Sweet Romance10 min read
The Corn Cob, The Mute CEO, and the Night of Honest Farts
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I was squashed like a folded map on the morning subway and my cheap soy milk betrayed me.
"Great," I muttered, watching the pale puddle spread like a bad mood on the floor.
A man next to me coughed without shame. "Ugh," someone else said, fanning the air.
I kept my cool. I told myself, I am a professional adult, I will not startle the train with drama.
Then something poked my butt.
"Hey!" I spun around and glared.
He was tall, skinny, and alarmingly handsome in a staged, movie-kind-of-way. His face went blank when my eyes found his.
He blinked, then looked away like a kid caught with a cookie. He looked guilty in a very small, very obvious way.
But the poking thing didn't stop. The train rocked, and the poke nudged again.
"Put that disgusting thing away!" I barked.
He froze, red flooding his cheeks. Around us, the car fell into a low, curious hum.
He tried to step back but the train stopped. His body pitched; the offending thing jabbed me once more.
My hand moved by itself.
Smack.
"I'll have you arrested if you don't leave me alone!" I spit, more theatrical than I meant.
He touched the place I hit, surprise and hurt on his face, and then he followed me off the train like he'd been dragged by guilt.
I quickened my pace. I was sure this man was not from my company. Who would he be?
At the building door I glanced back. He was still coming—still holding a corn cob.
A corn cob.
My face flared. I swallowed. I hurried inside.
The elevator pinged. I shoved my badge in, breathing like I'd run a marathon. A few coworkers squeezed in, cheerful and oblivious to small tragedies.
The elevator doors slid, and the tall man squeezed in too—corn cob clutched like a lifeline.
"Why are you following me?" I couldn't stop myself from hissing.
He opened his mouth, then closed it. He tried again and then made a small, apologetic face.
Everyone stared.
"Is he—" Amber Ribeiro whispered.
Dean Harris, our boss of small talk and big opinions, bustled in last minute with a stack of papers. He looked at us, then his eyes lit up.
"Wow—what a surprise! The president is here today!" he laughed too loud.
All eyes turned to the tall man in the corner. He looked like someone had asked him to step into the sun for the first time.
He swallowed. He couldn't speak.
I waited, and it dawned on me: he wasn't avoiding me from rudeness. He couldn't speak at all.
"He's—our president?" Kaylin Gross breathed.
"Young boss, rich family, barely ever in the office," someone else offered.
My stomach did a somersault. The man with the corn cob was the president I had never met in two years.
He was so red-cheeked his ears looked toasted. When Dean clapped him on the shoulder and demanded he say a few words, every eye in the room turned to him.
"Please, say something," Dean boomed.
The president fumbled, then stood like a puppet whose strings were cut. He pointed weakly, eyes asking for mercy, and finally mouthed, "I… I am Logan."
It came out in a whisper of movement, like a page turning.
"Logan Finley," Dean translated for the room as if reading a menu. "Welcome, Mr. Finley!"
They all applauded. He bobbed a tiny nod and sat down, still clutching his corn cob as if it were armor.
"Jensen, why don't you report first?" Dean prompted, and then made a face at me that said, "Save us."
"Me?" I nearly swallowed my own voice. I stood, said, "Yes," and launched into my monthly updates.
When I looked up, his eyes found mine. He startled, almost falling out of his chair. He recovered, and then smiled in a way that made the fluorescent lights look clinical.
After the meeting, my heart was doing its own report. Had I ruined everything back at the subway? Would the president brand me as the woman who hit him over a corn kernel?
He didn't fire me. He didn't throw me out. In fact, something stranger happened.
Later that day I caught a glimpse of him sneaking out, awkward as a deer in a glass shop. I swallowed my fear and followed. He didn't seem menacing; he looked small.
At his door I hesitated, rehearsing apology lines in my head, then knocked.
He opened it, frozen, and there was corn silk clinging to his mouth.
"Oh my God," I said too loudly. "Hold still."
He flinched, then leaned away, red as sunrise. I reached up like some helpful aunt and—I misjudged my force.
Smack.
Again.
"I am so sorry," I blurted. "I'm trying to apologize—"
He looked like a man who had been hit by a feather and a storm at the same time. His eyes stung. He could not speak, but a look like thunder passed over his face.
He pushed past me, pressing the elevator button with a hard thumb, then walked away.
I ran after him, snatching his half-eaten corn cob from his desk as proof of my goodwill. He was gone down the hall, but I grabbed his train, pressed into the elevator, and there he was—alone, teetering, clutching nothing.
