Sweet Romance14 min read
The Floral Dress and the Hairdryer
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"Happy birthday."
The karaoke room lights blinked like distant stars. There were seventeen candles on the tiny cake, and Jen Taylor—my oldest friend—pushed it toward me with a grin that crinkled her eyes.
"Make a wish, Caroline," she said.
"I wish my life would calm down for a week," I joked, but my laugh came out thin.
"Don't be dramatic," Jen rolled her eyes and elbowed Drake Nichols, who was leaning against the wall with a drink. "Caroline just wants a normal week."
"Normal is overrated," Drake said. He winked at me the way he always did when he wanted to seem caring and ended up sounding self-important.
"Okay, okay. Everyone sing!" Jen grabbed the remote and pointed it at the screen.
I stood up. My stomach flipped. "Jen, I think I need to go to the restroom," I whispered.
"Alright, go. Don't disappear on us," she said. Her thumb brushed mine for a second. That small touch felt like a rescue.
The bathroom window was open. Cold winter air rushed in and painted my face pale. I leaned over the sink and stared at myself: red cheeks, the faintest smudge of lipstick, a stitched-up bruise from a careless shoulder bump earlier. I smelled faintly of cheap perfume and lemon disinfectant.
A knock came from the door. "You okay in there?" Jen's voice.
"Yeah," I called. "I'll be right back."
When I stepped out, someone was standing at the doorframe—a stranger, tall, dark-eyed. He smiled like he belonged there and asked if I needed help finding my way to the exit. My chest tightened.
"He's asking if we can go home together," Drake laughed, but he was close enough to take Jen's hand and call her "wife" like it was a joke that had gotten stale. I felt invisible and furious and small all at once.
"Can we go home?" I heard myself say to the stranger.
"Would you like to come with me?" His voice was low. "I can walk you."
"Just so you know, you need to be responsible if you take me home," I told him without meaning to be clever.
"If you come with me, I'll be responsible," he said, eyes half-closed with a smile. It sounded like a dare.
Jen guided me close to her. "Let's go," she said, and I let myself lean into her as if I could hide there.
The stranger's smile faded. He stepped back to leave. "Don't invite strangers home," he said quietly, right by my ear.
I looked up. The stranger was Ewan Fischer.
"Who?" I mouthed at Jen.
"Where did he come from?" Jen answered with a whisper. She always worried with a fierceness that made me feel loved.
"Can we go now?" I murmured, like a child.
Jen led me out. "Okay. We'll go."
The next morning my head throbbed. My mother called, then lectured through a laugh, then said she couldn't come home this year. She had "work obligations." She had had those for years.
"You've been gone three years," I told her, tears quick behind my voice.
"Caroline, I can't," my mother said. "Be good. Call Jen. Take care of yourself."
"I will," I lied, hanging up. I was seventeen that day, and my birthday did not look like anything special in her calendar.
I grabbed my coat and my painting kit and went to the studio. The streets were thin with snow. I walked into a small convenience store and dropped a bag of snacks. "Sorry," I muttered as the plastic burst on the floor.
A hand reached down and helped me gather my scattered treats. "It's okay," a voice said.
He smelled like soap and cigarettes. My cheeks burned. He was the same man from the night before. "Thank you," I whispered.
"Don't be out late," he said. "Walk home together next time."
"Who are you?" I asked, but before he answered a group of boys appeared at the alley, surrounding him, shouting and ugly.
"Hey, man, who do you think you are?" one of them jeered.
I had enough fear to run. I shouldn't have stayed. But I didn't. I stepped in front of the man.
"Stop it," I said. "This is bullying. Someone's calling the police."
"You a cop now?" one of them hissed.
Ewan took a beating. He didn't cry out. When one boy reached for me, I shoved him. The boy slapped my face. Ewan stood up, grabbed a leg, and kicked. The world spun and then we were all running, a blur of breath and pain, until we escaped the alley.
We sat on a bench under a tree that had lost its leaves. Rain tapped at the pavement, turning the cold into a thin ache.
