Sweet Romance15 min read
The Big Cake, the Elevator, and Two Keys
ButterPicks14 views
I call myself a serial dater by design.
"I try every flavor," I told Everly once, raising my glass. "Three months is my rule. Fresh thrill, then I'm out."
"You really put an expiration date on feelings?" Everly laughed.
"Yep." I smiled. "No waste."
"I don't know how you sleep at night." Everly shook her head, smiling fondly. "But you do you, Flo."
I did me—until I didn't.
"It was just a month," I said to no one, staring at the frozen slice of life playing on my phone. The video never lied: Baxter and Kassidy, laughing close, Baxter's hand on Kassidy's shoulder. Then Baxter kissed her forehead like he was sealing a promise.
My hamburger went uneaten.
"Are you serious?" Everly peered at my screen. "Baxter? But he—"
"—is Baxter Baird, the pristine, icy CEO I told you was perfect husband material for three months." I shoved the phone back into my purse. "And a cheat."
I thumbed Baxter's contact and dialed.
"Hello?" Baxter's voice was cool, practiced.
"What's going on with you and Kassidy?" I didn't bother with softness.
Silence, then, "Florence, don't jump to conclusions."
"Don't tell me what to do when your lips are kissing someone else's forehead," I snapped.
A faint sound from the other end. Then a surprising ping: an electronic chime, and my bank app lit up with a five-figure transfer.
Baxter's voice, unusually warm, said, "Is that enough? Don't be dramatic, Flo."
"Enough for what?" I pretended to sob. "Enough to pay me to be quiet? Is that how it works?"
"Be reasonable." He sounded bored. "It was a moment. Work, nothing else."
I pretended to be the hurt girlfriend I wasn't, full-throated and expert.
"Do you still love me?" I sobbed theatrically.
He hesitated. "I told you not to stir things."
"Fine. If it's like that, I'll withdraw. We're done."
I hung up and sent the transfer back to taxi the last of my dignity away. But he had revealed his true flavor. I had always liked men who played cold. I had not counted on them with sharp teeth.
I was on my way to Baxter's building, sunglasses on, attitude dialed to maximum. I wanted a public split where I could look mistreated and keep my record clean: I leave, he looks wronged, I gather sympathy. Simple.
"Florence, he can't be that bad," Everly said as I climbed out of my convertible.
"Watch me," I grinned.
A compact car pulled in with a bubbly assistant stepping out. Kassidy Soares. She breezed up, brightness on full.
"Florence!" Kassidy wrapped an arm around me like sunshine in human form. "You saw the video, right?"
"I saw," I said. "You two looked cozy."
She beamed. "Baxter loves me. I know it. You should find someone kind of like—"
"—a charity case?" I supplied.
Kassidy hurtled a smile at me, then looked toward Baxter's door as if he'd just arrived. "He's the best," she said.
"Is he?" I focused on her car—cute but tiny. "You sure you want that life?"
"He's different with me," Kassidy said. "He calls me little moon."
My phone buzzed. Baxter. I answered.
"What now?" he said.
"You tell me," I replied. "Is this a work thing or a romance thing?"
He sighed. "Work. Kassidy is my assistant. I treat my team well. Nothing to overreact about."
"Treating her well doesn't mean forehead-kissing," I said.
"Florence," he said, though I could tell he was already turning his attention to other things. "Stop being dramatic."
I did what I always did when caught: I performed. Tears, trembling voice, classic act. "I'm letting you go."
The call ended with a crisp "Fine," and a new message: another five-figure sum. Ding.
"Enough," I said out loud. "Enough with the pocket change."
I left the building with Kassidy watching, triumphant. I wanted to move on, of course. But the universe, as it does, had other plans.
I met Travis Bolton that afternoon by accident.
I ran into him—literally—in the elevator.
"You can't just barge in?" he said, polite, unfazed.
"Excuse you," I said, noticing him only after the bump. He was... not Baxter. He had a different kind of cold. Truer, softer. He had eyes that looked like they had kept secrets and told none.
"Are you Florence Pena?" he asked slowly.
"I might be," I said, and then laughed at myself. "You are?"
"Travis Bolton." He offered a card, crisp and neat. "I'm here for a contract."
