Sweet Romance13 min read
I Threw His Gifts Into the Dumpster and Found a New Song
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I woke up on my birthday and watched him leave.
"He took a call and walked out," I told myself, five slices of cake and thirty people staring at me through a doorway. "That was the end."
A day later, Angelina Booth posted a photo: "Thank you for coming to me when I was at my weakest," she wrote. The photo was Jude Washington asleep on a couch, his cheek soft, his eyelashes long. The caption was shiny and clean.
I put my phone down and felt something in my chest unclench. Ten years of waiting thinned like fog.
1
"I saw you upstairs with her," Jude said the next week, standing under my building's lights as if the night owed him explanation.
He looked almost polite. He had that easy, tall posture people trusted. He put a small box into my hands.
"Sorry about that night. I left so fast I forgot your gift," he said.
"Thank you," I said. I smiled the same smile I had for ten years, the one that said you are fine.
"Me and Angelina are grabbing dinner," Jude continued. "Join? Or would that make you feel like a third wheel?"
"I'd rather not be your lamp," I answered.
He and Angelina strolled away, his arm around her, his thumb rubbing the top of her hand without thinking. Seeing them close together did not sting. It was like watching a film in which I had already stopped believing.
Julissa Dell texted later: "She posted that scarf picture on purpose."
"I know," I typed back. "It's the one I gave him last year."
"Then you should dump everything he ever gave you," Julissa replied. "If you can dump the box, you can dump him."
2
He worked upstairs; I worked downstairs. I used to get up early and make breakfast for him, because his mouth was picky and he skipped meals and I worried.
"Why didn't you bring me breakfast today?" Jude asked once, his hands in his pockets like he always looked good with a problem.
"You expect me to cook you forever?" I said.
He blinked. "I didn't say forever."
A call came then and I ran. I had learned to run the old ways: run when my heart might do something messy.
3
"That scarf was a present from you," Julissa pointed out after Angelina shared a cat video of the scarf being shredded.
"Yes," I said. "And I am not bothered."
There was a small thrill in how calm I felt. I kept the box Jude had given me. I didn't open it.
4
He came to ask me to the cinema.
"Angelina doesn't like sci-fi," he said like a man listing facts.
"Neither do I," I said, and in truth I had two tickets sitting forgotten in my phone wallet. I had meant to take him; I had meant so much that it was a small habit shaped around him.
He paused. "Oh. Then I'll ask someone else."
"Good," I said. I felt curious and a bit guilty. I took the tickets and refunded them an hour later. The refund pinged in like a found coin. I felt happier than I expected.
5
Loneliness can be loud, especially when you've been alone your whole life.
"Emergency at the airport!" Julissa's voice on the line made me run.
At the arrivals gate a tall kid in a hoodie stood with a guitar case and a grin like a new sunrise.
"Miss Dixon?" he said, though we had never met. "Julissa told me you'd pick me up. I'm Beau Mason."
He looked like sunlight had been set to human form: open, messy hair, a blue shirt that fit like it was painted on.
"You can stay with me for a few nights," I told him because I felt sorry for him and because the idea of cooking for someone else was strangely appealing.
"I'll sleep on the couch," Beau said. "I'm a poor artist."
6
He did not sleep on the couch. He made dinner, he hummed while washing dishes, he asked to play my old video game with me and laughed when I missed easy moves.
"You're good at this," he said, leaning his shoulder against mine.
"You're the musician," I said. "Why cook so well?"
"To impress my future wife," he joked and winked. He was twenty-three and absurd.
He called Julissa "sis" and when she texted instructions he obeyed like a bright little soldier. There was nothing fragile about him that night. He moved through my kitchen like he belonged.
7
Jude called during dinner.
"Are you home with a man?" he asked with a question that tasted like accusation.
"He's Julissa's kid," I said. Beau looked up and smiled at Jude's voice over my phone.
"Is he related?" Jude asked, the word thin and suspicious.
"Yes," I said. "He's family."
When he hung up I watched Beau eat with a small relief I had not admitted to myself. He was kind, and every time he offered to make tea or close my door, he looked at me like I was someone worth looking at.
8
We shared rice and stories and he made tea that tasted like summers.
"You're not like other guys," he said, suddenly in my kitchen, between the sink and the stove. "You were always the one who gave, right?"
"I used to give to someone who never saw," I said. "But that was years ago."
Beau laughed in a small, shameful way. "My songs are getting picked up. Maybe I'm going to Beijing."
"Then go," I said. "You should do it."
He bit his lip. "I might be back. For now can I stay until I figure it out?"
