Sweet Romance13 min read
Paid Voices, Close Doors — How I Lost My Shame and Found Him
ButterPicks14 views
"I paid for a voice and woke up with a life."
"You're dramatic."
"I told you, Knox, you sounded like someone who owned an ocean."
"Do you want another bedtime story or do you want me to keep humming?"
"I want both."
My phone glowed in the dark. I had my blanket wrapped to my chin and my throat a little raw from crying. The summer I moved into Aunt Corinne's apartment to study for the big exam, I didn't expect much except quiet and a strict schedule. I found the app because I couldn't sleep and because the quiet in the borrowed room made my heart ache like it was an empty cup.
"Hello," he had said that first night. "Which story would you like?"
"Anything," I had whispered, "Something calm."
"Once upon a time," Knox Alves murmured in the low, even voice I'd already started to memorize, "there was a girl who thought the world had closed its doors on her. She didn't know doors could open from the inside."
"I like that," I told him. I felt ridiculous even saying it aloud to a stranger on the phone, but the way he read—slow, precise—felt like a hand on the small of my back. His voice made the apartment less empty. It made my chest less tight.
"Goodnight, baby," he said.
"Sleep well," I whispered, my cheeks hot, and remembered that neither of us meant it in any deep way. He was a paid voice. I was a paying user. Simple, safe, boring.
Two weeks after I started using the app, Aunt Corinne introduced me to a guest staying at her place.
"This is Alexander Bartlett," Aunt Corinne said casually in the kitchen as she tied a towel around a cutting board, "He's staying here for the month. He studies medicine at A University. If you have any questions while you prep, ask him."
I looked up. The man who had been sitting at the table leaned his long legs out from under and smiled once, politely. He had hair that refused to be unruly and a face that kept order with itself. His shirt sleeves ended exactly where his wrists made art; his fingernails were neat.
"Hi," he said. "Sorry to intrude."
"Hello," I managed. My voice bounced somewhere between my throat and my heart.
That night I closed my textbook and pretended I hadn't registered the exact shape of his hand. I told myself I liked the voice from the app, not the man who sat at Aunt Corinne's table. Still, the next morning I woke early to study and the house smelled of coffee. I found him at the table again, fingers stained faintly with watermelon juice from when he'd cut fruit earlier.
"You study late?" he asked.
"Sometimes," I said, because of course he asked and because my English vocab list sat splayed like a map on the arm of the couch.
A week later my ex sent a mean message after reading my study update. "You're wasting your time. Come home. Life's simpler there." I closed the chat and felt old shame return like a sore that never quite healed.
That night, when Knox called, his voice asked, "Want me to stay on the line?"
"Yes," I said, because I meant it, because the voice had become a blanket.
"Good. Tell me about your day."
I did. I told Knox about the watermelon, about the ex, about how nothing fit anymore. The voice was patient.
"What if you had someone real?" I blurted. "Someone who could stand in the kitchen and hand you a plate?"
"You can have someone," Knox said, with a small amused exhale. "You're doing the work."
"You say that like you believe me," I muttered.
"Because it's true." He added softly, "You can say my name if you like."
"Your name is Knox?" I asked, ridiculous, and partly wanting a thread to hold.
"Yes."
"Knox—"
"Yes?"
"I like it when you say 'baby.'"
"Baby." He said it once, then again, gentler. My face turned red; I felt stupid and happy at the same time.
The coincidence that turned all of this loose into something else was silly and petty. I was on a forum for the app one night and read that some users asked their voice people to call them "baby." My cheeks heated. I tried it the next night. Knox said it with a practiced warmth that ruined me for the rest of the night.
"You're too soft," I told him.
"You like soft," he said, and I wanted to argue but I couldn't. The world outside my small bed-curtain became a warm hush.
Then one afternoon my phone pinged with a message from a stranger: "Are you prepping for the grad exam?"
I wrote back, thinking it was a troll. "?"
"Yes. You look like you are. Head down?"
"Who are you?" I typed, and then realized too late that I saw his profile photo. Tall person, white shirt, glasses. He was Alexander Bartlett. He asked with casual generosity if I wanted help with any English grammar. He said he taught a younger student sometimes.
"Can you help me with verbs?" I asked, ridiculous but true.
He came over. He sat at the edge of his laptop and taught me. He explained the trick to small phrases and why some clauses slipped. He tapped the keyboard and his jaw worked as if he was adjusting a lens.
When he left my brain was full of his explanations and my cheeks were too warm. I went back to my bed and called Knox. I told the app-voice the whole thing and waited for Knox's usual gentle jokes.
