Sweet Romance11 min read
The Little Deer Eyes and the New Life
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"Ian, you look like you can solve the world's math with that frown," Sigrid said, and lit up the courtyard like a lantern.
"I solve grades, not hearts," I replied. "Sit. Don't you have class in ten minutes?"
She sat anyway. "I wanted to tell you something." Her voice was a small thing, barely above the cicadas and the soft clack of the basketballs from the other side of the yard.
"You can tell me anything," I said, because that was what older brothers did, and she had been that to me for as long as I could remember. "But only if it's not about my lab report."
She smiled the way she always had: bright, mischief somewhere in the corners. "Ian, be serious."
I put down my notebook. "Okay. Serious. What is it?"
She blinked rapidly, huge eyes wet for reasons that were not only the afternoon heat.
"Ian Bartlett," she said—she always called me my full name then, like a warning, like a secret. "Let's be together."
I remember laughing first, the way people laugh when they aren't sure whether to be terrified or thrilled.
"Me? You? We're siblings-in-arms and test partners. Are you sure you mean—"
"I mean I like you," she said, and there was no fumble in her voice. "I like you more than I like bubble tea. Will you be my boyfriend?"
"Ian," she said again, softer, and I heard the spin of my own heart.
"Why are you telling me this now?" I asked. "You're eighteen, I'm a year older. Why now instead of a year from now or ten?"
"Because I couldn't hold it," she said. "Because you were always there and I thought you knew. I thought you'd know."
I felt the world tilt. I felt a chord inside me reach and tremble. The sun was falling and it painted the rims of her lashes in gold.
"Run three kilometers," I said, because that was the only armor I had at the time. "For your punishment."
She huffed. "I can barely do eight hundred!"
"You'll manage. I'll run with you," I said, trying to iron the edges away from the emotion that had just lodged itself in my chest.
We ran. She complained in bursts, then laughed, then squeezed my arm and looked at me with those deer-bright eyes. In the months after, I trained her, pushed her, teased her. In my mind there was a plan I never said aloud: make her better, then be worthy. I set standards for both of us, mostly myself, thinking a polished future was proof enough of love.
"You're pushing too hard," she said sometimes, thinly masking the hurt with a smile. "Stop trying to make me you."
I would scoff. "I'm not making you me. I'm making you ready."
She did every test I set. She complied with school projects and essays, with drills and practice, even with tidying her tiny room to the ridiculous geometry of my standards. When she praised me—"We're so lucky to have you, Ian, you're like a rocket"—I felt both pride and a tearing, small thing inside my chest that I refused to name.
Then I left for graduate school overseas.
"I'll come back," I told her. "I'll come back and then we'll talk. I'll be worthy."
She hugged me at the airport. She said, "You better come back or I'll drag you back with my two hands."
I smiled. "I'll arrive with a tie and better jokes."
She watched me go. I thought of that moment a hundred times while the nights stretched long and foreign. I had chosen what I thought was the right path: excel first, secure the future, then love properly. It was the creed that had never let me sleep until every paper, every grade, every prize was placed on the shelf like an offering.
The first year abroad, I called when I could. She answered sometimes. Other times my calls went unanswered. When I finally came back, the world had shifted in the small ways that matter most.
"Sigrid," Clive told me once over coffee, "she's different."
"Different how?" I asked.
"Smiling, for one. Smiling at the right kind of people. She's got a boyfriend, actually. He studies at A University. Name's Giovanni. You've heard of him."
"I've heard the name," I said. "Everyone at A knows a Giovanni. He has a reputation."
"He treats her like a poem," Clive said. "Like she is carefully invented and the world is lucky to read her."
My chest folded. I tried to tell myself it was nothing. Girls change, men change. Maybe she was trying things. I told myself I had made the right choice.
A few months later I was at a bar downtown. It was late, and I was trying to forget the particular hollowness that had nested in the night. I saw her there by surprise. She was laughing with Giovanni—no, Giovanni was looking at her with a look I knew by mirror and myth. It was the exact look I'd seen reflected in glass a thousand times when I was alone with ambition: this man liked beautiful things, and he possessed confidence like a coat.
That night I intervened, clumsy and probably pitiful. I told her, poorly, that the life she chose for herself should be chosen on purpose. "I like you," I said, the words fell like drunk confession. "Will you go out with me? For a day. Just a day. If it doesn't fit, I walk away."
She tilted her head. Her eyes flickered between shocked and something else. "Ian," she said, quietly. "I... didn't expect this."
"You can say no," I said. "Say no and I'll leave."
She didn't say no. She didn't say yes either. She said, "Let's try the day."
We had a day of awkward engagements, of forced closeness, of making a test of compatibility. I played my role faithfully—kind, considered—but at the end of that day she was alone with Giovanni and something I couldn't map. The next morning she posted a picture with Giovanni on social media; they were smiling like two people from a magazine.