9
He stayed. He left in the mornings to meet producers and he came back with small stories and bigger promises. His messages were steady; his voice notes smelled of hotel rooms when he was away and of cheap coffee when he was near.
"Are you messing with me?" I asked once, half laughing.
"No," he said. "I like you. I liked you five years ago and somehow I still do."
"I can't be your whole life," I said, because age and promise and fear have their own voices.
"You don't have to be," he said. "I'll be enough."
10
Jude walked into our restaurant that day like he always owned the place.
"Hello." His smile was smooth. "Who is this?"
"Beau," he said, standing. "I am Beau Mason."
"Jude Washington," Jude replied, and his eyes flicked at my hands like he was mapping where I had been.
"Good to meet you," Beau said politely, then let loose a grin that suggested he knew whatever games Jude wanted to play and would not be nervous about them.
Jude left after that with a tight line in his jaw. Later he called.
"Why are you with him?" Jude asked in the old way, like it was his right to know.
"Because he makes me laugh," I said plainly.
11
Rumors circulated—lunchroom whispers, elevator sighs. Jude's promotion came like thunder. He took work by storm and soon he was no longer below me but above: vice-president now, hair tighter, suits sharper.
One evening, soaked by rain, he found me leaving the office, a cigarette butt still glowing under his shoe.
"You got engaged?" he spat when he saw the ring on my finger.
"Yes," I said. Beau had asked under a thin paper tent at a feast of noodles, and he had smiled as if it was the most natural thing in the world. "We did."
He grabbed my hand like the world hinged on it and tried to pull the ring off.
"Let go," I said. "You're acting like a fool."
He blinked; then he went mad. He tried again, and when my hand moved away a beat, he pushed forward like a petulant animal. That made me slap him hard.
"You are not a god," I said. "You were never mine to command."
12
He reached for me. His hands were too strong.
Beau stepped between us. "Don't," he warned. He didn't raise his voice.
Then Jude swung. And Beau answered with his own two fists. I shoved in the middle and the elevator had people staring, phones out, wide eyes like saucers.
"Stop!" someone shouted. "Call security!"
"Don't touch her!" Beau yelled.
I pulled Beau back. He was breathing hard, his knuckles white.
Jude walked away like a wounded man. For a moment there was silence that smelled like wet stone.
13
A week later Jude's work moved him to another city. He gave me one last thing: a diamond necklace and a card with a message that tried to be gentle.
"Keep it," he wrote. "As a token. If anything changes, call."
Beau rolled his eyes when he found it.
"Some men never learn," he said. "We'll bag it and donate it. I don't like things that tie you to ghosts."
I mailed the necklace to a charity and felt light.
14
Then the alumni group erupted.
Angelina posted about "a shameless woman stealing hearts while preaching virtue." She named me and called me "cheap." Her words were knives that shined.
"She accused me," I told Julissa, the words like small flint hitting water. "She called me names in front of everyone."
"We'll fight back," Julissa said. "But don't act first. Let us help."
Julissa and I planned. We filmed. Beau held my hand while I opened the box Jude had given me every year, the small things that once meant everything: stuffed bears, watches, cards with bad handwriting. I walked outside, the camera on, and I said to everyone who might watch:
"I loved him for ten years. These are his gifts. Julissa said if I could throw them away, I might free myself. So I am done."
I dumped the box into the dumpster, the sound of paper and plastic like a broken bell.
15
The video spread. Messages poured in. Jude called me again and again. I deleted him and felt clean.
But a video is a beginning; the crowd wanted more. They wanted the truth, the kind that makes people stand and judge.
So Julissa arranged an alumni reunion at a small hall downtown. Angelina announced she would be there with Jude. The hall would be crowded: classmates, office people, old lovers, curious neighbors. It was the perfect place.
16
"Are you sure?" Beau asked that afternoon, his fingers gripping my coffee cup like proof that he could make a plan hold.
"I am," I said. "I want them to see what they did. I want them to hear the truth."
"Then we'll make sure the truth is loud," he said.
He wore a simple shirt and held my hand when we walked in. His presence was steady. The room smelled of tea and old wood and the nervous perfume people bring when they mean business.
We had proof and a short speech. Julissa, ever sharp, had collected a string of messages, pictures, receipts and a few texts Jude thought were private. People had saved screenshots without realizing their value.
The hall filled. People took their seats. I could see Angelina at a table with her friends laughing too loud. Jude arrived late, wearing a jacket like armor, trying to look casual and failing.
