Sweet Romance13 min read
My Accidental Job, His Quiet Smile, and the Handkerchief
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I never planned to become anyone's housekeeper. I never planned to fall in love either. But that week in the city, when summer felt too heavy and life felt too small, my whole world rearranged itself around one tall, quiet boy with stormy eyes and a very patient smile.
"You still haven't made up with Jun—" my friend Laura started, and I shoved a milk tea straw into my mouth like it was a sword.
"Don't say his name," I said. "I am not making up with anyone."
"You and that 'not making up' line again," Laura laughed. "You always say that, Kaylin. Who are you trying to fool?"
I shrugged and walked faster. "I don't want a boyfriend. I have projects, okay? Projects that cost money."
"Projects cost money," Laura agreed, "but they also make you look more mysterious. Which is weird, because you already look like a living cartoon."
"I am not a cartoon!" I protested.
"You are a walking marshmallow," she answered, making me glare. I was definitely not a marshmallow.
We walked past a wide avenue where the sun was yawning in the sky. I felt a presence before I saw him: tall, neat, and pale enough that his dark hair looked like ink. His eyes are the kind people invent when they write that cheesy line about "eyes that hold the stars." I stopped mid-step because my brain did something silly and short-circuited.
"He—Hunter?" Laura's voice went small.
"H-hunter who?" I managed.
He was closer now. I recognized him from class—the kind of boy the girls labeled "school prince." He looked at us as if he had always known we would be here.
"Hey," he said to us. His mouth curved into the most casual smile, as if he was greeting a weather report.
"You're—Hunter Fletcher?" I asked, stupidly.
"Yes. It's hotter than usual," he said, like that was all there was to say.
Laura blurted, "You're the reason half the girls in our class have heart palpitations!"
He gave her a cool glance, then turned to me and asked, "Are you... Kaylin? You look like you're trailing coffee."
"I... I'm just thirsty," I lied.
He shouldn't have been there, but he was, and for reasons that would embarrass me later, he walked us to his car and said, "Get in. I'll give you a ride home."
Laura squealed and disappeared into the back seat. I could feel someone watching us from the sidewalk: Bianca D'Angelo, the blonde goddess of our department, with a look that could freeze water. I flushed inside but kept my face calm.
"Thanks," I muttered.
He glanced over at Bianca and, very simply, said, "You, get out."
Bianca blinked. People near the curb noticed. She fumbled, turned, and walked away like a perfect drama had ended with a flick of a wrist.
I stared at him. "You told her to get out?"
"Yes," he said. "Get in the car."
We drove in silence. The car smelled faintly of lemon and something expensive. Hunter—he said nothing much, but when he spoke, his words had a weight.
"You said you're looking for work?" he asked.
"Yes. Something part-time. I need some cash."
"I know someone who needs help," he said. "Come by at noon tomorrow. Try not to be late."
I did not know he was arranging everything. I thought he had simply offered a ride. Later I would learn he had already called the agency, sent messages to a friend who knew managers, and told the housekeeper—Grant Simpson—to be prepared. For now, I thought only of how impossible it felt to be alive and next to him in the same car, breath soft like sugar.
The agency he led me to three days later was chaos: older women everywhere, bright aprons, stern faces. I filled out forms that asked the most ridiculous questions—"Do you sleep deeply?"—and I wrote the honest truth down like a dare.
"I sleep like a log," I wrote.
The woman in charge peered over her glasses. "Six days of training, starting this afternoon," she said like it was a sentence carved into stone.
I almost left. I could see Laura's group chat calling me unreliable, and I imagined my savings evaporating into equipment costs. But then I thought about Hunter's smile and the way he said, "You, get in," and I remembered how easy it felt when he looked at me like I mattered.
"Okay," I said. "I'll stay."
Training was brutal. The room filled with women who had not worried about a grade in decades and knew precisely how to fold a towel so its corners lined up like military squares. I tried. I failed. Someone called out my first attempt and I felt heat climb my neck.
"What is this?" The instructor held up my clumsy roll. "Do you sleep with the blanket in your mouth?"
I wanted the earth to swallow me. I wanted Laura to text me and call me back and say, "It's okay. We'll take you to a cafe." But no message came but one from Hunter.
You okay? he wrote.
I stared at the small bubble of text and typed back, You are not supposed to know that I am okay. Then I went back to folding towels.
By the end of my first day, I smelled of disinfectant and failure. I sat on the dormitory bed—yes, they made us sleep on the agency's spartan dormitory—and a small ding appeared on my phone. Hunter: You look tired.
"Thanks," I answered.
"Come finish training this week," he said. "You'll be useful."
"Useful?" I typed.
