Sweet Romance11 min read
The Coffee, The Sugar Fish, and the Sea I Chose
ButterPicks12 views
I still remember the exact time my phone vibrated the day everything changed.
"He's posted," Jazmin said from the other side of the room, her voice thin with private glee.
"Don't open it," I told her without looking up.
"You have to." She shoved her phone toward me.
I opened my feed. A photo—Camilo smiling at a girl whose face the frame only showed in profile. He looked like he always did in photos: calm, like a boy who had never been rushed. The caption read, "Three years. Only more, never less."
My chest squeezed.
A minute earlier he'd sent me a message. One line.
"I'm done."
I stared at the screen until the letters blurred.
I called him. He hung up after one ring.
His reply came later, cool, short.
"Not convenient. Text."
I typed a paragraph, deleted it, typed again, deleted again. I put my phone down and told myself not to cry.
Then I wrote, finally, "Break up fine. Say it in person."
A single word came back: "Okay."
We met at the little cafe by the back gate, where the light pooled on worn wood. My coffee had cooled by the time he walked in.
He'd changed.
"She likes this," he said, flicking the cuff of his black hoodie as if a color could explain a heart.
I stared.
"Why?" I asked. I kept my voice flat, the way I keep it when the room asks for more than I have.
He smiled like a boy showing a new trick. "Because her waist is... thinner than yours."
The words fell into the space between us and made a little crack that would spider further.
"You mean that's it? That's your reason?"
He spread his hands. "Also, I like her. Anything else?"
I didn't plan to, but my cup went flying. Hot coffee sent a scalding ribbon across his chest.
He blinked. Calm. Smoothed the wet fabric with his hand, and said, as if we were back where promises could still be made, "I'm leaving."
He walked two steps and glanced back.
"We were good this year, right? Okay, good ending. Don't need to greet each other later."
Then he left.
People in the cafe watched. A man murmured, "Wow." A woman hissed. My hand shook so badly I almost dropped the empty cup.
I chased after him. Somebody else's coffee had been warm; I scooped it up, felt ridiculous, and poured it over his head.
He didn't shout. He didn't turn. He stood straight while coffee soaked the black fabric and ran down his spine.
"That’s our good ending?" I said.
No reply. He walked away with something like casual indifference.
I should have felt triumphant. Instead I felt hollow and foolish.
I ran into Flynn Cooper at the gate.
"Are you okay?" he asked. His voice caught like a soft net.
"I am," I said. "Fine. Thank you."
He narrowed his eyes. "Camilo's post went viral."
"Of course it did."
He hesitated, then said, "He doesn't deserve—"
"Don't." I brushed him off. "Just forget it."
Flynn didn't forget. He never did.
Later that evening, Jazmin called, nearly screaming on the line. "He got hit! Flynn hit him!"
I sat down hard.
"Who hit him? How do you—"
"Flynn. He saw Camilo and went—went crazy. You should come see. He's such a mess. You have to come!"
I felt a cold bloom of something that might have been hope. I dressed and went to the student square.
The square was full: students leaning against railings, phones out like little torches. Camilo stood at the center, his hoodie still damp, his smile gone. Flynn faced him, sleeves rolled, jaw tight.
"Why'd you do it?" Flynn's voice was raw.
Camilo shrugged. "Do what?"
"You posted that and broke her without talking. You used another girl, posted the photo a minute after texting a one-line break. You're proud of this?"
Camilo's smile thinned. "I didn't ask for a sermon."
Flynn took a step forward. "You lied to her. You threw her away like a wrapper. You... you staged it."
A ripple went through the crowd. Heads leaned in. Someone muttered, "Spill it, Flynn."
"Tell them you paid her," someone else demanded. Phones raised.
Camilo's expression flickered with something like alarm. "You don't know what you're talking about."
Flynn didn't stop. "You told everyone you were in love with your 'first love.' You posted the picture, then you sent a cold text. You want to be seen as noble. You want to be sweet in people's stories."
"You're being dramatic," Camilo said. His fingers dug into the wet fabric of his hoodie. "You all always take everything the wrong way."
Phones streamed faces, little rectangles collecting the moment.
"Tell them why you really did it," Flynn said. "Tell them you paid a girl to be your 'memory' because you couldn't bear to hurt her when you were sick."
The square went very quiet.
Someone laughed, nervous. Camilo's face paled.
"That isn't true," he said.
From the crowd a voice rose—tense, halting. "She's here. The girl in the photo is here."
Heads turned. She walked forward, swaying slightly, a bottle of water in her hand. The same profile as the photo, but with mascara running.
She stood just behind Camilo. For a long moment none of us breathed.
"I was paid," she said. Her voice trembled. "He asked me to pretend. He promised he would tell her later. He said—he said he couldn't risk telling her the truth."
"Tell them the truth now!" Flynn demanded. "Tell them everything."
She swallowed. "He said his family feared his father's illness might pass down. He told me—he told me he'd been told it could come back. He said he couldn't let her live with that chance forever. So he asked me to be him."
A murmur rose, then the crush of phones.
