Sweet Romance13 min read
I Bought a Pair of Shoes and Lost My Safe Space
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I first saw him at the White Horse Club, a dim room of chandeliers and soft music where people paid for company and pretended boredom like it was art.
"I want a full table," I told the manager, folding my hands over the napkin like a woman who had practiced being in charge.
"Ms. Allison," Gregory Taylor said with a thin smile and a glass that had already been drained, "you're late as always."
"Business runs on my time," I said. "And my table stays reserved."
He laughed and offered me the empty cup. "Then you must punish yourself."
I watched him for a long second, then let my eyes drift to the white T-shirt in the corner. He looked wrong for that place—too clean, too young, like someone who had been put into the room by mistake.
"Who is he?" I asked.
"Just a pretty boy," Gregory said. "Picked up for the night."
I let him mean what he meant. I had my reasons for being nervous about letting things go too far with the pretty and the young, but I had my own plan: keep everything tidy, keep numbers even, and always be able to walk away.
"Get him," I told my assistant, Emory Burris, later. "Or borrow him for a few hours. No promises."
"Already done," Emory said. He slid a paper box along the table to the boy. "You can take him."
The boy looked at me through the club's blue-lit haze and bit his lip once, the way young people do to hide a tremble.
"You're brave," I said softly. "Or stupid."
He answered like a child, "Maybe both."
He was Marco Curry.
The first night he stayed because I offered the empty room and, secretly, the thought of keeping a pretty person close for a while made me feel less alone.
"Why did you look at me?" he asked that first time, once we were alone in the quiet.
"Because you stood out," I told him honestly. "And because I wanted to see how you would behave when the lights went down."
He smiled then in that way that makes the world less sharp.
"I won't be a bother," he said. "Really."
"You will be whatever I ask you to be," I said. "But don't be soft on me."
He touched my hand like someone daring to hold a hot cup.
"I want to stay," he whispered. "Please."
"Go home," I said.
He didn't go. He didn't leave a thing behind. He left only a card on my table—forty thousand dollars, which he said came from odd jobs and a stubborn pocket. He left his white shirt, thin and wet with my spilled drink. He left himself messy and raw and real.
"You're mine while I say you're mine," I told him the morning after. "This is not a love story."
"I don't need a label," he said, fingers fisting into the sleeve of my jacket. "I just want to be with you."
I had a fiancé, Edison Cummings, and a plan. Marriage was a method of consolidating power, not a fairy tale. Edison made offers that looked like love and numbers that tasted like security. I told Marco that the marriage was business.
"Do you like him?" Marco asked once, hands sticky with mayonnaise from a late-night sandwich.
"I like what he controls," I said. "I like what he secures." I pulled back my sleeve to keep his fingers from tracing the thin line of a scar on my wrist.
"You like him?" Marco repeated, eyeing Edison as if he could guess the shape of an adult's aloofness.
"Sometimes," I said. "It's complicated."
"Will you keep me?" Marco asked. "After?"
"I might," I said lightly. "When he's stable. Maybe."
He cried for me then, poor used-up words and salt and an entire chest of small griefs. He cried like he had been stopping up a leak for years.
"Don't push me away," he pleaded. "Not forever."
"I can't promise forever," I said. "But I'll see how long I can be selfish."
He believed me, and he stayed.
I am not proud of the nights I let him stay. I told myself I was generous. I told myself people needed shelter. Mostly I told myself stories I could afford.
After he got sick from rain and a foolish stunt, I put him briefly in a hospital and then moved him into a hotel to recuperate. He scratched his head and said, "You're paying my tuition, you know. Maybe that's my job now."
"You act like it's charity," I said. "But that's not what it is."
"Maybe it's not charity," he said. "Maybe it's proof."
That year, Edison closed a deal and moved the entire city toward the hot-springs project that would make our partnership real.
"You're cold," he said sitting beside me as the project people swarmed the terrace. "But not in the way I thought."
"I'm cold where it matters," I said.
He laughed and brushed the hair at my temple. "Then stay warm with me tonight."
"No," I said, because desire and choice were not the same in my head. "I don't sleep in my partner's bed unless we sign at the altar."
"Good," he murmured. "Then we should sign quickly."