"Thank you," I said again, voice small.
"You're the second one to fall into my day," he said with a dark laugh. "Why do trouble and you keep meeting?"
"You saved me," I said.
"No. I don't like people getting hurt."
We stuck plaster and ointment on bruises in his little kitchen. He made tea like he'd been doing this for years—quiet, deliberate, patient. He didn't ask questions he didn't need to. He let me breathe.
"I'm Caroline," I said finally.
"Ewan," he answered. "Ewan Fischer."
He had eyes that softened when he looked at me. He had a laugh that was sudden and without warning. He moved with a kind of careful strength.
"Thank you," I said, over and over, until it became the only phrase that could stand for whatever happened between us.
We started to meet. He walked me home when it snowed heavy enough to cover a path. He brought a hairdryer once when mine broke—an old, boxy one, warm with faint laundry scent—and taught me how to dry my hair faster. Small things became big things. He'd hand me a napkin before I dug into a hot bowl of noodles. He'd smirk when I painted something that looked like a storm and call it "The Good Storm."
"Who bought the hairdryer?" Jen asked the first time she saw it.
"Ewan," I said. "He says your hair shouldn't catch a cold."
Jen hugged me with that ridiculous, loud laugh she has. "Medicine comes in many forms."
At school there was the small pulse of ordinary life: sketching in a corner, waiting in line, talking with Jen about everything and nothing. Drake was still around, and sometimes he was loud in the halls, telling stories that made him sound like a hero. Once, in the cafeteria, he noticed me and play-acted at being my knight. People laughed. I felt both proud and exposed.
"You'll be fine," Jen whispered once, squeezing my hand. "You're strong. You'll do great in your exam."
I passed an important audition and got a chance to study in another province—an art training that promised to sharpen me. It was an opportunity that felt like a small light in a long tunnel.
"I'm leaving in two weeks," I told Ewan.
He blinked. "When do you come back?"
"A year. Maybe longer."
"I'll come see you," he said.
We didn't argue about leaving. We didn't make grand promises. We sat together in his small apartment, shoulder to shoulder, and watched a movie that neither of us could remember afterward. I felt, then, like something steady and warm existed between us. I told myself I would survive a year apart because he had already shown me how to stand up when the world pushed.
The night before I left, Drake Nichols showed up at Jen's place. He had been away for a while, and he was flashy and confident and smelled like a perfume sold in airport shops. He told us he was going overseas for work—Drake always had grand futures planned—and that he would be back.
I watched him with a kind of strange distance. He looked at Jen the way a customer looks at a prize. The way he talked, the words he used, felt like a performance.
"Don't be dramatic," Jen told me that night.
On the plane, I pressed my face to the cold window and watched the world fall away. I missed Ewan already, and my phone filled with his short messages: "Text me when you're there." "Show me one painting." "Don't forget to eat."
I studied hard. The provincial training was intense—days that blurred into nights, long charcoal sessions, critique after critique. I met other painters who were fearless in ways that made my fingers itch to paint bolder. London-levels of skill in small rooms. I learned to see like an artist: negative space as a friend; silence as a canvas.
Ewan and I scrawled messages to each other at strange hours, a sleep-scrambled "good night" when he was awake for me, a "hang on" when I had an exam. His life shifted; he found work, climbed a little. So did I. The year folded like a sketchbook, pages smudged and layered.
When I came back to the city, Jen was there at the bus station, eyes bright. Ewan met me at the airport. I had a new sketchbook, and he had a tired, wide smile as if he'd been saving it for me.
We slipped back into each other like a familiar glove. He had adopted quieter manners—tea at nine, a text at noon, dinner waiting ten minutes after my class. We painted together sometimes, his strong lines, my soft sweeps.
One evening we went to a small bar. Jen waved us into a private booth. Drake was there. He sat with a swagger that had always been a little too big, but he seemed to be holding something smaller inside: a secret grin that tasted like mischief.
"You're back in town?" Drake asked casually when he saw me.