"He's real," Knox said.
"Yes." I felt a smile like a cat stretching across my face. "He's very real."
I posted one night—stupidly, when I was too tired to think—under a fan comment on Alexander's profile, "He's so pretty, his hands are perfect, his voice must be perfect, he's mine." I used an anonymous handle and meant nothing by it except a small flash of childish hope.
Alexander read. He noticed. He did not mention it. Instead he kept being kind when he explained clauses, when he tapped his pencil, when he hummed a measure he liked and said, "Relax. Breathe."
Then a small panic happened. I saw his social media, and there was a photo: Alexander on a park bench, wearing a white coat, arm around a woman with long hair. The caption was throwaway and affectionate. In a single second I felt my heart fold in on itself like a cheap chair.
I messaged Knox, wild. "He has a girlfriend."
"Maybe it's a sister," Knox said casually.
"It looks like a girlfriend."
"Probably not," Knox said, the way a friend who wanted to soothe says things that are not promises.
Humiliated, I stopped using the app. I wanted to be principled. I wanted not to be the girl who paid to have a voice call her baby. I closed the app, I logged off, I tried to be reasonable. Then one night I heard a knock on my door.
Alexander was there. He stood like a quiet wall, coat hanging like a promise.
"Why did you unfriend me?" he asked.
"You can see that?" I whispered.
"Yes," he said. He looked at the screen of my phone when I showed him the app. "Are you... OK?"
I tried to explain, and then I heard my new "boyfriend" on the app saying "baby, are you up?" and Alexander heard the name.
"He called you baby on a platform?" he asked. His voice was low.
My face burned. "It was... stupid. Please don't tell anyone. Please."
Alexander's expression became something complicated. He reached into his pocket and touched a little box of leftover cake he'd obviously picked up on the way. He offered it like an apology and a map.
"Eat this," he said. "I'm sorry you felt small."
I told him I was fine. I wasn't.
He stayed.
"Do you have a girlfriend?" I asked at last, because the photo kept playing like a loop.
"No," he said. He said it like truth. He then took out his phone and called the woman in the picture.
"Gracelynn?" he said when she answered. "Hello—yes. This is silly. She thinks your photo is a boyfriend. Would you—"
He pressed his phone to my ear. "Hello," Gracelynn said with a bright, efficient voice. "Oh! Hi. I'm Alexander's sister. Yes, I took that picture. I thought it would be fine. Sorry for the misunderstanding. He's not dating. He told me to manage his account so people wouldn't pester him."
I stood there with my phone on my ear, shaking, my breath a raw sound.
"I'm so sorry," I said to a woman I'd never met, and she laughed.
"Don't worry," she said, like someone who had handled worse. "He's awkward at these things. Tell him he owes you cake."
After that, Alexander became the warmest, most steady thing in my life. He taught me grammar like he taught a tiny patient. He made me water when I forgot. He left a note by my bag sometimes. He knew when to be quiet, and when to be persistent.
And he also had rules. The first time we were alone and he said, "If you're going to fall in love, say it plainly," I choked on the smallness of the option.
"Say it plainly?" I asked.
He took my hands. "I don't like secrets. I prefer that you tell me the truth. You like me. Tell me when you like me."
So I did. "I like you," I said, the words falling heavy and clean.
He smiled as if I'd given him a cup of something he really wanted. "I like you too."
We found our rhythm. He'd come home exhausted from shifts, and I'd wait with a bowl of soup. He'd call during my practice exams to wish me luck. He read my answers and made me say sentences out loud and corrected me like a meticulous friend. The more I tried, the better I did. When the exam's results came out, I had done what I'd set out to do—I'd passed, and better than I'd dared to hope.
One evening, after my results, the world shifted. The park had clouds of white flowers, and he kissed me under a tree like he wanted to make me forget every small fear. "Come with me," he said, and I did.
Then the sudden collapse came. I woke up in a hospital with tubes and the sharp light of medicine. I had fainted in the common room from exhaustion and dehydration. Nurses circled and called my name. Alexander's voice was immediately there.
"Are you awake?" he asked.
I tried to sit up and saw him—white coat, hair in exact order—speaking to someone in the way he always used, practical and composed. Beside him stood a woman who introduced herself as Gracelynn Clement. She was warm and efficient; she explained tests; she made jokes that landed lightly.
"You scared us," Gracelynn told me when I could steady my breath.
Alexander took my hand. "You need to rest," he said. "Don't push so hard."
"Sorry," I squeaked.
"Promise you'll rest?" he asked.
I promised.
