Sweet Romance14 min read
The Gardenia and the Tide
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I wake up with sand in my hair and a taste of salt still on my lips. I blink, and the fluorescent lights above the hospital bed are too bright. My mother sits at my side, wringing her hands like she can twist the accident back into nothing. I try to say something and my chest burns.
"Are you thirsty?" she asks, voice small.
"No," I answer. "I'm fine."
"Don't try to be brave," she says, and her throat makes a sound like a sob that didn't break.
She's gone by the time the door opens again. I turn my head and there he is—Bowen Mendez—standing in the doorway like a photograph I can't fold up. He looks older than the last time I saw him. His jaw is tight. His hair is a little too neat. He moves forward, then stops beside the bed, hands shoved into his jacket pockets.
"You were swimming alone?" he asks, trying for calm.
"I could swim," I say. "Someone cut me off. I was stuck."
His face changes. "You—" He draws in, then says the thing I already feel flattening inside me. "I thought Sophie was in more danger."
"Bowen." My voice doesn't rise. "You chose her."
He flinches like I've slapped him. "It wasn't like that."
"It was like that," I say.
For nine years Bowen has been the map I used to find my way home. Our parents worked together. We went to the same schools. We shared jokes and the kind of silence that meant we understood each other without speaking. He used to be someone who would make me laugh even when he teased me. He used to fix things for me. He used to be my anchor.
"Do you remember the vase?" I ask.
He looks puzzled.
"The one I broke at my mom's when I was ten," I say. "You took the blame."
He remembers. His mouth tightens. He used to be the kind of boy who would stand in front of a scolding mother and say, "It was me," so I wouldn't get in trouble. I thought that made him good.
After Sophie came into our lives, everything shifted like the tide.
"Bowen, why did you stay with her the whole time?" I ask now, "at the hotpot? At the conference? When she cried in class?"
He swallows. "She's sensitive."
"You're sensitive to her," I say. "Not me."
He tries to reach for me. "Kira, don't make this so small."
"It's not small," I say. "You left me to die."
He makes a sound like he wants to argue, but then his face collapses into a softer expression. "I didn't know she couldn't swim," he says too quietly.
"You didn't know?" I repeat. "You chose her when I called your name. You chose her when my legs were stuck in a net."
He looks at his hands.
"I don't like you anymore," I tell him. "I already stopped liking you when you stopped being mine."
He looks as if the color has been taken out of him. "But I still—"
"Don't," I cut him off. "Don't say it."
He stumbles like someone who hasn't learned how to hold his grief.
"Please," he begs. "Kira, I'm sorry."
"I don't want your apologies," I say. "I want you to understand what it feels like to be the one left behind."
He goes gray. He tries to protest, to say it wasn't meant that way, and his words fall away.
People call Sophie Henderson the perfect student. She dresses well, speaks in soft, measured tones, smiles like a museum portrait. She had the scholarship, the reputation, the careful words that made professors lean forward. When she walked into my life, Bowen's attention slid to her as easily as a tide to the shore. It took me time, shock, and a near-death to see that the shore wasn't mine anymore.
"She can't be that perfect," I told myself then. "No one can be."
Two months after I woke up in the hospital, the truth began to show itself in small, ugly pieces.
"Did you see her report?" a girl from my class asked one afternoon. "It's... strange."
"Strange how?" I replied.
"Her last assignment—it's like it was copied. The writing is the same as someone else's."
I walked away, thinking of Sophie sitting across from me in the cafeteria, politely declining the spicy hotpot and letting Bowen make sure her spoon was never too hot.
I didn't want to believe it, until the paper in front of me proved everything: the scores misaligned, the timestamps edited, the lines of work that were identical to another student's. I held the report and the world condensed into a hard, brittle thing.
"They're accusing me of plagiarism?" I said when they told me in the dean's office.
"Not accusing," the dean said. "There are questions."
"And Sophie?" I asked.
The dean's face held a stale sympathy. "She wrote a letter. She said you were trying to make trouble."
"You put my work and hers together," I said.
"Why would she do that?" the dean asked, bewildered.
"Why would she?" I echoed.
When I confronted Sophie the first time, she looked at me like a statue surprised by dirt. "You're making this personal," she said. "You should be careful."
"Personal?" I laughed. "You take what's mine and make me look like a thief."
"You're jealous," she said simply.
"Jealous of what?"
"Of being noticed," she answered. "Of being expected to do more."
I was supposed to be humiliated and disappear. That was the plan. Students muttered and looked in the wrong places. But on that afternoon, in the hallway outside the dean's office, I found the one piece of evidence I needed.
"It was this," I said, sliding a printout across the desk. "Look at the timestamp."
