Sweet Romance12 min read
The Board, the Strawberry Cake, and the Neighbor Next Door
ButterPicks14 views
I woke up with the taste of the same sentence in my mouth again.
"Do you ever think I annoy you, always trailing after you?" the voice asked in my dream, clear as a bell and as small as the ache inside my chest.
I opened my eyes, blinked the dream away, and sat up on the top bunk in Room 303. My dorm window let in a thin strip of morning. Nova was already at the door with her bag slung over her shoulder.
"You're up?" she called.
"Yeah," I said, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. "Go on to the library. Bye."
Aliana ran down the hallway and out into the noisy street; Nova's footsteps faded. I stayed a moment longer under the blanket and promised myself, like I always did, I wouldn't let the dream follow me into the day.
I showered, brushed my teeth, and told the mirror a lie: "No more of that dream."
When I stepped into the magazine office that morning, my hands were steady. I had dressed like a professional—clean blouse, neutral makeup—because today was meant to be different. I had hoped this would be the week I finally stopped being "the intern" and became "the staff."
"Sit down," the editor-manual-manual—Manuel Black—said when he pointed to the chair in his office and closed the door. He clicked a folder open like he was opening an old wound.
"Kaitlyn, your work has been very good," he began. "But the board you submitted last week—"
"What about it?" I asked, trying to sound composed. I remembered the many late nights, the careful alignments, the fonts I had stayed up choosing.
He tapped the printout. "The owner saw it. The owner thinks it’s… not consistent with your previous work. He thinks there's a connection with some other designs."
My stomach dropped. "I made that board. I stayed here until three in the morning. I—"
Manuel sighed. "There's no changing his mind. Your probation has been canceled."
I stared at him until the office room blurred. "But—"
"You can appeal if you want," he said, softer now. "But the owner saw it and decided."
I left the office staring at the folder on his desk like it might explain itself.
Outside the bathroom stall a moment later, I put the pieces together. I remembered the day Li Yu asked to use my laptop because hers had "crashed." I remembered how she'd chatted me up in the hallway, smiling. I remembered she left my desk and had that little, too-casual smile.
I stared at Keily Said's workspace like a crime scene. Then I found the traces: a temporary file, a timestamp. My heart burned.
"Why?" I shouted down the row of desks.
Keily looked up, startled. "Kaitlyn, what's wrong?"
"Why did you swap my board? Why did you put yours in?" I felt myself on the edge of roaring—of breaking something. The office went quiet like someone had pressed a pause button.
Keily's face went through a practiced sequence: surprise, then a flutter of hurt, a well-timed pout. "I would never—"
"You would never what? Sabotage someone to get ahead?" I spat. "We were friends."
She looked at me like the words were heavy and foreign. "Kaitlyn, you're mistaken."
A dozen heads turned. Glasses clicked, phones lifted. I packed a small U-disk with everything I thought I needed: the original PSD, the work logs, the copied timestamps. I left the building and sealed that job behind me like an old wound.
At the tea shop that afternoon, I sat with Aliana on our usual table by the window. She squeezed my hand.
"Keily? She did this to you?" Aliana asked, eyes sharp. "She was always… slippery."
"She was also very good at smiling at the same time," I said.
"I have a friend," Aliana said with conspiratorial brightness. "He runs another magazine. We could ask—"
"You want me to go? Sell out? Beg?" I asked.
"No," she said. "Just come talk to him. It won't hurt."
So I talked to him—Elton Wheeler—who ran a small but serious magazine across town. He wasn't the blustering sort. He sat back and listened.
"Kaitlyn, your page here shows your fingerprint," Elton said after he scanned my work. "Anyone who knows design knows this is you."
"Then why did Manuel let the owner decide like that?"
"Offices are politics," Elton said. "What I can promise is this: if you want to start over, if you want a fresh slate, come and show me what you can do. Interns grow. Editors grow. People change."
I started the next week at Elton Wheeler's place as an assistant editor. On my first day, the receptionist—Dorothy Golubev—smiled like a harbor. I signed paperwork, met the team, and waited for my place to sink in.
"You look familiar," a voice said by the elevator.
I looked up to see a tall, quiet man with a winter coat and an expression like a closed book. He had a name I would learn to love: Donovan Perkins.
"Do you work here?" I asked, because it felt oddly like my whole life had tilted and opened a door.
He smiled, small like sunlight. "I do," he said. "I'm in the building next door. Donovan."