Because of the hospital episode, we met their family properly. Gracelynn came by for tea. She fussed over me like a second mother and told me that Alexander had always been the kind of person who would stop and help. "He had a hard summer," she told me in a way that made him look small and great. "He nearly gave up once."
"He told me," I said, and he blinked, embarrassed.
They accepted me fast. Aunt Corinne invited them to dinner. The world shifted until everyone in it seemed to know our story. People at the clinic joked about how Alexander's girlfriend must be very gentle; friends teased him; a professor wrote a note of approval. Life felt like a house being built—we added rooms.
And then came the ex, Grady Scott. He sent me an invitation to a wedding one afternoon, and a short, bragging text: "Three houses, one town. Look at me now. Thought you'd like to know." I should have ignored him. I didn't.
I told Alexander. He listened to the short voice message and then his hand tightened. He replied coldly. "Congratulations," he said, and then added, with something softer, "Why did you tell her?"
"What?" I asked.
"Why tell you? Why now?"
"I wanted closure," I muttered.
He looked at me like he was measuring the exact weight of my courage. "Let's not let him decide our story," he said. "Let me decide."
He did decide. He chose something that was small and huge at once: public exposure. But he didn't do it out of malice. He did it to protect me, and to expose a man who thought himself important.
It happened at the same hospital where Alexander once trained under a strict teacher. The clinic had a small celebration because Alexander had a new paper accepted. People from the department came. They brought tea. They talked about medicine and late nights. Grady Scott arrived at the entrance like a peacock, always sure the world owed him attention. He saw me, saw the light around me, and decided to be loud.
"Well, well, if it isn't the girl who thought she could go to the city and study," he said, voice carrying. "Did you get anything? Or did you just get a boyfriend?"
Guests turned. Some recognized him as the man who'd dated me before. He laughed, as if an old joke had been retold.
Alexander watched calmly for a moment. He came forward slowly, like someone approaching a patient with a steady hand. He didn't yell. He asked one small, clear question.
"Why are you here?" Alexander asked.
Grady took that as a cue to perform. "I'm here to show you all my success," he said. "I made money. I told her to be reasonable. I told her not to chase impossible things."
"Is that what you told her?" Alexander repeated. "How did you put it? 'Be reasonable'?"
"Yes," Grady said loudly. "And she left me. Good for me."
A circle gathered. Some people shifted to listen. Even the nurses peered out of the break room.
"Tell them," Alexander said quietly.
"Tell them what?" Grady sneered.
"Tell them about the ways you treated her," Alexander said. "Tell them how you told her to give up. Tell them why you think success forgives being small."
Grady's face changed from smug to confused. A few people in the crowd frowned.
"What's this?" he snapped. "Who are you to—"
"She is Livia Hunt," Alexander said. "She moved here to study. She's the top of her class. She supports herself while you stayed in town and made yours a 'simple life.' She chose more than you offered."
"That's not fair," Grady said. "I have a stable job."
Alexander stepped closer. "You told her no city would suit her. You told her her dreams were childish. You mocked her grades. You asked her to be small, and now you stand here with your three houses."
Grady snapped back, "I was helping!"
There was a silence like a held breath. Then someone from among Alexander's colleagues—an older doctor—said, "We prefer people who build others up. Denigrating someone who wants to learn is not help."
"She paid for her own exams," another nurse said. "She worked night shifts. I saw her study at 2 a.m."
A woman near the refreshments who'd been quietly scrolling social media tapped her screen and called out, "Hey, your boss from the company says you lied about that property deal. Care to explain?"
Grady's face went five shades pale. People around whispered. One of his old friends muttered, "Really?"
"Wait," Grady stammered. "No, that's—"
A man who knew Grady's history stepped forward. "You pressured women here. You said you'd 'provide' if they'd stop moving forward. You used money to buy silence."
Now people were watching like theater-goers at the crescendo. Phones came out. Someone recorded. Someone gasped. Alexander watched all of this like a surgeon observing a wound.
Grady tried to fight back with bluster. "You can't do this to me," he shouted. "You're making things up."
"Make things up?" Alexander repeated, cold as a scalpel. "You told her that her plans were ridiculous because it made you less guilty about letting her go. You badmouthed exams you never tried to understand. And you used the word 'reasonable' like a weapon."
"That's not true," Grady insisted.
A woman whispered to another: "I remember you told her in the cafe last fall? You said 'studying is for people who fail at life.'"
Grady's voice faltered. He looked around, and instead of applause from his triumphant peers, he saw faces of disappointment, of annoyance, of distance. The people who had been smiling at his arrival now turned away. Someone took a picture. Someone else shook their head.