Elias Cardenas was the one who took the photo: a senior who'd pulled me out of the water that day and left only a faint memory of his shadow in my mind. He had been the stranger who seemed to appear from nowhere and lift me, heavy and limp, to the sand. He had wrapped me in his coat and carried me to the medical tent without so much as a question.
"You're telling me you had a photo?" the dean asked, eyebrows raised.
"Yes," I said. "A photo that proves I was working on my paper before the submission that she stole. The timestamps don't lie."
The room was full of people now. Students crowded the doorway. Sophie was pale as a sheet, clutching her bag.
"You set me up," she hissed at me under her breath.
"I set you up?" I echoed. "You set me up."
Then I walked out of the office with my evidence and Sophie on my heels like a shadow. We stepped into the courtyard and she tried to drag me back into a private corner. She grabbed my wrist. "If you ruin me—" she began, and the threat was soft but electric.
I pulled free. "I will show what you did," I told her. "I will make sure everyone sees."
"People will believe me," she said. "They always do."
"There are cameras," I said. "And timestamps. And people who saw you work with other students' papers. You can't just play a victim and expect the world to bow."
She laughed like a bubble popping. "You'll be sorry."
"Maybe," I said. "But I'm tired of being the one who doesn't fight back."
We walked to the faculty building because that is where truth likes to hide under piles of paper. The dean called a meeting. Word spread. Students trickled in. The room filled with the fog of gossip and a hunger that makes people spectators first and humans second.
"Miss Henderson," the dean said when Sophie sat down and opened her mouth to speak. "We have evidence here that suggests academic dishonesty."
Sophie froze. "This is slander," she hissed. "You can't—"
"Is it slander," I asked, "if the timestamps match and your assignment contains whole paragraphs identical to another student's submission?"
Her lips went white. She turned to Bowen. "Bowen," she said.
He had not expected to be called upon. He was sitting there, looking small in a way I'd never seen him before. "I—" he started.
"It was your father's donation," the dean continued, oblivious to the soft electric current between Sophie and Bowen. "We have records that show preferential treatment in the scholarship process coinciding with that donation."
It was quiet as a grave.
"The scholarship will be suspended pending investigation," the dean said. "We will convene a committee."
Sophie cried then, staggered and fragile, but not with real tears. Her hands were manicured; the cry was the sound of someone accustomed to using performance as armor.
"You think this is the end?" she asked, voice brittle. "You think you'll win?"
"No," I say now, sitting in my hospital bed, remembering that courtyard. "I don't think. I know."
They arranged a public hearing, a day when everyone in the faculty and many students could come. I wanted it public. I wanted the truth to be a parade that forced everyone's eyes to look.
On the day of the hearing the auditorium smelled like cheap coffee and nervous perfume. Sophie sat on the stage with an army of people who had once smiled at her and whispered. Bowen sat in the front row, hands clenched. Elias Cardenas—my rescuer and the one who later kept showing up like quiet sunlight—sat a few rows back, watching. The dean sat at the table with his copy of the report. Cameras from the student paper were set up on tripods.
"Miss Henderson," the professor began, "we have before us documents indicating that you submitted a report with sections copied from another student's work and that there were irregularities in the scholarship nomination process involving donations and grades."
Sophie looked up at him, a practiced innocence on her face. "This is wrong," she said. "I studied hard. I earned my scholarship. Kira is hurting me because she is jealous."
The room hummed. Someone gasped. A few students clapped.
"Do you have proof?" Sophie asked, eyes sweeping, trying to find an ally in the crowd.
"I do," I said. I stood and walked to the table with the printed timestamps and the history of edits. "This was edited. These timestamps show the file was created earlier than Miss Henderson's submission. This email chain proves she worked with faculty members outside official channels."
"Where did you get this?" she demanded.
"From colleagues who noticed discrepancies," I answered. "From students who compared files. And from the system logs."
Her face shifted. "You can't show my documents," she hissed.
"I can and I will," I said. I handed the folder to the dean. "And I have testimony that my work was copied."
One by one, people came forward. A student who had once sat near Sophie during a lab said, "We saw her copy." Another, a quiet girl with ink-stained fingers, said, "She coached my friend on how to delete edit histories."
Sophie began to look small. Her calm crumbled into anger.
"You're lying!" she shrieked. "You're ruining me!"
The crowd reacted with a low murmur. Cameras whirred. Bowen's face went ashen. I watched him shrink, his hands trembling on his knees. He did not stand to defend Sophie. That was the first crack.
"Mr. Mendez," the dean said softly, "we also have records that suggest a donation was made by your family in exchange for influence over the scholarship allocation."