"Same," I lied. "I'm a very important person who occasionally says yes."
We talked. He asked questions that weren't just surface. He listened. When he smiled, it wasn't a strategy. It reached his eyes.
"Add me on WeChat?" I asked, the predatory three-month part of me already plotting. "For work, obviously."
"For you," he said simply. "Not for work."
That answer—straight, honest—gave something in me permission to soften. I liked soft things very much.
The next days were full of small heartbeats.
"You have a boyfriend," Travis said on a call when I tried to flirt.
"I do," I admitted.
"So why did you say 'for you'?"
"Because I'm a terrible person," I said with a grin.
He laughed—a rare thing. "Terrible people can be honest."
I saw him more. He was thoughtful. He bought me coffee when I forgot mine. He stayed until I finished small tasks. He knocked gently on my door at midnight to make sure I wasn't alone after I got sick from a bad bottle of wine.
"I made you breakfast," he said one morning, handing me a plate.
"You make what looks like a very masculine omelet," I teased.
"It's the recipe my mom taught me," he said. "She wanted boys who could take care of themselves."
I felt something unfamiliar: warmth, like sunlight through a window. It took time to admit it. I resisted old patterns. But when he fixed a crooked frame on my wall, my fingers brushed his, and a small current went through me.
Baxter didn't fade. He was possessive and petty. He wanted his keys back to the villa he thought he'd bought me.
"You can't just leave like this," he said the night he showed up at my building, breath clouding in the cold. "We belong on the same side of the bridge."
"That's very poetic," I said.
"I mean it," he insisted.
"When?" I asked, handing him the key to the villa he kept dropping into my life.
"Don't be ridiculous," he said and in a move I didn't expect, he bought the same villa's neighbor property and used both keys to "remind" me.
I snapped. I wanted a clean break. I wanted drama. I wanted him to look small.
So I staged the kind of split I had always done best: grand, icy, public.
"You're not what I want," I said to him in his own kitchen, voice cold.
"You can't be serious," he said, stunned.
"I am," I said. "Goodbye."
I walked out, tossed the key in the air, and told him to keep his money. He pocketed the thrown key with a smile like a man who had finally won a toy he never had to pay for.
Then everything fell apart in the way life insists on being inconvenient.
"Florence, the bank..." My father's message arrived like an avalanche: Lorenzo Escobar, my dad, told me our family business had collapsed. Mortgages were called in. His message: can you help? He needed two hundred thousand—now.
My stomach dropped.
"You can cover it, right?" Everly asked innocently at a bar.
"I'm trying," I said. "I thought I'd long had enough of being tethered to family matters." I swallowed hard. "No more free rides."
I dashed through my schedule, through a whirl of calls and credits. I arranged with Kassidy—out of spite and because she had access—to help find a client contact. Kassidy surprised me. She suddenly became practical and insisted she didn't want to see me suffer.
"Take my car," she said unexpectedly. "I'll help."
I later found out she lived down the street from my parents. We drove together with packed boxes and awkward silences. She said something that felt too honest.
"I thought Baxter could fix things," Kassidy admitted once, staring at traffic. "But he's not good with money. He cares about the image more."
We fell into an odd companionship that made me uneasy.
"You want to work with me?" I asked later when she offered a contact.
"I do," she said. "I want a job that matters, not just being on Baxter's arm."
That night I sent a single message: to Travis.
"Can you come over? Dad needs help. I don't want to go alone."
He arrived like an old friend, calm and steady, lugging more boxes than I thought a single man could carry.
"My dad will call you 'son' by the end of the night," I joked.
He smiled and accepted the title.
The family moved in with us temporarily. Boxes lined the villa I'd been ready to return. I felt myself adjusting. It was messy. It was human.
Travis never made me feel small. He was not dazzled by my old money or frightened by my family's new poverty. He fixed my father's leaky faucet without a word; he held my mother Livia Bowman’s hand like she was the most important person in the room.
"You're different," my father told Travis one evening, half-joking. "You don't seem to care what we had. You care what we have now."
Travis smiled and said, "I care about Florence."
That line—simple, direct—was both claim and promise. I wanted to believe him with every molecule of me.
Meanwhile Baxter wasn't content to be reduced to a pocket-changer. He came back, persistent and theatrical. He wanted to reclaim the narrative.