"Logan, wait—" I panted.
He looked at me as if I were another species that smelled of trouble. He tried to walk past, then stopped. He was so awkward that it hurt to watch.
"Please… hold on," he mouthed, trying to say something meaningful.
I forced my stubbornness into a smile and said, "You dropped this."
He stared at the corn cob I handed him like I had offered him a crown. He looked down at it, and then up at me, and then he laughed—soundless, small, and it made his shoulders shake.
"I want to apologize," I said.
He hesitated, then pointed at me, then pointed at his chest, then made a slow wave over his mouth. He could not speak at all. He only shook his head.
"Okay," I said, and decided to take charge of the situation my way.
That night, he invited me—no, he didn't invite me. He didn't ask anything at all. But we ended up on a company dinner because everyone else had been too eager for the free food.
The restaurant was packed, noisy, and smelled of fried things and chili oil. He sat across from me; he was tense, like a tight string ready to snap.
I ordered two corn cobs.
"Why corn?" he asked with his eyes.
"Because it's our history," I said. "You know—train, bus, corn. It's destiny."
He blinked.
Dinner was a strange battlefield. The boss, Dean, tried to guide conversation like a captain steering a ship through fog. My hands were steady: I fed Logan absurd stories about the office, about coworkers, about my morning rituals. He listened, his eyes big and soft.
Then chaos happened.
It came out as a sound, low at first, then proud and unstoppable.
The room froze. We all stared. Color drained from faces like paint from an old postcard. A decade of decorum evaporated in a single, unmistakable note.
"People have needs," a coworker trilled awkwardly, but no one believed it.
Logan's cheeks flushed until they matched the red of the chili sauce on the table. He hid his face in his hands. I should have been mortified. Instead I felt a ridiculous, stubborn tenderness rise in me that made my chest warm.
I leaned in, louder than I had any right to be. "It's okay," I whispered, and then, in the hush, I added something absurd to deflect the shame. I made a sound, a tiny mimic of his escape, the sort of childish thing you do to keep people laughing.
He looked at me as if I'd performed a miracle.
"You're the only one who can laugh at me," his eyes said, plain as speech.
After the restaurant emptied, he was light as a balloon and fragile as glass. He gave me a small thumbs up—silent, grateful.
"You're my friend," I told him. He pointed to his chest, then touched mine, then drew a slow line from his lips to the door. He wanted me to stay. He couldn't say it, but he tried.
Days stretched into small moments: a shared pastry, a corner-quieted talk about silly things, him showing me drawings he made—little people on scooters, one of them red-cheeked, the other holding a milk tea with a straw. He drew slowly, deliberately, and I realized he was showing me feelings through pictures when words failed.
One evening, we went out searching for roasted sweet potato and milk tea like two kids on a treasure hunt. He was clueless about ordering apps and wallets. He called me when he needed help, sounding unsure and honest.
When he asked, "Can you lend me a little?" I said, "No." I told him I couldn't because the truth—my savings were small and fragile. He gulped and then thanked me anyway, embarrassed but kind.
We rode around, ate too much, and laughed. He told me, in his halting sign-language-scribbled messages and in drawings and in one very slow, very earnest note he left on my desk, that he liked the way I put people at ease.
"You're honest," he wrote once, and underlined it.
The other man came back into my life too. Ephraim Stephens had been a friend from college, steady and not flashy, who'd kept a steady rhythm in my life like a favorite song. One morning he showed up, flowers in hand, casual and real.
"Hey," he said, voice warm as tea. "How are you?"
We had breakfast and he walked me back. He was easy to be with. He had a confidence that felt like a blanket—safe, comfortable, and solid.
Logan noticed. He watched us from the sidewalk window, guarding a small, clumsy pride.
"Does he—do you like him?" Logan asked one night, the question hardly moving his lips.
I looked at Logan, then at Ephraim's messages on my phone. Ephraim's kindness was a steady tide.
"He's good," I said honestly. "But it's not black and white."
That honesty changed something.
One night, after a too-long day, Ephraim came to pick me up. He brought warm milk and a grin and the kind of hands that make you feel held.
"Come home with me?" he asked.
I dared. "Yes."
He wrapped me in care, in little practical chores and small teachings—how to tie a tie for a job interview, how to make hard boiled eggs that don't crack. He became my safe harbor and, before I knew it, my heart found a pace that matched his.
When I told Logan, I expected a shrug. Instead he looked like someone had been caught off guard by a sudden sunbeam and didn't know if he should step into it or run away.
"You like him?" he asked again, only with his hands this time, slow and pleading.