17
"Welcome," the emcee said, in a voice too bright. "Old friends, great to have you all. Tonight—something new."
The lights dimmed and a video started on the big screen. Julissa had arranged it: the video opened with the scarf, the cat, the message Angelina posted, then showed Jude's earlier text messages—small, polite, then warmer, then raw with a confession I had never heard in person.
Then came a sequence of screenshots: Jude's messages to me, his careless jokes, and one he had never meant anyone to see—his plan to "console" Angelina in public to look like a hero, while privately asking me to wait. There were buttons of dates and times, showing when he would vanish for her and return consoling, and receipts from a hotel the night of my birthday. There was a voice clip Jude left on a friend’s phone—drunk, wretched, calling my name and crying.
The lights were up and the screen went dark. The hall smelled like someone had opened windows. People shifted.
Angelina's face went white. "What is this?" she whispered across the table.
Jude's mouth moved and then closed. He looked at me as if measuring how much snow was left.
18
"Do you want to speak?" the emcee asked.
"No," I said. "I want them to listen."
I stepped toward the microphone. My voice did not wobble.
"I loved him ten years," I said, "and he used me and lied about it in small ways and big. He thought he could have both comfort and an ornament. He thought he could instruct other people's hearts."
"Angelina, you posted a photo to make him look noble," I said, and I watched her face crumple. "You humiliated me in a public group. You labeled me shameless and cheap."
She stood up, suddenly, and clutched at her napkin like it was a shield. "You are lying!" she cried. "He helped me when I was alone!"
"Who paid for the hotel that night?" I asked, and Julissa flicked a slide showing the receipts. The room tittered at first, then went quiet, then grew loud.
Jude's expression shifted in a way you see when someone realizes a magician has exposed the trick—a slow, horrified comprehension. He tried to form words that looked like denial.
"I'm sorry," he began. "You don't understand—"
"Stop," Beau said, quietly but hard enough to be heard. He held my hand like an anchor.
Angelina ran toward the stage like a small animal. "You have no right!" she screamed. Phones lifted, quick flashes like small constellations.
19
"You called me names," I told her. "You accused me of being 'both a lamp and a thief.' You took a scarf I gave him and acted as if you had earned it. You used a night of his absence to make him into a hero."
Angeline's face twisted into sudden rage. "You—" She threw her hand, and in the flinch a wine glass tipped on a table, red spreading.
"Everyone, please," the emcee tried, but the hall had already decided its side.
Jude's face moved through colors: amusement, pity, then shock, then fierce denial, then breakdown. He stood there like a drowning man reached a ledge and found no purchase.
"You're overreacting," he said at first, voice hoarse. "This is private."
"My dear," Beau said softly, then louder: "Private things don't become public if they are kind. Private things become public when people are hurt."
People watched. Phones recorded. A group of classmates came forward with their own small evidence—texts Angelina had sent about looking good for Jude, receipts of gifts that had never been explained. Once one person opens a door, others find they can step through.
20
Jude laughed in a sound like broken glass. "You think this will change anything? You think people will believe a show?"
"Some will not," Julissa said, stepping forward with the calm of one who has practiced outrage like prayer. She held up the last proof: a recording of Jude telling a friend that he kept me 'as backup' and that Angelina was 'the permanent plan.'
The room gasped. A few heads turned away. Angelina's friends stared like betrayed conspirators. Someone behind me began to clap. It was small, then louder, until it became a rhythm that sounded like a verdict.
Jude's eyes changed. He shifted from arrogant to angry to pleading in a short arc.
"No," he said. "You can't do this. I—I'm sorry. Please. I didn't mean—"
He looked around. People filmed, some shouted, "Explain!" Others said nothing, shocked into silence.
Angelina began to cry, loud and raw. "I was hurt," she said, voice scratching. "He was there for me."
"At whose hotel?" someone demanded. A friend at the back held up a tab from a downtown motel with Jude's corporate card. The friend had been his drink buddy. The hall hummed.
21
Jude moved from confidence into denial. "I didn't... I didn't do anything wrong," he said. "You are twisting things. She was lonely. I comforted her. So what?"
"So what?" a woman shouted from the side. "So what if you treat two women as props while you keep both in your pocket? So what if you brag to friends that you could keep them both? You are proud of that?"
People pressed in. Someone shouted, "Shame on you!" and others echoed it. A young man stepped forward and slapped Jude's face hard, a single sharp sound that split the air. It was not my hand; it was a stranger's that had been waiting for permission. A chorus of voices rose up, calling him liar, coward, worse names, some kinder too.