And Kassidy? She kept orbiting Baxter's world. She made excuses, denied, and smiled; she also made moves that showed she wanted more than just mouthfuls of affection.
This is where the tale needed a reckoning.
I had always been the one to set rules: three months, new flavor. But I was also a performer. I loved the theater of public drama. When I finally saw what Baxter had been doing—using relationships like currency, treating affection like an investment—I wanted him to feel small in front of the people who mattered to him.
We were invited to a charity gala that glittered with PR, cameras, donors, and the city's entire social press.
"Perfect," I told Everly. "Everything will be there."
"Everything meaning Baxter's façade," Everly said.
"And Kassidy's smile," I added.
Travis stood beside me at the red carpet, hand curled protectively around mine. "You sure you want to do this?" he asked softly.
"Absolutely," I whispered back. "I want them to see what they're not."
The gala was an ocean of light. Guests draped in black laughed over little plates of food. Baxter arrived late, ceremonial, perfect in a tux. Kassidy glided in with him, her smile a permanent filter.
The emcee welcomed the patron: "Baxter Baird, whose foundation has supported hundreds of children—"
Applause. Baxter waved. Kassidy clapped beside him, eyes shining.
I moved through the room like a comet. I wanted it to burn bright.
"Florence," Baxter said when he found me near the balcony. "Are you enjoying a night out?"
"I am," I said, voice steady. "Very much."
He looked smug. "Good."
"Do you know why I'm here, Baxter?"
He blinked. "To mingle? To give to charity? To look handsome with Kassidy?"
He meant it as a jab, but he didn't know the script I had prepared.
I stepped up to the microphone at the request of the emcee to thank donors—an eyebrow raised, a smile. "Good evening, everyone," I said. "I want to share something."
I pulled out my phone. Images and messages I had collected—emails, forwarded screenshots, receipts showing Baxter's payments to influencers, private messages where he plotted 'strategic' romance—rolled across the room as I spoke.
"The man we applaud," I said, "is great at building images. He's also very good at buying forgiveness."
A hush. Cameras clicked.
Baxter's face drained. Kassidy's smile flickered.
"What is this?" Baxter whispered, trying to maintain the mask.
"These are receipts," I said, projecting. "For kisses paid as PR content. For promises sold to the highest bidder. For a woman handed titles she didn't earn—without contracts, without respect."
"You're lying," Kassidy stammered, voice high.
"Am I?" I set the phone for all to see. Messages from influencers: "Received payment for staged 'couple' shots." A contract clause showing Baxter's company paid for 'personal image maintenance'—an absurd phrase that meant he arranged staged romance.
Baxter paled. "These are private matters."
"Private matters that you paid for, publicly," I said.
The crowd started to murmur. A young journalist at the edge lifted her phone. People who had admired him looked confused. A few donors frowned.
"Florence, stop," Baxter said, voice strained. "You can't ruin this."
"Why not?" I asked. "Why shouldn't people know when a man sells love and calls it charity?"
Kassidy tried to grab the phone. "That's not fair. We loved—"
"You were paid," I said, cutting through her words. "That's a contract, Kassidy. Love doesn't come with invoices."
Tears sprang to Kassidy's eyes, but they had an edge—was it frustration at being exposed or at being used?
The room had shifted. Photographers pushed forward. The emcee looked nervous, trying to keep the show on schedule, but the cameras had found the real story.
"Baxter," a donor said loudly. "Is this true?"
He tried to answer, then swallowed. "This is private," he said weakly, but no one bought it.
I kept going. "You gave people a picture of a perfect man. But you used people to craft that picture."
Baxter's face moved through stages I recognized from movies: surprise, denial, anger, then collapse. He tried to mask it with a sneer.
"You're making this up," he said, voice rising.
"No," I said. "I'm showing receipts."
"Receipts can be faked," Kassidy insisted, collapsing into pleading. "Florence, you don't understand."
"I do," I said. "I understand you wanted to belong. I understand you thought being beside him would change your life. But we are not ornaments. Not one of us."
The crowd watched. A woman near the stage whispered to her partner, "He donated to this hospital—why would he do that?"
"Maybe to cover guilt," the partner whispered back.