The project closed. The out-of-town investors clinked cups and told stories about lands and profits. I drank only to look less alone. Marco had disappeared for a little while. I thought he'd moved on, but then he appeared at another of my dinners, wearing a black tailcoat as if he had rehearsed exactly what to look like in order to make my chest ache.
"You work as a waiter?" I asked when he showed up, hovering at my feet in a service uniform.
"Yes," he said, though his voice broke on the final syllable. "I needed the money. Five hundred an hour."
"You're ashamed?" I tried to make a joke of it.
"No," he said. "I only wanted to see you."
"You're persistent."
"Maybe it's because I like you," he said.
"I'll be blunt," I told him later when he helped me clean and padded my bare feet with the new flats he had bought. "I am getting married."
He swallowed, and then he kissed me like someone trying to keep my attention. "No," he said, almost a prayer. "You won't."
I let him hope. It made him brighter. I had always liked watching lightness on people as though it was a candle I could hold briefly.
"Wait for me," he begged once, fingers knotting in my sleeve. "I can be everything you need. I will be everything you need."
"I can't promise anything," I told him. "But I'll watch you try."
Between the boardroom and the bedroom, my days folded into the same shape. Edison and I negotiated like proper partners. He was a soft-handed storm, planning his movements quietly and then moving cities to suit. He gave me the warmth of a household plan. He also offered the thing I'd been chasing since my grandfather had handed me the keys to the company: stability.
He was good at business. He was worse at beingheld.
I kept Marco because he made me feel younger and because he learned to read me—when to step forward, when to steal the blanket off my knees, when to be a fool to make me laugh.
"Do you love him?" Edison asked once, when the city lights were sprawled beneath our car like a glittering promise.
"I love what he will bring," I said. "He sees opportunity. He gives safety."
He touched my face gently. "Then let me be the man who makes you safer in ways numbers cannot."
"I can't marry you for that," I said. "Not yet."
He pressed his forehead to mine. "If you come to me, I will not bargain, Kristina. I will give you the parts of myself I can give." He spoke as if handing me a tool.
I felt guilty the way someone feels when they leave a gift on a table and walk away. It isn't theft. It isn't cruelty. It is just—business.
A few months later, a rumor started that Edison had a different relationship with Everly Teixeira, the actress who smiled like sunlight and wore gowns with the trust of someone who knew she was always seen.
"She's his ex," Everly said bluntly when she came across my office for a meeting.
"Then why did she sit on his couch wearing his sweater?" I asked.
"Because she is his sister," she said, handing me something like an official paper. "DNA test and everything."
I blinked. "He told me nothing."
"Edison didn't want to make it public," Everly said. "It is complicated."
"Everything he does is complicated," I muttered.
"Also," she added, "I think he likes you, too."
"You think?" I snorted. "We are a partnership."
"I know him," she said. "He cares more than he lets on."
Her words unsettled me. If he cared, would I answer that care honestly? Or would I keep bargaining like always?
When Marco found a stable job at the research lab—a place with bright rooms and careful instruments—the part of my chest that had been bartered closed in. He became not just someone who made the mornings softer; he became someone who could make a life without me.
"You're doing this for you?" he asked once, folding shirts in our small rented room. "The work."
"I am doing what I must," I said. "And you are doing what you must."
He looked at me like someone weighing a heavy stone with his palm. "Then we walk the rest together, when you are ready."
I smiled and kissed his wound, stupid and shallow as it was, and in that moment I meant it.
One night, months later, Edison and I were at my grandfather's house for dinner. The old man had been cold in the past, but a few years and a few stubborn knocks had made him, oddly, tolerant.
"You look good together," he said without smiling at me and Edison when Edison walked in. "But you must make choices."
"I will bring my husband to the party when we plan the merger," I said lightly.
Edison put his palm on my back. "We'll make it official when it's time."
Marco walked in right after. He wore a plain sweater now, and his hair was grown out the tiniest bit longer. He looked nervous, like someone walking into an exam they were hoping to pass.
He held my hand like we were crossing a stream.
"So," Edison said to nobody, "are you in favor of family reunions?"
Marco only smiled. "As long as dinner's decent."
