Sweet Romance13 min read
My Friend’s Brother and the Little Yellow Duck
ButterPicks7 views
"I didn't mean to get involved."
"I know."
"I swear I didn't."
"You always say that."
I said the first line in the small campus grove because I didn't know what else to say. The sun stitched light through the leaves, and two boys were there with a canvas leaning against a tree. One of them was Arlo Cruz—Ines's brother—and the other was a quiet junior with thin glasses.
"One person picks the scene, the other paints?" I asked, pointing at the easel.
"Yeah," Arlo said with a smile that made the world a little softer. "I was just helping him choose a spot."
"Helping who?" I kept my voice even, but my head filled with little alarms.
"Just a friend," the junior said. He looked nervous when he looked at me. He smiled politely and then, after Arlo's classmate gave him a quick tug, the two left in a hurry.
"That looked like they were in a rush," I muttered.
"Maybe they are late," Arlo said, and something about the way he laughed made me think of secrets.
"Arlo?" I called after watching them go.
He paused and turned back. "Yes?"
"Everything okay?" I asked.
"Everything's fine," he said, but he blushed like heat and looked like a child caught with paint on his hands.
I thought of Ines's voice when she asked me to warn me: "Ayah, look after my little brother while I'm studying. He just came back from abroad and is a bit... easygoing. Please don't let anyone take advantage of him."
"Don't worry," I had said then. "He's like my brother."
Now I watched Arlo's retreating back and felt a twist of concern.
Later that week I saw them again—this time in my class. The campus is small; coincidences tumble into each other like falling dominos. Arlo sat two rows behind, and the same quiet boy sat beside him. They whispered and leaned close together. My eyes kept drifting back despite myself.
"Are you spying?" Arlo asked later, when I finally glanced his way and he caught me.
"Who, me?" I shrugged. "I'm being professional."
"You look like you like to be nosy," he said, grinning.
"Someone has to keep an eye on you," I answered.
He pretended to be offended. "I don't need an eye kept on me."
Then the class activity: random pairing through the projector, an app where students scanned codes and the screen pulled up usernames. The class laughed when the first ID popped up: 'cloudbanquet'. People hooted. Seconds later, the second ID showed: 'cloudbanquet_dog'. The room erupted. A couple's names. The two in the back stood, and I saw it: the quiet boy said, "I'm cloudbanquet."
"I am cloudbanquet's dog," Arlo said, and the whole class went wild. I sat there like I had swallowed a lemon. This was… a public clue. My own heartbeat felt loud.
After class I had to call Ines. I poured out what I'd seen—guilt pinged through every sentence. "He's acting strange," I said, "and his friend..."
"Is he a one or a zero?" Ines asked quietly.
"A what?" I frowned.
"Is he the active one? The passive one?" Her voice was a whisper.
"Even if he is—"
"Mary," she interrupted, "as long as he's happy."
She hung up, but I couldn't. I didn't want Ines's brother to get led into trouble—or for her to worry.
A few days later I arranged to watch Arlo more. Ines had left town for a short trip, trusting me like family. She texted a big red envelope emoji and a "mua~" sticker. I felt the weight of that trust.
I started small. I learned his schedule. He was often free in the afternoons—basketball, he loved basketball. So I took on the goofy duty of standing at the edge of the court with a bottle of water that suddenly made me feel very official.
"Mary!" he shouted when he saw me.
"You came to watch?" I asked.
"Yeah," he said, and then he jogged over and tapped the bottle out of my hand. "Thanks."
"That's my water," I protested.
"You're welcome," he said, and drank like a king. His throat moved and the light caught his jaw and for a second everything wrong felt irrelevant. He smiled a little and winked—one of those small things that stayed in my chest.
"Thank you for coming," he added.
"Don't make a habit of this," I said out loud.
He grinned. "I won't be able to help it."
When he asked me to eat with him later, I thought he was bribing me. "No," I said, "but it's fine."
We sat across from each other. He talked like a kid and ate like a champion. He kept stealing my fries with childlike mischief. Then a man passed by at the head of our table.
"Mary?" came a voice. It was Chase Olivier, my old senior who had returned to teach and suddenly was my colleague. He waved and came over.
"Is this your boyfriend?" Chase asked with a smile at Arlo and me.
"No," I answered before I could stop myself, "this is Ines's brother."
Arlo froze. His eyes flashed something sharp, like someone had moved a mirror and sunlight at the wrong angle struck him full in the face.
After Chase left, Arlo looked at me like I had wronged him.
"Why did you talk to that man?" he demanded.
"He's my colleague—"
"Then why would you talk to another man like that?"
