Sweet Romance10 min read
Locker Room, Pool, and a Thousand Small Confessions
ButterPicks10 views
"I opened the wrong door."
"Well, you did open it." Angelo grinned, leaning against a row of lockers like it was his throne.
I wanted to crawl into the floor and disappear. Instead I froze and let my eyes do the impossible: count abs.
"Hey," Mateo said, cheeks flushing, fingers on his shirt's hem like a nervous kid. "You okay?"
"I'm—" I couldn't say "sorry" because it sounded like I'd asked for this, and I hadn't. So I said, "I forgot to lock the door."
"And you walked into the team's private locker room?" Laurent asked, folding his arms. His voice was low and flat like the winter sky. He wasn't surprised. He was faintly amused.
"I'm Coraline," I managed.
"Coraline," Graham repeated, smiling gently, like the word was warm. "You're Dean Boyd's sister, right?"
"Boyd?" I blinked. "You know my brother?"
"Of course." Graham looked toward the gym like it was the center of the world. "He is loud enough to be noticed from space."
"Thank you," Boyd's voice boomed from the doorway as he pushed it open. "There you are."
Boyd came in, hand over his mouth like he was trying to be dignified but failing. He was red-haired and half-grin, the kind of brother that made you feel both safe and embarrassed.
"Bring the stuff and leave," he ordered. "And you, you boys, put your shirts back on."
"Aw, come on, Boyd," Mateo said with puppy eyes. "Let her see."
"She's a minor," Boyd said flatly, and I wanted to die.
"I can see that." Angelo laughed.
"Enough," Laurent said. He shrugged on a towel like a shield. "We have a game."
"Will you come?" Graham asked me later that day, when Boyd's scowl had softened and the sun seemed to forgive everything.
"I can't," I lied. "I have class."
"Saturday," Boyd corrected with a glare. "You don't have class on Saturday, Coraline."
"You caught me." I smiled and felt ridiculous. "I'll come."
"Good," Graham said like it was settled. "I'll save a seat."
At the game I screamed like a lunatic. I learned a new kind of cheer: one that vibrates the sternum and makes you proud and embarrassed at once.
When Graham sank the three-pointer, I shouted, "Graham, you're amazing!" and saw his soft smile.
"Thanks," he mouthed back.
"You're ridiculous," Boyd muttered, but his chest puffed with a father's pride even though he was my brother.
After the game we went to dinner like we'd practiced the evening. Angelo argued for a spicy place. Mateo insisted on a hole-in-the-wall his uncle recommended.
"She's my guest," Boyd said when Mateo tried to pay. "Let her eat. But only a salad."
Mateo pouted and said, "She eats like a freight train."
"She is not a freight train," Boyd said. "She's my baby sister and you will treat her accordingly."
"I'm Mateo." He handed me his phone to add. "Add me."
I added him. My contact list gained three handsome names that night and I felt like a person in a movie.
A week later, I posted something dumb and dramatic on social media—an old habit. The next morning my phone filled with messages.
"Want to come to T University this weekend?" Mateo asked in the first text.
"I have lab," I typed.
"That's okay," he replied. "Come eat."
Laurent messaged later, simple and to the point: "Can you swim?"
"Not really," I wrote back, remembering how I clutched flotation devices as a child.
"Then learn," he said.
Laurent had a motorcycle. He wore a black helmet, and when he took it off, his hair had that "slept in and still beautiful" arrangement. He tossed me a pink helmet like a challenge.
"Sit up," he ordered.
I sat. He guided me onto the bike, strong and patient. "Hold on."
I did. He drove like someone with a deadline, calm and fearless. When he stopped at the pool and said, "I'll catch you," I believed him with that childish, dangerous trust.
"You okay?" he asked when I hesitated on the edge.
"Yes." I tried to be brave and managed a nod.
"Down you go," he said, and his hands were warm against my waist. The water closed around me and the feeling of weightlessness tasted like possibility.
"You can try to float," he suggested.
I gripped his neck and felt like a cat clinging to a person who smelled nice.
"Let go?" he asked softly.
"No," I lied.
"I'm right here," Laurent said.
Graham—the one who always smelled like piano wood and safe things—showed up later. He had that family ease with me because his mother was my professor and I'd been over for dinner. He brought oranges, a shy grin, and a small, quiet kindness.
"You're staying for dinner," he said when his mom insisted I stay. "We like you here."
"Mom's food is the best," he added and fed me chicken. He watched me with a kind curiosity that felt like an adult hand smoothing a shirt collar.
"I like his mom," I told Boyd later.
Graham laughed. "She makes the best dumplings."
"And Graham," Boyd said, "you are on time, you are kind, and you are stealing my sister's attention."
"I'm not stealing anyone," Graham said, but he looked happy.
It got complicated.
Laurent took me for rides and dared me to jump into cold water and said "I'll protect you" like it was a spell. Mateo bought me food and took my hand when I was embarrassed. Graham smiled softly and took care of me the way someone who knows what patience looks like.
