Sweet Romance14 min read
Rain, Lies, and the Light That Waited
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1
"It stopped raining at the cemetery," I said, though my voice sounded wrong to me.
"You mean it kept raining," Lorenzo snapped back on my screen, with a tiny smug streak I could hear even in text.
I stared at the photo he had just posted: two faces close, neon light behind them, popcorn in hand, the caption: "Best day of the year." He had tagged a girl. He had posted the picture at the exact moment my world narrowed into one room with white sheets and bright hospital lights.
"I don't have the energy, Lorenzo," I typed. Then I closed the chat and pressed my phone into the pocket of my damp coat. My hands were still cold from the cemetery. My grandfather's ashes rested in a small stone box now, under a gray slab that would wear my name with weather and time.
On the bus I finally opened the message again. He had sent, and then deleted, a screenshot of another girl's confession to him. Three words: "Sent by mistake." I knew the trick. He wanted me to wake up jealous. He wanted to be chased. He wanted me to plead the way I always pleaded. He wanted me to fix him.
I didn't have any pieces left to put back together.
"Melody," my roommate Antonio said later when I crashed in our shared room, "he's been waiting downstairs for you for two days." He reached out with two soup spoons and a bowl of porridge. "You need to eat."
"Leave it," I said.
Antonio frowned. "He'll look pathetic out there. Lorenzo will beg. He always does."
"He always does," I agreed, thinking of rain and a boy who used to be a friend and then everything else. I thought of the first time he found me in the rain, nineteen and soaked and humiliated, and pulled me into an embrace like an anchor.
"You used to say you'd wait for me when it rained," he had said to me once, that boy with eyes like summer light. "I will always find you when it rains."
"I know," I remembered telling him. "When will you grow up?"
He had pressed closer, hands like a child's, voice like a dare. "I'm just insecure. I want you to show me you care."
"Then show me by being someone who keeps steady," I had whispered.
But steady was not in his vocabulary.
2
The first time I met Marcel Chen it was rain again. "We keep meeting in storms," he said, handing me a small box of tissues when he saw me standing under the lab shelter, shaking.
"I didn't know you notice those things," I said.
He shrugged. "People who notice other people's small trouble are never very old." He was nineteen but moved like he was made of adult pieces. He had that odd steadiness—quiet and unshowy—that calmed the edges of my loose panic.
"You are Lorenzo's teammate," I said one afternoon, when Lorenzo was sulking after a lost match and Marcel was easy at my side, carrying a spray for his twisted hand like it was nothing.
Marcel smiled faintly. "No. We're teammates on the court. That's different."
"But you stood up for me," I reminded him.
"Some things don't need a team to do the right thing," he said. "If someone is hurting you, I won't watch."
"That's... brave."
"Not brave. Practical."
His words would repeat in my head for nights afterward.
3
"We can't be together anymore," I said when Lorenzo finally caught me under the dim light outside the dorm. The rain had stopped but the pavement still shone.
"What? No," he said, sound shrinking. "You can't mean it, Melody. We can work this out."
"You posted the photo," I said. "You posted your happy night while I was at my grandfather's bedside."
He blinked, like the world had betrayed him. "That was a stupid timing. I didn't know—"
"You did. You didn't think," I replied.
"I am sorry, please—"
"I'm tired, Lorenzo." My voice came out like paper. "I am tired of being the only one who notices the line between childish and cruel."
He reached for me. He always reached. He wrapped his arms with that old pull and said, "I didn't mean to be cruel. I'm scared. I'm scared I'll lose you."
"Scared boys learn by testing," I said. "I'm done being the test."
He went through stages like a bad play: disbelief, then anger, then the tiny hurt that made him a child. "You can't just—" He tried to twist my sleeve back.
"You did," I said. "You chose your picture over my grief."
He looked away, defeated. Students walked past. One of them, Earl Wu, a teammate, stood with a basketball under his arm, watching. The air hummed.
"You can't—" Lorenzo started, and Earl said, "Enough."
Earl's voice was flat and steady. "Leave her alone, Lorenzo."
"Why are you in this?" Lorenzo barked.
"I'm on her side," Earl said simply. "Because she's human."
Lorenzo scoffed and shoved Earl. The shove looked thin against the night, cheap and petulant. Marcel appeared like a shadow—always there when needed—and before I knew it, he had put himself between Lorenzo and me.
"My patience is over," Marcel said. "Go."
Lorenzo turned, adrenaline roaring. "You can't tell me what to do," he spat.
"I can tell you to keep your hands to yourself." Marcel didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. There were students coming out of the library, curious, drawn. A crowd always finds noise.
4
A week later I was at the student hall signing some lab paperwork when the first proper punishment happened.
