," he said. "Loser does ten 'Daddy' calls."
I screamed. He laughed and skated like a man who could tame wind.
"I promise I won't drop you," he said, as if that were the most natural legalistic promise.
When he set me down, he looped an arm around me like it belonged there. He smelled faintly of beer and cheap cologne and heroism.
"You're not nervous, really?" he asked later.
"I was," I admitted. He grinned, then said softly, "You're brave."
We exchanged messages more. Sometimes he was silly: "You are a high mountain flower." Sometimes he was serious: "Don't hang with that club president too close."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because he smiles like a saint but he keeps his hands wrong places," he said, irritated.
I raised an eyebrow.
This boy—Bryce Hansson—he was something else. He would do the loudest things in public then quietly hand me a napkin in secret.
One night a woman messaged me. Her profile said "I am Bryce's girlfriend." She told me to stay away. She posted a picture of Bryce with a girl in a car and accused me of being the other woman. I read her messages and felt the ground slide.
I accepted her request, which felt stupid but necessary. She marched up to me at class the next morning like she owned the hallway.
"I'm Bryce's girlfriend," she said with a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Keep your distance."
I said, "We are just friends," and meant it.
"You like him, I know," she said. "He told me."
He did? I'd never told him.
She admitted she came because Bryce asked her to tell me. My chest twisted.
"Wait. You told her that?" I demanded later and rushed at him. "Did you really tell her I like you?"
He grabbed my wrist. "No, no, no. It's not like that. Her messages are fake. She's my—" he hesitated, throat moving, "—old classmate. She drank, she begged me to go. She smashed my phone. I had to replace my phone. She is crazy, Dylan."
I slid him my phone. On her "girlfriend" chat there were messages that made Kidnap-thriller energy. Bryce snatched his head and scowled.
"This is a fake, she used my contact list—someone cloned a chat. She... she even forged screenshots. She wanted attention. She's always liked stirring trouble," he said, white-faced.
"Then prove it," I said. "Prove she forged it."
He looked at me, then marched across the quad with me in tow and stopped in front of the club president—Crosby Ward—who was chatting with friends.
"Crosby," Bryce said with the bluntness of someone who didn't filter. "Do you know Beverly Daniels?"
Crosby raised an eyebrow. "Knew her in high school," he said. "She had a flair for drama."
Bryce didn't stop. He pulled out the new phone, the receipt, and the messages he still had in fragments. He asked Crosby to check the campus camera footage. Crosby agreed—because Crosby was the kind of person who helped and because he owed Bryce a favor from the skating club bet.
We watched campus security footage in the admin office. Beverly had arrived on campus the previous night, stumbled around, argued with a delivery worker, then—shocking—sexually harassed him until he left and then went to Bryce's dorm. She smashed his old phone. Security had caught it in low quality; her face was a little blurred but you could see the mannerisms.
"I didn't know what she was going to do," Bryce told the security guard. "She was belligerent. She asserted I'm her boyfriend. She made that post."
The security guard typed, "We'll file an official complaint for vandalism and harassment." He handed us a paper. My heart raced. This was more than college gossip now.
"Bryce, are you okay?" I asked.
He smiled the kind of smile that tries to be brave. "I'm okay if you're okay."
Time moved in the odd slackened way that heartbreaks and protests do. The campus forum still buzzed—people choosing sides, meme-making, shipping, gossiping. I didn't respond publicly. Bryce did everything publicly. He posted sincere, slightly over-the-top messages defending me, calling the online lies what they were—lies.
The girl, Beverly, escalated. She went to class, posted again, claimed she would "expose" me. People gathered in groups. I felt the old fear creeping in. But the difference now was that I had someone who would not let me fend for myself.
"Let's handle this together," Bryce said. "Face it. Publicly."
He was serious. The next day he asked me, "Do you want me to bring it out in front of everyone? Hold a sort of... reveal?"
It was terrifying to me. Public confrontation? My panic wanted to flee. But he squeezed my hand.
"You don't have to speak," he promised. "I'll do the talking."
I nodded. We planned.
It all happened on a Thursday. The cafeteria was full. Bryce walked in, took the microphone the student council had set up for announcements, and turned on the portable speaker with an air of someone about to perform a love song.
"Can I have everyone's attention?" he asked.
"Bryce, what are you doing?" someone hissed.
He ignored them. "I want to say something." His voice eased out. "This is about something ugly that's been posted. It features my name. It's fake."
Someone cheered, someone hissed. But we had their ears.
"There's a girl going by Beverly Daniels posting that she is my girlfriend and that Dylan is some kind of—" he hesitated, "—a homewrecker. She's been spreading forged screenshots and a fabricated WhatsApp call record. She smashed my phone. She showed up drunk on campus and vandalized property."
He turned to where Beverly sat—right at a table with friends. She glared.
"I have police records," he said. "I have the security footage. I have witnesses. I filed an official complaint this morning for harassment and vandalism. She is not my girlfriend. She is pretending. She is trying to hurt Dylan with lies."
He walked to the front of the crowd and put the phone with the footage on the table. It played. The cafeteria went quiet. Her face in the dim footage couldn't be mistaken if you watched closely—the same posture, the same coat.
"You made a public smear," he continued. "You used a fake account to say things. You are making false claims."
Someone shouted from the back, "Prove it!"
He grinned—half exhausted, half triumphant. "Watch." He played back a recording from a call Beverly had made to one of Bryce's old classmates—rants, threats, boasts about how she'd get attention—boasting that she could "make their campus burn" if she wanted. The voice was unmistakable. The audience leaned in.
