Sweet Romance11 min read
I Wrote My Own Love Story — Then I Changed the Script
ButterPicks14 views
I wake up inside my own book the day I meet him.
"I am not the heroine," I tell myself, half proud and half smug. "I'm the secondary girl who never wins."
In the pages I wrote, the secondary girl is rich, pretty, safe—luxury by the ton. I used to be poor in my first life; here I have the piano lessons, the expensive creams, the private tutors. I sleep better at night because I can buy comfort.
That safety ends the moment he walks into the gym.
"Hi, I'm Ethan Chapman." He says it like a small gift. His smile catches light like someone always standing under a lamp. At first I think it's a line I wrote for someone else, and then I feel something tight in my chest that I know belongs in other people's novels, not mine.
"You're—" I can't finish. I was not supposed to have this scene. "Ethan."
He narrows his eyes in quick surprise and then laughs, bright and easy.
"Right. Ethan."
"Of course," I tell myself. "The script begins."
"You're staring," Annika whispers from behind my shoulder.
"Am I?" I whisper back.
"Yes. Don't be obvious," she says.
I pretend not to be obvious and fail.
"That boy has a tiger smile," she says, later, when we are in the hallway.
"Don't," I tell her.
"He looked at you," Annika insists.
"For all I know, he looked at the plants," I say.
"Do not lie."
"Fine. He looked at the plants. The very attractive plants."
He is a magnet. I am the middle of a trap I made for my own characters.
"Hey, Elaina," he says one afternoon, coming closer than any of the pages planned.
"Don't touch any of my plot lines," I say.
He sits within arm's reach, and then he sits a little closer. He calls me "little Yuan" on a joke page I wrote years ago and I almost die laughing—this is the embarrassing part where the author realizes their creation has feelings.
"What's wrong?" he asks.
"Nothing," I lie.
"Then smile like you mean it."
He laughs like it's simple, like he can cure anything by laughing, and because I wrote him that way a long time ago, he obeys the script and means it.
The more I try to behave like the wise, aloof secondary girl, the closer he moves.
"I'll be over at my place this weekend," he says casually one day when the class is messy and loud.
"To walk a corgi?" I ask. The voice in me that wrote the original keeps a ledger of little things I put into him for texture.
"Yes," he says, like it's no big deal. "Do you want to come? My place has a corgi and a piano."
"My life," I want to say, "is a string of private lessons and safe purchases. I do not belong in your movie."
Instead I say, "My homework is unfinished."
"Homework transfers," he says cheerfully. "Friendship doesn't."
The narrator in me scowls. In the book, his attention is reserved for Athena Campbell. He will slow-burn toward her, learn to read her cold face like a map, and then they will stumble into each other in the kind of scenes that make readers hold their breath.
I do not let the book have the only say.
"Do not follow the pages," I whisper to my notebook later that night and plot how to change the story without breaking its bones. I can keep what I wrote and cut the sharp edges. Sweet instead of tear-soaked. That is my plan.
"Why change?" Annika asks over tea.
"Because," I say. "I don't like cruelty for the sake of drama."
"You're moralizing the plot? Since when?"
"Since the day I realized I could be kinder."
The first sweet change is small: I stop the meaner scenes I wrote about Athena. She used to be the cold center of the storm, shut off and alone, and the book made her suffer for it. In real life she is timid and kind—Athena Campbell, who knows numbers and sleep schedules, who appears and sits silent in the classroom and doesn't expect anything.
"Do you want the yogurt?" I ask one afternoon, holding out a blueberry oat yogurt I'd collected from Ethan.
She looks at the small bottle like it is a relic.
"I don't—" she begins.
"You should have it," I say and put it in her hand.
Ethan stops mid-step when he realizes I gave his yogurt away. He corners me after class, sincerity and a little hurt in his face.
"That bottle was for you," he says.
"But she had none."
"That doesn't mean—" He stumbles, like he is being slide-ruled for the first time.
"I'm sorry," I say, because I'm trying to be a better version of my character.
He forgives me and then begins bringing two bottles every day, one for me, one for Athena. "One for you, one for her," he says with the solemnity of a knight splitting his bread.
I watch them from the side. They are not dramatic. They are small and steady.
"She smiled at me today," I tell Annika.
"You're not supposed to tell me that if you want to be noble."
"I'm trying to be noble," I say.
"You are a fragrant mess."
We laugh.
The first big break in my new plan happens on the way home from school. I realize the book's villain—Athena's brother, a boy I never wanted to write as cruel—has been real all along.
I spot them in the alley the day of her scholarship celebration: a group of tall boys blocking the way. Athena's breath hitches like a small trapped animal. Her books are scattered, paper fluttering like defeated birds.
"Who are you?" I demand.
"We're having fun," one of them sneers.
"She just got scholarship money," says another, throaty and mean. "Looks like easy pickings."
My mouth tastes like metal. This used to be a plot beat intended to make Athena vulnerable so Ethan could rescue her later and the two would warm toward each other. Now it's a real threat. I do the only thing I can think of.
