Sweet Romance12 min read
My Matchmaker Mistake — and the Professor Who Stayed
ButterPicks13 views
I never meant to send that message to him.
"I just had the worst blind date," I typed to Katelyn, fingers flying. "Old guy, dry as toast. I couldn't even bite."
Three seconds later, a new message landed in my phone. A single question mark.
I stared. Then my brain did that embarrassing thing where it stacked every mortifying second of my life into a single film.
I must have hit "reply all" instead of "send." My cheeks warmed in a way that heat never had before. I stared at the screen like if I blinked the universe would fix itself.
"Child, are you polite?" the unknown number wrote.
I didn't want to answer. I wanted sleep. I wanted to crawl under the couch and become a sock. Katelyn, giddy on the other end of the chat, sent a string of laughing faces. I tried to pretend to be cool.
The next morning I came downstairs with my hair in a chicken-nest and found him already seated in our living room. He looked too tidy for my house — clean suit, neat hair, a watch that suggested better things than my rent money. He smiled like that was normal. Like he had a right to be there.
"Good morning," he said softly.
"How—" I choked. "How are you in my house?"
He opened his mouth. My mother clapped her hand over my shoulder and shoved me in the bathroom. "No pointing," she scolded in a whisper, like I'd broken a delicate vase. "Wash up, don't scare him."
"Who is he?" I mouthed into the mirror at the pale, tired woman I saw.
"Professor Simon Kelly," my mom said, when I finally emerged. She said it with the proud tilt of someone who knows a small, secret victory. "His mother is my old friend."
I sank onto the sofa opposite him, half an apology, half a bristling defense. "Yesterday I said things I shouldn't have. People make mistakes. Can we... call it a misunderstanding and move on?"
He watched me with a quiet patience that could be mistaken for boredom if you didn't look long enough. He didn't rise to my bait. He looked at me the way teachers look at students about to get a grade: steady, engaged.
"You could be more careful with your words," he said. "And with your phone."
"Do you want me to apologize more dramatically?" I snapped. "Bow? Cry a single tear?"
"That won't be necessary," he replied. "My name is Simon Kelly."
"Right." I sat up straighter. "I'm Gina Ray. Nice to meet you again, by chance and mis-sent texts."
He laughed, just a little. "Gina."
He had eyes that curved like a moon, warm and disarming. He had hands that moved with slow precision, like they knew how to hold fragile things. If I tried to list what was wrong with him — old, established, too tidy — I found the list short on real reasons.
"You're thirty," my mother said later, in the kitchen, blunt as a butter knife. "Thirty and never married. Is there anything wrong with you?"
Simon shrugged. "I teach. I work. I love my job."
"Then what is wrong?" my mother asked.
"I am busy," he said simply. "I am not built for loud weddings."
The day relaxed into something dangerous: a plate of food, a car ride. "Let's go eat something warm," he said. "Sit in the front. I will not have you freezing."
I put my feet on the dash like a teenager, grinning at the audacity of the man who told me what to do and then did it with an apologetic smile.
"You sound like my dad," I teased.
"I know." He gave me a look that said he didn't regret being dad-like. "I like being responsible."
He wasn't a mere object of a blind date's scorn. He could be warm. He could laugh. He could peel shrimp with an unshowy elegance and hand them off to other people as if it was the most natural kindness in the world.
"You told that woman I was allergic to shellfish," I accused once, after he'd nudged a plate her way and said she should eat it.
He smiled. "You are."
"What? Who told you?"
"I watch you. You told me one night when we shared coffee." He paused, watching the steam rise. "When someone else needs you, you remember what they disliked because you want to protect them."
My chest tightened. "You remember too much."
"Good," he said. "Remembering is the beginning of care."
We started to see each other on purpose. Katelyn teased me for how fast it happened. "You two are like a romcom that forgot the commercial breaks," she said. "I demand photos."
"Send them with a warning label," I wrote. "Content may melt."
