Sweet Romance14 min read
The Little White Flower and the Blue Dress
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"I kept it," I said, holding the tiny white flower between my thumb and forefinger. "All these years."
Elias looked at it, then at me, and for a second his face was like the carved statues in the history wing—quiet, unfairly serious. I laughed because I couldn't make my heart stop thumping. "You kept it too?" I dared.
He blinked, not answering right away. Finally he shrugged, small and stubborn. "I put it in a box," he said. "In case you ever came back for it."
"I always come back," I told him. "I always will."
"Then maybe stop making me wait," he said, and there it was—his blunt, irritatingly honest Elias-ness. I used to like that bluntness. I still did.
"Don't be ridiculous," I said.
"I am not ridiculous," he answered.
That was the promise we made when we were seven. Back then I was Pilar and he was Elias. He gave me a little white flower. I promised to be his bride. We made a knot with our pinkies and swore on sunshine and mud pies. It was the kind of oath that felt like the only thing that mattered in the world.
"Hey, Pilar!" Kristina waved me out of my memory. "You bringing the magazine today?"
I nearly choked. "Shh! Not so loud." I slid my fingers under the desk, found the magazine, and hid it before Elias could spy the cover. It was ridiculous and soft and everything I loved: a serialized high school romance that always ended my week with humming, happy headaches.
"Elias," I mouthed. "Do you want to—"
He leaned close, voice low. "You look different today."
"You always say that," I replied, which wasn't a lie. He bent his head, and for a terrible beat I thought he might say the words I'd been rehearsing since dawn. Then the bell killed my courage.
"Out, out, out!" Ernst Gibbs, who doubled as our advisor and the kindest terror in school, clapped his hands the way teachers do to remind us that lectures were important and adolescent confessions were not.
Later, when I was alone and the magazine heavy in my bag, Victor sat down across from me. He smelled faintly of camera spray and citrus. "Hi. I—uh—I'm your new deskmate," he said, smiling like he was giving the sun directions.
"You read Garden Youth?" I whispered, opening the magazine on the sly.
"Yeah." Victor shrugged. "I model sometimes. My face was on that cover."
I wanted to curl into him and confess everything: that the hero in every romantic chapter looked exactly like Elias in my head, that I had been waiting for his confession since I was small, and that the little white flower was still folded between old letters in a shoebox.
Instead I did the only thing I could think to do. "Do you think Elias will ever—"
"Who?" Victor blinked.
"Elias Ogawa," I said. "My—friend. Sort of. He used to say he'd marry me when we were kids." My face burned. "I thought maybe—"
Victor's expression softened. "Maybe he just hasn't found the right way to say it," he offered. "Maybe he needs help."
"Help?" Kristina snorted. "You? Helping spark Cupid?"
Victor grinned. "Maybe."
At noon I left Kristina and the giggles to their gossip and slipped a note into Elias's backpack like an eleven-year-old. "Meet me at the pavilion at noon. I have something to say," I wrote, because sometimes you have to do the stupid, brave thing before you think it through.
He arrived in that stylized way of his—like the world was an exhibit and he was part of the display, dark uniform, quiet eyes. For a second the world stopped. "Pilar," he said.
"I—" My mouth got tangled. I said it anyway. "Elias, I like you. I have for a long time."
There was a silence that stretched and creaked. Elias's gaze was steady and calm and patient like the surface of a lake before a stone is dropped. "I don't feel the same way," he said.
My smile dissolved. I heard the exact words I had rehearsed being kicked aside. "You—what did you mean when you said you'd marry me?" I flung out.
He shrugged, as if childhood summer promises were light scrap paper. "Kids say things."
A hand rose to my cheeks, and for a painful instant I thought he'd reach to wipe the sudden salt of tears. He didn't. He looked away. I ran.
"She ran," someone said later. "She always ran."
Kristina found me folding my face into my hands in the corridor. "What happened?" she whispered, stuffing my emotions into her sleeves.