"Do you want to apologize to her," Alexander asked softly, "or do you want to keep telling the same lie?"
Grady's mask broke. He tried to laugh, to recover, but his words came brittle. "I—I—"
He looked out for help but had none. The older doctor said, "If you thought money made you better, then know this: respect is not for sale."
Around us the crowd murmured and a hundred small judgments lined the room. People took sides. Some clapped quietly for Alexander—not for triumph but for rightness. Some recorded. Grady's face loosened; it became smaller as if he'd been deflated in public.
He tried to escape, but the exit was now lined with people who had noticed his called-out hypocrisy. One of his associates, who'd been with him through deal after deal, avoided his eyes and stepped aside. Grady pushed forward, and then someone near the door made a small sound—laughter—and it spread.
"You're alone, aren't you?" a nurse said kindly but without pity. "No one's impressed by that."
He turned as if to protest, but his voice was swallowed by the room. No one came to his defense. A woman who'd once been charmed by him tapped him on the shoulder and walked away. The man who had once admired his three houses turned to the crowd and shook his head.
Grady left with his head low. People watched him go. Phones still recorded. The camera caught his face, his bravado stripped down to nothing. For all his earlier noise, it had come to a point where the crowd's feeling was simple: he had been mean to someone who was trying to improve her life, and now he had to live with the truth.
Afterwards, people spoke in whispers. "He looked a little crazy," someone said. "What a shame," another replied. Alexander stood beside me and put an arm around my shoulder.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"For what?" I asked.
"For letting him get to you, and for the noise of it all."
"It's okay," I said.
"You don't have to be afraid of being small," he said. "You're not small."
That public unraveling changed how everyone saw Grady. He wasn't imprisoned or arrested—this wasn't a legal justice show—but in the town and among the people who mattered to me, his image was split. People stopped trusting him. His fans unfollowed. His old bravado became the butt of jokes and whispers. He had to answer to far more embarrassing things than money: petty cruelty made public, the way even acquaintances turned away when they remembered unkind things he'd said.
After that, the world felt safer. People who'd once snickered at me without knowing my story now looked at me differently. Alexander held my hand in public without apology. I studied harder. I slept better.
Months later, in a small ceremony among colleagues and family, we promised to be each other's partner in the messy life of medicine and studying. Aunt Corinne cried and insisted the guests eat more. Gracelynn took me aside and said, "Take good care of him," as if we were child and grown man at once.
"Will you be okay at the hospital?" I asked that evening when we were alone on the balcony, and the city smelled like late jasmine.
"Yes," he said. "As long as I know you're okay."
"Promise you'll tell me if you hurt?" I asked.
"I promise," he said. He cupped my face and kissed me the way someone who had learned to be careful with exactness would. "I love you," he said, simple and true.
"I love you too," I replied.
At the end of the story, the small things mattered. The cracked pair of glasses he'd broken the first week we kissed. The little hair tie he put on his wrist because he said it "looked better" on him than mine. The app that had brought me innocent comfort—Knox's voice—became a private joke between us.
"Do you ever regret the app?" he asked once, gentle.
"No," I said. "It got me through a lonely month."
"It also almost led you to be embarrassed in front of me," he teased.
"And yet you still asked me to be your girlfriend."
"Because you were brave," he said.
"I was messy," I admitted.
"You were brave and messy," Alexander said. "That's enough."
We married in a small spring ceremony. I wore a simple dress. Aunt Corinne cried and told me I had done well. Gracelynn baked the cake. Alexander wore the glasses he'd once broken and mended. After the service, the ex—Grady Scott—sent a message that read, "Congratulations. I hope you know what a catch I had." Someone later told me they saw his message and replied with a simple, "She married a man who builds, not one who buys." It was another small public tally of how things had been righted.
At the very end, I kept a small token—the cracked lens of his old glasses tucked into a little box. When days felt grey, I would open it and remember how doors had opened from the inside and how the voice that soothed me at night had been only one of many things that led me to real company. I had wanted someone to call me baby; what I had found was someone who taught me how to be both brave and small, to study and to rest, to be loved without apologies.
"Do you remember Knox?" Alexander asked one lazy afternoon years later, when we sat in our kitchen.
"He kept me from being alone," I said. "He made me brave enough to knock on your door."
"Good," he said. "Then I'm happy he existed."
"And the app?" I asked.
"It collects dust," he said, smiling.
I held the cracked glass up once more and listened to the ordinary tick of the wall clock, and I knew the story was mine because I had the right to tell it. The small shame had been replaced by a life full of ordinary kindness, and that felt, in the end, like the greatest kind of victory.
The End
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