Sweet Romance11 min read
Switching Crushes, Keeping Heartbeats
ButterPicks11 views
I never expected a book to ruin my life and save it at the same time.
"I can't believe he liked someone else," I blurted out to the empty page, though the book was already shut.
My name is Eliana Lawrence. The boy everyone called my childhood friend—my small lion, my protector—was Jaxon Stevens. He had been my whole ordinary world: wandering hallways with sticky hands, arguing over who stole whose cookie, sharing the same umbrella, sharing secrets that sounded like treasure when he said them. Jaxon always came back. He always laughed at my bad jokes. He always let me win when we played games.
Until he didn't.
"Eliana," Jaxon said one afternoon, soft as cotton, wiping my tears with a paper napkin like he could fix everything. "What's wrong?"
I pushed his hand away and stamped my foot like a child. "Dog of a boy," I told him, because sometimes words taste better when harsh.
I had read the book because I wanted to know how things could go wrong. The book was a cruel mirror—one year from now, the Jaxon I loved would fall in love with a new transfer student named Isla Clark. I had watched that version of myself in those pages twist into jealousy, do foolish things to ruin Isla, and then fall into an abyss where my family was crushed and my life hollow. I hadn't wanted that ending.
"Promise you won't change," I had whispered to the book. The book didn't answer.
So I decided to change instead. I decided to protect my future self by changing my present.
"I won't be that girl," I told myself.
I started with small things. I stopped waiting for Jaxon before school. I stopped walking home with him. I stopped sharing snacks. "I'm focusing on studies," I said, curt and practiced. "I need to study."
"Are you okay?" Jaxon asked every time like a small dog who had been left out in the rain.
"I'm fine," I lied, and then I found a surprising new habit: I did not miss meeting him nearly as much as the book had said I would. Maybe the book had exaggerated. Maybe I had grown.
Three days after I decided to step back, the school buzzed.
"Is that her?" a girl in the corridor whispered. "The new transfer?"
"She sounds angelic," another replied. "And they said she's top of the city—Isla Clark, right?"
I stood up from my desk when the murmurs passed our row. A tall girl with an effortless smile paused at our class door.
"Excuse me, is anyone Eliana Lawrence?" She asked, voice like sunlight.
"That's me," I said.
"Jax asked me to tell you he will be late home tonight," Isla told me with a smile as simple as a coin flip. "Don't wait for him."
"Thank you," I said.
Something fizzed inside me like a small alarm. Jaxon stopped coming by. He stopped popping up like clockwork. For three days, he didn't come at all. For a month, his visits thinned into leaves in wind. I watched him laugh with Isla in the cafeteria as if seasons had changed and I had missed the memo.
"She’s pretty," my friend Cecelia Lucas whispered one lunch. "And smart. Of course Jax would notice."
"I guess," I muttered, trying to sound unmoved.
Jaxon came to the table with two trays and a sheepish smile. "Eliana," he said. "You're here."
I looked at his face and felt something like a bruise. "Are you eating with Isla today?"
"She and I just came from math clinic," he said, pushing a piece of meat onto my tray. "I won an award at the math contest, by the way."
My chest tried to be happy for him. I managed a smile. "Congratulations."
"Thanks." He sat down across from me. His eyes were bright with pride and full of news about summer camp and a bracelet Isla had liked. He spoke as if I were the one cheering on his stage.
After that, there was the rumor. For reasons I still never understood, people decided I liked the school heartthrob, Aurelio Hicks. Rumors are like stray cats—they rub against your knees and then suddenly they tell everyone your business.
One afternoon in a bookstore, when I was alone and safe among pages, I bumped into him.
"Careful," he said, his voice low and a little cocky, and he handed me the fallen book. "You really are Eliana Lawrence, right?"
"Rumors travel fast," he said, a crooked smile. "I'm Aurelio Hicks. I don't like you."
"Good. I don't like you either," I shot back, because I disliked being told what others assumed about me.
But Aurelio lingered. He had the sort of face people paused for. He teased like he could ruffle my skin and make me notice. He annoyed me, and at the same time, I found myself laughing at his jokes.
"Add me," he said once, flippant.
"Fine," I muttered, scanning his contact.
He started showing up in smaller unexpected ways—dance class, library corner, once as our duet partner for the school festival. We were tossed onto the stage together: he, with a carefully rebellious ponytail and a costume that made half the audience gasp; and I, in a long robe, trembling in the wings. We practiced ancient melodies and moves until the calluses of our fingers learned each other’s pulse.
"Why are you here?" I once asked, cheeks flushed from rehearsal.
"Because you were interesting," he said, leaning on the wall with that half-smirk. "And because I wanted to be."
"You make it sound so casual."
"Nothing about you is casual," he answered quietly.
He made my pulse misbehave in the most inconvenient ways.
School days cooled into summer. Jaxon left for a camp that smelled of pine and rain. I, with homework and piano lessons, tried to make life tidy. Aurelio and I grew closer; he sent fireworks over video one midnight for my birthday and stood outside my building with smoke of rebellion and a small snowman during winter, like one of those movie scenes I liked to daydream about.