"He told me he doesn't feel the same," I choked out. "All those years were—"
"Maybe he doesn't know better words," Kristina said. "Maybe you—"
"Maybe I'm done waiting," I snapped. Then softer: "Or maybe I should make him feel."
We called the plan "Capture Heart." We wrote steps in a tiny notebook—things like "Make him jealous" (which sounded sweeter in textbooks than in real life), "Gain distance" (which sounded like chess), and "Make him chase." We were seventeen and dangerous with glue sticks and overconfidence.
That same week something else happened. At the start of the second semester, a new student arrived. "We have a new transfer," Ernst Gibbs announced. "Everyone welcome Bridget Komarov."
Bridget had hair the color of a sunset and a practiced smile. When she stepped to the front of class, those with less subtle hearts started whispering. She smiled right at Elias and lowered her eyes toward his shoulder. "Hi, Elias," she said, "it's so good to see you again."
He smiled like someone there was music for. My stomach turned.
"Bridget?" I said later, trying to sound like she was a pebble in my shoe. Kristina bit her lip.
Bridget sat beside him, an easy loop between them like the years had never been apart. "We were friends when we were little," she told everyone in those bright, friendly ways of hers.
A rumor starts small—someone says "she's old friends" and another person adds "they were close" and soon the whole class is gossiping like spoons clinking tea cups. For once, the noise cut through my self-control.
The next day I got called out of class to be "punished" for chatting in Ernst's lecture. He sent me to the library to "calm down." The universe conspired again: that afternoon I ran into Bridget at a charity reception at the Komarov estate. She wore pale pink. She looked like a porcelain doll.
"Hi, Pilar," Bridget said, and somewhere inside my plan the wires shorted.
That night I did something reckless and beautiful. I wore the dress Elias once gave me—deep navy, hem embroidered with his initials—and walked into the room with my chin up. Bridget smiled a slow, unhelpful smile.
"Low taste," she said once, to me. Elias stepped between us before I could bite back.
"Don't," he said.
Bridget threw back her hair, indignant with elaborately practiced tragic air. "I just wondered why you'd wear something like that to my reception."
He looked at me, then away. "Pilar," he said, soft and weird. "You look nice."
I held on to his hand because I couldn't stand not to. Maybe I wanted him to see. Maybe I wanted him to remember the seven-year-old kneeling in a field. Maybe I wanted him to feel what I felt.
The next morning our little plan to "distance" had worked far better than I'd imagined. Elias looked at me and then looked away. The cold distance stung like winter. That same day Bridget joined our study group, as if it were the most natural thing on earth. Victor, surprisingly, joined too. "I like teamwork," he said.
"Of course you do," Kristina muttered. "You're a model."
We studied in the afternoons. I pretended to concentrate, but sometimes my ears stayed tuned to the angle of Elias's shoulders. He took care of the problems I couldn't solve. He had a gentle way of correcting me that made me want to fold into the person he was shaping. Bridget watched. Sometimes she wrote notes. Sometimes she would meet his eye and smile and it felt like a tiny dagger tapping my ribs.
Then came the sports meet. I was running the 50 meters and later the relay. I won the 50 meters. People cheered me like a small, perfect god. Elias was there, applauding, and I caught his eye and felt like my face might explode from happiness. Then the relay—Bridget was the third runner. We drilled day after day, Victor calling times and Kristina fixing my form.
"Go!" the starter shouted.
The race was a blur of muscle and dust. Bridget took the baton and faltered. She fell. The baton skidded and landed by my foot. For a second I froze, then I grabbed it, pushed my legs and lungs like anvils and took off. We finished second, but I didn't care.
Later Bridget lay in the infirmary with a scraped, bleeding knee, and Elias carried her there with his hands steady as anchors. I walked toward them and saw something in his features that I had mistaken for indifference—concern.
"Why didn't anyone else help?" I asked, tight. "Why you?"