"She needs me," I say loud enough to be heard by the alley's narrow walls.
"Get lost, pretty lady," one of them says and more than one hand reaches out.
Then I run.
"Leave her alone!" Ethan shouts, his voice like a ball of light slamming into the dark.
He is there, fast as a fact I put on paper. He takes a swing and then loses balance because he is not a comic hero; he is fifteen-year-old human with surprising courage. I take my courage and I slam my forehead into the leader's temple. The noisy chaos skids to a halt. The leader staggers, cursing and clutching his head.
"Call the police," I say.
They leave, glowering, because a girl who hurts their ego is more dangerous than a girl who cries. We gather Athena's books under an orange streetlight while our own breaths fog.
"You didn't have to do that," Ethan says later, pressing ice to my forehead with ridiculous care.
"I know," I say, bruised and oddly proud.
That night, I decide to rewrite more than small things.
"I am going to stop you from losing the scholarship," I tell Athena the next day. "Tell me everything about home."
She tells me. The story is small and awful: boys who watch, a brother who is always short of money and even shorter on conscience.
"Who is he?" I ask.
"Maddox," she says. She says his name with a shrug the way you might say "rain"—unpreventable, seasonal, part of the weather.
"Maddox Rodrigues," I like the name less when I hear it attached to the idea of a plan to rob his own sister's scholarship.
"Can you stop him?" Athena asks.
"Watch me," I say.
I am no detective. I'm an author who learned to move people and words. I use both. I plant a rumor at school, carefully, like a seed: "He and his friends are getting into trouble near the market." I leak a different story to another group: "Someone saw a handoff behind the school today." The gossip moves like a hungry thing; within hours a teacher mentions it to administration. The administration mentions it to the town patrol. Meanwhile, I keep Athena close and keep Ethan close.
I never wanted real harm to come to Maddox. I only wanted the scheme to fail. I wanted truth to shine, because truth is less cruel than the book's blade.
But truth sometimes needs a stage.
One rainy Thursday we have the school's monthly assembly. I sit with my knees trembling because the plan is a delicate thing. I have arranged for Athena to stand at the back; I have arranged for two teachers to be on standby; I have arranged for one of Maddox's friends to have a sudden conscience and trade a plain truth for a small favor. The gears I made on a page are now made of breath and human error.
The principal calls the gathering to order. "This month," she says, "we will talk about honor and safety."
"Now," I say under my breath. "Now."
Ethan squeezes my hand and looks at me like I'm the funniest person on earth.
"Maddox Rodrigues," the principal intones, and immediately fifty heads swivel. "We have reason to address an incident involving wrongdoings at the market and manipulation of another student."
Maddox's mouth goes dry. He is fifteen but the statement is older than him; it ages his face like sunburn.
"Who told—" he starts.
"My name is Elaina McDonald," I say, standing. The auditorium is a bubble of air and expectant faces when I walk up.
"I am the one who stopped you," I say, and there are whispers like mice. "I am the one who called attention to what you planned."
Maddox stands too, red blooming under his collar. "You—"
"You almost hurt Athena," I say. "You planned that. You told people to watch her. You thought the money was yours to take."
"That's not true!" he shouts. He lunges for a lie so fast it cracks.
"It is true," says a voice behind us. One of Maddox's friends—York Conti—stands with a shaking face. "He told us to do it. He promised a share."
The auditorium hums. A dozen phones lift like birds as students start recording.
"Why?" I ask calmly.
"Because we needed it," Maddox says. His voice—before this—had been drunk on bravado. Now it is sand. The bravado cracks. "My mom—"
"Enough." The principal's face is resolute. "You will come with us. This will be handled with the proper authorities."
Maddox's face melts through stages of denial.
"This is slander!" he cries first, face bright with panic.
"Evidence?" a teacher asks.
"He's lying—" he starts again, but the auditorium breathes as if watching a simple trick.
"Do you have anything to add?" the principal asks me.
"I have witness statements," I say. "And a recording of the conversation where he plans it. He told himself this would be easy because no one would suspect his sister. He thought he could profit off her."
Maddox ducks his head like a beaten animal. "I—" he begins, and then his face collapses into grief and fury.
"You will not leave," the principal says, voice hard. "Security will escort you. There will be investigation. For now, you will face the consequences in full view of the school."
The next hour is a slow peel of dignity. Teachers speak, students murmur, and Maddox's friends distance themselves. A few hundred witnesses watch the boy who thought himself untouchable shrink under the lights. He moves through denial, through surprise, through frantic bargaining.
"That's false!" he cries to his mother on a phone call made under teachers' eyes, and the sound echoes like a small animal's howl.
"Apologize," I say, though my voice is gentle. "Apologize to Athena."
"Apologize?" he spits. "To her?"
"Yes," a teacher says. "And to everyone you put at risk."