"Just returned," I said.
"Welcome back," he said. His eyes flicked to Ewan with something like interest and then slid away.
"Come sit with us," Jen said. "It's a reunion."
We drank, we laughed, we sang. Ewan paid the bill without looking at the total like it meant nothing. I liked that easy confidence. I liked that he never tried to be the loudest in the room. He had a gravity that pulled me.
Later that night, in the wet outside, a pair of men blocked my path as I was leaving alone for a second. My ankle twisted, and a hot panic spread in my chest. A familiar figure moved like a shadow and solved it: Ewan kicked, shoved, grunted. The two men scowled and fled; police took them in for a few days. Ewan returned me home, water dripping off his hair, his temper oddly tender as he laughed and said, "Don't go out like that again."
"Why did you come?" I asked later, when my head leaned on his chest.
"Because it's you," he said simply.
We kissed, sometimes with a hunger that surprised me, sometimes soft as paint on a watercolor. We found each other between classes, in cold corridors, in shared breakfast. He teased and nurtured in equal measure. He touched my hands as if memorizing them.
One night, after a long day of studio work, we kissed in the doorway and the kiss deepened. I pushed him away, confused.
"Why did you do that?" I asked.
"Because I like you," he said. "Because I always have."
"Then why did you act distant? Why did you make me think you wanted distance?" I asked.
He looked at me, eyes dark. "I get scared. I don't know how to keep people close. I thought maybe keeping distance was easier."
"It's not easier," I said.
We were young, and our emotions swelled like a tide. We tried to carve something that could hold both our fears and our joys. There were nights stacked with tenderness and nights stacked with silence. For a week we chose to be close and then one night he stood up and said softly, "Maybe we should live apart for a while."
"Why?" I whispered.
"I don't know," he said. "This isn't forever."
I felt the floor tilt. He left that night as if leaving a window slightly ajar. He sent messages that grew less frequent. I told myself it would pass. But distance is a hungry thing.
Time hummed on. We drifted. He worked. I worked. We met sometimes, and the touch between us was full of memory, not promises. The city felt smaller. I kept painting. I kept showing up.
Months later, the gallery near the river sent me an email: a small showcase for young artists. I picked paintings that felt raw and honest—landscapes with hands in them—pieces that tasted like the winter I had left and the summers I'd returned to.
On opening night, the gallery smelled of paint and wine. The space filled with people in slacks and smiles. Ewan stood in the doorway, a silhouette of the only man I wanted to see. Jen squeezed my hand and mouthed, "This is your night."
Drake Nichols was there too, and he came smiling, arms wide like a man welcomed home. He had friends who drank and clapped and called him a rising star. He walked up to my paintings and smiled like he’d always meant to be there.
"Drake," I heard a voice say behind me. It was a curator, pleasantly surprised. "Who helped you with this collection? The technique is familiar."
Drake's smile slipped. He didn't open his mouth fast enough. I felt a chill I couldn't name.
I had suspected something oddly small and sharp about him for months—hints of a different agenda. Years earlier he had played at being kind, then distant, then a savior. People performed in the world; actors changed scripts.
Then I found a file. A string of messages that Drake had sent to someone—messages that suggested he'd been in touch with a gallery in another city, offering my work as "collaboration" while claiming credit. Evidence piled like stray brushes.
I did what people do when they can't hold the rage inside any longer: I stopped and told the truth.
"Excuse me," I said into the microphone the curator handed me. My voice trembled but reached the ears of every person in the room.
"We're supposed to be looking at these paintings tonight because they're mine," I said. "I made these. I sent them to a curator long ago—only one gallery should have them. I didn't consent to having my work handed to other people. And yet—"
I turned and faced Drake. He looked like a man suddenly caught during a private rehearsal. His laughter was too bright.
"Drake," I said. "Tell them how you labeled my work as your project. Tell them who handed over my drafts to your 'contact.'"
He blinked. "What are you talking about?"