He had a small way of remarking on little things. "Your lip is raw," he noted once. "You need balm." He handed me a tiny tube like we were sharing secrets.
"You weren't supposed to notice," I told him.
"Not noticing would have been a missed lesson," he said.
We had a reckless little battle of wills. I tossed jokes like confetti. He answered with calm facts and a sideways smile. I was intent on teaching him how to be reckless and he was intent on teaching me how to be steady. It was exhilarating. It felt dangerous in the best possible way.
"Would you do me a favor?" he asked one evening.
"Depends. Is it illegal?" I asked.
"No." He smiled. "I want you to be my girlfriend at a dinner."
My laugh died. "Your... girlfriend?"
"There is a woman — Constance Powell — who thinks she is entitled to more than friendship," Simon said, careful words like stones placed one by one. "Her parents and mine are close. She believes our families should be closer. She is... persistent."
Constance. The name sounded smooth and pretty. A memory flung itself into my head: the young woman at the dance studio, polite smile, made-up pity.
"I will act as if you are mine," I said, teeth playful. "This will be easy."
"It will help me set boundaries," he said. "And it will keep you safe."
I played the part. I sat beside him at the table, tucked my hand into his arm the way actresses tuck in in practice shots, and watched as Constance's face shifted in ways the camera never caught.
"Nice to meet you, Gina," she said with a smile that tasted like lemon.
"Please, call me Gina," I said, warm as a toaster.
She told a story about childhood and a near-fatal fall from a rooftop. My hands curled. "Thank you for sharing," I said. It felt honest and a little dangerous.
She left the table abruptly, like a tide pulling away. Later, Constance came back in a blur.
"He's mine," she said, voice thin. "He's mine because I know him, because I grew up on his street."
"That's a nice claim," I said. "Do you have a deed?"
Constance's eyes glittered. "I am pregnant."
Time hands its own cruel jokes at you. My hand, which had been resting on the table, went cold.
"Pregnant?" I muttered.
Simon blinked, then his face folded into something that could have been pity, had pity been a boring gray sweater.
"Constance?" he asked gently.
"It's his," she said. "He knows. He knows the child is his."
Simon looked at her like he was looking at an unsolvable problem. "No," he said simply. "Constance, you are not pregnant by me."
"No, you said you'd protect her," Constance whispered to me, as if I'd ever sworn fealty. "You will leave me alone."
"Constance," Simon said, steady now, "this conversation is out of place."
Her pain became performance. She trembled like a reed. She hid wound and made an altar out of it to attract him. I could feel the family shifting like tectonic plates.
"Let's take a walk," Simon said to me later, voice low. "Wait here."
He left and Constance exploded. "You took her side!" she cried. "You used her!"
"Constance!" Simon's voice came back, quiet but filled with the thunder a teacher uses to end a fight. He returned with the police officer from the front gate. I watched the scene with a detached horror: Constance with tears smeared and breath coming like broken things.
She had lied about pregnancy. She had threatened to break things. She had, on the roof that week when I met her alone, threatened to hurt herself. That night Simon had scaled a railing and pulled her back. He did not boast about it. He had told me in private, not to impress, but to explain the depth of what had been handled.
"This is not about me," I said then, and meant it and did not. "This is about her."
Constance's actions did not deserve simple pity. But she did deserve something else: consequences. Not a private scolding. Not a quiet fixing. Something that both shook her and showed everyone that manipulations that involve lies and danger will not be allowed to slide.
So when the town held a small community dinner at the old cultural house — the place where professors and neighbors and parents and too-curious friends gathered — Simon suggested I come as his girlfriend. "We will clear the air," he said.
We walked into the warm room under paper lanterns. People shuffled. Conversations hummed. Constance sat at the head table with a tiny band of supporters — a few of her parents' friends and two women who looked like they believed everything they heard.
"Hello, everyone," Simon said, a light that didn't need to be loud. "Thank you for being here."
I squeezed his hand under the table and let him speak. He told a plain, careful story. "Last week, Constance told me she was pregnant and that I was the father," he said. "I did not know of this until she told me. I am not the father. I did not father this child."