Jude's eyes filled. He tried to speak. He tried to take the microphone. His hands trembled.
22
The slow breakdown began. His lips formed denials, then apologies that tasted like metal. The room watched as his defenders slunk back. A few people who had laughed with him at lunches looked down, their faces cooling.
Angelina clutched at her scarf and began to sob. Her friends faltered. Then one girl—quiet, fair-haired—stood and said, "She knew the scarf was from someone else. She lied and tried to make herself a savior."
The crowd turned on her like a tide. Phones recorded. People whispered awfully candid phrases like "manipulator" and "show off." One man went so far as to walk up to Angelina and take a photo of Jude's trembling hands and post it to his feed with a comment: "This is the man."
23
For Jude the arc of emotion was a public lesson. He had been proud; now he was exposed. He went through a sequence I could read on his face: smugness, then irritation, then disbelief, then frantic denial, then a kind of thin, naked shame. He tried to hold his head high and failed.
"Please," he said at last, voice breaking. "Don't do this. I'm sorry. I will make it up. I'll explain."
"But you explained," someone said. "You explained it to others and not to the one you hurt."
A group of classmates began to chant—soft at first—"Apologize. Apologize." It caught. Jude's voice grew small.
24
After the speech, after the crowd's verdict, Jude's fall was not dramatic like a movie. It was small and messy. People stopped inviting him to lunches. His closest work friends texted a perfunctory "Are you okay?" then began to distance. Social posts that once praised his work were fewer. Someone in HR later told me they had been told of "a public incident." The next week a transfer to another office overseas was announced. He left angry, he left hollow.
Angelina's punishment was different. She had built herself as a savior on false stories. Her social accounts were flooded with comments from classmates who had been fooled. She had to watch her own friends step away. Women I had never spoken to before texted compassion and also precise, cool admonitions. Her parents called and did not know what to say. She posted an apology that read like a script and not like a heart.
25
The hall emptied. People filtered out in groups, some pointing, some whispering, some shooting the night with small triumphant smiles. I felt both sad and clear.
"You did good," Julissa said later, when we stood outside in the cold. She hugged me hard.
Beau took my hand. "You were brave," he said simply.
26
Life after is quieter. Beau and I moved in together properly. He kept making songs and jokes and small breakfasts. He would take my jacket off when I shivered and drape it over my shoulders like a knight.
"You're stubborn," he told me one morning as he handed me a bowl of porridge. "I like that."
"And you are reckless with your heart," I said. He smiled and kissed my knuckles.
We were young and ordinary and a little reckless. I loved that the man who loved me did not expect me to be a lamp on his table. He liked me loud, messy, ordinary.
27
A year later someone at work asked me in the elevator, half teasing, half curious, "Do you still keep things Jude gave you?"
I laughed. "I threw them in a dumpster on video. I have a receipt for the donation of one necklace. Life is lighter."
I thought of the trash can that had swallowed ten years of small things. I thought of the dumpster’s lid closing like a curtain.
28
Once, late, I walked past the alley where we had thrown the box. The dumpster was there, slightly dented, the smell of rain and paper. There was a small smear of tape left on the lid, like a memory. I touched it and smiled.
"Do you ever regret it?" Beau asked as we held hands.
"Sometimes," I said, "I remember the nights I stayed awake hoping he'd come back. But then I remember how it felt to drop the box in the bin. That feeling is mine."
Beau squeezed my hand. "Keep it," he said. "Keep whatever you need."
29
There are moments I still replay: the morning he gave me porridge, the night he first kissed me, the time he stayed up while I burned soup and pretended it was gourmet.
"I like you sleeping," he would say, and then grin in a way that made me feel memorized. He smiled in ways Jude never did: small, private, like a secret shared between us.
If anyone asks me the shape of my happiness, I point to small things: a bowl of porridge, a used concert ticket, a song scribbled on the back of a napkin.
30
My ending is not perfect. Jude is gone and I am quieter about him. Angelina moved to another city and cleaned up her life. Beau writes on the train and sometimes sings about a girl who threw away a box.
One night I opened my phone and saw a simple message from Julissa: "Remember the dumpster."
I laughed, then sent Beau a picture of the dumpster lid, a small dent of proof.
"That's our history?" he asked, playful.
"It was mine to close," I said. "I closed it."
Beau kissed me then, under the hall light, in the small way two ordinary people hold each other's hands and say yes.
I closed my eyes and remembered the sound—"thud"—of the lid. That sound is the end of a long season and the start of a new song.
The End
— Thank you for reading —