"Eliana, I know this sounds wild," Aurelio said on my birthday, the fireworks making his face dance like a secret. "Do you want to come out now?"
"Not tonight," I hesitated, because some of me still waited for Jaxon to show up with a gift and sheepish grin. But Aurelio's voice sounded like permission and I felt daring.
When Jaxon returned from camp, he moved differently. He had new friends. He had Isla in his stories like a new sun. He stood outside my building once, sheepish.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I forgot."
I forgave him in three breaths and hugged him like an old habit. I wanted him to be happy. Maybe I had finally learned to step back. Maybe the book's cruelty had taught me mercy.
At the start of my final year, Jaxon and Isla were listed as student speakers at the opening ceremony. Their warmth wrapped the whole school in a glow; people started making them a couple the way a city makes a story a myth. Half the hall loved them for their charm. The other half resented Isla, because people are small when they feel afraid of being replaced.
"Why are they picking on her?" I asked Cecelia one afternoon, watching Isla walk by.
"They say she takes attention," Cecelia said. "You should let it go."
I didn't.
I watched instead as girls who liked Jaxon put Isla through small cruelties. Some rough notes in a desk, a rumor whispered in the restroom, a hand that pushed a book a little too hard. Isla retaliated like a brave thing—she threw back what was thrown at her. Maybe she was stronger than they expected.
Weeks later, a boy from school—the one everyone feared a little—pushed me into a back alley and shoved a stack of letters into my hands. "Give these to Jaxon," she said. "They’re about Isla. It'll make him look."
I looked at the pictures and found myself staring at the evidence: supposedly private photos, supposedly secret messages. My heart turned into a fist.
I stood beneath the hill where Aurelio sometimes climbed, the pages crackling like leaves. He was waiting on the wall, smoking a cigarette with a bored air.
"They want you to give those to Jaxon," he said, flicking the ash. "Don't."
"They think I’ll love the drama," I said. "They think I’m the kind of girl who would do it."
"You are not," Aurelio said, standing and coming closer. He took the letters and tore them with slow, deliberate motions.
"Are you sure?" I asked.
"Yes." He crumpled the paper and let the wind scatter the scraps like confetti. "They wanted pain. You gave them kindness."
That kindness was a turning point.
But high school is a place where kindness sometimes looks like a weakness. Weeks after I refused to be a weapon, the girls came to me anyway.
"Give these to Jaxon," the leader said, holding a new stack. I looked at them; the photos were cruel. My hands trembled, not with hunger for revenge but with the sick knowledge that injustice was being prepared in my name.
They pushed me toward the school gate and left me there like an accusation. I found Aurelio on the wall, flicking his cigarette again.
"Not today," he said and walked me home, nose red in the winter cold. "Not on my watch."
But courage is contagious. The girls—Kennedy Guerrero and her gang—thought they could shape story by spreading lies. They did not expect a public stage to upend them.
It happened at the winter assembly. The student council had arranged a forum for kindness. Isla, graceful and fierce, stood there as a brave target. The auditorium hummed with expectation. Teachers, students, even our principal were there. The girls planned to smear Isla’s reputation with doctored images. They wanted a private humiliation to look like truth.
I sat behind Aurelio and watched his jaw tighten. He leaned over and whispered, "Trust me."
"What's the plan?" I mouthed.
"Just watch." He smiled that crooked smile that made the world tilt.
When the moderator asked for anyone to speak about school culture, I felt my pulse hammering. People looked at Isla like she was glass. Isla’s chin was steady. She spoke about being new, about fear, about courage. Her voice did not shake. The crowd leaned in.
Then, with a flick that felt practiced, the projected screen behind the stage—supposedly set up for kindness slogans—changed. Instead of slogans, a video began to play: the girls’ plan, captured without their knowledge. It was raw footage of the conspiracy, their whispered planning, the assembly of doctored images and the moment they chose to push the pile of pictures toward me. The auditorium went silent. For the first time, everything was a mirror.
"How did—" someone breathed.
Kennedy's face flushed from white to red to a sick purple. "You—"
"No," she spat. Her voice cracked like glass. "You can't show that—"
The principal rose. "Who's responsible for this display?"
Aurelio stood. "I am," he said. "I asked for a recording to be shown. We should see the truth."
He'd somehow secured footage from the hallway CCTV—evidence the girls had not thought of, proof of their intent. He had done it cleanly; he had done it legally; he had done it with the precision of someone who could handle pressure.
The auditorium watched as the recording replayed: the girls' plotting, their chuckles, the exact moment they thought they'd weaponized a rumor. People in the audience began to make noises: shock, disgust, disbelief.
"What are you doing?" Kennedy kept yelling, helplessly.
"This—this is unacceptable," the principal declared. "Kennedy Guerrero, please step forward."
Kennedy stumbled to the microphone, eyes wide and frantic. "That wasn't—"
"Describe what you were planning," the principal insisted.
"She was going to give Jaxon pictures," Kennedy tried, voice doing a dizzy fall. "We were—We were—"
"I want to hear it from you," the principal said. The auditorium hummed like a beehive.