Beverly's face changed. She first went white, then red, then she stammered.
"It—it's not what it looks like," she blurted. "I... I was—"
"You were drunk and violent," Bryce said calmly. "You will speak to the dean about this. The campus has posted a notice and we've put up the footage on the student portal for transparency."
People around whispered. Some took out their phones. A few nodded at us. The dean walked in at that moment—called by the commotion—and looked at the footage. He asked Beverly to come to his office. She refused and tried to leave the cafeteria. The crowd closed in.
This is the long part: what happened next was public, procedural, and deeply humiliating for her in the way the rules required. There were dozens watching—students, teachers, security. She shifted from being cocky to confused, then defensive, then pleading.
"Wait—no, I didn't—" she shouted.
"You lied in public," one student said. "You used fake screenshots."
"She vandalized his property," another added, pointing at the security footage.
Beverly's tone shifted. "I—please—this will ruin me."
Around her, friends who had been filming shrugged; some recorded the dean escorting her into the office. Her face crumpled. She started to yell, then to sob. A few students openly called her out: "You made that girl's life miserable for likes!"
Beverly pleaded, tried to accuse us of harassment. Bryce remained composed. The dean asked the security officer about protocol. They told Beverly to come to the office; if she refused, they would restrict her campus access pending investigation. She realized she was losing control. She went into the office screaming and begging for mercy. I felt nauseous as she shifted from attack to pleading.
It lasted a long time. There were witnesses. People posted the footage. Comments flipped from conspiracy to condemnation. Within hours the original posts and the forged screenshots were taken down by the platform moderators and replaced with a campus notice: "Harassment and falsification of evidence will not be tolerated."
Beverly came out hours later with a pale face. She had to make a public apology. She read on camera, eyes down, voice broken.
"I apologize," she said. "I was wrong. I was drunk and I made false claims. I apologize to Dylan and to Bryce. I regret my behavior."
The crowd was stern. Some clapped—quietly—because people wanted to see justice, not cruelty. She tearfully promised to make amends: community service, mandatory counseling, and she accepted a restriction of some campus privileges pending disciplinary action. The dean announced that a formal hearing would follow.
Her expression changed from defiant arrogance to terrified shame. The whole process was public: a dean's office, a campus notice, the security footage, students' reactions ranging from murmured approval to silent judgment.
I watched her collapse into her hands when the dean left. I felt both pity and anger. People stepped forward to console me and Bryce. He took my hand without speaking.
"You okay?" he breathed.
"I'm fine," I lied at first, then added, "Actually—I'm okay."
That scene—her fall from arrogance to pleading—satisfied that strict rule in my heart that wanted fairness. She had publicly torched a life; the school publicly put out the small fire. It wasn't revenge; it was accountability. She had to live with being wrong in front of everyone.
After the public drama, things settled into a warmer routine. The campus folders that once gossiped now posted photos of me and Bryce being ridiculous—him photobombing my studies, me laughing at his pranks. People cheered for us. The "ship" turned into blessing for the most part.
We had small moments that made me melt.
"Come here," he said one rainy afternoon and handed me a hoodie.
"You'll get sick," he scolded, but his eyes smiled.
Another time, when I froze in the middle of a speech, he leaned over and whispered, "Breathe. Say the first word."
He did not take the glory for anything. When he saw me stiff in crowds, he came up behind and slipped his arm through mine so close I could feel his heartbeat.
"You're beautiful when you don't try," he told me one night under the dorm lights.
"Stop being ridiculous," I teased.
He kissed my knuckle, and the world stilled.
"Your first kiss was quick," he joked later, "but you did it."
"That's because you nearly—"
He kissed me again.
Among the many public displays that once embarrassed me, he made me feel safe. He pushed me gently into trying new things. He turned my safety net into his own commitment: "You don't have to be loud for me," he said once. "I'll be loud enough for both of us."
One time the skating club had a small holiday show. He dragged me into the spotlight with a grin. "You're my girlfriend, remember?" he whispered before the music started.
"You're going to make me die," I whispered back.
He skated expertly, holding my hand. At the end he spun me into a hug, and then declared in front of the crowd, "I fell for her the day she sat on my back and dared the world to laugh."
The crowd cheered. My face burned. He bent close and said, "You didn't embarrass me. You brightened me."
Our days were full of those small, ridiculous little things—him stealing my fries and apologizing like it was a solemn crime, me hiding notes in his bag and finding them later with doodles, us falling asleep side by side in the library on group project nights.
When the controversy finally faded, the awkward video that had started it all became just one of those origin myths people loved to retell.
"Remember the push-up girl?" someone would say.
"She sat on my back," Bryce would joke, "and I sang like a lunatic. She made me look like a hero."
"You made her into one too," I'd argue, because he had.
The biggest change was inside me. I used to flinch at attention. Now, I could look at a crowd and think, "He's over there." That made the crowd less scary.
One evening, by the lake, he dropped to one knee—no grand production, no hundreds of friends, just us and the quiet water. He didn't ask for a ring. He didn't need props.
"Will you keep being my partner in public embarrassment?" he asked, half-smiling.
"I will," I said, and laughed.
He kissed me slow.
The story started with a stupid, awful sound on a drill-field back in August and turned into something warm and safe. I discovered that sometimes a messy beginning is the only kind that turns into something honest.
I still blush—daily. I still cringe at cameras. But now when my cheeks burn, someone squeezes my hand and whispers, "You look perfect."
And sometimes I whisper back, "You made me brave."
The End
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