He is forced to stand and speak the words. His voice cracks. First he attempts bluster, then slides into tears, then tries again and tries to escape. Students record. Some clap. Some sob. Parents exchange looks that ask, "Why would you ever do such a thing?"
I watch Athena the whole time. She does not cry. She is small and rigid and very brave. Slowly, as Maddox loses his friends and any advantage, she does something he will never forget: she turns her face to him and says, "Why would you put me in that position?"
He answers with a tangle about money and shame and "I didn't think—" and then the words "I was desperate" grow too small for the room.
The punitive process is not graceful, but it is public and it is long. There is a recording, an apology forced by school authority, counseling arranged, and a social unmaking that happens right before all of us. For the first time in my book-ridden life, a villain is not swept off to legal obscurity; he is stripped of audience. Students whisper and shuffle, teachers write notes, and Maddox's bravado collapses into a thousand tiny humiliations.
I will not pretend I felt no satisfaction. I had written scenes like this and wanted blood or redemption in some tidy paragraph. This was better: messy, embarrassing, human. He had to search for apologies and find his voice thin and wrong. He had to see his sister look at him with a kind of sorrow I'd never imagined putting into the book.
"I didn't know," he said finally, voice small.
"You did," Athena responded softly. "You did know."
Her words were not roaring. They were not dramatic. They were real. Around us, students recorded, teachers nodded, and the principal closed the assembly with an appeal to empathy and responsibility.
Maddox's punishment continued beyond that room. There were community service hours, revocation of privileges, supervised meetings with counselors, calls to his parents that changed his home life into an audit. At school he had no safe corner. Students avoided him or stared. He tried to plead with classmates, one by one, and their faces were small, private trial juries.
A few boys laughed. Most people recorded. Some older students offered advice, and some offered harshness. In a week, Maddox had lost access to school trips and the baker's shop in town who once gave him a discount. People whispered as he walked by like an exiled idea.
He fell through many gates. The shame did not bury him—he had to live inside it. He had to stand in front of those he'd harmed and rebuild a life of trust from scratch, which, in our town, meant months of small humiliations and the long, boring work of being reliable and small enough to be invisible.
When it was over—never truly over—he had to look Athena in the eye again. "I'm sorry," he said; it was the same phrase but different now.
"Make it right," she told him, like a ledger. "And stop lying to yourself."
He had to do that, and the rest was paperwork and small atonement. The public punishment had been an exposure more than a finale. It broke the plan and spared a scholarship; it broke one boy's arrogance and maybe made him listen to real remorse.
After the storm, quiet returned.
"You made a lot of enemies," Annika said, when we sat on the gym stairs with hot drinks.
"Enemies?" I laughed. "I made a lot of friends."
"Friends?" she said. "You mean the ones who didn't film you."
Ethan squeezed my hand. "You did well," he said, and his eyes were soft.
"I didn't do it for credit," I said. "I did it because I couldn't watch it happen."
"You wrote it that way," Annika teased.
"I didn't this time."
Time moved on like a loyal metronome. Ethan and I kept getting closer in ways I had not written in full before: small jokes about umbrella sharing, arguments about the best tea, nights when we compared terrible practice videos of my piano playing.
"Stop deleting our photos," he told me one night as we scrolled through a camera roll.
"I was being cautious," I said. "I am the one who writes endings."
"Then write this in permanent ink," he said.
"Maybe," I said.
We went to the plant park in the rain and got soaking wet. He wore a ridiculous sundress accidentally bought from the convenience upstairs and laughed as if he had practiced silliness.
"You're ridiculous," I told him, and he leaned forward.
"Be my girlfriend," he said without the fanfare the book promised, with the kind of tremble that is honest and small and utterly human.
I said yes not because of a script but because of nights and noodle shops and the way he pressed my fingers and meant it.
"I want a life written in small kindness," I told him once, leaning my head on his shoulder.
"Then let's write it together," he said.
In the end, I rewrote my book from the inside. Athena graduated to college with scholarship intact; she worked and invested in small ways and became less haunted by family demands. Ethan and I stayed together the messy way teenagers do: with apologies and lunches shared on benches and a thousand little jokes only we found funny. Maddox learned, slowly and clumsily, accountability. He did not disappear into a single sentence. He lived, and paid, and changed.
My final scene is not theatrical. It is a small one.
"Do you remember the vow we pronounced?" I asked one night, pointing at the ridiculous phrase we had shouted in a moment of youthful drama: "same year, same month, same day of death."
He laughed. "You said it louder than anyone."
"I meant forever," I said.
"Forever is a heavy word," he said, kissing the top of my head.
"Then promise me this: when we argue, you will bring blueberry yogurt."
He made a mock bow. "I promise."
In the morning I put my hand on the piano. A little dent remained from years of practice, and my fingers tripped over a familiar scale. The song came out like sunlight.
This was my story now—composed hands, crooked vows, yogurt and all. Not the book's original cruelty. Not the neat tragedies I once thought were necessary. Just life—no less beautiful for being quieter.
The End
— Thank you for reading —