"Because you were hurt too," he said quietly, and suddenly he was beside me, not because of Bridget but because of me. "Pilar, your foot—"
I had a scratch across my ankle. I hadn't noticed; adrenaline was a sly friend. Ahmed Peterson, the school medic, wrapped my ankle with practiced hands. Elias's voice, low and unassuming, asked about care instructions. He read them like they were small prophecies. My heart did a ridiculous thing in my chest.
"You didn't tell me," I whispered. "You didn't tell me you were worried."
"I didn't know either," he said. "I thought you were... fine."
Something changed then—something soft and damaging. I decided to stop pretending.
The next week, the little notebook of plans got bolder. "Act like you're moving on." "Make him miss you." "Make him choose." We practiced silent treatments like they were spells. But the world kept throwing wavering things at us.
Bridget kept coming. She smiled and apologized for awkward moments she had invented. She oiled the wheels of conversation in a hundred little ways. Teachers praised our study group. I began to suspect that she wasn't just playing coy. She was constructing a net.
One afternoon, walking past the school greenhouse, I overheard Bridget on the phone. "Yes, tomorrow, the banquet," she purred. "Yes, I'll be there. Yes, he'll be there." She laughed, bright and unbothered. "Don't worry. Everything's under control."
Under control. The words rang like nails. I knew then she had an aim.
The turning point came in public.
It was the Komarov family gala, a glittering affair of lanterns and clinking glasses. Parents and patrons drifted under chandeliers like moths to light. My parents stood off to the side, flattering small talk blooming around them. I pretended to sip a drink so I could watch. There, across the room, Bridget moved like she was orchestrating the room. She caught Elias's eye and leaned close, artful and practiced. For a moment I let the old fear catch me, but then I breathed and stepped into the circle.
"Bridget," I said, because I could. "Why are you here?"
She turned with a smile, surprised as if at a curtain call. "Oh, Pilar," she sang. "Do you remember me?"
The noises around us hummed. People turned because gossip is a magnet. I watched her for long seconds. Then I said the thing I'd written in my notebook: "You were always the girl who liked to be seen."
Bridget's smile thinned. She had been prepared to be idolized; she had not been prepared for accusation. For a moment she looked embarrassed, then composed herself in a flash.
"You are being ridiculous," she said. "I am exactly as I am."
"Who do you think you are?" I asked. "You came back thinking everything would fold around you. You planted half-truths and smiles until people believed them. You staged accidents and then played the victim. Why?"
Gasps rose. A woman near us shifted her clutch, someone keyed "record" into their phone with fingers so fast I knew that very second the world had switched from private to broadcast. In an instant a circle had formed—sensing drama, students and guests leaned in.
Bridget's face hardened, then a flash of anger: "That's a lie."
"No, it's not," I said. "Our runner said you said 'be careful' and then you fell. Our teachers heard you 'misrepresent' histories. You sat beside Elias and implied you were 'first.' You lied."
"You're making scenes," she snapped.
"It's a scene only because you turned our lives into a stage," I answered. "People made mistakes because of your tricks."
Her expression changed—smug to shocked to sharp. She stepped back, hands fluttering like a bird caught in a net. "You're—crazy," she said. "You can't prove any of this."
At that, Victor, who had been quiet until now, pulled his phone from his pocket. "I can," he said.
He put the phone on a table and played an audio clip. It was of Bridget's earlier phone call, the one I had heard only by eavesdropping; but now Victor had the evidence. The voice was Bridget's, clear as a bell. "Yes, tomorrow, the banquet. Yes, I'll make sure everything is arranged. Yes, he'll be there. She will fall. Yes."
For a second everything was soundless and then the room collapsed into noise. Phones rose, faces turned from gossip to disbelief. A cluster of parents gathered, their murmurs a tide. "You staged it," someone said. "You planned her to fall?"
Bridget's composure snapped. "That's—" she started.
"Are you denying it?" I asked.
"Yes!" she said, voice high. "This is slander."
"Tell that to the tape then," Victor answered, and a dozen other phones had already started recording. I could see the color leaving her face, the smile unspooling like cheap ribbon.
