Sweet Romance9 min read
The Big Underwear and the Director
ButterPicks9 views
"I told him everything and he said no."
My thumb hovered over the send button like it weighed a hundred pounds. I hit send anyway.
"You were brave," Julianne said from across the desk.
"I was drunk," I corrected. "And stupid."
"Either way, did he reply?"
"Yes." I scrolled. The message glared back at me: sorry, I don't think this will work. Then another line: "Do you remember the bad review you left three months ago? I'm the owner."
My mouth went dry. "He said he's the shop owner."
Julianne raised an eyebrow. "So?"
"So he's lying. Everyone fakes something online. I'm not falling for that." I stood up, grabbed my bag, and walked toward the director's offices.
"Wait," she said. "Where are you going?"
"To tell him off." I almost laughed. The laugh felt thin.
I found him in the hall. He was every inch the photo he'd sent me—tailored suit, calm face, the kind of jawline that could make women pause mid-step.
"Blake?" I called.
He turned slowly. His voice was even. "Yes?"
"I'm Kaitlyn."
"So?"
"You used a fake account to seduce me over a one-star product review." I felt the words rush out, angrier than I was. "You lied to me."
Blake's mouth twitched, half-annoyed, half-amused. "Kaitlyn, networking isn't done that way."
"Who said I was networking with you?"
He blinked like he was peeling something off his eye. "Then why are you here?"
I felt the room tilt. I swallowed. "Wait," I said. "Aren't you—"
"Blake Rossi."
"No—" I felt heat rise. "Never mind."
Later, in the meeting room, when we talked about handling negative reviews, I stood up.
"Of course you should communicate and improve the product," I said loudly. "Not seduce the reviewer. Blake, right? You're on the panel—do you agree?"
He didn't answer at first. People shifted. Someone snickered. Blake's face showed a trace of surprise, then the faintest smile. "We handle feedback strategically," he said. "We don't use personal messages to target customers."
"Exactly." I sat down, breathing hard. It felt like I had thrown a stone and watched the ripple. Rumors started, of course. Some whispered that I was trying to climb. Some said it was a mess. I stopped listening.
That evening the corridor smelled like rain. He stood at the end holding an umbrella.
"Waiting for the rain to stop?" I said.
He looked at me properly then, the way someone reads a book he likes. "Do you have a problem with me?"
"Yes." The answer came out small. "I don't like being toyed with."
A young guy ran up, breathless. "Bro, I've been waiting for you forever," he said, glancing at me with the sharp curiosity of someone trying to remember a face.
Blake's look softened into something unreadable. "This is my colleague. Do you know her?"
"No." The younger one backed away fast. "Sorry, sorry."
Blake turned back to me. "I can escort you home."
"I don't need—" I started. He offered the umbrella. I snatched it, ashamed and oddly pleased.
"By the way, your fly's open," I said, ridiculous and petty.
He didn't flinch. "So you were looking at my fly?"
I wanted to claw the sentence back. "I just—looked."
"Looked at what?" His tone slid between teasing and sharp.
"Fine. I saw it. Happy?"
He smirked, and for a second I thought he might laugh. Instead he said quietly, "You want to see something else?"
I ran. My wrist was grabbed. He held my hand for a beat, then let go. I almost cried from embarrassment for confessing to a stranger online and for running into him in person.
That night I tossed and turned. He'd pretended not to know me when I confessed online. He'd acted like he hadn't sent that picture. And still, the man in front of me had been kind, even protective, on the trip we took together for work.
On the plane he had asked, "How's your shop's business?" or something like that. "Are there many bad reviews?" He typed on his tablet then, and his fingers moved fast. "I can handle a lot of messages at once."
"Which girls catch your eye?" I asked on a dare.
"Quiet ones," he said.
The answer landed like a pebble in my chest. Quiet. He hadn't said anything like that to any of the loud older men's jokes at the dinner later. He stood up for me when a client tried to pour me more alcohol. He told the man, "She has to work tomorrow." No one argued. He was a shield without flamboyance.
"You owe me an apology," he told me once when I accused him of being the online owner who had messaged me.
"An apology?"
"For the misunderstanding. For the message." He said it with a calm that made me want to be forgiven just because of the way he said it.
"Fine." I relented. "But only if you promise not to tease me."
"Deal."
On the trip his silence often felt heavy, then reassuring. One night the elevator stilled as if the world paused. We stared at each other until the silence felt almost loud. My heart pounded. He had this effect on me—an uninvited warmth that made me say stupid things and then cringe.
