Sweet Romance9 min read
My Mic Was On and He Took My Heart
ButterPicks11 views
I didn't realize my mic was still on until he answered me back.
"You're still wearing clothes? Can't play?" I joked without thinking, watching the screen.
The screen went quiet. Then a body moved out of frame and back in, like a stunt in a bad movie.
"Now do you like it?" he asked, straight to camera.
I froze. "My mic—" I tapped my phone like a madwoman. "Oh no, I didn't mute it!"
"You're bold," someone in the chat teased.
I typed like my fingers were burning. "I was joking. Sorry, sorry, sorry."
A new message popped up. "Who said that?"
"Who said what?" I replied too quick.
"You trying to get me in trouble?" the message read. The profile picture was a golden retriever. The name was Aaron Fischer.
"Uh—no way," I wrote. "That wasn't me."
"Don't play dumb," the chat said. "Admit you like what I'm wearing."
I did the only hero move I had: I slid into humble pie and typed, "I like it. I really, really like it."
His reply came fast. "Then come over and see if I can play."
By the time I clicked the video invitation, my hands were shaking so hard the phone almost slipped.
"Not—" I started to type, but the screen flashed. His face filled my phone. He was doing push-ups, the long line of his neck muscles flexing every time he lowered.
"Afraid to look me in the eye?" he said with a bored half-smile.
"I'm—" My mouth went dry. "I mean, I wasn't—"
"Shut it. See you on campus."
I hung up on him and then laughed at myself alone in my room. A week later, he was sitting in front of me in the gym, throwing a basketball from three-point range like it was nothing.
"You're the one who said I'm not playful," he said.
"You're not supposed to be that literal," I answered, trying to pull back my bangs so he wouldn't recognize me. He looked at me and then at my hair, really looked, and I braced for the worst.
"You're cute like this," he said. "Who are you hiding from?"
"Nobody," I lied.
"You're with Bonnie?" he asked, nodding toward a cluster of girls.
"Bonnie is my friend—" I started. "She's Bonnie Schultz."
"Okay then." He shrugged. "Stand in front of me."
He tugged my cap and dragged me to stand in the first row. "You're not leaving this spot."
"Why not?" I asked, because I could.
"Because you look better here."
He kept saying things like that. He could roll his eyes and make them sound like love notes.
After class, I saw him on the bus. He sat down beside me with all the ease of someone used to owning space.
"You're always watching my legs," he said.
"You're always in my line of sight," I countered.
"Same thing," he smiled.
I had messed up on purpose on video, but I hadn't expected my voice to do the rest of the work. He found me after the incident and added me on WeChat. He sent long messages, or short ones, sweet ones, teasing ones. He asked to borrow my attention, and I gave it.
"Can I borrow your jacket?" I texted once, because I could not, under any circumstances, walk near him without doing something stupid.
"Aaron's jacket?" Bonnie squealed when I told her. "Don't you dare ruin it."
"I won't ruin it," I told her. "I'm returning it."
He tossed the jacket to me one afternoon like it was nothing. I stood there, wrapped inside his warmth, and felt something big and slow settle in my chest.
"Take care of it," he said.
"I will," I promised, and meant it twice.
Then a girl I didn't know—Mercedes Kraemer—came up behind us and said, "Is that his jacket? You should give it to me. I'm his girlfriend."
I froze like a deer.
"What?" I heard myself say.
"He asked me to pick it up," she said loudly. "I have every right."
Aaron's eyes slid to me. He let a smile grow, the kind that split a face in two.
"Give it to her?" he said quietly. "Is that what you want?"
"I—no," I said.
"She's wrong," Aaron told her. "You can keep the jacket."
"You're lying," Mercedes hissed. "You're lying, don't pretend you didn't tell me!"
"Stop," I blurted.
"Stop?" she gasped. "Stop being so—"
He didn't look angry. He looked amused. "She said she was my girlfriend," he told the crowd of curious students. "She asked me to pick the jacket up from her, and she wanted to prove we're together."
Silence for a breath. Then people chuckled.
"That's not true," Mercedes snapped. "You said—"
"Stop," he said again, firmer this time. "You said you were my girlfriend, so I asked you which jacket you meant."
"She's making it up!" Mercedes shouted. "She's lying to take my place."
"You asked me to play along and then tried to take the jacket," Aaron said, and there I heard the thing that wrapped me in warmth. "Why don't you leave and stop making a scene?"
She left, face crimson, and later she came back insisting they were a couple. He asked her to kiss him, in front of us, and I kissed him instead—on purpose, to shut her up. He tasted like mint and trouble and he did not let go.