Constance's eyes sharpened. "How do you know?" she snapped. "You could be lying. He might be afraid."
Simon smiled then, the kind of small smile that meant he was done using half-truths. "We checked. Medical tests were done. There is no pregnancy."
A thin ripple of noise rose. "What?" someone whispered. "But she said—"
Constance slammed her fist on the table. "I can show—"
"Please," Simon said. "Let us be clear."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out messages, photographs, a notice she'd posted online. He read statements she had made. He produced security footage from a stairwell that showed Constance staging scenes, placing props — pills, a test — in a small bag. He read out the text messages where she had admitted to a friend, in sick plain language, that the 'pregnancy' was a way to secure a place. The room went very quiet.
"I am ashamed to show you these things," Simon said. "But Constance's lies have endangered people, used sympathy as a weapon, and have attempted to manipulate the lives of others."
Constance stood up. "You don't have to—" she began, voice taut, but the chairs were already turning toward her like sunflowers.
"Do you remember when you threatened self-harm?" Simon asked, soft but direct. "Do you remember the rooftop?"
Her mouth opened and closed. She looked smaller under all those eyes.
Around us, people who had been on the fence shifted into shock. Women who had paused with chopsticks in the air almost dropped them. An old neighbor, who'd known Constance as a baby, stared with tears building. Someone whispered that Constance's parents were in the back, and then the room felt like a stage and a court at once.
"Constance," Simon said, "I saved you because I did not want you to die. I did not save you to be manipulated. You are allowed to be sick. You are not allowed to make others the tools for your illness."
She hid her face in her hands. "You don't understand," she wailed. "You don't know what it's like to be replaced. To be invisible."
"That is not a permission slip to hurt others," he answered. "If you need help, we will make sure you get it. But you need to stop using false stories to bind people to you."
"Why are you telling them?" she cried. "Why here?"
"Because your lies were public," Simon said. "Because your actions put others at risk. Because sympathy should not be a currency for control."
It was a slow, public dismantling, but not a mob. The room's hush was heavy, judgmental, and then practical. People leaned forward. "She made a scene at my daughter's recital," one woman said. "She told me my son was dangerous," said another. Each small voice stacked evidence like coins.
Constance's face changed rapidly: anger, denial, bargaining. "You don't know," she repeated. "You can't prove—"
A young man at the back — a friend of mine — stood up and showed a video on his phone: Constance walking into the dance studio the night she claimed to be attacked, smiling, no sign of injury. The clip cut into fragments of a narrative that didn't fit her claims. People started to murmur more loudly. Some took pictures. A few clucked their tongues and sighed.
Constance's bravado crumpled. Her eyes darted around, looking for an ally, a soft landing. None came. The group at her table sat in awkward silence. Her parents had faces like carved wood — blank, hurt, a betrayal of the image they had been given.
"Please," she whispered, small now. "I didn't want anyone to leave."
"You made them," one woman replied coldly. "You tried to hold them with a lie. People deserve the truth."
Her breathing quickened. She sank back into her chair like someone deflating. "I'll—I'll leave," she said. "I didn't mean—"
"No," Simon said. "You are not going anywhere alone. You will see a professional. You will not disappear from care."
He had rehearsed this with me in the weeks before — the idea that consequences must be public in order to stop public manipulation. And now the public watched the unraveling. Constance's face went from outward fury to a brittle, exposed whining that made people look away. Her supporters looked ashamed. The room didn't jeer; it stared in a hush so cold I could feel it on my skin.
Constance's breakdown was not a private sob; it was a public unmaking. She tried to flail, demanded sympathy, accused, denied. Her voice broke into that high, dangerous pitch of someone whose last anchor had been pulled. People reached for their phones. Some recorded. Some called friends. Constance's parent friends shifted their weight, whispering. A few clapped in thin, shocked disbelief. Someone whispered, "You played with people's lives."