"You punched the wrong button in the document," he corrected me once over a file. He leaned in to show me. I was dizzy. "What did you say the source of funds was?"
"Midline..." I stuttered.
He repeated his instruction patiently. The words came out like a low song. After he left, I sat there with the trace of his heat lingering on my skin.
"Are you okay?" he asked when I almost fell leaving a dinner. He steadied me. "I owe you a life for every glass I made you drink," he joked. I smiled like an idiot and said, "Thanks."
"Don't be ridiculous." He smiled faintly. "Get home safely."
We shared an awkward, private joke about me pretending to be an empress one drunken night in a hotel. He was the only one who laughed with me.
Back at the office, lunch table gossip buzzed. Someone said they'd seen Blake leave a hotel room messy with a woman's things. I wanted to die from mortification. But Blake sat across from me like nothing had happened, and when our eyes met he gave me a small nod that said more than a thousand social media posts.
Work flowed faster. Blake taught with a quiet steadiness. He would correct with a soft voice, then leave a small message that read like a line from a play. "Don't dawdle," he'd write. "Get it to me by five."
That's when the truth came out, sharp and loud.
I added the stranger from the restaurant to WeChat. I wanted to prove a point: that online people could be childish. The stranger's name popped up as "Fletch." He called almost immediately. He spoke in a rush, apologizing, then begging.
"Please, Kaitlyn—" he said. "My shop got shut down. Blake said if you could give some mercy—"
"Blake?" I repeated.
"He told me to ask. He said he might be able to help."
Something prickled then. I remembered the boy at the restaurant: fidgety, eager to please, his eyes flicking between us. Could he be the one who used the fake account? I opened messages, traced the online chat. The tone matched the boy's nervousness.
I did what any sane person who'd been toyed with would do: I set a trap.
The company had a welcome party that night in a private room reserved for staff. Ford Drake, the vice president, made jokes. Glasses clinked. People laughed. It was the perfect place for public truth.
I stood up and pulled the microphone toward me with the shaky hands of someone about to do the wrong thing on purpose. "Can I say something?" I called.
Heads turned. People loved a surprise.
"This is a strange one," I said. "Three months ago, someone I was chatting with online rejected me citing a bad review I left. He said he owned the shop. Tonight, I'd like to invite the owner to come forward."
My voice echoed off the wooden walls. Blake's eyebrows knit. He looked...curious. Ford's laugh died mid-note.
The room stirred like a pond after a stone. "Kaitlyn?" Julianne whispered.
"I'd like Fletcher Mathieu to come forward," I announced, nailing the name with the kind of certainty that felt like throwing a rope. "If you're the one who used my review to flirt—"
Fletcher's face went white as rice. He tried to laugh it off. "Kaitlyn, what is this?"
"You called me online and then rejected me," I said. "You told me you were the owner of a shop and that I was a problem for your business. You used my review to justify ignoring me. Why would you do that?"
He stammered. "I—I didn't mean—"
"You didn't mean to catfish me and hurt me?" I asked plainly. The room hummed. People leaned in like they wanted a show.
Ford Drake, who had a habit of enjoying a scandal, rubbed his hands together. "This sounds juicy."
"Blake," Fletcher blurted, "don't pretend you don't know. You told me to message her. It's on you."
A hush fell. Blake's jaw tightened. He stood slowly, a deliberate motion. His voice was cool as marble. "Is that true?"
Fletcher's eyes darted. "I—it's complicated. Blake said—"
"Stop." Blake cut him off. He turned to everyone in the room. "You think I asked him to make trouble for anyone? To catfish my colleague? That's the claim?"
"No—" Fletcher's face crumpled. "I thought—I've been stupid. I thought if I pretended to be someone classy I'd get a chance. It was an experiment. I didn't mean to hurt her. I'm sorry."
"Apologize to her now," I said.
Fletcher shuffled to the small stage area, the spotlight feeling like a real blade. He bowed his head. "Kaitlyn, I'm sorry. Really."
Around the table, phones appeared. People started filming. A few whispered boos. Others clucked like hens.
But the punishment couldn't just be a shame-video. I wanted him to see the chain of effect. I wanted the room to understand what he'd done.
"Tell them what you told me online," I said.
He hesitated, then muttered the lines—how he'd claimed to be the shop owner, how he had pressured me, how he'd laughed. The words sounded small in the face of a crowded room.