After that, everything changed. He started to be oddly tender. He taught me three-step layups like a man teaching a very valuable thing. He kept my hand small in his hands. He teased me and then hugged me until my breath found its rhythm.
"You're impossible," I told him one night, when he wrapped me in his oversized hoodie.
"I know," he said. "That's why I like you."
"Why me?" I asked.
"Because you say stupid things and mean them," he answered. "Because you make me laugh. Because you're brave when you don't know it."
He said it like it was a list of rules, and I folded them into my heart.
The trouble started quietly. Mercedes started showing up in the hallways like a shadow. She would stand near the classrooms, watching us. Once, she blocked our way and demanded we kiss in front of everyone to prove we were together.
"Prove it," she said, nails digging into the strap of her purse.
"Fine," Aaron said. He pulled me close and, with an exaggerated flourish, planted a kiss on my lips. The crowd around us made little noises, some approving, some disgusted. Mercedes turned red, then pale. "Satisfied?"
She stalked off.
But later, in the cafeteria, she returned with a different plan. She told a rumor that I had refused to give her my jacket because I had told her I was his wife. The whole story had a fever of exaggeration. People loved scandal.
"She's lying," Bonnie told me, furious. "Why would anyone do that?"
"Because she wants attention," I said, but my voice trembled. I didn't like people whispering and pointing.
The rumor ballooned. Someone took a video. Someone else posted it. The chat rooms lit up with theories. I walked down corridors and felt eyes following me like rain.
It built into a problem until one day there was no avoiding it. Mercedes staged a confrontation during the student fair, right under the old ficus by the library. She brought her friend group, big and loud. She wanted an audience.
"There she is!" someone cried. "The girl who stole his jacket!"
I felt my face burn. My hands tightened around Aaron's. He smiled like a man willing to be ridiculous.
"What's this about?" he asked aloud.
"You two are fake," Mercedes said. "Stop pretending. Admit it."
"Admit what?" Aaron asked, letting his voice stay even.
"You two pretended to be together to embarrass me. Admit you lied."
By then a crowd had gathered. Phones in hands. Students who wanted drama and dessert. I could feel the weight of the watching, like a weather front.
"She says we lied," Mercedes repeated.
"Is that right?" Aaron asked me, glancing my way.
"Yes," I said. "We didn't plan this to hurt you."
"She did," Mercedes screamed. "She told me she would prove to everyone that he was hers. She said she would humiliate me!"
"You wanted the jacket," Aaron said. "You wanted a show."
"That's—" Mercedes started. "That's not true."
"All right," he said. "Let's settle this."
What followed was a purge I didn't expect.
"Everyone, watch," he said, and because he said it, everyone watched.
"Mercedes," he called out, "tell them exactly what you told me last week."
She blinked. "I told you I wanted you to pick up the jacket. I told you I was your girlfriend."
"Yes," Aaron said, nodding. "You told me you were my girlfriend and asked me to let you pick it up."
"No, I didn't—" Her voice cracked.
"You told me to come pick it up from you," he continued. "You told me I should publicly show affection to make other girls back off. You told me to let you keep the jacket."
A whisper ran through the crowd like wind. Mercedes looked as if someone had taken a photograph of her heart.
"I have messages," Aaron said. He pulled out his phone with the casual air of a man who carried receipts for everything.
"You have messages?" Mercedes laughed nervously. "So what? Messages can be faked."
"Can they?" Aaron asked. "Do you want me to show them? Do you want everyone to hear the audios?"
She looked at the circle of watching faces and realized the crowd had moved from curiosity to appetite. I watched mercy freeze into a statue.
"You set me up," Aaron said softly. "You tried to use me to get attention and then accused this girl of stealing when she refused to play along."
"No!" Mercedes shrieked. "That's—"
"Silence," Aaron said.
He clicked his phone and started to speak with a firmness that made my chest ache with gratitude. "Here's the voice message," he said aloud, and the audio played.
"I can't stand this," Mercedes cried as the proof rolled out in her own voice, admitting everything, her plan to stage a romantic tableau, her attempt to humiliate me when I refused to comply. The crowd listened. Phones streamed it. People laughed and jeered. Some were shocked. Some clapped.
"How could you?" Bonnie shouted. "That's cruel."
"Why would you do this?" I asked, and I couldn't keep the hurt out of my voice.
She tried to backtrack. "I—he—"
"Stop," Aaron said. "You're not allowed to blame him."