Kennedy's voice moved through the stages that had been warned in the rules: laughter, then shock, then denial, then collapse. "We—It was a joke! It was just for a laugh," she lied, but as she spoke, the faces in the crowd shifted from curiosity to condemnation.
"Where are your classmates?" the principal asked. Heads turned. The girls who had stood behind Kennedy were now a quilt of shame, avoiding the light.
"Why would you think this is a joke?" Isla asked from her seat near the front. Her voice was level. It cut straight.
Aurelio stepped forward. "They designed a campaign to publicly disgrace a student by fabricating her relationship with another student. They planned to feed it to Jaxon. They did this to hurt."
Kennedy tried to regain control. "You saw it because—"
"—because someone decided truth mattered today," Aurelio interrupted. "And because the school deserves to see what orchestrated cruelty looks like."
Around the auditorium, phones came up. Someone started a live stream, someone else recorded. The crowd’s reaction changed into an audible chorus: "Shame," "How could you?" "That's disgusting." The principal looked older by ten years. The teachers had already pulled out their records. Parents in the audience winced and whispered to one another.
Kennedy's face collapsed into disbelief and then fury. "You can't do this!" she shouted, voice trembling from anger. "You're ruining my reputation!"
"Your reputation?" a mother in the front row scoffed. "You were trying to ruin someone else's life."
"How dare you—" Kennedy took a step forward, but the weight of the projection and the murmurs and the flash of phones held her in place. She began to stammer. "It wasn't supposed to—" She broke down, words slipping into sobs.
People in the auditorium started to clap—not in approval, but in sharp disapproval, like the sound of a gavel. "Shame," a student shouted. "Shame on you."
"Isla, do you want to speak?" the principal asked.
Isla stood slowly. "I don't want anyone's pity," she said, looking directly at Kennedy. "I want kindness to be more than a slogan. If anyone here believes bullying is a joke, I hope they watch this and understand the work they have done."
Kennedy tried to fight back. "You don't understand—"
"I understand," Isla said simply. "I understand the fear. And I hope you understand what it means to be on the other side."
Around us, the crowd reacted. Some students recorded the girls' faces and shared it. Others approached Kennedy and the gang, not to attack, but to ask why. A teacher led Kennedy and her friends to the administration office. The principal announced a meeting with parents, community service, and disciplinary measures. He also set up counseling for Isla. The shame was public; not a dramatic humiliation staged for blood, but an exposure that made those who sought to hurt think twice as they watched their plan dissolve under the weight of truth.
Kennedy's reaction shifted through stages: arrogant defiance at first, then a bright red flush, then denial and tears, and finally a hollow, collapsing plea. "No, wait—please—I didn't mean—" she stammered, but the audience, which had expected drama, instead gave her something worse: the cold silence of people who had chosen truth.
People's faces were blank, phones out, comments flowing. "She did it," someone said. "Look." Another voice: "We saw it." The students' faces registered disappointment and anger. "I can't believe she would do this." "Why be so cruel?" "This is school—this is supposed to be safe."
A long time later, when the crowd thinned, Kennedy stood alone on the stage. She was not physically harmed, but she had been stripped of the narrative she'd hoped to create. Her gaze traveled to the student rows, to parents, to teachers. She learned in that room that cruelty can be reversed when someone chooses to show the proof. The way she wilted, the way her voice bent from arrogance to pleading, and the way students recorded her was the punishment—social, immediate, and precise.
After that assembly, life shifted. The girls faced consequences: school community service, mandatory counseling, and a weekly restorative circle working with those they'd targeted. They couldn't claim ignorance anymore.
"Aurelio," I said later, voices low. "How did you—?"
He gave his crooked smile. "I had an idea. I hate bullies pretending kindness."
"You were amazing."
He shrugged. "I just wanted to make sure the truth saw the light."
In the days that followed, Jaxon came to the truth slowly. He apologized for his silence. "I should've trusted you," he told me once, mean with remorse. "I'm sorry."
"I know." I hugged him because he needed it. Because some stories deserve tenderness, even after mistakes.
My relationship with Aurelio didn't become a fairytale overnight. We argued. We kissed in the rain. We learned each other's smallness and warmth. He was not perfect—none of us are—but he chose to stand up when it mattered. He wrapped a bracelet of little deer around my wrist—simple, silly, meaningful—and said, "You're mine. Do me the honor."
"You're dramatic," I told him, but my voice trembled with a happiness I had not expected.
When he got his big break—someone noticed his dancing, and he went to the city to train—our love transitioned into a new kind of trust. He called from backstage, voice tired and thrilled. "I love you," he whispered. "Will you come?"
"Always," I said on impulse, but then corrected myself with honest breath. "Yes."
Years later, he knelt beneath the streetlamp where we'd first watched fireworks, ring hidden in his pocket. "Eliana Lawrence," he said into the winter night. "Will you marry me?"
I reached for the bracelet on my wrist, the chain of small deer that had watched us grow. The bracelet had always remembered everything: the smoke of fireworks, the first time he took my hand, the night he showed the world truth. I put my hand out.
"Yes," I said, and it was not a promise from a book. It was my voice, whole and honest, and the world felt like it was finally listening.
The End
— Thank you for reading —