Sweet Romance11 min read
The Quiet Professor, the Loud Wife, and the Jade Bracelet
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"I can't believe I'm late for my own lecture."
"Get up, Kenia. Your live class starts in ten."
My roommate's voice was half asleep and half amused. I swung my legs off the bed, hair a mess, and walked into the tiny room with my laptop. The webcam lit my face. I took a breath.
"Good morning, everyone. I'm your new instructor. Call me Professor Schaefer."
The face on the screen was calm, framed by a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. He looked exactly like the man who had been sleeping beside my pillow these last few weeks. My heart did a clumsy flip.
"Oliver?" I mouthed, and the entire chat exploded with little heart emojis. Somebody wrote, "Your husband is a professor? Lucky!" Another typed, "Is he the quiet type?" My own fingers trembled when I replied, "Yes."
Oliver smiled—one of those small, careful smiles I'd only seen once before. It hit me harder than I expected.
"Is everyone awake?" he asked, voice even. Then he looked straight into the camera.
"Kenia, you look like you haven't slept."
I wanted to disappear. I waved, too loud, and tried to find my place on a page full of notes that suddenly lost meaning.
After the class, I padded into his study.
"Professor," I said, sliding onto his lap without asking, "can you explain question three?"
He didn't look surprised. He closed the laptop gently, put his hands on my book, and started to walk me through the logic. When he wrote, his handwriting was neat and a little dramatic—like everything about him. He bent close enough that I felt the warm breath on my ear.
"Do you understand now?" he asked.
"No," I admitted.
He sighed, but it wasn't annoyed. He put his pen down and said, "I'll explain again."
He explained slowly. He repeated the steps. When he finished, I stayed where I was—wrapped in the safe, exacting silence of him.
"Kenia," he said at last, "get down."
"No," I protested, stubborn and silly. "I like it here."
He made a show of being stern. "Go study."
I feigned outrage and clung to him. He let me. Later he set me on the floor with a small hand that felt like a command and like a promise at the same time.
I called Martha as soon as I could. "Martha, I don't want to live," I said, dramatic and true.
"Why? Did Oliver bite you?" she replied, mocking.
"I tried everything. I flirted. I cooked. I cried. He keeps being... calm."
"Did his heart race? Did his cheeks flush?" Martha asked. Her voice went high. She lived for melodrama.
"Nothing," I said, honest, and half ashamed. "I think he's... not into women."
"You think he's gay?"
"Maybe."
"Then divorce him," she laughed. "You deserve better."
We talked nonsense, but inside, the fear was real. I had chased him—with a blind-date promise that somehow turned into a marriage certificate we filled out the same day. He was a quiet, brilliant man who taught at the university. He was the kind of man I had pictured and then shoved into my real world without a second thought. I had thought it would be easy to win him. I was wrong.
That afternoon, Oliver locked his door.
I knocked. He didn't answer.
"Oliver?" I called.
A muffled sound—like an exhale—came from the other side. Then a click. The door wouldn't open. He had locked himself away. My chest tightened.
I waited until evening and then used the spare key. He was sitting at the kitchen table with a tray—two sandwiches, cut neatly in half.
"We have a substitute this week," he said without looking up. "Professor Cade Ahmed is sick. I'm covering his sessions."
"You're my professor?" I asked, trying to make my voice small.
"Temporary," he said, and left it at that.
The next week, the chatrooms filled with messages about how handsome our substitute was. Candy hearts and breathless students who wrote, "He's so young for a professor!" My stomach warmed with a small, absurd pride. This was my man. He was mine.
Still, at home he was a riddle. He didn't talk much at dinner. He made two plates; he cleared one away without sitting down. He put his hand on the small of my back when he thought no one was looking. Sometimes, when he thought I was asleep, he stared at me like he was memorizing the play of my face in the lamplight.
One night I decided to try everything. I leaned across the table and kissed him. He sighed like a man who had been waiting and didn't want to be moved. "Eat," he said, and that was the end of that.
I decided, in true Kenia style, that I would either be brave or be ridiculous. I picked both.
"Oliver," I said, cheeks hot. "We need to talk."
He glanced up from his laptop. His eyes were tired; there was a small scar at the corner of his lip that I noticed in a new way. He always looked as if life had asked him a serious question and he had politely refused to answer.
"What about?"
"Divorce."
"Why?" The question came like a soft temperature check.
"Because," I said, meaning to be fierce, "you don't seem to love me."
His face didn't change the way I wanted—no big reaction, no pleading, no confession. He stood up slowly, wrapped his hand around my waist, and walked me to the door. I saw the house through a child's perspective—my parents watching, the neighbors like a row of small statues.
He stopped and turned. "We're not going."
"I said I want a divorce," I repeated.