Bowen's head snapped up. "What?" His voice cracked. "No. My father—"
"Your father's company contributed funds earmarked in part for that scholarship," the dean said. "There are emails indicating your family suggested candidates."
Bowen fell back in his chair like someone punched him. He tried to speak, then looked at Sophie, who stared back with that practiced, defensive rage.
"You told me she would explain," he whispered. "You promised me—"
"What do you mean?" Sophie snapped.
"You told me you'd make things right," he said, and for the first time, his voice wasn't a refuge. "You said if I helped... you would—"
Sophie looked like all the blood had left her face. Then she started to cry, but it was not the sincere kind that breaks and folds. It was the crocodile kind, staged and sharp.
People leaned forward. Students who had once envied Sophie now watched with a new interest that felt like hunger. I felt my chest go hollow and steady. This was what I wanted: their faces, their eyes.
"Why did you do it?" one of the professors asked.
Sophie snapped her head toward me. "She forced me," she spat. "She provoked me into it."
"You bribed professors to change your grades," another student shouted from the back. "You forged pages."
The room broke into a chorus of accusations.
Sophie leapt to her feet like a trapped animal. "How dare you!" she screamed. "You think you're better than me? You think you're clean? Without the scholarship I'd be nothing!"
"Then why did you cheat?" the professor asked, calm and dull as a blade.
The color left her face and someone in the back whispered, "She admitted it."
Sophie laughed—an ugly, sharp sound. "You people will believe anything!"
"Sit down," the dean ordered. "This hearing is over for now. The committee will decide and will publish its findings."
"But—" Sophie tried to protest.
Outside the room, a crowd gathered like vultures. People pointed fingers. Phones lit up the air with camera flashes. Bowens' father's name started to be mentioned quietly, the rumor becoming a blade.
The punishment was twofold. For Sophie, the school announced immediate suspension pending further disciplinary action. Her scholarship was revoked that day. Evidence of fabricated grades and tampered files was placed in the committee's hands. The dean told the press that he was "deeply disappointed." People said the word "fake" like it was contagious.
For Bowen the consequences were different but public all the same. His father faced pressure and returned the funds. The college refunded the donation and announced it would refuse future contributions from his family. Bowen's father, furious at the scandal and afraid for his firm's reputation, sent Bowen to study abroad for a year and stripped him of positions he had been promised in the family business. Bowen was made a public example of how privilege could fracture.
Sophie wept and raged. The punishment didn't break neatly; it shredded.
"How could you?" she cried in the courtyard where a few students crowded around. "You can't take everything from me!"
"Why did you do it?" one of Sophie's classmates asked bluntly.
"I needed him to see me!" she screamed. "I needed him to—"
"You made your own bed," another girl answered. She sounded older than her years, hard. "No one put the pencil in your hand but you."
Sophie fell to the ground, hands braced on the cold concrete, and then, suddenly, she rose like an animal and stormed away. People watched her go; their faces were a mixture of pity and schadenfreude.
Bowen's punishment unfolded more quietly, but it was public. At the announcement, his father stood before cameras and apologized for "errors in judgment" and pulled the money back. A crowd of students watched him sign the paperwork. Bowen sat in the corner, no longer shielded. His friends avoided him. He had been shown to be complicit, and the safety he'd assumed he'd always had—his family, their money, the little privileges—crumbled like old sandcastles.
During Sophie's public fall, Bowen's reaction moved through stages everyone could see. First he looked closed and small, like someone who had been walked through a trap he didn't build. Then he became defensive, trying to explain away the emails and the guilt. When that failed, he pulled back into denial, making stammering excuses. Finally he broke down completely, face crumpled, speaking apologies directed at me and at the whole room. "I didn't know," he said, over and over. "I thought—"
His voice lost its conviction and then his composure fell with a sound like breaking glass.
Around him, the crowd's reactions oscillated. Some students shook their heads with sharp, pleased looks. Others were quieter; a few reached out and touched his shoulder as if pity were something they could give. Cameras recorded those faces. Later, clips of his apologies would spread across campus social feeds and be replayed with commentary.
Sophie left the university within a month. She didn't wait for the formal expulsion. Someone in the crowd whispered that her grandmother was sick and that her family had been ashamed. She packed her things and left one cold morning, box held under her arm, head down. She didn't look back.
Bowen's exile was different. His father escorted him to the airport as students watched him leave. Bowen said nothing. He didn't try to stop the car. His face had that particular kind of empty that comes when you realize the things you thought were solid were only covers for rot.
The professor who accepted bribes was fired. His name became a rumor, a cautionary tale in faculty meetings. Parents called for stronger oversight. The scholarship program was suspended. There were inquiries and statements and lots of careful words.