He looked made for her, the way fabric and body fall into place. He was everything I feared she might want. She seemed happy, unspooling laughter into his arms. I told myself to be reasonable: happiness is a good thing, even if it isn't mine to offer.
"There is no ifs," I told myself. "She can be happy. That should be enough."
Back overseas, sleep abandoned me for months. The nights were long and quiet and filled with worst-case scenarios dressed as memories. I fought insomnia with late-night walks and caffeine and the chemical lullaby of pills I bought in a pharmacy. It was there, under the fluorescents by the counter of a small late-night shop, that I met Alicia.
"Do you need help picking?" she asked, smiling as I stared at packages with names I could not pronounce well.
"I don't know what I'm buying," I admitted.
"Those are mild," she said. "They helped me once when I couldn't sleep for three nights. I'm Alicia, by the way."
"Alicia Carson," she said. "And you're Ian? You look like someone who has a whole plan in his pocket."
I laughed, a sound I hadn't heard in a long time. "Who told you that?"
"You did," she said. "You just didn't know it yet."
She had short black hair that lifted at the ends like a question. Her eyes were big and direct, but different from Sigrid's; there was steadiness in them. She asked about my work, my nights, the way my face tightened when I mentioned temperatures and deadlines. Something gentle and forgiving settled around us that night. We kept meeting. She would send me articles that made me think. She would leave long voice notes when I couldn't sleep. When I said I might move on for a job, she didn't beg me to stay. She asked me if staying made me happy, if moving made me grow.
"Make your call for you," she said once over tea. "Not for someone else, not for a what-if."
When I met her at the courtyard of her little apartment on a damp night—rain stitching the air—we spoke like two travelers from adjacent trains: same route, different seats.
"Do you want to come with me when I go to City B?" I asked, clumsy and honest. "I'm being asked to transfer. It's a big opportunity."
"I can't," she said. "My school is here. I'm finishing my degree."
I paused. There was a weight to choose: the same choice I'd once agonized over. The world seemed to like making us decide between the life that is planned and the life that opens you like a map.
That night, I bought too much wine and knocked at Alicia's door.
"Why are you here?" she asked sleep-rough voiced, and then saw my face.
"I can't leave without telling you something," I said.
"Tell me."
"I might go," I said. "And... I didn't know if I wanted to." My voice broke in a way that surprised me. "I mean I don't want to run from things, but I don't want to choose wrong again."
She listened. The rain outside became the world's punctuation. Then she said, "Ian."
I looked up.
"If staying would make you resent, don't stay for guilt. If going would make you lose the person you could walk your life with, don't go for promises."
"You're not making it easy," I said.
"Neither is love," she said.
We moved closer and she took my face in both hands and kissed me. It was ordinary and true. It was the first time I had acted merely for the sake of wanting the person beside me, not as a future-calculation.
When I returned home for good, years later, many things had been shuffled: jobs, small triumphs, failures, the map of my priorities.
Sigrid and Giovanni were still together. Their pairing surprised everyone at our old campus because their early reputations suggested fireworks and tales. But Sigrid had calmed in a way that suits some people. Giovanni—who I had once assumed was a string of small conquests—had shown consistency. They had a quiet that was honest. I told myself then that love evolves in ways we cannot foresee; the cheerful public assumption that spectacular beginnings have to die young is a falsehood.
"Welcome back," Giovanni said when we met in the arrival hall, his voice polite and warm. He did not have the slither of the mythology that I had imagined. "It's good to finally meet you, Ian."
"You too," I said, meaning it.
At the arrival party, the six of us sat across a small round table. Laughter moved like a tide. Clive talked loudly about work and small misadventures. Douglas sat with a half-eaten dessert and nodded at everything. Sigrid walked in hand-in-hand with Giovanni like two people who had learned to be tender to each other's edges.
"You're papa soon," Sigrid said, teasing Clive.
"Don't say such things," Clive protested, blushing. "It's true though. We're expecting. It's strange, but wonderful."
The night felt like a comfortable sweater. I reached out and took Alicia's hand. She squeezed back as if to say: this is what staying together feels like.
We were all a little drunk on reunion and bottles of familiar wine. Games followed—stupid, friendly games. Sigrid got tipsy and dared Giovanni to a small game of truth. The room laughed and eased into confession.
"Name one ex that mattered," Sigrid challenged.
Giovanni won the coin toss and flashed a grin. "Truth," he said.
He named a person, a memory, stories that were honest but not cruel. People clapped. The energy around him warmed into affectionate teasing. He seemed, in public and in private, a man who had learned the language of commitment.
I watched Sigrid, and the way she leaned into him made plain the difference between what I had wanted and what she chose. I felt a sting, then a warm acceptance.
"Ian," Alicia said, later, in the quiet hallway. "Are you okay?"
"Yes," I said. "I have to mean it. I have to mean her happiness."
"You do," she said. "You do because you understand finally what's love and what's possession."
She kissed me then, small and sure, like the last piece of a puzzle clicking into place.