It started because Lorenzo was everywhere—he tried to be charming, to reinsert himself into my orbit, and he made a mistake: he tried to use the people around him. He had gathered his dorm, he had whispered, he had tried to twist gossip into support. He had said things about my family that were untrue, trying to make me look like a liar, trying to say I had exaggerated my grandfather's death.
"He said what?" someone asked me that afternoon, voice low.
"You're lying," Lorenzo had posted on a group chat. "Why use someone's death for sympathy?"
I looked at him then. The room was the student activity hall. It was a normal Thursday; the debate club had left, the photography students were packing. But whispers found me. "He lied about you," Earl told me. "He told others you were faking it."
Marcel spoke first in the hall. "Show me the messages," he said.
"Why don't you just let it slide?" Lorenzo tried to smile. He had that casual arrogance that used to be charming.
"Because truth matters," Marcel said. "You dragged my name into this. You used a classroom of people as your stage. This is not a private matter anymore."
I didn't plan the next thing. I only followed Marcel when he took my hand and led me to the middle of the hall. "I want everyone to listen," he told me in a low voice, then he stepped forward and said, loud enough that heads turned: "This is about dignity."
Heads turned. Lorenzo's face paled, the color running away.
"Leave us alone," Lorenzo muttered.
"No," Marcel answered. "You started a lie. You will end it in the same room."
A crowd gathered. Phones were pulled. Someone posted a live stream. That small hall swelled into a tribunal without a judge.
"Melody," Marcel said, looking at me, "tell them what happened."
"I was at a hospital," I began. "My grandfather had a stroke. He passed away in the night. I went to the funeral. During that time, pictures appeared on Lorenzo's feed of him and another girl, smiling. He sent deleted messages that were meant to make me jealous. Then he told half the dorm that I exaggerated things for attention."
A man two rows back said, "That's awful."
Lorenzo's voice sharpened. "You never showed proof."
"Proof?" I turned. "My proof is in the people who were with me at the hospital." I named nurses, the night shift, the doctor who had called. Eyes widened. "And my proof is in the silence of the one who should have been there."
"That's not proof," Lorenzo snarled.
Antonio stood up. "He posted the picture," Antonio said. "He posted it at four in the morning while she was on the phone in a hospital corridor."
A student snapped, "Why post then?"
"Because he wanted attention," someone else answered.
Marcel pulled out his phone. "You did a sequence of things, Lorenzo," he said. "You told dormmates you wanted to make her jealous. You sent a screenshot and deleted it on purpose. You grouped people together to stage an 'intervention'—and then you told them that Melody was dishonest."
By now the live comments had ballooned. "What's going on?" "Scandal at the uni." "Was she faking it?" The hall smelled like cheap coffee and tension.
"You're lying," Lorenzo said, louder. He was no longer fighting to be missed; he was fighting for control.
"Tell them," Marcel urged me.
I looked at the men in the front row—students, a lab TA, my friend Antonio, others with tired faces—and then at the flood of small phones pointed like trial torches. I told the story—again and again—with details: the quiet room, the daytime darkness, the way the nurse's badge glinted, the name of the doctor. The crowd listened. I saw heads nod. I saw faces soften.
Lorenzo's friend, a boy from the dorm who had been set to corroborate his lies, shifted and said, "He told me to say this, but—"
"You told him to lie?" someone shouted.
"We were kids," the friend mumbled.
"Kids take advantage," Marcel said. "Adults take responsibility. Grow up."
Lorenzo's posture collapsed. Those were small things—the way he lowered his shoulders, the way his jaw trembled—but they were the beginning of unmaking.
"You're turning this into a spectacle!" Lorenzo cried out. "Everyone's recording! I'm ruined!"
The room laughed, not maliciously but with the incredulousness of people who had watched a man make his own doom.
"Yes," a woman in the back called. "You are."
Phones were out. Comments flew. "He had no empathy." "What a coward." "Who does that?" Clips of Lorenzo's smiling face from weeks ago were pulled up and juxtaposed with his callous posts. Someone flashed one of his old texts where he had bragged about making a girl jealous.
Lorenzo felt the walls of his performance collapse. He had always counted on private cruelty—on the idea that pain could be issued in whispers. Here, in the hall, the whispers were loud and shared.
He turned to me, a rawness beginning to crack his voice. "I'm sorry," he said very quickly, too late. "Melody, I'm sorry. I didn't—"
"Save it," I said.
The crowd grew louder, but not because they wanted to attack him. They wanted to see if he would grow. He did not.
Then the worst moment for him happened: the dorm leader stood and read aloud a message Lorenzo had posted earlier, the one where he had joked about my grandfather's funeral as "bad timing." The room froze.
"How could you—" Antonio started, then stopped. "You owe her and her family an apology."
"I did apologize!" Lorenzo cried.
