Sweet Romance10 min read
Locked Door, Silk Slip, and a Very Handsome Landlord’s Son
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"I owe rent and dignity," I said to my reflection, holding a pocket pudding like a tiny, sad trophy.
"Then stop buying pudding," Journee said over the phone, voice bright. "Or go seduce your landlord's son. He's ridiculous—tall, model legs, peak cheekbones, and his dad owns the building. Live rent-free. Think of the Instagram."
"I don't think about Instagram," I muttered, one eyebrow raised at my own mirror image. "I think about electricity bills."
"I mean, do you want me to set up a tutorial on 'How to Seduce in Seven Easy Steps'?" Journee snorted. "Step one: bump into him in the elevator."
The elevator doors were closing. I popped a spoonful of pudding in my mouth. The door slid open and there he was, effortless as a poster, hoodie on, hand reaching for the buttons.
"12?" he asked without looking up from the phone in his hand.
My jaw locked. "Thanks," I squeaked, the pudding sliding off the spoon and plopping onto the floor between my shoes.
He glanced down at the pudding. One eyebrow lifted like punctuation. "Nice pudding choice."
I buried my face in my hands. "Please, don't make me be him in every future narrative."
We rode in silence for two stops. "You sound famous," he said finally, amused.
"That's because I'm famous in the 'I forgot to pay my rent' club," I said. "Membership dues overdue."
He laughed, soft and low. "Club president is my dad, then."
When I got home later and locked myself out in a silk cami and nothing else, my life decided to script the scene Journee had joked about.
Someone had been too smart to take the elevator and instead left the door swinging behind them. My key was inside. My phone, too. My bedroom was a promise I couldn't reach.
I climbed stairs like they were punishment and knocked on the 14th floor—Marcel Gauthier's apartment—because of course the landlord's family lived two floors above me. The door opened and a tall figure in a towel leaned in the doorway, hair dripping. He froze.
"You're the..." he said slowly, one corner of his mouth playing a smile.
"Tenant with bad life choices," I said. "And less layers than advisable."
He regarded me like he enjoyed the view and the comedy. "You're really here to see my mom?"
"Yes. My door locked and I have an important date with lukewarm takeout."
His laugh was a musical thing. "You're stubborn, you know."
"Or desperate," I corrected.
He held up a circle of keys later—dozens of them like tiny medals. "I keep spare keys. It's comical how many keys we have."
"Of course you do." I slid the towel over the T-shirt he handed me. "You shouldn't keep spare keys in your hand if you want me to believe your parents don't treat you like a king."
"I'm not a king," he said. "Sometimes I think I'm a prince in training."
We ended with me taking his cheap towel and promising to wash it. He told me, "Don’t make me regret lending you a towel."
"You won't," I said. "I owe you a laundry session."
Days slipped into a new rhythm. I covered morning office hours and late-night shifts at a bar. The schedule was brutal but doable. The bar was its own tiny world: Jorge the bartender, Dylan Kelly the older coworker who drove me home sometimes, Helene Brown who flirted with every attractive stranger, and me—Georgia Dickerson—desperately trying to keep my rent paid without joining Journee’s 'Seduce the Landlord's Son' master class.
One night, the son—Evert Estrada—came with friends. He sat in a corner and watched me in a way that felt like being carefully inspected rather than ogled.
"Is that your uniform?" he asked when he came to the bar.
"There's a theme tonight," I said. "Costume night."
He gave a small, sharp look to the friends around him. "I don't like it."
"Then leave," I thought, and smiled while I poured them a soda and half a round of discounted beer. Helene singled him out quickly—big eyes, a practiced laugh, and an easy leg swing.
"He's gorgeous," Helene sighed. "Is he single?"
"Probably legally unattainable," I muttered.
Evert sat and waited until things calmed. "Are you coming off shift soon?" he asked me at the end of his table.
"Depends. Will you take me home, or leave me to the mercy of Dylan's playlist?" I asked.
"I can drive," he said simply.
"That's surprisingly heroic for someone who lives in the building you manage," I teased.
"I'm not the manager," he corrected. "But I can be your chauffeur."
The car was black and impossible to stealth. He drove like someone who knew exactly where he was going. On the curb he stopped, looked at me, and said, "I don't think you belong in that uniform every night."
"You mean my collection of outfits?" I said.
"Yes," he answered. "And also, you don't belong in the version of yourself that stays up that late."
"Touching," I said. "Thanks?"