A pause. A ripple through the crowd. Somebody clicked a phone camera on. Faces tilted, seeking. Jen's face was pale with worry; behind her, guests whispered.
"You told the curator in Northport you were the artist," I said. "You showed him my sketches and claimed them as drafts for your concept. You called them 'our collaboration' when I didn't know. You lied. You profited by offering my work without permission. You told friends my pieces were an experiment under your name."
"That's not true!" Drake barked. "I—Caroline, you must be mistaken. I only—"
The room filled with murmurs. The curator's expression shifted from interest to puzzled. A woman in a floral dress gasped. "Is that true?"
"No," Drake said again. Denial came fast, like a practiced habit.
"Then explain these messages," I said, and took a breath that sounded like a broken bell. "Explain the emails you sent from your account—emails offering ten pieces to that Northport show, saying 'I found these gems—young artist, raw talent, working under my direction.' Explain the messages to my old professor where you wrote, 'I'll cover the fees, I'll host, I'll manage the show.'"
A man at the back clicked his phone and displayed the emails. Faces leaned forward. Drake's mouth opened and closed. His confident posture seemed to deflate.
"Caroline," he said, suddenly small, a shadow of the swagger gone. "I didn't—it's not like you think."
"You told people my story as if it were your own," Jen whispered, voice raw. "You told lies about her background to make a selling point."
"Stop," Drake commanded, but his voice had lost its steam.
He tried to laugh it off. "People take credit for things all the time. We all want to sell a story."
"Not by handing over someone's work," I said. "Not by stealing drafts. Not by putting a name where it doesn't belong."
The crowd reacted. A man near the door shook his head. A woman took pictures. A teenager shouted, "That's theft!" A fellow artist stepped forward and said, "You can't do that. Credit is everything."
Drake's face paled. Anger drained into fear. For the first time I saw him crumble from inside—smugness to panic to pleading. He reached for his phone and thumbed a message to someone. He tried to speak to the curator privately, but the curator pushed away.
"Are you saying you did this?" the curator asked, more sharply.
Drake's voice turned to protest. "I didn't mean harm. I only wanted to help."
"You can't 'help' by stealing," a woman hissed. "You can't 'help' by lying."
I watched Drake's expression twitch from arrogance to confusion to the sharp horror of being caught. He tried to insist he was part of the community, that mistakes happen. He tried to show receipts of purchases, witnesses who would vouch for him. The witnesses were thin and shuffled their feet.
A cluster of people gathered in a ring of whispers. Someone pushed a folded letter across the curator's hand—the one I had printed out proving the Northport correspondence. The curator scanned it and looked at Drake. "We have to take this seriously," he said.
Drake's bravado collapsed into apology like a broken vase. "I'm sorry," he stammered. "I—Caroline, I'm sorry."
"You took what was mine," I said. "You told people a story about my life that wasn't true to sell paintings."
"Please," he said. "It wasn't meant to—"
A chorus of voices rose. A woman in the crowd said, "You should refund the galleries. You should apologize publicly. You should never be allowed to represent someone like that."
"You're asking for ruin," Drake pleaded to no one and everyone.
"That wasn't my choice," I said. "You made the choice."
He sank into himself. He was trying to plead, to explain, but the people around him were already analyzing every message and receipt. Security cleared a small space and dragged him aside. Someone called his main patron; someone else called another gallery.
"You swore you'd support me," Jen said quietly into my hand. "You shouldn't have to go through this."
I nodded, my hands trembling.
Drake disappeared into a knot of murmuring people and phones. The gallery staff closed the door politely and asked everyone to leave; the curator called the police to report possible fraud. Cameras still hummed like a witness drone.
He was publicly humiliated in the best possible way: exposed, stripped of his pretense, unable to perform. He tried to bargain, to explain, to demand he wasn't a thief. People took photos. Conversations stopped mid-breath. Some muttered about deceit; some applauded me for my courage. A few of Drake's acquaintances turned away as if to wash their hands of him.
At the end, his voice thinned to a plea. "Caroline. Jen. I'm sorry."