He replied: No. Necessary.
He told me about a position at a house that needed someone who could learn and who could be patient. When I showed up to interview, a tall man in a suit—Grant Simpson—handed me a questionnaire that asked about my sleeping hours as if it determined my moral character.
"I get nine hours," I wrote.
Grant looked at my handwriting like it was an unexpected dessert.
"Your employer will want you to change your schedule," Grant said finally. "Six a.m. No naps. Healthy meals. Light sleep."
"That is a lot," I said.
"It is a house with standards," Grant said. "Do you want the job?"
"Yes," I said.
He smiled in a spare way, and I followed him up the curb where for the first time I saw the house I would call work—a pale villa with red tiles, white walls, an iron gate that made me wish I had better shoes. I choked on the sight; I had never been inside such a place before.
"Don't drool on the floor," Grant said. I wiped my mouth and tried to mean it as a joke, but Grant's face remained neutral.
The house was huge and messy. It smelled faintly of seafood and lemon. I began to clean like a soldier, sweeping, mopping, organizing. The kitchen was a battlefield of pots and a plate tower. I didn't notice him arrive back home until his voice called from the entry.
"I was wondering who could turn my kitchen into an art installation," he said.
My heart did something sharp. I turned to see Hunter leaning against the door, perfectly clean, perfectly composed, as if he had been carved from a better season.
"You're here?" I said, and my voice sounded like a child’s.
"You," he said. "Yes."
I kept working. He watched me with a look that made me feel both ridiculous and seen. That day he taught me small things—how to keep the oil from pooling in the pan, how to listen to water when it boiled. He told me once, quietly, "Less oil." Then later: "When you step, steady yourself."
I laughed inside at how many small ways he cared.
But of course, nothing is simple. Bianca D'Angelo appeared. She wore beauty like armor and looked at me with a face that labeled me "an intruder." She cornered me once near a courtyard and asked, "Does he even notice you?"
"Why are you asking me?" I said.
"Because I thought you were a stunt actress hired to make him look humble," she said. People who walked by heard it and slowed. My face went blank with shock.
"I am not anyone's stunt," I said.
She scoffed. "You? A house helper? Why would he ever lower himself to choose you?"
"Because maybe he likes people who can laugh and fix a pan," I said. She did not like that. She called me later, claiming I had ruined her chance, and started to send messages to classmates that were sharp and cruel.
I kept working, and the months softened around us. Hunter was not dramatic. He didn't flood the house with gifts or stage grand speeches. He simply did things—small, careful things. He took my wet handkerchief one day, the little embroidered cloth I had made for him, soaked from mistakes, and placed it into a drawer. The handkerchief became a secret like a quiet bird returning every now and then.
"Why'd you take it?" I asked later, pretending not to care.
"Because I'm the kind of person who keeps small things," he said.
One night he fell ill. He lay in bed like a fallen king. I tried to be useful but mostly I was awkward and worried. I dug out expired medicine, trying to show I cared, and he scolded me gently for it.
"Where did you get those?" he wheezed.
"From the pharmacy," I said.
"Those are ancient," he said.
"I didn't know which to give," I said.
He laughed then, a weak sound. "You don't have to be perfect." He took my hand and, with the warmth of a sunlit tile, told me, "You don't have to be perfect. Just be here."
The small, private moments multiplied: the way he tucked a blanket over my knees when I fell asleep on the couch; the time he forced me into a photogenic mask and brought me to a surprise party like a child who had found the map; the day we adopted a white kitten from a pet shop and named him Clear—short for "Clear Breeze," but Hunter called him Clear and I melted. The world rearranged itself around these little fits of joy.
We had our first date—an honest, awkward, wonderful thing. He asked, "Will you go to a movie with me tomorrow?"
"Yes," I said, and my heartbeat pressed against my ribcage like a secret drum.
We sat in the dark and he held me like a warm book. At one point I poked his nose, asking him to buy me a milk tea. I tried a bedside trick my roommate Laura had taught—lean in, kiss the nose, act casual. He pretended he wasn't moved. Then he kissed me so softly it was like a page turning.
We kept steady months of small romance—trips to the amusement park where I feared for his face when he tried to ride a roller coaster; a birthday where I accidentally soaked the handkerchief I had made and hid it like a criminal; a surprise where the whole class dressed in silly costumes and jumped out of hiding at the park, cheering for him. He blushed as if he had just been caught with a private happiness.
But Bianca never stopped. She whispered to others, she posted subtly cruel comments, and she waited like a storm that remembers the shape of the river. It hurt, more than I expected. I was a simple girl who did simple work, and suddenly I was the center of gossip, subject to petty games and barbed jokes. People who used to nod now stared.