"You apologized in texts. You deleted them. You apologized because you were caught." Marcel's voice was low. "But now, aloud, now, in front of people you used—say it. Tell them the truth."
Lorenzo's cheeks glowed with shame. He made a small, broken attempt: "I tried to make Melody jealous. I thought it would make her chase me. I was selfish."
There was a pause long enough for an entire sentence of his youth to end.
"And you used my grandfather's death as a lever?" I asked.
He couldn't meet my eyes.
"No," he said. "No, I didn't."
The crowd reacted like wind. A dozen voices called out. "Then explain the post at four in the morning!" "Explain the screenshot!" He could not.
The dean's secretary, who had been first hesitant to stay, cleared her throat and said, "This is a matter of student conduct. We will handle it."
"Will handle it?" someone scoffed. "You mean punish him?"
"We don't punish to hurt," the dean's secretary said. "But we do hold people accountable."
"Do it here," someone shouted. "Make him apologize publicly."
The dean's assistant stepped forward. "Lorenzo D'Angelo," he said, "stand and face Melody."
He stood. He looked small.
"Face her and apologize fully. No deletions. No private messages. You will say what you told the dormmates, and you will tell everyone why you thought hurting her would be acceptable."
Lorenzo swallowed. The hall waited like an ocean. "I—I'm sorry," he began.
"Say why," the dean's assistant ordered.
"Because I'm jealous," he whispered. "Because I thought if I made her jealous she would love me more."
Marcel's jaw tightened. "And is that love or possession?"
"The room exhaled. People whispered. His face shifted: first shock at being seen, then denial, then an ugly petulance, then the slow, humiliating dawning of regret. Some students took photos. Others recorded video. A girl laughed sharply and said, "He finally got his public moment."
"Get out of her life," Earl said, low and furious.
Lorenzo looked like someone had emptied him. He made a final, wet, earnest attempt. "Please, Melody. Please—"
"Don't," I said. "Not here. Not now." I wasn't cruel. I just wanted the truth, and the truth had been laid bare. The crowd began to chant, not unkindly but with the clear judgment of massed witnesses: "Accountability! Accountability!"
He stood at the center, shrinking, as his performance curdled into ruin. Around him thousands of small phones carried his shame into the world. People I had never seen before commented: "He had no idea what empathy meant." "He used grief for his games." "Let him learn."
Lorenzo finally sank into a chair. He leaned his face into his palms and sobbed—not the theatrical tears of apology, but the small, aching defeat of someone who finally felt the depth of the damage he'd done.
There was no physical punishment. The punishment was public and merciless and real: his crudeness had been exposed, and anyone who had once admired him now watched him shrink. Witnesses came to my side: friends, classmates, and even students who had never spoken to me before. They said, "We believe you." They said, "Thank you for telling the truth."
At the end, the dean's assistant announced formal consequences: campus community service, mandatory counseling, an essay read in front of the student body on empathy. "Public accountability," he said. "Because university is where you learn to be an adult."
Lorenzo's reaction changed through the whole thing. He went from furious to shocked to pleading to broken. Around him, murmurs rose and fell: scorn, surprise, a few who tried to soft-pedal sympathy. Some people filmed him; some clapped; some simply walked away.
"Why did you do that?" Marcel asked later, more privately.
Lorenzo's shoulders shook. "I was stupid. I wanted to be needed."
"You hurt someone because you were afraid to not be needed," Marcel said, quiet but cutting.
He left the hall a different man. The room emptied and yet the echo of that moment stayed with everyone who had watched. People discussed it for days: "Do you think he'll change?" "Public shaming is cruel." "But he needed to be seen."
I sat on the steps with Antonio and Marcel. "It's done," Antonio said, rubbing my back. "You didn't have to watch it all."
"I watched because it was the only way to stop him," I said. "He had power because he hid behind prank and charm. Now it's out."
Marcel took my hand and didn't say anything. He held my fingers like something precious and fragile and real.
5
After that, Lorenzo disappeared for a while. He came back sometimes, a new quickness in his step. He wore a slender silver ring now, a ring that seemed to scream 'change' like an overused label. I ran into him once on campus; he was polite, but the charm looked powdered, fragile.
Marcel and I grew closer slowly, as if patience were a thread we both learned to braid. He walked me to the lab every day, told me a story about his father and grief, the way loss had taught him to steady. "My father died when I was twelve," he had said once. "I cried like you did. I came through."
"You made it through," I said.
He shrugged. "I learned that remembering isn't clinging. It is the opposite."
We went to a music festival together. Under loud lights, a band sang the line: "Life is bright like a song," and I felt my edges soften. When he kissed me suddenly in the grass afterward, it was not the clumsy seizure of someone used to taking. It was careful and warm, like a hand choosing a home.