I loved them all in different degrees of a stomach kiting across wires. I was eighteen and wildly irresponsible with my heart.
Then my life got messy. The kind of messy a little money and a lot of shame make.
My uncle—Philip Blevins—came to my campus like a storm. He had always been a shadow in our lives, a man who promised help and never delivered without taking things. He used to be family. He wanted to become family again, and he wanted money for the price.
"Coraline," he said in the quad, "you can help me. I need funds."
"I don't have—" I started.
"You do," he said, eyes milky with greed. "Boyd's been doing well. You must be able to get him to help."
I pushed back. "He's my brother. He isn't your bank."
"He sold our house," he accused in public, loud enough for clusters of students to stare. "Your parents left nothing because of them. You have the obligation."
My face burned. Graham's jaw tightened. Laurent's eyes darkened. Mateo's fingers clenched.
"Leave her," Boyd said. "Now."
Philip's voice rose like he was used to getting center stage. "She owes me. She owes me everything. I can expose her—they'll believe me. She is nothing without her family."
Graham stepped forward. "You will stop humiliating her."
"Or what?" Philip laughed, the sound like a bad coin. "What can you do, piano boy?"
"Call the campus police," Graham said simply.
A little crowd gathered. Boyd's hand found mine and pressed—it was a pressure like an anchor.
"You're making a scene, Philip," a voice said behind me.
It was Laurent. He was in a tank top, arms folded. He walked toward us like a storm with silk gloves on. He smelled like gasoline and river water.
Laurent's voice was low. "My friends do not deserve this."
"Oh? And you are—" Philip sneered.
"Laurent Chandler," he said, with the same flat tone he had in the locker room. "You know me."
The crowd shifted. "Isn't that the motorbike guy?" someone whispered.
"You're poking the wrong person," Mateo said, stepping forward, fists tight.
"Walk away," Boyd said to his uncle. "Now."
Philip turned on him like a cornered animal. "You think you can order me around, boy? I built you up. I gave you..."
"You sold our name for a bottle and a lie," Boyd interrupted. "You're done."
The push and shove escalated. That small public tiff could have ended in a quiet apology. It didn't. It ended in the way ugly things do when they meet the sun: everyone saw Philip for what he was.
He tried to pull me toward him, to drag me away to some forgotten street where threats were safer. Laurent moved first—then Graham, then Mateo.
"Let her go," Laurent said.
Philip laughed and his hand slammed my wrist so hard the crowd gasped.
Laurent struck him, not with a punch but with a cloth of calm. It was a push, and then other fists, and then a break. Philip's arrogance cracked like glass. He staggered. People filmed.
"Stop!" he roared. "I'm family!"
"Not anymore," Boyd spat. "Get out."
Security arrived. Someone called the police. A thousand eyes now watched Philip sputter and amend his sentences into thin apologies. He was dragged by campus guards, but not before his face went from smug to incredulous to pleading.
"You're a monster," Graham said quietly.
Philip looked at the men who had cornered him on a public lawn and found no shame—only fury.
"Tell everyone," Laurent said to my uncle. "Tell them what you were really after."
"I—" He started, voice breaking. "I needed money. You all owed me!"
"Pull the videos," Graham said. "We will post what you are. Files, receipts, court records. You will have no friends tonight."
Philip realized in that moment that public humiliation would be his punishment. He wanted private shame. He got exposure. The police cuffed him and led him away while the crowd recorded, commented, laughed, and spat metaphors.
The punishment wasn't a tribunal or a long court case yet. It was worse for him: exposure. Every insult that he had used to control others now turned back against him. News spread through the campus like spilled juice.
Philip's face was red and wet with sweat. He screamed something about "family," but the word had fallen from his mouth like a meaningless coin.
When it was over, we stood together. I was shaking.
"Are you okay?" Graham asked.
"Yes," I said. "No. I don't know."
"You don't have to answer yet," he said.
For the first time, the stakes in our silly dating-of-dizziness felt real. Some men protected me because they liked me. Some protected me because they had enough backbone. Some did both.
After that day, life changed speed. People who had noticed me only as Boyd's sister began to see me as Coraline—loud, stubborn, affectionate, clumsy, and someone other men wanted to fight for.
Graham invited me to his house more often. "My mom wants to see you," he said once, and I went. Her kitchen was a warm place full of laughter and oranges and the sound of fingers on piano keys. Graham would stop playing to see if I liked something, and I would pretend I didn't notice when he cut my food into smaller pieces.
Laurent rode his motorcycle like the wind and was as steady as a cliff. He could make me laugh the way I had never expected him to. Once he kissed the back of my neck just to check if I would turn, and I turned and surprised us both.
Mateo was the gentlest of the three. He peeled shrimp for me in a barbecue shop and handed them to me like offerings. "Open," he said, shy but proud.
"You're ridiculous," I told him, but I always took the shrimp.