I decided, with the quiet courage of someone who has had enough, to stop letting her acts pass in silence. The day came when the school's end-of-term awards ceremony happened in a glass-walled auditorium, full of parents, students, and the kind of echo where whispers turn into roars. Hunter was to sit on the platform among alumni and sponsors. I had not planned to speak. But I had one small arsenal: proof.
"You're going to get called out," Laura warned.
"Everyone knows she is mean," I said.
"No. Mean is not enough. You need clarity."
I had saved messages that Bianca had written—cruel notes about me, invitations to others to exclude me, a voice message that betrayed her sneer. I also had a two-minute recording where Bianca admitted, to a close friend, that she was trying to make Hunter jealous because she thought that's how you'd win a heart.
At the ceremony, when the director introduced hunter and the lights made a halo around his head, I stood up. My hands shook so badly I thought I'd drop the small recorder in my pocket. There was a hush. That auditorium could swallow whispers and give them teeth.
"Ladies and gentlemen," I said, my voice suddenly not my own. "My name is Kaylin Dorsey. I have something to say."
There was a ripple of surprise.
"This year," I continued, "I have learned what 'quiet care' looks like. I have also learned what cruelty can be when it sits in the mouths of people too afraid to say it to your face. I came here not to make trouble, but to remind everyone that words matter."
Bianca, seated in the front row with two friends, looked up like a queen interrupted.
I pressed play on my phone.
The auditorium filled with a recorded voice: Bianca's laughter, the imitation of my accent, her advice to friends to mock and exclude me. Then a second recording—the voice message where she planned "a little campaign" to make Hunter jealous. Her face, previously composed, flushed. Her hand tightened on the program.
A murmur grew. Heads turned. I could see Hunter's face close enough to read the small lines of confusion.
"That's not me," Bianca snapped. Her voice tried to be bright. "Someone must've—"
"Then explain why you texted this." I held up a screenshot. The crowd leaned in like a tide. Voices rose—some in shock, some in anger, some in anticipation.
"You're lying," Bianca's voice cracked. "You're a liar."
Hunter stood slowly. The gesture was a slow moon rising. His eyes fixed on Bianca like a compass pointing north.
"Bianca," he said, calm but like a bell, "is any of this true?"
Her denial twisted into something that looked like panic. She tried to laugh it off, to joke, but the hall stopped laughing with her. A table of parents stood and whispered. Some students took out phones. Some recorded. Others looked away. The school's headmaster, who had been watching from the back, furrowed his eyebrows like a judge hearing an unexpected charge.
"Why would I...?" Bianca started.
"Why did you send messages about excluding Kaylin?" I asked. "Why did you mock her? Why did you plan to stir trouble?"
She tried again. "This is—this is a setup. Somebody wants me embarrassed."
"Do we have proof?" Hunter asked, not unkindly now. He scanned the room. People shuffled. Someone coughed.
"Enough," Bianca cried, suddenly loud and raw. "I didn't think he'd..." She looked at Hunter like a house losing its paint. "I thought maybe if he envied me he'd—"
The whole auditorium inhaled. We all waited for the collapse of glamor.
"She thought she could manufacture a heart," I said. My voice steadied, and the auditorium seemed to brighten because of it. "But you can't create love by making people miserable."
"That is cruel," someone in the crowd said.
"Bianca," the headmaster's voice was quiet but it reached the farthest corner. "The school will handle this."
Bianca's face changed color—first red, then pale, then stripped-down raw. Friends around her avoided her eyes. A few students laughed nervously, the sound thin as paper. Someone took a photo. Another started a video. People whispered, "I can't believe she did that," and "She thought she could control us all."
She stood in the center of that storm and tried to keep her poise. I watched her go through a chain of changes: first shock, then denial, which dissolved into anger, then a small, frantic attempt at boasting, and finally a collapse—a wet, imploding heap of shame. Her mascara ran in small black constellations. People took out their phones. Some recorded the moment. Some didn't. Some just stared with a heavy pity.
"Stop!" she pleaded, suddenly small. "Stop recording. Please."
"Why should we stop?" a freshman asked. "You said it all yourself."
People around her began to murmur with small voices—remembering times she had scorned them, times she had excluded someone, times she had replaced kindness with a smirk. A chorus of memory.
It was not a violent fall. There were no tears of revenge. The punishment was the stripping away of privilege in a very public place—a slow, social unraveling where the town watched the curtains drop. Bianca tried to stand. A few of her close friends, who had once followed her like satellites, shuffled away. One of them, Coen, who had been her most visible ally, stepped forward and, in a voice that shook, said, "I didn't think it was that bad."