"Not now," he said.
His hand was steady. It was like the rest of him—quiet, certain, unmoving. I stormed off to the couch and spent the night there. In the small hours I slipped into sleep, a pile of cold blankets around me.
Next morning, my classmates were ruthless. Someone had recorded the class and uploaded clips of him looking serious; others made jokes. Comments flew like birds. "Kenia, you're brave," one typed. "Did he kiss you?" another wanted to know. I flushed and wanted to reply with something clever. I didn't.
That week's assignments were monstrous. Oliver set problems that none of us had been taught. He wrote in the group, "Do all of them by tomorrow. If not, you will fail the course."
"That's impossible," one girl moaned. "He can't do this to us."
I panicked, because I cared. Half my reason for marrying him was practical—he taught the very subjects I was studying. I wanted him to be both my husband and an answer key. I wanted to be the girl who could walk through school and graduate without stumbling.
I marched into his study the second the last bell rang.
"Why are you doing this?" I demanded.
"Because you're at home," he said, tapping his glasses like a punctuation mark. "You're available."
"Available? I'm not your homework assistant."
"You're my wife."
"That doesn't give you the right to torture my classmates," I hissed.
"It's a lesson," he replied. "If you actually learn, it's easier."
"You're being cruel."
He looked at me. For a second, there was something like amusement, a flicker I had not seen before. "Come sit," he said. "I'll go through them with you."
He taught me one question at a time. He was patient to a fault and precise like a clock. The way he explained—slow hands, choosing only what mattered—made stormy thoughts in my head quiet down. When he smiled, it was small and honest. I felt something else—an unexpected thrum in my chest, a warm light that meant "this is what I wanted."
"Do you understand now?" he asked when we finished.
"Yes," I whispered.
He didn't say anything. He just looked at me the way a person looks at a photograph they've kept under their pillow. "Stay," he said.
"Stay where?"
"Here." He tapped the spot on his lap. "Stay here for a while."
I sat. He taught other things that night—how he preferred his tea, what made him laugh, the exact shade he liked for the curtains. He told me little facts in the spaces between sentences, and each fact felt like a cable tied into the small boat of us.
Days passed. He stopped setting impossible homework for the entire class; he only gave me extra now and then. When I brought the answers to my friends, they were shocked.
"How did you get him to do that?" Martha asked, curious and delighted. "Kenia, you are magic."
"I'm not magic," I said, and smiled in a way I had learned to keep secret.
A week later, I bit him on the lip in a ridiculous attempt to wake him up. He laughed then—full, soft laughter that made my heart ache. He put his forehead to mine and said, "You are trouble."
The first time his parents came over felt like stepping through a photograph. Oliver had slid the idea into conversation one night like he was testing a bridge. "My parents could visit," he said quietly.
"Now?" I asked, surprised and nervous.
"We're married," he said. "I should have invited them before."
When they arrived, I nearly forgot how to speak. Mr. Hans Calderon was quiet in a grandfatherly way, and Mrs. Eloise Dubois smiled like someone who had kept a long secret and was finally telling it to the right ears. They gave me a small box. Inside was a jade bracelet, green as new grass.
"Kenia," Mrs. Dubois said, "we are happy you are his wife."
Her hands were small and warm. She put the bracelet on my wrist. When I looked up, Oliver's face softened in a way that made me feel ungainly and precious all at once.
"Thank you," I said, voice small.
That night, he told me the story I'd sensed but had never heard properly. He had been a sick child once, hollowed by long hospital nights and the silence of a world that didn't speak back. A girl had sat at his bedside and told him stories, bright and relentless. She'd left before he could answer. He'd waited years to find her again.
"You were the one?" I asked, stunned.
"Not exactly the same," he said. "But you remind me of someone who helped me find my voice."
He took my hand and laid it over his chest. "I like you," he admitted in the way he liked—plain and real. "I like you for all the small things."
"Do you love me?" My voice trembled.
"I know," he said. "And I will tell you every day."
There were small, shining moments that took my breath: the first time he smiled at me for no reason, the time he wrapped his coat around me in the rain, the night he kissed my forehead and told me to sleep. Each was a lamp that made the whole house soft.
One afternoon, after a week of steady warmth, I found a scar on his lip again and remembered the night I bit it. "You remember when I bit you?" I asked.
He grinned—quiet and private. "Yes. You were trying to steal my trouble."
I laughed. "Please stop being so calm. It's making me do all the drama."
"Drama is exhausting," he said, mock offended. "Be simple."
"I'm not simple."
"You're mine," he replied, with that quiet finality of his.
The semester rolled on. Oliver taught, I studied, and the classmates went from complaining to grudgingly admiring. Martha sent me videos of me teaching a group of friends and applauded like I'd climbed Everest.