Then one night, after enough ordinary days had passed, there was a confrontation that had nothing to do with Philip. It had to do with choices.
Graham had an audition abroad—an opportunity that had been years in the making. He told me softly, like telling a secret, "I might leave. I'm not sure yet."
"Go," I said too quickly. "You should go."
"Will you be sad?" he asked.
"A little," I admitted. "But why would you stay for me? I am not that important."
He smiled, and the smile reached his eyes. "You are important. To me."
"Then why does it feel like there are a thousand ways to lose you?" I said.
"Because you are used to losing things," he replied. "Let me not be one."
I couldn't decide how to respond. I was eighteen and fumbling and learning what my heart wanted. There was no one answer that would make everyone leave happy or sad. I wanted Laurent and Mateo and Graham to notice me in the way I could not command.
"Come with me," Laurent said one afternoon, sudden as summer rain. "Just for a day."
"What? To where?"
"To the harbor. To breathe."
I laughed. "I can't just go with you."
"Yes you can," he said.
We rode until the city became a suggestion and then turned back. When we came home, the world seemed smaller in a way that was comforting.
The final scene came with an award ceremony at school. Laurent was speaking in public about something he felt passionately about, and there was a cluster of people who wanted to pick a fight with him. Philip had been released on bail and tried once more to shame me in front of a crowd—this time at an alumni event. He thought he could bully and buy his way back into us.
He chose the wrong place. He chose the wrong people.
We had arranged to meet: the team, Graham's mother, some classmates, and the people who had already seen his true colors.
"You again," Philip said, the smell of stale arrogance surrounding him.
"Leave now," Boyd told him, his voice a low hurricane.
"I want an explanation," Philip begged the podium. "Why did everyone abandon me? They owe me."
Graham stepped forward. "You owe people apologies."
"Not just apologies," Laurent added. "We owe each other safety. You do not get to drag our lives into filth anymore."
"Look at him," Mateo said loudly. "He sells lies and then asks why his house is empty. He takes what's not his and blames everyone else."
People began to whisper. The microphone picked up the words and the house fell quiet. Philip, finally exposed, tried to regain his act. He gestured, bawled, accused. But the room had already shifted. He was losing every witness.
"Here," Graham said, and he had a stack of envelopes. "These are messages we collected. These are evidence of what you've been doing for years."
"You're lying!" Philip shrieked, but his voice thinned. He saw faces of people he'd taken advantage of. He saw a timeline of his own selfishness laid out like receipts.
"Where do you get off?" Boyd asked, stepping closer. "You took from my family."
"He isn't the only one," Laurent said. "You did this to others."
A woman in the second row stood up. "He did it to me." Another voice followed. "To my brother." A rush of testimony unfurled like a banner.
Philip, once loud and sure, began to tremble. The audience pressed in. Cameras flashed. The dean excused him and called security. The security led him not just to the exit but to a stage where he had to face his deeds.
"You will make amends," the dean said, voice reverberating. "Public reparation starts here. You will answer to the university board and the people you hurt."
Philip's face changed—shock, then denial, then a small, shrinking pleading that couldn't be made brave again. He tried to explain, to accuse, to charm. Every attempt failed. People recorded, posted, and talked. The consequence wasn't only the law; it was being seen for what he was.
He started with "You don't understand" and ended with "Please, I—" His voice cracked. People listened to a human who had cleaned his conscience with other people's lives.
The punishment that night was enraging and necessary: his reputation dissolved in front of the very audience he'd tried to manipulate. He had no comfortable seat to return to, no sympathetic ear. The people he'd preyed upon stepped forward and told the truth.
At the end, he slumped, not in dignity but in exposure. Someone took a photo; someone else posted it; it went viral. The public humiliation was thorough. It wasn't an execution, but it was a social sentence: his name now came with stories and warnings.
When Philip left, he had no threats left, only the echo of his own promises. The crowd dispersed. Some were chilly; some were sad. But we had won the simplest justice: our lives were ours again.
Later, in a hospital bed and in a messy apartment and in stolen conversations, the men who became my pillars showed me the many kinds of love.
Graham whispered, "Stay," and I thought of piano keys and patience.
Laurent teased, "You look ridiculous when you sleep," and I curled into the rhythm of his motorcycle breathe.
Mateo said, "I'll bring you dumplings at midnight," and I laughed and accepted.
On a quiet evening, with a cast on his leg and an apology in his pocket, Laurent leaned in and said, "I like you."
"You're impossible," I said.
He smiled. "Then be impossible with me."
We all learned, painfully and sweetly, that love is not a single line. It's a little messy, a little loud, and sometimes it is an entire team of people who stand up in the sun to make sure a bad actor doesn't hide in the shadows.
"Will you kiss me?" Laurent asked one night, ridiculous and sure.
"Only if you promise to stop pretending to break legs," I teased.
"Deal," he said.
I kissed him. It tasted like relief and gasoline and the first time I'd ever been brave enough to choose for myself.
The End
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