Camilo's jaw tightened. "That's private."
Flynn stepped forward until his chest nearly touched Camilo's. "You left her and then staged pity to protect yourself. You thought making her hate you would make her safe. You chose the coward's path."
People around us started shouting questions. "Did you pay her?" "How much?" "Why lie?"
Camilo's face crumpled. He laughed, a dry, thin sound. "You think you know everything."
A girl near us started to clap sarcastically. A few people joined, and it turned ugly. "Shame! Shame!" someone called.
Camilo's hands flew up. "Stop it!"
"No," Flynn said quietly. "You need to answer."
"Why are you all doing this?" Camilo's voice cracked. "I… I thought—"
"Thought who?" asked another student. "Yourself?"
The actress—his paid stand-in—took a breath, steady as a person slapping a moth off a flame. "He paid me to be a memory. He told me the story to make me play it. He told me to stand by him, to let her see us. He promised to tell her the truth—later, when it was safe. He never told her."
Flashlights scrolled across Camilo's face like interrogation. Someone posted a live stream. In a heartbeat it was out there: Camilo's head bowed under the weight of a hundred young voices and flashing screens.
"You're cruel," Flynn said. The word was a blade.
Camilo's eyes filled. For the first time he seemed small, not handsome, not incisive—just human and raw. "I was trying to spare her pain," he whispered.
"By staging your exit?" Flynn's laugh was soft, horrified. "By making her humiliated?"
"She doesn't understand," Camilo said. "None of you do. I can't trust myself; I—"
The crowd closed in. "Show us proof!" someone demanded.
He fumbled in his pocket. "I can show—"
But what could he show? A doctor's note? A fear? He had time to manufacture an image but not a defense. He had time to make a dramatic exit but not to face the aftermath.
Phones flashed. Comments filled with "liar" and "shame." Someone nearby recorded as Camilo's voice shivered. "I thought—she deserved better than my shadow."
"Better? You left her without a face!" Flynn said. "You left her with questions and shame."
Camilo looked at me then—at me who had thrown coffee and chased and collapsed later in my room—and something in his eyes broke cleanly.
"I thought it would be kinder to go," he said, and his voice was barely a thread. "Forgive me. I thought I was protecting her."
A girl behind me spat. "You protected yourself."
That's when things turned public in the worst way for him. The stand-in—who had been crying—exhaled and held out her phone.
"This is the agreement," she said. "He paid me. He told me words. He told me to be the story. He thought he'd be noble."
She set the screen to show messages—words like "I'll make this easy," "Don't tell her yet," "We need a clean break."
Gasps smelled through the crowd. People who had been on Camilo's side now watched his image shrink.
Camilo's face fluctuated—first incredulous, then rage, then denial, then pleading.
"No, no—" he said, voice climbing. "It's more complicated. You all don't know the full—"
"Tell it," Flynn said. "Tell it honestly."
He opened his mouth and then closed it. He could not produce the story where he had noble reasons. The messages on the girl's phone were plain.
A boy standing near us posted to a hundred followers: "Camilo Ilyin staged his breakup. Paid someone. Guys, don't be like this."
It spread like a dye in water.
Camilo's shoulders sagged. He put his face in his hands. "Please. Please," he whispered. "I'm sorry."
Someone in the crowd started to boo. Someone else started to cry.
Flynn stepped back, anger taken down into a deeper voice. "You wanted to be seen as the honorable man who let her go because of fate. You wanted applause for your 'sacrifice.' You deserve to know what the world does to men who treat women like props."
People shouted. A livestream asked, "Is he going to apologize in public or just play tragic?" The question hung, and Camilo, raw with exposure, could not find a spoken defense that would save him.
He tried to explain. "I just thought—"
No one wanted to hear another rationalization.
One girl thrust her phone in his face. "Why would you do that to her?"
He looked at her and answered, "I was scared."
That answer did nothing to the shouting.
"Let him go," someone said.
"No," another voice insisted. "He needs to face them."
The crowd's verdict became a kind of performance. Some applauded Flynn openly. Some moved closer to me, murmuring support. Camilo, the man who had once been a neat, well-posed photograph, was now a subject of gossip and pity and scorn. He tried to compose a face and failed.
At last he turned away, stumbling toward the dorm block. Phones followed him. Heads shook. A chorus of "shame," "liar," and "coward" trailed behind.
When he left, Flynn stood in the center of the square, hands on his hips, the angry boy who had chosen to defend the one he cared for.
"She deserves better than a staged story," Flynn said, looking at me. "She deserves the truth, the real choice."
His palms were callused but gentle later when he took my hand and walked me back to the dorm.
That night the footage went around. People debated. Some called Flynn a bully. Others called him a savior. I only listened and let my sleep come, fitful but steadier than it had been that afternoon.
Weeks later, I would learn more pieces of the story—things Camilo could not say in the square because he was too tangled in his own fear. But that day the square punished him: public humiliation, the heavy judgment of a thousand witnesses, the collapse of the image he'd curated. He had become a cautionary tale; his life thinned into a clip on a screen.