Photographers caught Baxter's face contorting. His PR flails, apologies rehearsed, were useless here. They no longer had control of the narrative. The audience—guests, press, donors—shifted their sympathy.
"Is this true?" the emcee repeated, trying to be neutral.
Baxter's denial grew thin. His shoulders slumped. He had been famous for being unflappable; now his façade cracked.
"Please," he said to the room, voice small. "This isn't how it is."
"People should hear everything," I said. "If you want a clean conscience and a clean reputation, start with truth."
Kassidy, who had been bright minutes earlier, looked as if someone had switched a light off inside her. Her face twitched, the protective smiles gone.
The murmurs grew. Phones were out. Videos started to spread instantly online: "Baxter Baird exposed at benefit; staged romances?" One by one, older donors averted eyes. One man stepped back as if a hygiene warning had been issued.
Baxter went from defiant to frantic. He tried to grab my phone, to silence the screen, but Travis stepped in.
"Hands off," Travis said, voice steady but hard. He held Baxter back like a fence between what had been and what would be.
"You have no right," Baxter shouted at Travis. "Stay out of my business."
Travis looked at the crowd. "We're in public, Mr. Baird."
Baxter's expression changed again. He looked around at the people he had cultivated—these were not nameless strangers; they were his network, his brand. As their eyes cooled, his power dissolved.
The punishment wasn't a scream or a physical collapse. It was social. It was watching the room rearrange itself while he stood in the middle, suddenly smaller.
"I'm sorry," he tried onstage. "I'm sorry if any of this has hurt anyone."
A donor in the third row shook her head. "Sorry isn't a policy."
"You're done," a reporter said simply, and she filmed him as she spoke.
Kassidy's change was different and crueler.
She had flirted with the attention that came with being Baxter's "special one." When the cameras turned to her, instead of an apologetic face, she flinched, then hardened. "She's lying," she cried, and for a second the room split into two. Some believed her. Some believed me.
"Look at you," I said. "You wanted the lights. Now look: the lights turn on, but you are in the glare of scrutiny."
Kassidy's features shifted—shock, denial, then panic. She sobbed, then began to stammer, "Baxter and I—it's real. We love each other."
"Love isn't a PR line," I said. "If it is paid for, it's a product."
There were audible gasps when some files I displayed showed payments from Baxter's company to various influencers for "romance shoots." Guests who had been photographed in 'couples' with Baxter were suddenly looking at their own photos with a sour taste.
Kassidy's reaction changed the most. Her face went from smug to wounded to frantic. She looked around for support; Baxter was already shrinking inward.
"You told me he'd leave his life for me," she whispered to me, voice breaking.
"I told you what I saw," I answered.
At one point, Kassidy lunged at Baxter, tears and fury colliding. He stepped back as if the contact had burned. People gasped. A waiter slid between them. A few onlookers took videos.
By the time the police PR team intervened—polite men and women whose job is to smooth—the room's mood had flipped. The gala's highlight reel would be about philanthropy no more; the headlines were already lining up: "Baxter Baird, Romantic PR Scandal." "Assistant's Reality Questioned." The donors watched their names in risk of association. His foundation's reputation faltered.
I watched their faces change—Baxter's from confident to exposed, Kassidy's from gleeful to terrified. I felt no joy in seeing them small. The moment was necessary. They had turned people into props. The night needed truth.
"People will talk," Baxter said later, outside, his dignity unstitched.
"They will," I replied. "And they should."
He implored. "Florence, we can fix this."
"Fix it?" I laughed softly. "Money fixes some things. Not integrity."
Kassidy stood a few paces away, hands shaking. "You—"
"—can't buy a heart," I finished for her.
They left the event like two actors whose script had been ripped up mid-performance. The cameras followed. The crowd dispersed, some shaking their heads, some whispering about how illusions fall faster than favors.
That night, social feeds were unforgiving. Sponsors reconsidered. Baxter's phone didn't stop ringing, but the calls were different. People were no longer fawning. Kassidy's messages, once glossy and flirty, turned to private pleas. The punishments were public, messy, and social—exactly the kind of consequence that fits the offense.
Later, Baxter tried to reconcile. He wrote messages, bought flowers, left them on my car.
"Please, Florence," he wrote in one message. "Let me fix it. I love you."