I laughed because the world seemed to like coincidence today. "I'm Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn Hayashi."
He nodded. "I know of you now."
We did not talk about the dream. We talked about coffee and traffic. We talked about nothing and, in the way strangers who used to be children together sometimes do, the conversation felt like the bedrock of something old.
It turned out Donovan and I were neighbors in a way that made my chest hurt: he lived across from me, three doors down. The realization came with a push of joy so big my hands trembled.
"You live there?" I asked, pointing at his building across the small courtyard.
"Yes," he said, leaning on the doorway. "Good neighbors make better coffee runs."
I did not expect him to be the kind of man who turned the world quieter, but there he was—quiet, attentive, and catching the way my fingers brushed a spilled crumb. He was not the mysterious, twinkling star of my dream. He was someone close enough to be dangerous.
We walked to work together occasionally. We had lunch across the street; he added two dishes to my order as if he knew what I liked better than I did. I forgot to be wary.
"You eat too little," he said one morning, nudging a spoon toward my plate.
"I have to control my weight," I said, embarrassed.
"You can be a bit more generous with yourself," he said.
When he asked if I had ever been called 'annoying' in a soft voice that made things in me warm, I answered the way a person answers a memory.
"Once," I said.
He reached across the table and smoothed the edge of my napkin with a thumb. "You are not annoying," he said. "Not to me."
The first days at Elton's office were a fresh kind of busy. I met a team who made ideas like soup—all shared and warm. Boyd Lin was Donovan's assistant—loud and loyal—and he dragged blankets and pop-up tents like they were treasure.
We planned a day to go out of the city. Donovan said he wanted to show us a winding river that smelled like grass. We packed supplies and we joked. I told Aliana I would bring a small extra purse with extra sneakers and not to worry.
The morning of the picnic was hot. We loaded the car and Donovan drove with a gentle focus that made me safe. In the supermarket, I suddenly felt a spike of pain in my stomach that made me double over.
"Are you okay?" Donovan said, instantly by my side.
"I just—" I ran to the bathroom and pressed my forehead to the cool sink. When I came out, he was waiting. "We can stay," he said. "If you need a hospital, we'll go."
"I'm fine," I said, brushing it off like it was a secret no one needed. "Just… a stomach spasm from nerves."
He did not argue. He put a blanket over my shoulders as if it were a promise.
We arrived at the park and found the group already busy. Gold and charcoal and laughter. There was Genevieve, Antonia, Constance. They moved like cousins and friends, quick to help. Boyd lit the grill like he'd been born doing it.
"Who's next on water duty?" Boyd shouted, and people laughed.
We ate, we joked, and then Donovan took my wrist and led me to the shade. His face was open beneath the leaves; he looked both lost and found.
"I have something to ask," he said.
My heart did a foolish, joyous thing. "Yes?" I breathed.
He touched my forehead like someone checking an ache. Then he bent and kissed me as if he had memorized the maps of my face.
"Will you be my girlfriend?" he asked when he broke away.
"Yes." My voice was a small thing but filled the space between us.
The crowd clapped and whooped. Aliana whooped the loudest. Boyd recorded with his phone and sent a picture to his group chat with the caption: "Finally, proof my boss isn't a ghost."
We were a pair that afternoon: terrible at hiding, very good at existing in the same space.
But joy never shuts out echoes. Two days later, someone posted a photo on the university forum—a cropped photo from the supermarket—and someone else wrote poison below.
"She’s a gold-digging city girl," the post said. "Look at him—names across his shirt. Bought rides, probably."
The post had no evidence, only speculation. It spread like wind through dry grass.
Aliana found the thread and did not sit. "I'll find her," she said, sharp as a blade.
We all did what we could. Boyd traced uploads; Kyle Bonilla—who'd helped me find my way once on campus—checked who had posted it. Messages came and went like small arrows.
"Don't worry," Donovan said, but his jaw clenched. "This is ugly."
"It's troll work," I said. "People enjoy making up stories."
Aliana did not want me dragged into a fight. "I'll handle the forum," she said. "You two rest."
I thought it would stop. It did not.
Then the day came when I decided to make the past settle.
Elton's magazine had an industry mixer—editors, art directors, owners. I decided to go not as a defeated intern but as someone who had been wronged and who would not let that wrongness be forgotten.
I asked Elton if I could speak one minute. He said yes.