Hunter looked at me then, and for the first time he blinked hard, like a man suddenly unprepared for daylight.
"This is not about spectacle," the headmaster said. "We will follow school policy. But I will say this: generosity and the courage to apologize are rarer than any beauty put on stage tonight. If you cannot apologise, you will have to sit with the consequences."
Bianca sank. The crowd murmured. Someone whispered, "Good." Another, "She needed that." A few younger girls looked at me with eyes like lit matches—thankful, surprised. A mother near me clapped once, small and secretive.
Bianca's reaction changed as the minutes ticked. First she tried to deny. Then she claimed manipulation. When those didn't work, she attempted to rally a defense—a list of her good deeds, a litany of grievances where she positioned herself as the wronged. But none of that clicked. The room had already started to parse truth from performance, and Bianca's thin armor could not take the pressure.
She stood up, mouth trembling. "I—" she started.
"Stop," Hunter said gently. "If you care, say it simply."
That final request unmade her. She bent over and wept, not from the show of it but from being exposed. It was messy. It was cold. People softened. Some walked away. Some sat down. The headmaster called for a meeting after. Some faces in the crowd turned to me with something like relief, as if some balance had returned.
When the whirlwind settled, the punishment had been the worst sort to the proud: the public unraveling of a carefully crafted image, followed by solitude. The result was not savage cruelty. It was a social truth that sometimes burns sharper than any law. She begged, she made noise, she tried to take her friends back. But the world had seen her choice.
Later that night, messages spread. Instant social circles changed their tone. Bianca posted a shaky apology and removed pictures. The people who had once cheered now looked away. Not all punishment is brutal; some of it is simply a decrease in the applause. This was hers.
Hunter and I walked home under a thin sky. He took my hand and squeezed.
"You were brave," he said.
"I was angry," I admitted.
"I saw that," he said. "I also saw you choose how to use your anger."
That night he took my damp, ruined handkerchief out of his pocket. He had kept it, I realized, not because it mattered as a thing, but because it was mine. He folded it, and in the soft light of the bedside lamp, he said, "I like how you make things. I like how you try."
"I like how you tell me to get in the car," I said, joking.
He smiled, small and proud. "I like that too."
We grew together in small, honest steps. We went on dates that felt like half-summer fantasies: a cinema where he smuggled in my favorite tea, a pet shop where we bought a white-haired kitten that slept like a cloud, a mountain hike that turned dangerous when a rainstorm pushed us into a hidden pool. I remember falling into cold water with my backpack dragging me down, and the desperate, fierce sound of his voice above me telling me to throw everything away to float. I remember him dragging me to shore and holding me until I stopped shaking.
"Don't ever do that again," he said later, shell-shocked.
"I was stupid," I said.
"You were brave," he whispered. He had stayed awake all night building us a shelter with branches and leaves and later drawn a big SOS on the ground with a stick so a helicopter would see us. We were rescued by a pilot who chided us gently and called Hunter "a good man."
When my sister—Aylin Moreira—came to visit and met Hunter, she announced like a benevolent judge, "You take care of my sister."
"I will," he promised.
"Promise?" she asked, deadpan.
He looked at me and around the room. "Yes. Promise."
One night, with our hands warm and tired from the day's small work, Hunter pulled me into a hotel lobby that smelled of lilies.
"What's this?" I said, blinking at the ribboned room.
"Just come," he said.
Inside, the space was set with soft lights and flowers, an embarrassed soundtrack that seemed to know its lines. He took a small box from his pocket and set it on my hand. Inside were two rings—not wedding rings, he explained, but promise rings. He slipped his onto my finger and I slid mine onto his.
"I..." I began.
"Say the three words," he murmured, hugging me so that my face pressed into his chest.
I looked up. The room hum of small conversations dropped like a curtain. I felt like a child and the world at once. "I love you," I said.
He laughed a soft laughter full of relief and shook his head. "I love you," he said back.
We learned to live in ordinary miracles: the way he made tea just right, how I learned to make the kitchen not burn, how the cat Clear would jump into our laps and purr like a motor. The scandal with Bianca became a lesson in truth. She learned the cost of performing cruelty. We learned how small acts can add up to life.
Sometimes, when I touch the embroidered corner of that handkerchief—now a little frayed—I remember the river of small choices that brought me here. I remember getting into his car, the first time he told Bianca to step away, the day the mountain rain almost took me and the pilot's kind, practical hands. I remember that quiet promise: to be seen, to be chosen, to be kept.
"Do you ever think about what we were before?" I asked him once.
He looked at me like he could read the lines on my palm. "Only that I was lucky. You are home."
I smiled and folded the handkerchief into the drawer, a small, ordinary treasure.
The End
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