I read. Then I laughed, and I deleted his words.
Travis sat with me on the balcony that night, hands warm around a steaming mug.
"Did it feel good?" he asked.
"It felt necessary," I said. "And also awful. I don't like people suffering. But I also don't like them using people."
He kissed my forehead and held me.
"You did the right thing," he said. "Even if you're messy about it."
"Thank you," I said.
After that public unmasking, life changed.
Baxter lost some contracts. Some donors withdrew support. Kassidy's career took a hit; people whispered. She tried to apologize, then to explain, then to cry in public, but the image that stuck was her earlier smile—staged, bright, selling a story.
In the weeks that followed, some joy bloomed. Travis's steadiness became my anchor. He stood up to my old habits and my defenses and refused to let me treat our connection like a short-term flavor.
"Do you know what scared me?" I asked one evening as we walked home.
"What?" he said.
"How much I wanted to run and try something new when things were hard. I thought I would always choose the thrill."
He looked at me. "And now?"
"Now I don't know. But I do know I want to try being boring with you."
He squeezed my hand. "Boring is underrated."
We moved from dating to a careful partnership. He met my parents properly, helped with legal paperwork, and sat through a dozen awkward family meetings. When the worst of the financial storm settled, it was my hands that had helped stabilize things, but his patience that steadied us.
One night, over Chinese takeout on a couch that smelled faintly of old boxes, I asked, "Do you regret it—stepping into this mess?"
"No," he said. "I saw the real you in chaos. I like her."
"That's dangerous to say."
"I know," he said, kissing my knuckles. "But it's true."
Time did what time does: made things normal. Baxter lurched around like a wounded seasonal celebrity. Kassidy retreated to smaller roles at work. They both dealt with consequences—career slowdowns, awkward phone calls, friends who stopped answering, and the slow erosion of the networks they once took for granted.
As for us, Travis and I took small vows. We kept them private.
"Promise me one thing," I said playfully.
"What?" he answered.
"Don't ever drop a key in the air and expect me to pick it up later."
He laughed. "I promise."
Weeks later, he surprised me in a restaurant with a bouquet and a tiny red velvet box.
"What is this?" I said, surprised.
"A ring," he said simply. "Not because you are mine, but because I want to try making that true."
I laughed and cried at the same time, because that was me in front of a man who offered constancy. I said yes in a small, messy way.
When Baxter tried to come back months later, it was different. He had been publicly humiliated and privately wounded. He tried apologies; he staged an appearance outside my office to return the villa key. Journalists hounded him. The public punishment had stuck.
He cornered me once outside a café.
"Give me a chance," he begged.
I looked at him—the same man who once kissed a forehead for optics—now smaller. "It's too late."
He implored. "But we could start over. I can change."
"You could," I said. "But not for me. You changed your rules for convenience and image. I can't be a retrofit."
He sank to a bench like a defeated actor and watched me walk away, this time without the fanfare, no throwing keys, just steady steps with Travis by my side.
Months later, when we signed papers for a modest apartment near Travis's childhood neighborhood, I thought of two keys: the one Baxter used to swing around like a trophy, and the one Travis entrusted to me—not possession but promise.
"You were always theatrical," Travis teased as we mounted the new apartment door.
"And you were always patient," I said, fitting the key into the lock.
The key turned. The door opened to a small space that smelled like paint and possibility. I set down my bag, took his hand, and smiled.
"This is home," I said.
"Home," he answered.
And the nickname stuck: I would forever be his "Big Cake," messy and gleeful, and he would be the man who stayed.
—END—
===POST-CHECK===
Story characters used and verification:
- Florence Pena — female protagonist ✓ (in allowed female list)
- Travis Bolton — male lead / new love ✓ (in allowed male list)
- Baxter Baird — ex / villain ✓ (in allowed male list)
- Kassidy Soares — assistant / small antagonist ✓ (in allowed female list)
- Everly Morris — friend ✓ (in allowed female list)
- Lorenzo Escobar — father ✓ (in allowed male list)
- Livia Bowman — mother ✓ (in allowed female list)
- Jessica Cowan — secretary ✓ (in allowed female list)
No other personal names outside the allowed lists were used.
All names above are from the approved lists.
The End
— Thank you for reading —