I told him, "I like people who don't pretend. I like someone who shows up."
He watched me with a kind of fierce tenderness I hadn't seen yet. His face crumpled when I confessed that I was frightened by him once—by his small, strict world and the way he kept himself locked.
"I like you," he wrote in a small note and left it on my desk.
Ephraim proposed in the quiet, the kind of way that felt like sliding two hands together and deciding to hold on. We picked an apartment near the company, bright and small, the kind of place that would let him walk me to the office in the rain.
When I said yes, Logan came to the apartment to congratulate me. He was a man freshly grown into some new version of himself: calmer, more composed, better dressed. He smiled like someone who had learned something slow and heavy.
"You really love him?" he asked.
I squeezed his hand. "Yes."
He nodded like he had understood finally where honesty sits. "I want to be better," he signed. "Not to take you, but to be worthy of being your friend."
We all moved forward like a careful procession. Logan practiced conversation. He learned how to meet people and say a small joke. He smiled with his whole body instead of keeping it in his chest.
On my wedding day, Logan came. He looked poised and elegant, but not happy in the way people smile in magazine photos. He was a quiet presence—there, polished, and gentle.
He came up to Ephraim and said, simply, "Congratulations."
He turned to me, and his eyes were clear. "You look beautiful," he mouthed, like a bell ringing one note true.
I smiled and touched his arm. A private memory flickered between us: two awkward people on a train, a corn cob, a ridiculous shared dinner, and a moment of forgiving laughter over a ridiculous accident. That memory had held more than words.
Later that night, as the music wound down and the guests drifted like leaves, Ephraim and I counted the strange gifts we'd received. Ephraim had put away a small, symbolic token for me and left a playful one-coin gift for himself—something that made us both laugh.
Logan slipped outside to the quiet terrace. He found me, and we looked out over the lights.
"Thank you," he signed.
"For what?"
"For not leaving me alone," he wrote slowly, careful as if each letter mattered.
I reached over, took his hand, and we sat there under the stars and the hum of late traffic.
When I left the company months later—promoted, grown, and slightly less broke—Logan was different. He'd learned how to meet people. He'd kept drawing little pictures and sending them when he couldn't find words. He'd become a man who could stand in a room and be seen, and that alone felt like triumph.
Once, when Ephraim and I came back from a weekend, I found a drawing pinned at my desk: a tiny scooter, a boy with a milk tea blushing, and a girl riding ahead, hair flying.
I laughed. I handed it to Ephraim. "He drew us," I said.
He grinned, "He keeps drawing things he can't say."
"People keep surprising me," I said.
"Mostly good surprises?" Ephraim cocked his head.
"Mostly," I said, and I meant it.
Weeks later, Logan sent a message: "I'm coming back."
"Good," I answered.
When he returned, he was still quiet sometimes, but he was also brave in new small ways. He would come to team events and actually talk. He tasted freedom like it was new fruit.
At a company reunion, I watched him move through a crowd like someone who had learned to dance alone first and then with others.
He found me and, in a private moment, he gave me a small wrapped thing. Inside was a tiny sketchbook and a single, neat card.
"For your stories," he signed.
I touched his hand. "Thank you," I whispered.
He looked down, and for once he smiled and then laughed, a soft sound like a bell under water.
We both remembered the first day, the corn cob incident, the clumsy apologetic slap, the train, the elevator, the dinner of terrible timing, and the sound that cleared a room forever.
It was a ridiculous, precious history we shared, and that night we let it be our quiet joke.
"Keep the corn cob," I said, and he did not need words to understand.
He held that silly, unforgettable thing like an old, bright badge that reminded us both of how honesty could be louder than shame.
I walked away with Ephraim at my side, Logan waving from the doorway, the city lights turning into lanterns.
The corn cob sat on his desk for months, a small monument to an awkward beginning that grew into a gentle friendship. And once, months later, when the office kitchen filled with laughter, a familiar sound escaped—long, loud, and honest as a trumpet. We all froze and then fell apart laughing, because the world had room for foolishness, for growth, and for the truth.
"You're still the worst," I told Logan, hugging him.
He signed back, smiling, "You're the bravest."
And when the night settled, and the city hummed faintly like a sleeping animal, I replayed the day in my head: the poke, the corn, the slap, the tiny drawings, the roast sweet potato chase, and the flat-out ridiculous dinner. I closed my eyes and thought: this is exactly all the strange, messy things that make a life worth telling.
The corn cob stayed, the drawing stayed, and his quiet, honest ways stayed—proof that some accidents lead to the best of friendships.
The End
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