We were an odd pair. He was cadet serious with the softest laugh; I was the tired woman who thought romantic gestures involved smaller laundry bills. Still, we found ourselves in a pattern: he checked the building's cameras, I took the late shift, he complained about people who stayed out too late, I complained about his family's key collection, we argued about my coffee choices and whether he was being overprotective, and he called me "sis" when he teased me and "Georgia" when he meant it.
"I noticed you left your bra in my bathroom once," he said one afternoon, dry and kind.
"You didn't throw it away?" I asked, mortified.
"I don't throw that kind of item away," he said. "I hung it to dry like a proper neighbor. You should be more careful."
I was flaming beet-red and could only manage, "Thanks."
We moved forward in small steps. We rode each other’s coattails of embarrassment—my silk cami, the CCTV kiss that got watched by the landlord's parents, my clumsy confession that I was not, in truth, a professional seductress but a woman who needed rent relief. Evert, for his part, was a mystery—and then not. One night, when a drunk man named Benjamin Corbett cornered me at the bar, everything clarified.
"Come on, pretty," Benjamin slurred, the stench of liquor clouding his words. "Just a drink. Come sit."
"No thanks," I said, trying to sidestep him. He didn't let go. His hand found my wrist and squeezed.
"Hey, let go," I snapped. People watched without helping—until a strong hand grabbed Benjamin's wrist.
Evert's eyes were flat, hard as flint. He was not amused.
"Let her go," he said.
Benjamin wrenched and tried to play the tough guy. "Who the hell are you, kid?"
"I'm the one who will make you regret touching her," Evert said, voice low. He twisted Benjamin's wrist until the man's squeal split the music.
"Ow—stop—fuck—"
People in the bar pulled out phones. Some rose, some pulled away. "What are you doing?" Benjamin spat, voice cracking between bravado and pain.
"Apologize," Evert said calmly.
"I didn't—"
"Apologize now," Evert commanded, twisting the man's fingers in a way that made the tendons stand out like cables.
Benjamin's face flushed a bruised purple, and the muttered apologies started to come out between gasps: "Okay, sorry—I'm sorry—I'm sorry—"
The man’s bravado collapsed into a childish panic; he flailed for composure. The bar watched as the drunk man, once puffed up and threatening, shrank under Evert’s quiet pressure. "I'm sorry. Please, I'm sorry." The voice was thin, high, desperate.
A woman near the entrance started clapping, quietly at first, then louder. "Good," someone muttered. "Finally."
"We're calling the manager," another voice said. Dylan was already on his phone. "Security needs to come."
But this was not a simple call-and-arrest scene. Evert held the man so the embarrassment would sting more than any handcuffs. People filmed. Someone uploaded a shaky clip titled "Landlord's son owns harasser" and a hundred comments flickered like lightning.
"You're going to apologize to Georgia," Evert said, a coldness like a new winter in his tone.
Benjamin's eyes pleaded. "Please, please—I'll do anything—"
"Say it clearly, in front of everyone," Evert demanded.
"I—I'm sorry, Georgia. I was a pig. I won't do it again." The man spat my name like a curse and a plea. The crowd murmured. A few people began to chant, half in jest and half serious, "Apologize! Apologize!"
For a long minute he repeated it, each time the words sounding thinner. The bar gaped; faces reddened, whispering. "See? That's what he gets," Helene told someone else, beaming. Others nodded, some were filming, some packing up to leave, some cheering quietly.
When the owner finally arrived, Benjamin was small and shaking. "We can ban him," the owner said quickly. "We'll call the cops if he keeps harassing."
"He will leave now," Evert said. "From this building, from this block. If he ever comes near her again, I'll make sure everyone remembers who he is."
Benjamin's composure crumpled into groans and apologies. "Yes, thank you—I'll go—sorry—"
He stumbled out, the night swallowing him. Videos spread like wildfire. The comments were a mix of praise and blunt curiosity, but mostly people were glad to see a bully checked in public. For me, there was mortification, gratitude, and a sharp, unfamiliar warmth.
"You didn't have to do that," I said later, voice tight.
"I did," Evert answered. "Nobody touches my tenant."
"You're not my guardian."
"You are someone who lives here. I care."
We sat under the building light with boxes of cold food—helplessly romantic, embarrassing, the kind of grown-up sleepwalking that makes sense in a movie. He was gentler then, quiet. "You owe me laundry," he said, smiling.
"You're worse than my mother," I teased.
He kissed my forehead like he had done it a hundred times. "I'll help you feel less afraid," he said, and it felt sincere.