People made sounds—sharp, unbelieving. Some began whispering "shame." A man lifted his phone and pointed the camera at Bridget's hands, which were now clutching like twigs in winter. A woman took a photograph. A group of students started to laugh in disbelief, then to film, then to whisper.
Her eyes found Elias. "You know me," she cried. "You know how this is a misunderstanding."
Elias looked at Bridget, then at me. His face was something like judgment, something like sorrow. He swallowed. "Bridget," he said softly, "why would you do this?"
Bridget's mouth opened, closed, opened again. "I—" She tried to speak, then shook her head as if to rid herself of a memory she did not want. Her smile had all the armor gone. She moved through stages like an old film: smug, thinly amused; shocked; defensive. Now she went to denial: "I didn't—" Then to frantic defense: "You're all mistaken! I—it's not what it sounds like!" Her voice cracked.
From the floor above, an elderly benefactor peered down and the buzz turned to a murmur. "Are you serious?" someone else asked loudly. "She set someone up?"
"Everyone stop!" Bridget suddenly shouted. She backed away and then tried to laugh—an uneven sound. "This is—this is some horrid prank."
"Prank?" A woman in a beaded gown stepped forward, her nose tight. "You called for it, dear. You orchestrated a fall and told someone to make sure—"
Bridget's hands flew up. "No—no—you don't understand," she said. Her voice had become a thread. "I only wanted to make sure I got to talk to him—"
"To talk to Elias?" a student mocked. "To 'talk'?"
I watched her face. The bright, confident veneer had come off. Her shoulders shook. The room felt like a tide drawing back. Bridget's pupils were big and frantic. Then she did something I did not expect: she knelt.
It was a theatrical knee, slow and deliberate. "Please—" she choked, the haughtiness gone, replaced by raw fear. "Please. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
There was a silence like a held breath. People took out their phones. Some pressed record. Someone whispered the word "shame" like a benediction.
"Beg," someone called from the edges. "Beg for forgiveness."
Bridget's voice broke. "Please," she said again, and this time there was real pleading in it. "Please. I didn't mean—"
"Everyone," Elias said, and his voice was steady and hard. People turned. He looked at Bridget with a pity I had not wanted to see. "Get up," he said. "Apologize properly."
She glanced up, eyes full of water and shame. "I'm sorry," she managed. "I wanted to be seen. I wanted—"
"You wanted to ruin another person to make yourself visible," Elias replied. "You used others as props. You lied reputations away."
There were noises: gasps, near-screams, the shuffle of people stepping back. A woman recorded, somebody took a photograph and uploaded it in a flurry of fingers. A little boy in a suit clapped slowly like he'd seen something on stage: judgment.
Bridget's calm had burned away into begging. "Please," she said, sobbing now. "Please don't—please don't post—please don't—"
Phones flashed like a storm of tiny stars. The crowd reacted: some mocked; some tutted with satisfaction; others were stern with disappointment. A few people—older, kinder—turned away, embarrassed at the whole spectacle.
"Who recorded that?" someone asked.
"Everyone did," Victor said. He didn't look proud. He looked tired. "Everyone recorded it."
Elias's voice, low and unyielding, addressed the whole room. "We can either fix this quietly," he said, "or we can let what happened happen. There are choices in what follows."
"She's down on her knees," somebody hissed. "What do you want? Mercy?"
I didn't feel victorious. The applause that rose was a smear of relief and anger and justice. A handful of students patted me on the shoulder. A phone chirped with a notification: the clip was online.
Bridget's face crumpled and she sobbed, then tried to crawl away. People started to film her like she was an exhibit. A woman shouted, "Do it!" Another voice called, "Shame!"
Bridget begged. "Please—" she said. "Please. I didn't know—"
"No one took her seriously," someone said. "She wanted a scene so she made one."
Her family, who had arrived for the gala, looked stunned. A man in a tuxedo, who I guessed was her father, came forward. His face was cold. "Bridget," he said, voice like ice, "what did you do?"
"Please," she cried. "I'm sorry."