Dinner was tense in a polite sort of way. My grandfather glared like something had been stolen from him, and then he relaxed enough to laugh when Marco tripped over the tablecloth. The old man liked those small human faults.
At the end of the night, my grandfather pulled me aside. "You do what you want. But don't burn bridges you need."
"I won't," I said.
He smirked. "You better not."
The weeks before our intended wedding were full of paper and signatures and candles. We sent invitations. I sent one to Everly with an additional note that said "Thank you." I sent one to Emerson—no, Edison—Cummings, and to people who mattered to the deal.
I also sent one to Marco. He had done nothing wrong. He had only been himself.
At the rehearsal, something happened that had nothing to do with the contracts: the club men—the ones who had dragged Marco into that life and coerced him into dangerous "work"—appeared at our party.
I had avoided them. I had never authorized any of it. But they came, and not alone. They came with a swagger, thinking themselves immune to anything that wasn't measured in bills.
"Look who we have here," one of them shouted. "The city flower and her puppy."
A hush fell. People turned. I felt my face go cold in a way that is different from anger—like an animal's trap snapping near a foot.
"Get out," Edison said, voice low. "Now."
They laughed, oblivious. "Or what? Who will stop us?"
That is an old question people ask when they have bought the world with their silence.
I stood up. "You will leave," I said.
They smiled. "And if we don't?"
"Then you are going to be exposed," I said quietly.
I had something on my phone. A stack of messages, a few photos, a voicemail, and—more dangerously—a short video. The club had been careful, but they were sloppy when they thought everyone was busy. They had made the wrong assumption.
"You're bluffing," the largest of them said. He was arrogant and old. He had touched a boy's face like an owner touches a thing.
"No," I said. "I'm not."
I stood and tapped the screen. My assistant, Emory, moved quietly to the sound system. He had been waiting for this, had known the people who were dangerous, had waited for a moment when the world would stop caring about rumor and listen to truth.
The audio crackled. I had recorded one of those men's threats when he had come to the office to reclaim Marco's ID. I had a picture of the man with a business card that showed he handled security for that club. I had a dated message that implied blackmail. I had, better than anything else, a video from a night when one of the men had shoved Marco against a wall.
I played it.
For the first few seconds people just watched, the scene more akin to a bad play than real life. Then recognition sharpened into anger and disgust—faces draining, jaws dropping.
The man who had thought himself untouchable went pale.
"What is this?" he barked, voice cracking.
"You have been running a racket," I said softly. "You forced a boy into this room. You took his ID. You sent photos for leverage. You threatened students. You sold privacy."
The room hummed. The older men stared at him with new eyes. He tripped over his words. "I—no—"
"You lied to get him into that place," I said. "You told him the money would be enough to pay his family's bills. You recorded him. You threatened him. You thought you were untouchable because no one would stand up."
He laughed, a brittle sound. "You think you can change anything? We're bigger than you."
"Are you?" I asked. "Or are you a few men with suits and a cruel trade? Look at the faces around you. Are these not the same people who buy your discretion, but only because discretion is cheap and fear is expensive?"
People were beginning to talk. Phones were out. Someone had already started filming. The sound of two dozen whispers turned into the solid voice of community.
"You are going to leave," Edison said, stepping forward.
"No," the man said. "I'm not leaving."
I pressed another button. A woman I had found, someone who had been grabbed years ago in that same room, spoke into the video and told her story—clear and calm and present. A vendor who had been blackmailed to look the other way told his. People lined up to add the threads I had carefully collected.
Their faces changed. The man staggered as if punched. He looked on the verge of a breakdown that was the exact opposite of the one he had forced on Marco. His posture—once upright, like a king—collapsed into confusion.
"You're pathetic," someone in the room called out. "You trade on fear, and the only thing you have left is the smell of it."
A reporter in the corner leaned forward, eyes hungry. "Would you like to say anything on camera?" she asked. The club man struggled to form a sentence.
"I—it's a misunderstanding," he said, voice tiny.
"You're going to be taken away," Edison told him. "By the police. For unlawful restraint, blackmail, and coercion."
The man protested. "No, no, no!" and then started to babble denial. He had been so confident. Now, the room closed on him like a ring.