"Arlo, it's normal—"
"No, it's not," he muttered, and stood up, angry.
For the next few days Arlo avoided me. I felt guilty. I had told his sister I would protect him. I had not intended to make him jealous or hurt, but the small things—our private jokes, the water bottle—felt suddenly dangerous.
One afternoon, after Ines had to fly abroad, I was riding my scooter when Arlo pulled up in a Porsche. He stopped at the crosswalk. We stared at each other. He sped off, and a puff of exhaust sprayed me. I followed on my scooter like a very determined duckling.
He got pulled over by a policeman for noisy exhaust. I slowed down and then, triumphantly, rode past him. He sat by the curb sulking like a child. When I came back, he was glowering—but when I tossed him a little yellow duck safety helmet, he brightened like a lamp.
"You're ridiculous," he said.
"Put it on," I told him.
He did, sulking.
"You're a baby," I said, and he clutched the helmet like a treasure.
He climbed on the scooter behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist. "Hold on," he whispered.
"I am holding on," I said, but his close weight, his warmth against my back, felt like the inside of a secret.
At home, Ines returned unexpectedly. She walked in and gave Arlo a proper sisterly scolding. "How could you be so silly?" she said in that crisp Ines way. She glared at me the way a queen might glare at a general.
"I didn't tell you—" I began.
"Tell me what?" Ines demanded.
"About the game names," I said, ashamed.
She blinked, then laughed. "You didn't know?"
"Know what?" I asked.
It turned out that when Ines had been playing a game years ago, she and an online partner had used those couple IDs and kept playing. Unknown to both, some junior in another school remembered the names and had started looking for the in-game partner. Carter Nunes—the quiet boy—had thought his CP had become Arlo. And misread situations had escalated.
"You told him to mind his behavior around boys," Ines said, softening.
"I did," I answered.
Arlo glared at me. "You lied to my sister," he accused.
"I didn't mean to," I said. "I swear."
That evening, Arlo climbed onto my scooter and we were back to the secret conversations. He became more daring. He began to walk me back to the lecture hall at night, to wait for me after class, to send me messages that were short and stingy with detail: "You coming to my game?" "See you." "Thank you."
"I asked you to come only because I like you," he said one night out of the blue. "Not like... like sister. Like this."
"What?" I stopped walking.
He bared a little grin. "I like you. I mean I like you."
"What kind of like?" I asked, breath gone.
"This kind," he said, and took my hand.
I was stunned. He was younger—three years and a handful of innocence. He used the words like a small treasure, and I felt honored and terrified at once.
We tried to keep it quiet. We were 'underground' like two awkward teenagers playing grown-up. He would claim me in tiny ways: standing closer when Chase came by, slipping his hand into mine in lecture corridors, sending me text memes at night. The campus started to notice.
"Are you sure? He is your friend's brother." People asked with surprised smiles.
"It doesn't matter," I said. "We like each other."
"You could get in trouble," a friend warned.
"Then we will be very careful," I promised.
The more careful I promised to be, the more reckless Arlo became. He watched me like sunlight tracks a surface. He started to label himself publicly when around my friends, "this is Mary." He introduced himself as my boyfriend in a way that was shy and bold at the same time.
"He's so proud," I would tell myself.
And then the day of the agricultural field trip came. Arlo's class went out to the training fields, and I, curious and habitually available, went to find him. It was golden—paddy fields swayed like the sea. He was there on a small tractor, looking tired, sun on his arms, hat crooked.
"Mary!" he waved.
"Careful around the machinery," I said.
"There's a cow getting too close," he said suddenly, and with a speed that surprised me, he leaped down. He chased after a wandering old yellow cow and tugged the rope like a small hero. He slipped in the mud and banged his knee. He laughed, embarrassed, and the farmhands laughed, but I went to help him up and felt the pulse in his calf, the warmth on his skin.
Later he texted, "Did I look brave?" and then, bolder, "So... will you be my girlfriend for reals? Not the pretend kind."
"Yes," I answered, though my pulse did gymnastics.
He celebrated by hugging me so tight my laugh came out surprised and real. Later, as we rode home with Ines driving, the car jolted and I fell toward Arlo. He caught my hand—his palm warm and honest—and then before I could think, he typed into his phone: "Can I kiss you?"
I looked at him. He looked as if the world might tilt. "Don't be ridiculous," I tried to tease, but the air was thick.
He leaned in, and I kissed him on a breath—a small careful press over the curve of his throat. He broke into a delighted noise and then reached to do something more. Ines returned at the exact wrong moment and burst into the kitchen like a thunderclap.