Her father's jaw tightened. He turned from her to the crowd with a look I will never forget—dignified and disappointed. "We will handle this," he said. "Leave us."
A dozen phones stopped recording. Some people whispered, "She'll get away with it." Others watched with faces rearranged by what they'd seen.
Bridget folded into herself, blinking and pleading, the opposite of that bright girl who had stepped into rooms with ease. "Forgive me," she begged Elias. "Forgive me—"
He looked at her as if he'd been carrying a weight he hadn't known was there. "You need help," he said. "And you need to tell the truth."
She stood, arms wrapped around herself, eyes red and bewildered. The crowd parted like a storm. People discussed. And Bridget's humiliation didn't feel like a victory; it felt like a lesson being taught in public with too many witnesses.
After the gala, the world was different. Bridget retreated from our study group and vanished for a while. Her messages came in fits and stops. Some people pitied her; some didn't. A trending clip labeled "GalaConfession" blinked on my feed for almost a week.
"You were brave," Kristina told me later, when all the edges had worn down a little. "But are you okay?"
"I'm tired," I admitted. "It hurt to demand the truth in front of everyone. It was uglier than I wanted."
Victor put his hand on my shoulder. "You did right," he said gently. "We exposed something that was poisoning people."
Elias found me after the dust settled. He put something small into my palm: a little white flower, frail and browned, but kept. "You kept yours," he said. "I kept mine."
I looked up at him then, at the face I'd loved since dirt on my knees. "Was it true?" I asked. "That you would marry me?"
He smiled, a faint, stubborn thing. "I said that when I was small," he said. "I meant the shelter. I meant to keep faith. Sometimes I didn't know how to say it when I grew up, which is my fault."
He stepped closer. "But I know now," he said. "Pilar, I don't want you to play games to get me to notice. I don't want you to win me like a prize."
"I don't want to be a prize," I told him. "I just wanted you to see me."
"Then stay," he said. "Stay and let me prove I can see you."
I laughed and cried at once. "I'm injured," I said. "My ankle is a mess."
He looked down and rolled his eyes. "Of course," he sighed, and his hand found mine.
We didn't have a fairy-tale homecoming. We had hurt, and repair, and bits of conversation that were awkward and honest. Victor and Kristina took to teasing us mercilessly. Ernst clapped when my grades started creeping up because, apparently, academic redemption deserved fanfare. Ahmed checked in twice a week to make sure the ankle didn't get worse.
Bridget returned months later. She avoided looking at me. Sometimes I saw her in the library, staring at faces like she was trying to remember how to be other than a plot. Once, in the school corridor, she stopped me.
"Pilar," she said, "I—"
"What?" I asked.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I hurt you. I hurt people."
It was small and true. "Everyone makes mistakes," I said. "You have to decide who you are after that."
She nodded, and something in her loosened. "Can—you—" she started.
I surprised myself. "If you mean 'be friends'—maybe someday. If you mean 'be forgiven right now'—learn to be honest."
She agreed, and then we walked away. I felt lighter in a strange, careful way.
That year taught me that love isn't a promise carved in stone so much as an apprenticeship. You learn by doing it wrong and doing it better. You learn by falling and getting up.
Elias and I had a hundred small conversations—bad jokes, long silences that weren't cruel, apologies that were clumsy and honest. He learned to say things like "I want you" and "I noticed." I learned that being brave didn't always mean taking center stage; sometimes it meant stepping down and letting someone in.
At the end of the year, I opened the little box where the white flower lived. I laid mine beside his, and we tied our pinkies the way we had as kids, but this time we did not swear on sunshine and mud pies. We promised to say what we meant and to not weaponize pain.
"Will you marry me?" he asked, half-joking.
"Are you saying it now because you mean it?" I asked back.
He laughed. "Yes."
"Then no," I said, shaking my head with a grin. "Let's let the future be private."
He frowned, playful. "That's not how the story goes."
"Maybe we write our own," I said.
He nodded, and we did.
The End
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