She crumpled finally, shoulders shaking. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry."
It was not the satisfying revenge of a melodrama. It was a hard, public exposure that stripped away the weapon she'd used. It left her small, shivering, and unmistakably responsible in the eyes of the community that she had targeted.
The aftermath was practical. People offered resources, not stones. "There is a center," a neighbor said. "There is someone who can help. But you have to go."
Simon put his hand over mine and squeezed. "We will make sure she gets help," he whispered. "We will make sure she is not alone."
It was the closest thing to a punishment that the town could give while still holding on to mercy: public truth, social consequence, and a forced path to help. The crowd's eyes that had once watched her like an audience now watched her like witnesses.
After everything quieted, Constance was escorted — not cast out like trash, but guided, with hands on her shoulders, to the car arranged to take her to a clinic where she would begin therapy. People who had been her supporters turned away with that weird mixture of pity and relief. Nobody celebrated. There were no triumphant shouts. There were, however, many whispers about accountability.
I was left holding a cup of tea that had gone cold. Simon wrapped a jacket around my shoulders.
"Thank you," I said. "For doing what had to be done."
He kissed my forehead. "Thank you for being brave," he said. "And for refusing to be a pawn."
Weeks passed. Constance entered long-term care abroad at the specialized facility Simon's colleague recommended. It was good that she went. She needed it. She needed the structure and the distance. I kept visiting the edges of that story, sending letters that were careful and not consoling, steady like bandages.
Simon and I moved slowly and with intention. He taught, I danced, we belonged to each other's quiet worlds. He had the old professor's patience and a son's quick humor when he teased my clumsy jumps in the studio.
One night, months later, in a tiny little city registrar office, we signed papers that made the funny title his — my wife — real in the eyes of the state.
"We're legally bound," he said with a grin.
"Yes. You better act like it," I told him.
He squeezed my hand and, in a voice that made my heart hop, whispered, "Gina, will you still go dancing at night?"
I laughed. "Of course. You can't take the disco out of me."
He pretended to be stern and then kissed me like an apology and a promise. The world was ordinary and bright and quietly ours.
Constance's story didn't end in spectacle. She healed slowly. Simon didn't hate her — he suspected illness where others expected manipulation. He held my hand when her recovery was ugly, when she relapsed, when she showed small sparks of understanding. He insisted on boundaries and therapy, not vengeance.
Sometimes I think of the night on the rooftop — the blade of the knife, the rawness in Constance's breath. It could have been different. But the public truth had changed the arc. It stopped her from making more people into props, and it exposed the danger of mythmaking in small towns.
"Do you regret the way it all exposed her?" Katelyn asked me once, when we sat with milkshakes and giggled over older humiliations.
"No," I said. "I regret not being kinder. I regret nothing that protected other people."
Simon leaned across the table and said, "Compassion without consequence is not compassion; it's neglect."
He said it plain and then, when no one was looking, he thumbed the name of a message I had once sent by mistake and shook his head like it was a small miracle.
"Accidents can be lucky," he said. "Sometimes they bring us the right people."
"I still can't believe I said 'old man,'" I said.
He laughed. "You said 'child' back. We are even."
We married. We lived with small rituals — coffee at dawn, shrimp at midnight, an annual fight about who forgot the socks. Constance, from far away, wrote once to apologize. It was a two-page letter full of sorrow and small progress. I answered with a card that said, "Get better." That was all.
In the end, nothing about us was miraculous. We were both messy, surrounded by neighbors and family and small dramas. But those messy things were knitted into days that were honest. Simon taught me steadiness. I taught him a little bit of reckless joy. We kept each other's edges from fraying.
Sometimes, when I walk past the old rooftop of the studio, I press my palm to the brick where the wind always finds a way to sing. I remember the night fear had a voice and the town listened. I remember how the truth turned the tide.
And when Simon squeezes my hand in crowded rooms, I know the mis-sent message that started it all was the clumsy, human thing that set a very unlikely, perfect life into place.
The End
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