"What did you two do?!" she demanded, shocked and then, gradually, amused.
"Nothing!" we both cried.
She pounced, scolding Arlo in sisterly ways, but that night she sat down with tea and listened. She asked questions, and we answered honestly. When she discovered Arlo had been hiding her keys as a joke so she would return and catch us—yes, he was that scheming—she laughed and then pointed at him.
"You are impossible," she said to Arlo, and then she looked at me. "Mary, if you hurt him, I will cross you out of my will."
"You wish," I replied, and she smiled.
After that, being secret felt impossible. Arlo became my small public pride. He walked me to the lecture hall and introduced me as his girlfriend. He would puff up like a proud kid when I smiled at him in class.
The inevitable little crises flared. Chase Olivier, the senior turned colleague, came back to stay as a mentor. He had an easy charm and people misread his kindness as attention. Arlo saw him one afternoon and flattened into a protective hedgehog.
"What are you to her?" Arlo demanded to Chase.
"I'm her colleague," Chase smiled, perplexed.
"I'm her boyfriend," Arlo announced, arms around my shoulder like a flag.
Chase blinked, surprised, and then laughed. "Good for you, kid."
Arlo melted into relief like wax.
We lived that awkward sweetness for months. He came to my defenses. I covered for him when he pretended not to want attention. He made me laugh in a dozen small ways.
Then the day arrived when he graduated. The campus hall smelled like polished floors and proud parents and a hundred small futures. His parents appeared, popping into town after being away on business, and the surprise made Arlo glow.
That night he gave me a small box and a copy of his family book.
"Mary," he said, very small, very solemn. "Marry me?"
"I laughed. "Arlo, are you joking?"
"No," he said. "I'm serious. I know I'm younger, and I'm absurd, and I talk too much, but I mean it. I want to be the one to take care of you. Will you?"
I looked at him—at the boy who had leaned on tractors and basketball courts and who had once tried to bribe me with games—and I saw a depth that wasn't about age or rules. I thought of Ines's trust the first time she left town and the large envelope icon she had sent. I thought of the little yellow duck helmet and the farm cow and the canvas leaning under the tree.
"Yes," I said. "Yes, Arlo."
He picked me up then, spinning like a child and laughing like he had swallowed the sun.
We had secrets and we had the whole campus. We had to be careful; maybe some people didn't understand. But Ines had forgiven us and became our ally. She bossed him around but hugged me afterwards like a friend who had finally received a promised gift.
"Don't let him use that baby voice to fool you," Ines said once. "But don't let him go, either."
"I won't," I promised.
We learned to live in the small spaces—classrooms, late-night library corners, the basketball court after practice. He texted me from breakfast and once sent me a photo of a napkin with a doodled duck and "mua" written on it. I kept it in my wallet.
There were moments that made my heart do strange things: when he smiled at me in class where he never smiled at others, when he put my jacket around my shoulders on a cold day, when he reached across a lecture hall and quietly stole my pen during a quiz, smiling as if nothing could be more daring. There were also moments when he looked vulnerable and quiet and I learned to be steady like a shore.
"Are you happy?" he asked once, fingers idly stroking my hair.
"More than I thought I could be," I said honestly.
"Then stay," he asked, meaning the rest of his life.
"I will," I answered.
We had small arguments—the kind where he sulked because I refused to reply fast to his messages, where I scolded him for being reckless at intersections. He would pout and then produce the sincere apology: a hand-drawn coupon book for favors, a bowl of noodles at midnight, a patch of warm hands.
In public we kept it sweet and simple—sometimes too straightforward. The department learned. Students teased. Chase smiled and shook his head in good humor. Friends pretended they were scandalized but were secretly delighted.
The unique moments kept piling up. Once he brought me a pair of tiny earphones and jammed them into my ears. "Listen," he said. A song came on and he leaned in close. "This is our song."
"Since when do we need a song?" I asked.
"Since always." He kissed my temple.
Another time, he took my hand and whispered across a bench in the darkened quad, "You know that little duck helmet? Keep it. It's ours."
"I will keep it," I said. "And you keep my heart like a ridiculous little duck."
Through every season, the small rituals made our days real. He would insist on surprising me with biscuits from a street stall and then eat three while I was busy. He would stand up in a crowded lecture and shout a silly compliment mid-lesson, making the class giggle and the professor pretend to faint.
"What about the future?" I asked him one evening, watching the sun fold itself behind the library.
"We'll figure it out, together," he said, and his hand felt warm in mine. "I already want to live with you, to worry about your cold feet, to remind you to bring umbrellas."
"And what if my family worries?"
