Sweet Romance11 min read
The Girl with the Small Bun and the Big Suit
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It was a clear April morning. The sun felt kind, like a warm hand on my shoulder. I had an important meeting in forty minutes and my driver was inching forward at the intersection when I saw the old woman on the zebra crossing.
"Stop the car," I told the driver without thinking much. "Go check on her. If she's hurt, get her to the hospital."
The driver hesitated. "But boss," he said slowly, eyes on the crowd, "what if she’s trying to cheat someone? These things happen."
"There are cameras," I said. "We can prove anything. Go."
He still didn't move.
Then she walked in front of us.
She had her hair in a messy little bun on top of her head. Her shirt was white, the suit jacket too big for her. "Excuse me," she said, and the sound of her voice was small but clear. "Let me help."
I watched her kneel by the old woman's side and take out her phone. She turned on the camera and spoke softly, checking the old woman's pulse, testing her eyes, guiding the woman to sit up. People watched, whispering, but none of them stepped forward.
"Come on," the girl said to the old woman. "Let's get you to the curb. You can rest there until the ambulance comes."
"Are you sure?" someone asked.
"I'm sure," she said. "Just lift with me. One, two, three."
They moved. The crowd parted. A black car pulled up before ours could. The old woman and the girl got inside. The girl helped fasten the old woman's seatbelt.
I didn't go after them. I had a meeting. I headed to the office. But I couldn't stop thinking about the small woman in the big suit.
"She handled that like she knew what she was doing," I told myself. "She did not look like a child."
Her bun stayed in my head all day.
When she walked into the interview room two weeks later, I recognized the bun immediately.
She was breathing a little fast. Her palms were damp. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm nervous."
"Close your eyes. Breathe in for ten seconds. Open them after." I said the phrase like a reflex from my high school speech coach's voice. She obeyed. Her shoulders dropped.
"Better?" I asked.
"Much better," she said, and she smiled like a small, polite sun.
"What made you apply for an assistant position?" I asked. "You look... young."
She blinked. "I like order," she said. "I like helping people. I like being where things happen."
"You're not afraid of details?" I asked.
"No," she said. "I like details."
"Then you're hired." I said it in a moment of certainty, half moved, half amused.
"I—" she stammered. "Thank you."
She was pretty. She was careful with her words. But the real thing that sold me was what I had already seen—her habit of doing the right thing without waiting for somebody to tell her to do it.
I don't like hiring on looks alone. I don't like hiring on charm. But sometimes the two come together with skill and you end up with someone you trust with the small keys to important doors.
She grew quickly. She learned the rhythms of the office. She learned how to calm me down before meetings. She learned which client liked humor and which one responded to facts. In three years she was not the small girl in the big suit anymore. She wore the suit with certainty. She carried herself like someone who had been allowed to grow.
"You're good," I told her more than once. "Better than I expected."
"That's because you expect too little of me," she answered once, with a wink. "You should know by now."
"Maybe I like underestimating you," I said, though my voice was softer than usual.
When the other male assistant left to get married and settle in his hometown, I had to rearrange duties. "Mia," I said one morning in the elevator, "I want you to be my chief assistant."
"Chief assistant?" She made a face like a child asking for candy. "Do I have to wear a crown?"
"You already wear one," I said. "Just wear a nicer suit."
She shook her head. "I don't want shares," she said one day when I offered company stock as an incentive. "I don't want to be bound to a desk for life. I want my life free."
"Then I'll raise your salary," I said. "And don't run away when you get a chance to sleep."
She laughed. "You're very bossy, Henri."
"Am I?"
"Yes." She grinned.
She told little lies. Not about work — about life. Once she told me she couldn't come because a friend was getting married. The hotel receipts and the faces in her social photos said otherwise.
"Are you having fun?" I asked when I caught her in the KTV hallway, laughing with a group of women.
She froze. "I—" she tried to hide, then flushed. "We were celebrating."
"Celebrating what?"
"Friend's last night," she said. "The wedding."
"You could have invited me," I teased.
"Would you have come?" she asked, wide-eyed.
"Maybe," I said. "If you promised to be on your best behavior."
"Deal."
She wasn't perfect. She lied in small playful ways sometimes. She took the afternoon off and said it was to see family; she took the afternoon off and went drinking with friends. I could scold her, but I often let it go. I liked watching that mischievous side of her. I liked making her make up excuses. I liked the way she would look when she thought she had fooled me.
"You're letting her get away with too much," Gary David said to me once over coffee.
"I know," I said. "Maybe it's because I want to see how she'll come back."
"Or maybe you like watching her run," Gary said. "But don't let her run too far."
"I won't," I replied.
There were nights we worked late, when the office hummed and the city outside stewed in fluorescent light, and she would sit across from me and ask about the way I got started. I told her stories of long nights and wrong bets and how the first investor almost made me give up.
"I envy you," she said once, voice tiny. "You keep trying even after failing."
"It keeps me alive," I said. "And sometimes it gives me the chance to meet people who change my days."