"You should be," I said.
He flinched as if the words had weight. He left the building with his face burned by humiliation. No one shook his hand. No one defended him. The patrons who once laughed with him now walked past, eyes averted.
As we stood outside, the winter air bit my cheeks. Ewan's hand found mine. "You did the right thing," he said softly.
"I didn't want that for him," I admitted.
"Some people make choices. They have to face them," Ewan said. He squeezed my fingers like a pledge.
That night, messages poured in—friends, artists, strangers who had seen a clip. Many praised me. Some criticized. But the worst of it—Drake's lies—were in the open now. He had to live with the collapse he'd made.
After that night, things changed. People came to see my work because of its worth, not because of a gossip rumor. Galleries respected the provenance of each canvas. Drake faded into an apology column no one read.
Ewan and I grew in small increments: studio nights, slow dinners, shared afternoons at the museum. He learned when to give space and when to come close. He stopped pretending that distance was a solution to everything. He bought a second-hand camera and took photographs of my hands while I worked, claiming they made "good study."
"You never smile like you used to," I joked once, noticing how he held a pose while I painted.
"Maybe I'm trying to learn how to," he said.
We moved from small habit to a life with agreements: text before you come by, don't leave without telling the other, be honest when scared. We learned to be clumsy and still come back.
Years later, on a rainy evening, I took out the old box lined with newspaper: the same hairdryer Ewan had bought me the first winter. The plastic had yellowed slightly; the cord had a nick. I smiled and showed it to him.
"You still keep that?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. "Because it's the first time someone brought me a thing I needed without asking for something in return."
He laughed. "I was trying to be practical."
"You were trying to be kind," I corrected. "And you still are."
We had less drama, more art, and the kind of steady warmth that belonged to shared tea and splattered studio aprons. I painted more and sold pieces, not because someone else hyped them but because they belonged to me. Jen married—Drake's fancy life fell away and she found someone else who loved her without the performance—and she still hugged me like I was a lighthouse.
Once, in a small café, I overheard a woman say, "Who is that artist? The woman in the floral dress—the one with the patient man and the hairdryer story." I laughed. Someone else looked and smiled in recognition, like a secret passed on.
"Do you ever regret telling the truth?" I asked Ewan once as we walked home, the street lamps puddling on the pavement.
"No," he said. "Difficult truths keep us honest. They keep us ourselves."
"Even if people clap or hiss?" I asked.
"They clap for courage," he said. "They hiss for discomfort."
We walked on, hands linked, my floral dress swishing in the rain. The hairdryer hummed quietly in a box upstairs, a small relic of the night everything changed.
I kept that hairdryer—old, warm, smelling faintly of his soap—like a promise. It dried my hair and, in its stubborn smallness, reminded me of the man who'd shown up in an alley and refused to let me be injured by anyone else.
The city kept moving. I kept painting. Ewan kept returning to my door, always with a coffee and a smile. We didn't make grand vows every day, but we made a life that was honest, where hands fit together like the pieces of a canvas finally laid down.
One night, after a long day of painting, I hung up a new canvas: a storm-blue field where two figures walked side by side, one with a small box in hand—a hairdryer, maybe; a silly object that made everything ordinary and safe.
"Is that us?" Ewan asked.
"Maybe," I said. "Maybe it's the hairdryer."
He pulled me close and kissed me. "Then this is us—floral dresses, hairdryers, and stubborn honesty."
"That's enough," I said, laughing.
The night pressed like soft cloth around us. The hairdryer sat in its box upstairs, quiet and warm. The floral dress fluttered at the window like a flag.
We slept with the window open, the cold night letting in small bright sounds of the city.
I thought of all the times I had felt abandoned and of all the hands that had helped me stand up again. If I could pick one image to hold onto forever, it would be Ewan's hand, steady on my shoulder, the hairdryer humming, and Jen's bright laugh in the background.
"Stay," he said in the thin hours before dawn.
"Always," I answered, and the word settled between us like a borrowed sunrise.
The End
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