Flynn's hand was warm on mine. "You okay?" he asked.
I looked up at him. His eye crinkled in that way that made me believe. "I'm tired. But better."
"You threw coffee," he said softly, and I laughed despite myself.
"Yes."
"Good," he said. "Sometimes you need to make a mess to puncture a lie."
After that, we walked and talked and began to stitch something new in the quiet hours. I learned he had been watching me long before I noticed him.
"You borrowed five thousand once?" I asked one night when he told the story.
He nodded. "You left the market crying. I gave it to an account I couldn't trace back to me."
"Why?" I asked. "Why did you do that?"
He shrugged, looking at the ceiling of our little dorm kitchen. "Because I didn't like the idea of you being dragged home. Because I saw you cry and I couldn't just watch."
It should have been a small thing. Instead it landed like a hand on my shoulder.
Flynn and I started to belong to each other in the small ways—he would take awkward photos of me on the beach, he'd cook my favorite dish after studying my posts like a map. He learned that I liked the little sugar fish sweets and tracked one down in a night market, tucking it into his pocket, asking:
"You liked it before. Am I a stranger for noticing?"
"You're not a stranger," I said.
He smiled. "Good. Then let me be something else."
We took the three-day trip he'd suggested, mostly because Jazmin had disappeared with other friends and left the two of us with tickets. We walked coral roads, ate street food, and at night he gave me a tiny sugar fish for no reason other than that I had paused at the stall.
"Keep it," he said. "A token."
I kept it and kept him instead.
We came back different—closer and softly certain. He asked me to be his on a slow night with cheap cake and a borrowed ring in a restaurant where the lights were small and the hot pot steam painted the world soft.
"Will you?" he asked.
I put the ring on, sudden and willing. He grinned like a small sun.
"Yes."
Our life softened into rituals: lunches, library visits, pajamas on the couch. He would slide me water on nights I choked on memories. He learned the exact way I liked the sauce in my hometown dish, making it once long after I'd forgotten the recipe and presenting it like an exam passed.
"You remember everything," I said.
"Not everything," he admitted. "But the things that matter."
The day before our wedding an unexpected knock came at the gate.
It was her—the woman who'd confessed the thing to me a month before, drunk and raw—Camilo's before-she-was-a-girlfriend. She looked like a person shaken out of sleep. She wanted to talk.
"I wasn't his first love," she said quietly. "I was his stand-in."
I had already known, but the confession that evening came with fresh edges. She told me again that Camilo had been scared of a hereditary illness, that he'd convinced her to help him fake a story because he thought he was not worth a future with me.
"Please," she begged. "Please go back to him. He deserves you."
I looked at her, at the open gate, at the city I had grown used to. "My wedding is tomorrow," I said. "I won't change that."
She looked away, hurt and pleading. "He begged me to hide it. He wanted you to hate him so he wouldn't risk you. I couldn't keep lying."
"I know," I said. "I remember."
She handed me a slip of paper with an address. "If you want—" Her voice broke. "If you want to know, go."
I looked at the thin scrap and then put it into my pocket. Later, that night, I burned it. I did not go to the address. There is kindness in knowing a truth and letting it be a truth you can hold without dissolving the life you are building.
The wedding day was everything calm and bright. Flynn's suit fit him like he was supposed to be wearing it. He steadied me as I stepped out.
"Are you nervous?" he asked.
"A little," I said. "Mostly happy."
"You look like the sugar fish," he whispered. "Bright and sticky in hopes."
I laughed.
When Camilo walked in, he wore a plain white T-shirt—simple, an apology of clothing. He came up to me, eyes honest in a way that power hadn't clouded.
"Congratulations," he said. "I'm sorry for everything."
There was an odd peace in his presence now that the square had already done its work. When he left a thick red envelope as a gift and sat down with his companion, the crowd gave them the distance they gave wronged things that were now only memory.
The ceremony blurred. Flynn said the vows in a low voice that I felt in my chest. I said mine. We exchanged rings. He kissed me.
After, someone at my table clapped the loudest—Camilo, the man who had been both villain and victim, who had turned himself into an object lesson and then, by his own confession, become a fragile person again.
"To the happy couple," he said, and the applause rolled like gentle waves.
Later, when everyone left and the lanterns were down, Flynn and I sat on the small balcony and ate the leftover cake. The sugar fish was stuck in my pocket; it had lost a tail but kept its bright face.
"You okay?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. "I chose the sea. I chose the person who stood beside me, who made coffee when I needed it and carried my past like a light, not like a weapon."
Flynn traced a circle on my hand. "Thank you for choosing me."
I slid the sugar fish across the table to him. "Keep it," I said. "For when you need me to remind you why this whole mess was worth it."
He put it next to his fork and kissed my knuckle.
"We'll be okay," he said.
We were. The sea had not healed everything, but it taught me that the choice I made—who to trust with my small things and my big hurts—was the one that mattered. Sugar fish or no sugar fish, coffee thrown, fights in squares, and apologies burnt on a cold night: the story had a flavor all its own, and I had chosen the person who loved me in the quiet parts.
The End
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