"Do you understand what you did?" Julianne asked, voice sharp.
Fletcher's composure broke. "I was lonely. I wanted attention. I thought small lies would lead to something bigger. I was an idiot."
"But that's not the only thing," Ford added. "You used her anger to feed your ego. And you tried to pass it to Blake like it's someone else's fault."
Fletcher blinked, and someone near the entrance—one of our older vendors—stood up. "My business took a hit because of your fake store reports," he said. "Do you know how hard it is to keep a name?"
The room turned into a chorus of accusations. People we hadn't seen in months spoke up. A young intern took a photo and posted it live. Within minutes, messages pinged on phones, and the video spread.
Fletcher's face registered shock, then shame, then panic. He stepped back as a group of coworkers closed in around him.
"You used a woman's review to make her feel small and to make yourself feel big," Julianne said, quieter now. "Look at her."
I felt like someone outside myself watching, but I also felt something feral and right. The room watched him shrink. He tried to laugh it off, to blame a joke, to say it was a mistake.
"People are watching." Someone clapped slowly. "They'll know who you are when they search your name." Phones were being raised, recording the whole confession. "You didn't just deceive her. You deceived the public."
Fletcher's voice broke. "Please, I didn't think—"
"Do you want us to call your landlord?" Ford asked, not unkindly. "Do you want your shop to be closed permanently?"
"No—no." He sank into a chair, hands over his face. The room had stopped being amused. It had turned into a courtroom of peers.
He raised his face and looked at me with tears in his eyes. "I'm sorry."
"Sorry isn't enough," Blake said, quiet but hard. "You should apologize publicly where you met her. You should quit making fake accounts. You should fix what you broke."
Fletcher nodded, sobbing openly. "Yes. I'll apologize on my page. I'll close the account. I'll contact those hurt."
People murmured. Some applauded. Others recorded the apology as if to archive his failure. He fumbled with his phone, live-streamed an apology, confessed his actions, and begged for forgiveness. The comments filled fast—some sympathetic, many mocking.
The change in him was visible: from smug to flustered, to desperate, to broken. His friends stood in the doorway, shaking their heads, not stepping in. That was the worst punishment—nobody stepping forward to defend him. He was small in a room that had once seemed full of noise.
When it was over, he stood to leave. The vendor he had wronged spoke up. "You will refund what you can. You will apologize to those whose sales you affected. You will never pretend to be someone else again. And you will learn to be honest."
He left with his head down and his phone buzzing with messages—not with support, but with witnesses. On the elevator down, I realized public humiliation had red velvet stitches: it hurts, yes, but it tests whether someone will own their wrongs.
"Are you okay?" Blake asked me once the crowd thinned.
"I am." I breathed, steadier. "It felt...necessary."
He lifted my chin with one finger. "You handled that well."
"I just wanted him to see that people don't like being used."
He nodded. "Good."
After that, things softened. Fletcher's live apology had responses from some who forgave and many who didn't. He lost customers. His friends avoided him. He emailed me a longer note of apology later, which I read once and deleted.
Blake's presence was quiet and certain. He continued to correct my files, to text reminders, to bring me coffee when the office ran out. He stole my fries sometimes. He told me small lies—"You look good in that color"—and they were the kind that built instead of broke.
One night in the stairwell, under the hum of the emergency light, he took my hand.
"Will you go out with me," he asked simply.
I looked at him. "Are you asking like a boss?"
He smiled, a small private thing. "Ask like this man."
We kissed then, brief and honest, skin against skin and the world falling away for a second. It felt like everything I had tripped over for months finally lined up.
Months later, when my mother asked if I was seeing anyone serious, I sent her a photo of us on a casual Sunday: his hand wrapped around mine, both of us holding a takeout container of dry-pot broccoli.
"Who is he?" she asked.
"Blake Rossi. The director," I answered.
"Director? Dress well, Kaitlyn."
"I will," I said.
At night, he would tease me about my old online mess. "You owe me your youth," he'd whisper, and I'd laugh and shove him away.
One afternoon, I found my phone on the couch next to a pair of his giant boxers he'd left on my pillow by mistake. I lifted one and remember how I'd once brandished my own ridiculous underwear like a banner in a drunken hotel room.
He came up behind me and laughed. "Keep it. It's evidence."
"Weird evidence," I said.
"Perfect," he answered, kissed my neck, and I felt the world right again.
The End
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