"Are you serious?" I asked once, when he told me he would help with the problem of my relatives trying to claim the small inheritance my grandfather had meant for me.
He smiled, crooked and fierce. "I'm not going to let them bully you. Not into your life."
He did find people to look into the paperwork. He made a quiet plan. In the end, he paid someone to draft a simple legal explanation that the village land was not in immediate line for cash compensation, and that chasing the property would cost them in penalties. He did it tactfully. When my 'relatives' realized they could gain nothing but risk fines, they retreated.
I didn't want to know exactly what he had done; I only wanted the result: no more confrontations, no more will-bitten words at the gates. When I asked him who he had used, he chuckled and kissed my forehead. "This one is on me," he said. "I can be petty when I love someone."
6
Months passed and our days knit into each other. He taught me to eat when I forgot. I taught him to read an experimental protocol. We argued about minor things—about laundry and whether coffee after midnight was a sin—but when I was tired he would take off his jacket and place it over my shoulders without a smile, and I would feel safe.
One afternoon, Lorenzo returned with his slow, repaired manner. He stood outside the lab and said, "Melody, can we talk?"
"No," I said.
"Please." He was earnest, a quiet thing this time. "I have been in counseling. I am ashamed. I want to apologize and say thank you."
"I accept your apology," I said. "But I don't want us to be together."
He nodded, eyes damp. "I understand." He reached into his pocket and handed me a small box. Inside, a ring: silver, simple. "I thought maybe this could be my promise to stop being a coward."
I closed the box and held it. For a flicker I felt the old warmth. Then I thought of the hall, of faces, of Marcel's steady hand in mine. "Keep it," I said. "Promises put on other people are still for you."
He left, and I watched him go. He looked different—more adult, more painfully aware. But I had found my person in someone who did not need to manufacture drama to prove affection.
7
I married that sense of quiet into the life I wanted. Marcel and I had small ceremonies in both of our ways: a quiet promise by the sundial on campus where he said he would guard my future, and a later, softer conversation at the cemetery where he placed flowers for my grandfather and promised he would not ask me to forget.
We had to face whispers from those who had seen the hall incident and thought public punishment too much. Some said I had been cruel. Some applauded. For me, the point had not been spectacle, but visibility. I had stood and told a truth about grief. Some people needed to see the harm in order to learn.
Marcel and I grew into one another with care. He would call me "Mel" in the morning and "love" at night, small words with the heft of vows. He fixed my deskside lamp with patient hands once and I laughed. "You are so domestic," I teased.
"You steal my heart and I fix things," he replied.
We moved slowly, because wounds mend better when tended.
8
One day at a community event where alumni and current students met to talk about campus life, Lorenzo appeared. He walked into the crowd with a quieter step than before but there was a tremor of expectancy in his face, like someone hoping the world would hand him absolution.
Marcel stood up when he saw him. "We can leave," Marcel said softly, but I shook my head.
Lorenzo went to the mic and cleared his throat. "I am here to talk about what I did," he said. The hall was full; somewhere, a camera streamed.
"I did something selfish and cruel," he said. "I tried to make someone feel less important so I'd feel more. I used a death as bait. I hurt Melody and many others. I want to apologize."
He had practiced the words; the edges were smooth. "I have been in counseling," he continued. "I have been volunteering. I want to do better."
People listened. I thought of the hall months ago. People softened and said small things: "Good," "Glad you're trying," "Keep going."
Lorenzo turned to me personally and said, "You don't have to forgive me."
"I don't have to," I answered. "But I see that you are working."
He smiled sadly. "Thank you."
Marcel squeezed my hand.
The event closed with applause, and someone said, "He's changed." Maybe he had, in pieces. People do. But the night was ours: Marcel and I walked out together, the city lights shining like small promises.
9
When I sit down to write this, I think of all the rain. I think of the boy who thought that scattering stings and pranks would chain someone to him. I think of the man who stood in front of a hall and said what he had done aloud, with witnesses and consequences.
There was punishment. There was humiliation. There was a standing in front of people and being told to face what you had done. For him it was public, painful, and necessary. He went through the motions from shock to denial to pleading to collapse. People watched. People recorded. People judged. He was made to speak his stupidity and his selfishness, and to face a crowd that had seen his gestures for what they were.
But maybe the real punishment was the thing that cannot be televised: the slow, patient work of becoming someone who can hold grief in another's hands without harming it. That is not a spectacle. That is a long, tedious work of pause and listening.
Marcel waits with me on late nights when my stomach tightens with old memories. He listens without fixing. He tells me small truths. "You can be angry," he says, simply. "You can be soft. Both are yours."
And when the rain comes now, I know someone will find me. Not to make me chase, but to stand steady beside me.
The End
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