The worst part, the part that makes the stomach cold and the breath catch, is the unmasking of pretense in public. A man who has made strength from secrecy loses it fastest when his secrecy is stripped. He lapsed from arrogance to pleading, denial to anger, and finally to shame.
"Look at me," I said to him. "Look at the crowd."
People recorded. Phones shone like small suns. Someone applauded in a small, shocked way. People who had been customers of his establishment turned their faces away. The room's mood hardened into something that would not forgive any time soon.
"Get out," my grandfather ordered at last, voice low but carrying. "Before someone does worse than shame you."
They did go, escorted off in a wave of whisper and recording. The largest of them tried to stand proud until he reached the doorway and then stumbled into the cold night.
The punishment was not only legal. It was social. It was seeing their faces posted, commented on, and their names whispered. It was losing the safe wall of secrecy. People who believed power came from silence learned, in one humbling moment, that power can be taken by sound.
Marco sat very still during the whole thing, his fingers tight around mine. When the men left, he rested his head against my shoulder.
"You did the right thing," he whispered.
"No," I said. "I did the necessary thing."
The night after the exposure, the city buzzed. The club's license was reviewed. The man had to answer questions at the police station. His friends stopped answering his messages. He sat alone in an empty office, watching as his reputation crumbled.
The fall showed every stage: initial stubbornness, then denial, then rage, then the pleading. The footage circulated. People who had once made deals with him stepped away. His online reviews became a slow avalanche. He watched as the world he had planned on manipulating collapsed into tiny, cold fragments.
It was public and it went on for a long time.
At the wedding months later—when Marco and I finally marked the start of something still fragile—the old man who had ordered the clubs and the men found his name in the headlines and could not stand the heat of local shame. My grandfather smiled with the satisfaction of someone who had always known the right moment to act. People clapped and cried for us. Edison was in the room, distant but graceful. He had chosen to support and to stand aside.
"You handled that well," Edison said privately later as we stood under the garden lights, hearing a small band play so badly it was charming.
"I handled what needed doing," I said. "Marco is home."
Marco grinned and then kissed me like he had at the rehearsal, like he had in rainy alleys and late-night rooms.
"Do you regret it?" he asked, breath warm against my neck.
"I regret nothing that keeps you safe," I told him. "Not a single thing."
The crowd around us cheered in a way that dissolved unfinished business. My grandfather snorted into his napkin. Everly cried on the sidelines with a ridiculous amount of mascara. Berkley Seidel—my friend who had seen me through the worst drinking nights and the worst decisions—danced without shame. Edison raised a glass; his smile was like a small, honest flag.
We had done something brutal and necessary and human. We had used light to burn out the dark corners.
After the wedding, I asked Marco to move into a modest apartment nearer his work. He protested and then laughed and said, "No. I want to live with you. I like making your tea."
"You know I like my coffee," I reminded him.
"You like both," he said.
We fell into an odd, gentle life. We kept our jobs. We laughed at things that had once ruined us. We kept the shoes he had bought me—the black flats, the white shirt he wore the night we met—and we put the silver band on his finger in the heat of summer.
"Will you tell stories?" he asked once late at night, fingers looping my hair.
"I will tell you everything," I promised.
He looked at me like someone who had found his place.
"I will tell the truth," I added.
"And if the truth gets messy?"
"Then we will clean it up, together," I said.
I married him not because the world told me to or because of any tidy plan, but because his presence had shifted the arithmetic of my days. I had been a woman who bought security. I became one who made choices that cost and gave back. We did not fix each other; we only kept one another's small fires going.
On our first morning as husband and wife, he made me coffee and carried the old cigarette pack and a handful of tiny, impossible things he found charming. He placed a new ring—our ring—beside my cup.
"Put it on," he said.
I did.
The silver was simple, and inside it was a tiny engraving he had insisted on: "Garden flower."
"When you look at it," he said, "remember the silly bird who thought he could be sold into silence and chose to come home instead."
I laughed and kissed him. "You are still a mess."
"You married me anyway."
"Because you came back to me," I said.
We walked out to the garden, where my grandfather had planted a small bed of late roses. He watched us from the porch like a man who had been hard but not unkind. He nodded once and turned back to his tea.
I touched Marco's hand. The silver band warmed under my thumb.
"This is ours," I said.
"Yes," he said. "Ours."
The End
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