"Then we'll let them," Arlo said. "They'll understand eventually."
He was so sure and small and brave. He had pulled me into his world like a tide pulling a shell. I had promised Ines I'd look after him, and in an odd turn I had fallen in love with the person she loved as a brother—only now he was my partner.
On his graduation day, when we walked among hats and music, he took my hand in front of all our friends. He whispered, "Thank you for staying."
"I had nowhere else I wanted to be," I said.
At night, when the lights in our small apartment hummed and the city made low sounds, he would lean on me like a sleeping cat. I would stroke his hair and think of the little absurdities: the tractor, the cow, the yellow duck, the canvas under the tree.
"Do you remember the very first thing you said to me?" he asked once, half-asleep.
"I did," I said. "You said you'd come with me if I was lonely."
"Good," he murmured. "Then let's keep walking."
I held him close and felt like a person who had been entrusted with something beautiful and fragile. I had promised Ines to protect him, and now the promise had changed shape. It had become a mutual promise. He protected me by loving me the way he did: straightforward, earnest, infuriating, and kind.
Sometimes strangers asked, "Is it okay? A woman dating her friend's brother?" I would look at Arlo's face and answer simply.
"It is," I would say. "It is exactly right."
At the very end he handed me the faded ticket stub from our first movie date and the small box he had once offered. "Keep this," he said.
I slipped it into my wallet next to the napkin with the duck. When I stood up to teach the next morning, the duck bobbed in my bag, and a student asked, "Who is that?"
"A small, stubborn, perfect boy," I said, smiling.
He would later say, "I put a little yellow duck in your bag because I wanted to be sure you'd have something silly to think of when you missed me."
"That will do," I told him, and kissed him quick and sharp.
The world kept moving: papers to grade, research to write, classes to teach. We kept our odd rituals. We argued, we made up. We built tiny domestic things: a box of spare umbrellas, a line of clothespins for drying shirts, a jar labeled "movie tickets."
Once, when I opened the jar, an old ticket fell out—the very first. I showed it to Arlo.
"Remember?" he asked.
"I remember everything," I said.
He grinned. "Good."
Years later, when our lives had shifted in small ways—the apartment changed, the routines changed—Ines still called me "Ayah" in a teasing voice. She still scolded Arlo about his taste in shirts and his habit of leaving socks everywhere.
"Don't forget to make her breakfast," Ines demanded.
"I will," Arlo promised promptly.
"Or you will get a written list of chores," Ines threatened.
"I don't like the idea of chore lists," Arlo said, hugging me. "I like doing things for you without being told."
"Sometimes we all need a list," I told him.
"Then I'll write one," he answered.
And so he did. The list was a small, crooked note stuffed into the little duck's pouch. It was ridiculous and perfect.
On the day we got the official notice—paperwork, signatures, a quiet ceremony in the registry office—he was nervous. I held his hand and reminded him of the little things.
"Stay silly," I told him.
"I will," he promised. "If you stay stubborn."
"I will," I said.
We said vows that were not old-fashioned but honest. He promised to protect me from cows that might roam onto campus and to stand up for me when someone like Chase teased. I promised to keep the duck alive in our mornings and to forgive him for any small offenses.
"Will you marry me?" he had asked me twice—once in a childish way with a little box, and once at the registry office with proper forms.
"Yes," I said both times.
Later, in quiet hours at night, I sometimes think of that first grove and the canvas. I think of the sophomore who leaned his head and whispered and the game names that had set everything off. I think of the tractor and the old yellow cow and the moment the car jolted and our hands found each other.
"Do you regret anything?" he asked one late night, laying his head on my lap.
"No," I said. "Only that I didn't trust my heart sooner."
He smiled into my palm. "Then we are even."
"I think we are," I answered.
We kept the little yellow duck on a shelf near the front door as a reminder. When anyone asked about it, we'd say, "It is our warning: always wear a helmet, and sometimes be silly."
People asked us if the relationship was awkward. I would tell them a truth that had become mine.
"It was never about rules," I would say. "It was always about two people noticing each other and choosing to stay."
That was the entire story: two people who, by chance, met under a canvas in a grove. A misunderstanding about online names. A friend trusting another friend. A young man who could be both annoying and brave. A small, ridiculous helmet and a box of tiny promises.
When Arlo took my hand in front of the registrar and our friends, he squeezed and whispered, "You took care of me first."
"I did," I said.
"So now it's my turn."
"I know."
At the end, I tucked the duck into my bag. It bobbed happily. The world seemed oddly right.
"You are still ridiculous," I told him.
"So are you," he said.
We laughed and walked out into the light.
The End
— Thank you for reading —