Mercedes began to sob. She grabbed at her hair and then at the air, like a drowning person grabbing at floaters. "I didn't mean—"
"Enough," Aaron said.
The watching was intense. Someone recorded her, someone else took photographs. I could feel the crowd's attention lock on her the way it had once locked onto me with suspicion. Now it was on her, watching as her composure crumpled.
She begged for forgiveness, but the words came out jagged. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Please—"
"Do you want to stand here and tell them the truth?" Aaron asked, voice almost gentle.
She nodded, broken. "I—this girl refused to play?"
"No," I said. "I didn't play."
The crowd murmured. "What did you think you were doing?" a boy asked.
"Getting him to notice me," Mercedes whispered.
"You had other ways," someone else said.
"People noticed," Aaron said. "Now you can own your actions."
Mercedes tried to make a grand speech, but it came out small. Tears streaked her makeup. People began to leave in small groups, some with scorn, some with pity.
"What do you want from me?" she begged him. "Forgiveness? A speech?"
"Do you want to apologize to her in front of everyone?" Aaron asked, looking at her like a man weighing an old coin.
She swallowed. "I'm sorry, Layne," she said, voice raw. "I shouldn't have done that. I wanted—you know—attention. I—I'm sorry."
The words landed like a pebble in a pond. Ripples of quiet. Some clapped. Some shook their heads.
"It doesn't fix everything," Aaron said. "But it'll do for now."
She cried harder, face visible in the crowd, and someone called out, "Go home, Mercedes!"
She left, shoulders hunched, and the crowd dispersed like the end of a storm. People talked in small groups, phones already creating memes and gossip threads.
Later that night, messages arrived—a few people defended her, others condemned her. Some asked—meanly—if she'd been expelled. Nothing that cruel happened. She had to endure public humiliation: comments, whispers, and the drain of being watched. She lost face; people stared differently. The rumor machine lost interest in me and turned on her. She had painted herself as a villain, and the world decided to collect its judgment.
"Why did you let it go that far?" I asked Aaron quietly later, when the lake was empty and the lights were soft in our favor.
"I couldn't let her make you small," he said. "That's what she wanted. And I couldn't stand hearing that."
"You could have just said so earlier," I said, but I wasn't really upset. I was grateful.
"Maybe," he answered. "But I wanted her to see the truth. I wanted everyone to see what it looks like to start something cruel."
"I hated being watched," I admitted. "But the way you stood up for me—I want to be brave like that when you need me."
He let out a laugh. "You're brave in small ridiculous ways. Keep that."
We walked in the quiet after the crowd left, hands linked. He kissed the corner of my mouth and murmured, "I like your crooked smile."
"You're impossible," I said, but my body warmed.
"Good," he said. "Because I'm all in."
From that day, the small humiliations faded like stains rinsed in running water. People still talked. She stayed distant. I still had bad days. But the good days—good lord—were full of warm things.
"Can you teach me more?" I asked one afternoon as we practiced free throws.
"Only if you promise to practice," he said.
"I promise."
He scooped me up that night and held me close. "I like you a lot," he said.
"I like you too," I said, and my voice was an anchor.
He kissed me like he was not going anywhere. He held my hand in class like it was a treasure. He bribed me with jokes and small tenderness and a thousand tiny, steady things. He was not a man who fixed everything with one grand gesture. He fixed things with steady, messy, human presence.
Sometimes I wondered if I had been the starting point. Once, in the winter, I left the jacket on his shoulder. He looked at me and asked, "Why do you keep my jacket?"
"Because you smell nice," I said.
He rolled his eyes. "Because it's warm."
"Both," I said.
He smiled and kissed my forehead. "Okay. Keep my jacket. Just don't call other girls 'girlfriend' without permission."
He laughed then, the sound like sunlight.
We learned each other's edges. I learned to tie my shoe without falling. He learned to call me "baby" at odd hours. We both learned to be present.
Sometimes people would point and say, "They look so perfect." Once a teacher asked how long we'd been together and the class chorused, "Forever."
"It's been one semester," I said.
"Feels like forever," he answered.
We stayed together after graduation. We lived together and got used to each other's clutter. He stole my hoodie; I hid his damn coffee mugs. We learned how to keep peace and how to apologize. I learned his childhood stories. He learned mine.
"How did this start again?" our child asked one morning years later. "You said you met at school."
"We were in the same gym class," Aaron said.
"You said you were bold," I said, smiling.
He winked. "You were loud."
"Mic still on?" the child guessed.
"Yes," we said together, and then laughed.
The End
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