When I stood at the front of the room, the lights made everyone look like statues with eyes. The small projector hummed. Keily Said was there—smiling in a way that had always felt too polished.
"Excuse me," I said into the microphone. My voice shook, but I controlled it. "I am Kaitlyn Hayashi. I used to work at another magazine and I submitted a board that was mine."
The room shifted. Someone murmured. Keily looked up. Her smile did not change.
"I want to show you a short comparison," I said. "This is my original file." I clicked the remote.
The board I had made filled the screen: my lines, my fonts, my choices. The room quieted.
Then I clicked again. The board that had been submitted in my name—Keily's board—flickered up.
"These two were identical in structure and layout," I said. "But the timestamps tell the truth." I opened a folder and projected the timestamps, the file access logs. "This file was edited from this account, then uploaded by Keily's machine. I have email chains. I have an original PSD. I have the timestamps and the copy logs."
Keily's smile left like skin. There was a loud stir as phones came up. Donovan put a hand on my back like a shield.
"You mean to say—" Keily started, voice small.
"I mean to say," I said, "that when people steal work to climb, they leave footprints."
The owner of my old company—Fillmore Lehmann—sat near the back, his posture stone. I looked right at him.
"You canceled my probation because someone replaced my work with theirs and you believed them," I said. "You destroyed a person's chance with a glance."
Fillmore's face cooled. "Kaitlyn—"
"Call me Kaitlyn," I said. "And call Keily to answer."
Phones hummed, hands recorded. A hundred sets of eyes waited.
Keily stood slowly, voice slick with practiced indignation. "This is a misunderstanding," she said. "I never—"
"You used my laptop and you changed my files," I said. "You told me you had a crash. You told me a story—and you changed my work."
Her face shifted: first the familiar arrogance—the wide little smile, the practiced disbelief. Then the room's attention pressed like a weight. Someone in the back hissed, "Prove it, Kaitlyn."
I clicked a USB folder. "Here are the server logs," I said. "Here is your laptop's local log with files you removed. Here are the backup email headers. And here is the owner telling Manuel to cut my name."
Keily's face lost color. "You—"
I watched her through the projector glare as the room's heat grew.
"Our company used to swallow the wrongdoer," Fillmore murmured. "We make mistakes."
People leaned forward. "Look at the timestamps," Donovan said into the open room. "Someone's copied the file and uploaded it. It's clear."
Keily's breath hitched. "You can't—this is libel—"
"What will you do?" I asked softly. "Will you deny it in front of everyone you lied to? Will you explain why you replaced my work? Or will you apologize for destroying my chances?"
Her eyes flashed. "You have no proof—"
"Proof is this evidence, and these witnesses who remember you using my laptop," Manuel said, stepping forward. "We will be consulting HR. We will be referring this to the professional board. In addition, we expect a public apology."
Keily's face changed; arrogance gave way to confusion. She had expected a quiet rebuke, maybe a warning. Not this bright, public unmasking. People around us shifted, whispers rose. Someone started a live stream.
"No. No, you—" Keily's voice broke. "This is false. I did not—"
"Keily," Fillmore said, calmly but with steel, "stand here and tell us in front of your peers why you swapped Kaitlyn's work with yours."
She took a step back. For a heartbeat she was defiant, hands fisted. Then the first crack appeared.
"I—" She turned to the nearest coworker, seeking a lifeline, but mouths were closed. Someone had the bite of a camera. Phones were up, lenses hungry. Around us, ten people recorded. Fifty streamed. A hundred watched.
Keily's voice shifted from denial to desperation. "Listen, I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry. Please, we can fix this, I'll—I'll resign—"
"Resign?" someone murmured with satisfaction.
"You're asking for my job? Is that what this is?" Keily's face crumpled into anger that did not fit the room. "You can't do this to me."
"I can do this to anyone who steals," Elton said, voice low and unembarrassed. "You stole someone's future by swapping a file to hide behind it. Today we publish the truth."
Keily's fingers twitched like someone trying to hold a rope already cut. She staggered back, her knees almost buckling. A cluster of junior editors watched in a mixture of horror and delight. "This is a misunderstanding!" she wailed, and then, more quietly, "Please—please—I'm sorry."
There was the sequence: arrogance, confusion, denial, collapse, begging. Phones recorded every frame. People who had been sitting quietly now murmured, some shook their heads, others clapped. A woman in the back let out a sharp laugh and then began to clap slowly, then louder.