The days unfurled. We kissed—awkward, clumsy at first—then longer, better. We had a real first kiss in his car outside the bar, breath hot, hearts thudding. I once asked him, cheeks burning: "Do you ever think about marriage?"
He blinked. "Only sometimes," he said. "If you say yes, I'm good at paperwork."
"That's not romantic."
"Romance is overrated." He shrugged. "But I like being practical."
The landlord's parents came back from a trip. At breakfast, in Ursula Nunez's sunny kitchen and Marcel Gauthier's steady nods, the world felt properly domestic and terrifying. "You two are good for each other," Ursula said, squeezing my hand like she owned me already. "Come eat every day, don't be shy."
Marcel chuckled. "When you have a daughter-in-law, you can never have enough breakfast."
I choked on my toast.
"You didn't tell me you were serious," I whispered to Evert later that day.
"I thought you were," he said. He looked older in the afternoon sun. "I like you. And I'm tired of watching you work two jobs."
"You mean 'tired of watching' as in 'stop' or 'satanic plan to marry me'?"
He grinned. "Both."
People loved the story—videos, whispered gossip, jokes about the 'king of keys' and the tenant who came in cami. Journee mocked me mercilessly, which was affection dressed as cruelty. Dylan smiled from the sidelines, solid and slightly disappointed, like someone who had hoped for a different end but still wanted me to be happy.
One evening, after we’d been together long enough for the building to be comfortably curious, there was a little drama that could have been far worse.
Helene had flirted too obviously that week, tasted the water, and then—predictably—she misread a look and decided to go for a spectacular move. She maneuvered herself between Evert and me at the bar, tossed her hair, whispered something and leaned in. She was aiming for a kiss scene that belonged in a college rom-com.
"Back off," I said quietly.
Helene's smile didn’t even wobble. "He's fun, Georgia. You could do better."
Evert, who'd been leaning against the jukebox, did something small: he reached out and took my hand. The smallness had teeth. "She's not going to do better," he said without raising his voice. "If she thinks she can step on someone's feelings as a game, she can step into the sunlight and find her dignity."
Helene's bravado leaked away like warm water from a punctured balloon. Her friends watched as she flinched. She apologized, clumsy and sincere enough to be honest, and left the bar looking like she'd run aground. Not arrested, not humiliated by law, but publicly diminished: she had been shown, gently but unmistakably, that certain lines weren't for play.
I learned that punishment didn't have to be violent to be devastating. Evert's method was precise: deny the show, deflate the boast, hold the battered person—me—in front of witnesses so that the world corrected itself. It was small social justice, but social justice nonetheless. People around the bar nodded, and the rumor mill quieted. He didn't film it, he didn't make noise—he simply made the choice to protect someone publicly, and the neighborhood respected it.
By winter, rent was no longer the ghost that woke me in the night. Evert kept his promise about keys and laundry and rides. We sat on the fire escape and ate tiny boxes of leftover food. Once, Journee asked, spooning sesame noodles, "So what was it like to seduce the landlord's son?"
"He seduced me back," I said.
"I thought you were supposed to be the best schemer?" she said.
"I schemed for a cheaper life," I shrugged. "Instead, I got dinners, someone who sticks up for me, and the embarrassment of my entire existence showing on a monitor."
Evert popped a shrimp with chopsticks and handed it to me. "You still owe me the laundry," he said.
"And the laundry owes me privacy," I teased.
He leaned over and kissed the corner of my mouth, a feather-light press. "Fair."
Sometimes, in the slow moments when the building hummed and the radiator clanked like an old heart, we would hear the faint beep of the security camera system and remember the first time we met at a locked door. I would run my fingers over the scar of embarrassment the world had seen and laugh.
"Remember the pudding?" Journee would call from the couch.
"Forever," I would answer.
He would squeeze my hand. "Remember the keys."
"And the towel," I would add.
"And the apology," he would finish.
We'd look out at the building that had watched us grow from strangers to partners, and I would feel a lightness almost like rent-free living—only better, because it had cost honesty, awkwardness, and the willingness to be ridiculous together.
The last line of the story was always small and very particular: the silk cami that had started it all hung in my closet, washed and a little faded, next to the towel Evert had lent me. When he kissed me in the hallway later and said, "Will you marry me?" I didn't say yes because of the grandness of it; I said yes because I remembered losing my pudding in the elevator and then finding someone who would open the right door.
"And you'll still make me buy pudding sometimes?" he asked, brow cocked.
"Only the cheap ones," I said. "But you have to bring the milk—I'd like a little dignity next time."
He laughed, and we walked up the stairs together.
The End
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