"Change my days?" she repeated.
"Yes." I looked at her.
She was quiet then. "Who?"
I didn't say anything.
When drinks mixed badly and I landed in the hospital with a bleeding stomach, she was the first person to find out.
"Henri, you should stop drinking," she said when I was released. "You can't work like this."
"Promise?" I asked. I hated promises. But I wanted to promise her something.
"I promise," she said, but she was not sure whether I meant it.
One night after a long client dinner, I found her tipsy in the back room. Her makeup was running, and she hugged me suddenly.
"You look lonely," she said, half-drunk and earnest. "Like someone."
"Like who?" I asked.
"For example," she said slowly, "Shen Yan."
My heart stumbled. I swallowed. "Who is Shen Yan?" I managed.
She blinked. "Your boss. Your—um, what do you call it? Your senior."
She laughed at herself.
"Shen Yan?" I said. The name landed like a coin in a bowl. It felt heavy and strange. "You mean me."
"You?" She squinted at me. "You're not like other men."
"How am I not like other men?" I asked.
"You're—different," she said. "Quiet, serious, a little scary. Not in a bad way. I thought you'd never like anyone."
"Why would you think that?"
"My sister said you like business more than people," she said. "And you always have that look... the look that thinks."
"So when you said Shen Yan, you meant me?" I asked.
"Maybe you," she said, and then, suddenly, she kissed me.
She kissed me like a child who had snuck a sweet and was enjoying it. Her lips were warm and reckless. "If you kiss me," she said between breaths, "you have to be responsible."
"Responsible?" I smiled despite myself. "What does responsibility look like?"
"It looks like breakfast," she said, grinning. "And taking me home when I'm drunk."
"That's easy," I told her. "Everything else might be harder."
We crossed a line that night that felt both lightning and a familiar path. I had been careful for years, keeping business and life tidy. She brought a mess I learned to like. I wanted to be more than a boss to her. I wanted to be a man beside her.
The morning after, she left without a word.
"I won't run away," I told my reflection in the mirror. I didn't believe it.
She sent me a message hours later: "I've packed your shirts for the week."
"Are you coming back?" I typed.
"Maybe," she answered with a smiley face.
I was still learning her words. She didn't always say exactly what she meant.
When I found a pack of emergency contraceptives in her bag later, the feeling that rose in my chest was hot and sharp. I felt both foolish and furious.
"Why didn't you tell me?" I demanded.
"It was a mistake," she said. "I panicked. I didn't want to be selfish."
"Selfish for what?"
"For being my messy self," she said. "For needing things."
"Then need me," I said. "But don't hide things."
"I don't like being a burden," she said quickly. "You have so much to manage. I don't want to add to it."
"You already did," I said, softer now.
She took a week's leave. I thought she would stay home. Instead, she left early in the morning the day after, and the apartment was empty when I brought breakfast.
I tracked her. It was a small, ridiculous chase: a taxi here, a coffee shop there. I found her with a man who said he was her ex, Dawson Curtis. He hugged her in a way that made me see why she had been tangled.
"You don't have to stay," I told Dawson later when I saw him with her at the corner. "Don't bother her."
He gave me a small look and walked away.
Later I sent a text: "Come with me to the Maldives."
"Why?" she typed back after a pause.
"Because I don't want you to leave while I stand still."
She didn't answer for an hour. Then she sent a single emoji: a plane.
She came.
Those days in the Maldives felt like an escape that could be bought. She laughed without worrying about morning reports. We swam, we ate, we fell into easy routines like two people who had known each other's small habits forever.
"I almost wanted to tell Dawson I would go back to him," she admitted one night as we watched the moon scatter on the sea. "But then I thought of your face when you thought I had left."
"And?" I asked.
"And I wanted a different face to be my safe place," she said.
"Good," I said. "Because I want to be that."
Back home, things moved faster. I proposed in the cherry blossom garden, in that ordinary themed way I'd rehearsed in my head a dozen times. The petals fell like gentle snow.
"Kneel," I said, because I wanted the theater of it, the hush, the sign.
She cried like a small rabbit. "Yes," she whispered.
On our wedding day, she surprised everyone.
"You are a graveyard of love," she told the guests, half-joking. "But it's a graveyard with a disco. I'm inviting you to dance on my headstone."
"You're strange," I laughed into her hair.
"You're boring," she shot back. "And that's why I like you."
"Because I'm boring?" I asked.
"Because you make boring feel like forever," she said.
She made me believe that life could have joyful little tricks.
We were married, and the world did not rearrange itself. We still had meetings, bills, and nights of too many emails. But there were small acts of care that changed everything.
"Henri," she said one morning in bed after a bad dream, "what if we had a baby?"
"A baby would ruin my sleep," I said, pretending.
"Then don't have a baby," she said. "For now, let's get a dog."
"A dog would bark in meetings," I countered.
"Then it can attend Zoom," she said.
Those were the kinds of jokes that filled our days.
Two weeks after the honeymoon, she asked for leave again. "Xiaojing is pregnant," she told me, voice bright. "She needs me to come along to the checkup."