"No, no," Keily finally whispered, sinking onto a chair as if someone had removed her knees. Her shoulders shook. "Please. I can't lose this job. Please."
Silence fell for a breath. Then someone took a step toward the stage and put a hand on Keily's shoulder. "You should leave," the hand said, gentle but firm. "Go home. Think about what you did."
Outside the room, cameras continued to stream. The clip of Keily's collapse—face pale, eyes wide, voice pleading—trended that night between comment threads of fury and pity.
"They filmed me," she whispered, hands over her mouth. "They'll ruin me."
"Then make it right," Manuel said. "You apologize in public. You accept responsibility. You do the work to fix what you broke."
Keily looked up at the packed room. The arrogance had drained, replaced by a human fragility. She put her hands together like someone asking for mercy. "Kaitlyn—I'm sorry," she said. "I—I'm sorry."
Applause broke out, thin and brittle; some clapped to mark the end of a wrong, others to mark the start of justice. Someone recorded. Someone took a picture of her crumpled face. Someone cheered. Phones chimed. The sound of the crowd was alive and hungry.
Later, when the dust settled, HR called her in. Elton asked for a formal statement and the owner Fillmore made the decision they all wanted: the artist who had stolen would be removed from any decision-making boards. Manuel offered me my name back: a reinstatement, public and written. When I read the official letter, hands trembling, I thought of the long, dark nights I had spent over the board and how they had been worth it.
I kept the U-disk in a drawer for a long time like a talisman. It felt heavy and like a key.
After that, things changed. Word spread of the public punishment. Keily's face was a cautionary tale in half a dozen group chats. She was humiliated, yes, but she was also human, begging at the foot of everyone she'd lied to. People recorded, people debated, people moved on. The law of small offices is small scandals are big and then small again.
"How do you feel?" Donovan asked me one night as we walked home.
"Like I finally drew a line," I said. "It did not feel like revenge. It felt like the end of a story I wasn't willing to keep reading."
Donovan smiled and kissed my temple. "You keep your lines," he said.
Life returned to a softer rhythm. Elton's magazine grew. Donovan and I built a neighborly life of breakfasts and late-night garbage runs. He would bring over a slice of strawberry cake—because once he remembered I loved it as a child—and leave it with a note: "For you. Don't let anyone take your sweetness." He wrote "For Kaitlyn" in a handwriting that made my stomach small and warm.
There were still small cruelties. The forum rumors would flare up now and then like mosquitoes in summer, mostly harmless. But when one of those rumors tried to sting Aliana at school, Kyle Bonilla and his friends traced it back to a troll account and the admin banned it within hours. We had allies.
One quiet evening, Donovan and I walked into the small courtyard between our buildings. The light was low and the air smelled like rain that hadn't yet fallen. He stopped under the small street lamp and turned to me.
"I've been living across from you for months," he said. "I could have been a coward and let you walk past me every day. But I came close."
I laughed because the memory of the dream—the small voice asking if she was annoying—felt so far away and bright.
"Do you remember," I asked, "that first thing you said to me? Something about not being my brother?"
He pretended to think. "I think I said, 'I don't want to be your brother.'"
"You did," I said. "And I said something soft in reply."
He looked at me and, because the world still allowed us small ridiculous moments, he pulled from his pocket a tiny dessert fork his fingers had hidden earlier and offered it.
"For the strawberry cake," he said. "For the door of 303, for the U-disk, and for the moment you stopped being afraid to speak."
I took the fork because he offered it, and because we had our own small ceremonial objects now. The fork felt clumsy and perfect. We ate cake on the doorstep and the curtain of night closed gently.
"Promise me one thing," Donovan said, using the word in a way that was no longer empty.
"What thing?" I asked, smiling.
"Promise me you'll keep your evidence drawer neat. Promise me you'll keep your guard and your spark."
"Promise," I said, and this time my promise was not to anyone else but to the girl who had once hidden under a blanket, who loved a voice in a dream, and who now had a man who loved her back and a public record that said she had been wronged and then mended.
The next morning, I opened the small curtain of our window and watched Nova tie up her shoelace. She did it with the same clumsy grace she always had. The U-disk slept in the drawer with the faint satisfaction of a closed file.
I have a picture on my phone of the strawberry cake he bought that night. It sits there sometimes as a quiet thing that reminds me: words matter, truths matter, and the little things—like a cake, a fork, a door, a neighbor—can hold a whole life.
The End
— Thank you for reading —