When it was over, when Sophie had disappeared and Bowen had left and the dust had settled into quiet that felt like the residue after an argument, I stood on the sand at the same beach and watched the tide.
They tell you the world is black and white, that the guilty are punished and the innocent restored. Real life is not so clean. The punishment scene was public, yes. There were tears and phones and the snap of cameras. There were speeches and retractions and reputations reduced to pieces. Sophie reacted as if she had performed for a role she had rehearsed. Bowen's face went through grief and denial and finally collapse. The bystanders whispered and judged and judged again.
Afterward everyone seemed to look at me differently. Some looked with sympathy. Some with suspicion—as if anyone who exposes a lie must themselves be stained. My mother called me proud, foolish, brave, and heartless all in a single sentence. The dean thanked me for courage. Elias Cardenas told me, "You were clear and steady. I am proud of you."
"You're the one who saved me," I said one evening, voice so small I thought the ocean might steal it.
He looked at me and smiled once, and it was like sun on cold earth. "You almost drowned," he said. "I couldn't stand the thought."
Later, when he brought me a single white-yellow gardenia and set it on my desk, he whispered, "This is yours. My little gardenia." He didn't say more, but the name stuck to me like warm glue.
Bowen tried to come back into my life and begged for forgiveness in the most public way—standing beneath my dormitory window with a sign, calling my name like a prayer. I didn't go down. He left after a while, shoulders hunched, a boy who had been unmoored.
Elias kept appearing. He would walk beside me like a secret, bringing small things—one time a cup of coffee when the library lights burned late, one time a sweater when snow threatened my ears. He asked for nothing in return. He was not perfect—he had his own past and his own quiet scars—but he was the kind of person who learned how to be present.
There were moments that made my heart beat and my hands go clumsy: the first time he smiled at me without irony, "You look like you're going to fall asleep," he said gently when I nodded off over notes. Once he noticed I was cold and took off his coat without a word. Another time, in the bustle of the auditorium, our fingers brushed and we both flinched like children and then let the contact sit there, warm and patient. A friend whispered, "He never looks at girls like that," when she saw him trace my outline with his eyes.
Elias wasn't the kind to be loud. He rescued me without expecting headlines. We talked about small things—books, music, the way the tide smells in winter— and about the larger ones he let come out in slow, careful sentences.
"Do you forgive Bowen?" he asked once.
"Forgive him?" I echoed. "I don't think that's necessary. I don't like him."
He nodded, not surprised. "Do you regret anything?"
I considered the net around my leg, the cold teeth of the sea, the way the world didn't stop. "I regret trusting him when I thought he was mine," I said.
He touched my hand then, light as a question. "Are you still anchored to the past?"
I laughed softly. "Maybe. Until someone teaches me a different shore."
He smiled and at that moment I felt something shift. I didn't go back to Bowen. I didn't want to. I let the possibility of something new sit like a cup between us: warm, promising, and real.
Months later, winter came with a clear sky and a cold that made your skin hurt. Elias stood outside my building with a small pot: a white gardenia in full bloom. He handed it to me like it was nothing and everything.
"This you called me," he said, and I felt weightless.
I kept the gardenia on my desk during finals. Its scent was stubborn and sweet. When I closed my eyes, I could see the sea and the net and Bowen's face pale as a page. I could also see Elias' steady hands and the way he looked at me with a patience I had never asked for.
Late one afternoon, he sat beside me in that empty classroom and said, "I like you, Kira. I have for a while."
I didn't feel the need to dramatize. I only said, "Then show me."
He smiled. "I will."
He leaned in, and our first kiss was quiet, like a promise whispered into a cold room. It was clumsy and gentle, and when we parted we laughed a little, embarrassed, alive.
"Stay," he said.
"I will," I answered.
Outside, someone called my name and the world pulled back into motion. Inside, the gardenia's scent held the room like a seal. I kept it on my desk for months until one morning, long after the petals had fallen, I placed the stem between the pages of a book. The press of the book kept it safe.
The sea was still there, unpredictable and honest. So were the scars. But on my nightstand lay a dried gardenia and on my palm a faint white scar where the net had cut. The story of being chosen and abandoned and punished and forgiven had written itself into me.
I look at the gardenia in the book now and close it. The dried petals are soft and stubborn. I smile, and the memory of Bowen calling my name across rippling water is duller, safer, like something that happened to someone else.
"Do you ever think about the tide?" Elias asked one night.
"Every day," I said. "It takes and then it gives."
He nodded. "Then let's make sure what it brings next is good."
I put my hand over his, and under the dried petals and the old salt and the scars, I felt steady for the first time in a long while.
The End
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