"Is she my child?" I asked with mock suspicion.
"No," she said, shaking her head like a bobble doll. "Of course not."
"Then let someone else go," I said, half-serious.
She put her face close to mine: "Henri, can I go?"
"You can," I answered. "But you must promise to bring me back a photo of you being brave."
"Fine," she said. "But you have to promise something too."
"What?"
"That you'll stop pretending the office is the only house in your life."
"I can't promise to stop pretending," I said. "But I can promise to pull the curtains when I kiss you in my office."
She laughed. "That's an oddly specific promise."
"It has precedent," I said.
"You are so strange," she said.
She left for two days and returned with a grin and stories of fetal heartbeats and giddy mothers. Life went on.
She told me later, when we were in the kitchen making simple eggs, "You know, when we were young, my mother said, 'Never marry a man who can't laugh.'"
"And?" I asked.
"And I said, 'Then I won't marry anyone.' Then I met you." She smiled and leaned her head on my shoulder.
"You married me anyway," I said.
"I did," she said. "And now you're my job and my husband."
One winter afternoon she came home and put down a small plastic box on the kitchen counter.
"What's that?" I asked.
She looked at me, eyes wide and a little afraid. "I thought maybe—"
"Maybe what?"
"I thought maybe I was pregnant," she whispered.
"Did you take a test?" I asked.
She handed me the box. "I took two."
I opened it like a man opening a letter that has both good and unsure news. Two lines, one faint, one bold. The result was clear.
She laughed, and then she cried.
"I'm not ready," she said, breathless. "But I'm so happy."
"Then we aren't in a race," I said. "We will make a plan."
"Henri—"
"Yes?"
"Promise you won't be a boring father."
"I promise to be boring sometimes and surprising at other times," I said.
She hugged me, and the small bun she still wore now sometimes messy from life, pressed against my chest. I felt a weight like a secret settling and felt ready.
There were hard nights. There were misunderstandings. There were mistakes that made us step back and breathe. But there was also laughter in the dark, when one of us woke in the night and the other simply held hands.
"Do you ever regret it?" she asked one night, voice soft.
"Regret doing what?" I asked.
"Marrying me. Being patient with me. Giving me time."
I slept on my stomach that night so I could watch her breathing. "I regret nothing," I said in the dark. "I only wish we had met sooner."
"Then why didn't we?" she asked.
"Because otherwise we wouldn't have this now," I whispered.
She laughed and kissed my shoulder.
One day, a rumor started circulating in the office: a younger girl accused of sleeping with a boss had gotten the job. The whisper reached my ears like a small stone in calm water. People looked with curiosity, then judgment. I met it with a slow smile.
"She earned it," I said aloud where anyone could hear. "And if anyone wants to gossip, tell me to get you a better seat at the table."
They laughed, eager to see what I would do. She came to the meeting room, head high, bun slightly messy, and sat beside me.
"You're my wife," I told the room, like a casual fact. "And she's my assistant. That's true and also not an explanation needed."
"You make it sound so simple," she said, but her eyes shone.
"Sometimes it is," I said.
People left. Office life passed through seasons. And every time she lied in small ways, I let her. Every time she told the truth that mattered, I held her tighter.
"Do you remember the day I first saw you help the old woman?" I asked her one evening as we cleaned the office together.
She smiled. "You saw me?"
"I was in the car," I said. "I thought you were a hero back then."
"I'm still clumsy," she said. "But I'll try."
"You already are."
She looked at me. "Are you going to keep acting like you don't want me or are you finally going to let me be your messy self?"
"I want you," I said simply. "Messes, bun, lies about weddings, everything."
She wrapped her arms around my waist. "Good," she said. "Because I like making you smile."
Months later, we sat in that same cherry blossom garden under a different sky. We had baby news and a small crib boxed in the corner of the bedroom, and sometimes I woke and listened to her breathing.
That afternoon she leaned close and whispered, "Promise me something."
"Anything."
"Promise you'll still pull the curtain when you kiss me in the office."
"I promise."
We stood. I pulled the curtain around my office window and we kissed like two people who had learned to close the rest of the world for a small, private thing.
The small bun on her head came apart and strands fell like soft confetti. A paper crane she had folded for me years ago sat on the shelf catching the sun. Outside, the city went on. Inside, it felt like a private season.
"I love you," I said, tasting the phrase like a spice I hadn't used enough.
"You're my boring man," she said, laughing. "And I'll keep breaking your rules."
"I wouldn't have it any other way," I said.
We walked out together, hands linked, past the desk where I kept the folded shirts she'd packed years ago. The office smelled of coffee and paper, and she tugged me by the tie like a child playing a grown-up game.
As we left, I held her hand and thought of the very first time I noticed that messy little bun and that oversized suit. I remembered the old woman and the calm with which a small girl made a decision.
I remembered that sometimes the important things arrive without warning at an intersection, and if you don't move, they pass.
I moved then, every day after that.
The End
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