We married months later. It wasn't a grand wedding, just a small ceremony with family and a few friends. Sigrid still called occasionally. We exchanged polite messages. We had our own life, our own routine. When I saw photos of Sigrid and Giovanni later—engagement ceremonies, smiling faces—my first impulse was affection. They had chosen each other and looked content. I realized the truth that had taken me years: you can love someone and not belong with them. Loving can be the most generous thing—allowing the person you love to find a life where they are most themselves.
Years passed quietly. I became the man who could sleep without waking to the hollow clock of should-have-beens. Alicia and I kept a small apartment with two cats and a box of records. We argued gently about paint colors and which plants to kill with neglect. We traveled once a year and invited friends when possible.
One evening, at a dinner where Sigrid and Giovanni came to meet our small extended reunion, Sigrid looked up at Giovanni and said, sotto voce, "You did well."
Giovanni kissed her forehead in public, and the room hummed. People rose like a tide to offer congratulations.
Clive, who was now a father with an exhausted smile, raised his glass. "To who makes you happy," he said. "You're lucky if you find even one person who will sit with the mess and still say yes."
We all laughed. I looked across the table at Alicia. Her eyes caught mine and we squeezed hands under the table.
At some point, the conversation turned to old flames—names that no longer fit. Douglas mentioned someone we'd once known. I found myself saying, "You did right by being honest."
Sigrid squeezed my hand then; her fingers were callused from gardening, and warm. "You taught me a lot," she said, leaning in. "More than you knew."
"What did I teach you?" I asked.
"To be patient with your own choices," she said. "And to accept that people can change."
"Is that the same as forgiveness?" I asked.
She laughed. "Maybe. Or maybe it's just life."
Sometimes in the quiet hours when the city thinned and the night squeezed us closer, I would think back to that sunset on campus when she had told me to be together. The memory was sharp like a pressed leaf. I used to hold regret like a small, heavy stone. But now I had pockets of light. I had wine-scented mornings and two cats who took pennies from the couch. I had Alicia's voice greeting me at dawn, and the way she learned to fold my shirts.
"You were always aiming yourself like a compass," she said once in bed. "And then you found someone who didn't want to set the direction for you but to walk beside you."
"That's you?" I asked.
"That's the Sigrid-she-was-not," she teased.
We laughed and kissed, and then the lights went out. The city exhaled. I slept.
One autumn afternoon, I walked along the campus path where we'd once run. Leaves lined the lane like money. I saw Sigrid waiting near the old bench, small bag in hand, hair a little longer. Giovanni was with her. He waved.
"Hi, Ian." Sigrid's voice carried like a bell. "You look well."
"So do you," I said.
She sat down. "Do you ever regret?" she asked suddenly.
"Regret what?" I asked.
"Any of it," she said. "The punishments, the plans."
I looked at her. Her eyes were as bright as they always were, but calmer. Smiles had lines now. "Of course. I regret the timing sometimes. I regret learning late."
She nodded. "I regret being someone I wasn't sure about," she said. "But I don't regret the things I learned along the way."
"Would you tell your younger self anything?" I asked.
"Yeah." She smiled at something inside her. "I'd tell her to trust that she doesn't have to be someone else to be loved."
"I'd tell mine to learn faster," I said. "To ask fewer ifs and more whats."
She reached for my hand. "You did better than you think."
I looked at Giovanni, who was watching with a small, affectionate smile. For a moment I wanted to measure currencies—who had what; the old habit is slow to die. But I felt nothing like envy. I felt something like a settled shore.
"Ian," Giovanni said, standing and offering a hand. "Take care of yourself."
"Will do," I said, and meant it.
We left the bench then, walking separate paths through a campus that had folded us into its memory.
Years later, when small narratives rippled across social feeds, people joked about how the campus had been a laboratory for hearts. I liked those jokes. I liked the idea that people could experiment and sometimes stumble into good things.
At home, Alicia hummed in the kitchen, stirring a pot of something that made the apartment smell like roasted garlic. I rooted through the drawer for cutlery.
"How was your day?" she asked.
"Fine," I said. "I walked the old path."
"Did you see ghosts?" she teased.
"Only warm ones." I kissed the top of her head. "Only friends."
She sighed happily. "You look comfortable. You look settled."
"I am," I said. "And I am glad."
She looked at me with a way that made my chest unclench entirely. "Good," she said simply.
I had loved once with the intent to mold; later I loved with the intent to nurture. The difference was quiet but immense.
That night I went to bed and dreamed of a deer, small and bright-eyed, who ran happily through an orchard. She paused and looked back. I woke with a smile. The little deer eyes had been with me for years—memory and longing and the echo that taught me what I needed to learn.
I kissed Alicia awake and whispered, "You are not a memory for me. You are the present."
She laughed, sleepy and pleased. "You'll never hide behind exams again."
"I hope not," I said. "I hope we keep choosing each other."
She squeezed my hand and turned away, and the night hummed steady like a new, kind clock.
The End
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