"You're incredible," she said on the phone. "And he's... he adores you in his own quiet way."
"Adore? No," I said, smiling. It felt like the smallest, truest wish coming alive to say it.
There were other oddities. Once, he left for a lecture and returned with a small cut at his lip. Students noticed on the call and sent a flurry of messages. Someone joked that I had bitten him in revenge. I texted back a heart and a one-line apology. Later that night he kissed the scar and called it home.
At one point I got scared again. I thought his parents' acceptance would mean I was trapped. He had told me, very seriously, "If you meet my parents and stay, staying will be forever. My family makes such promises. Think carefully."
"I want to," I said, surprised and certain. "I want to meet them."
When we finally went to their house, Mrs. Dubois placed the jade bracelet around my wrist and told me the story of a little girl who used to visit a sick boy in a hospital garden. The girl had been fierce and talkative. She had made strange jokes and left behind a polaroid with one sentence: "Be brave." The photo had kept him going.
"I thought I would find her again," Oliver said, voice low. "I thought I'd find someone who would help me keep the light."
"You did," I said, surprised into tears. "You found me."
He touched the bracelet. "I waited a long time," he said. "I had to be ready for the person who could be with me."
I realized then that he had chosen silence as a way to protect both of us—until he learned how to share his small storms. He had kept me safe even when he thought he couldn't protect himself.
Our life settled into a gentle rhythm. He taught; I studied; we cooked bad omelets and laughed about it. He still assigned me the occasional extra problem, but he made time for us. He made me tea when I had a headache. He left little sticky notes with equations drawn like hearts. He smiled more, often at me.
There were nights when he confessed he had been afraid—afraid that his quiet would push me away, afraid that my light would burn too bright. I told him jokes to make him breathe. I made faces until he chuckled. We built ourselves small rituals: a walk after dinner, the folding of laundry together, the way he always held the door with his hand at my back.
One evening, months after that foolish first lecture, I was alone in front of my laptop. The class had a tough assignment. I was ready to ask for help, but this time, I decided to be brave. I typed in the chat, "Professor Schaefer, may I present my solution?"
The camera panned to him. He looked calm. He smiled—the wide, honest smile that felt like daylight.
"Of course," he said.
My voice was steady. I explained each step. When I finished, the chat filled with applause. "Well done, Kenia!" someone wrote.
He looked at me with no spectacles between us, and said, simply, "You did well."
"Thank you," I replied. The words were small and huge at once.
He leaned forward and kissed my forehead. "You are home," he said.
That night, I slept properly in our bed. He put the jade bracelet on the nightstand and read. I reached out, found the bracelet, and touched the cool green stone. His hand found mine in the dark.
"Do you remember the night you bit me?" he whispered.
"I do."
"I remember thinking," he said slowly, the words measured like his lessons, "that even if you were trouble, I would rather have trouble than nothing."
I laughed in the dark and pressed my face into his shoulder. "You are impossible."
"You started it," he said, voice muffled.
"I know."
The months rolled into small, bright days. Graduation came and went. We didn't have a big wedding; we had a quiet ceremony and then a larger party later. The jade bracelet stayed on my wrist every day. Students still adored my husband. Friends still teased me about the day I had demanded a divorce and then refused to leave.
"Do you regret that moment?" Martha asked me over coffee once, eyes wide and playful.
"Which moment?" I asked.
"The one where you wanted a divorce."
"I regret not being more honest sooner," I said. "But I don't regret asking. It forced us to talk."
"Talk?" she said, incredulous. "He barely speaks."
"He speaks to me now," I replied. "He speaks in his way."
The last class he taught before summer break we both sat through. He looked at the list of students who had struggled and said, "Give Kenia time. She will teach you patience."
I raised my hand then and waved at the screen, and he flashed that smile again. After the lecture, when the cameras closed, he turned to me and said, "Do you want to take a walk?"
"I thought you'd never ask," I said.
We walked under the lamplights, his arm around my shoulder. Someone in the distance laughed. The jade bracelet caught the dying light and threw it back green and steady.
"Tell me one thing you love about me," he said suddenly.
I thought of a thousand small moments—the way his thumb traced the margin of my notes, the way he left the kettle ready in the morning, the way he stayed when storms came.
"You," I said simply. "You teach me the hard things."
He kissed me then, so gentle and so certain that I felt like a person arriving somewhere she had always wanted to be.
At the gate, he paused and looked down at the scar near his lip. "You saved me from a long silence," he said.
"You saved me from being ordinary," I answered.
He smiled. A true, bright smile. It was the kind that made the world tilt in the best way. He reached into his pocket and drew out a small box. Inside was nothing but a note: two words.
"Always here."
I opened my mouth to reply, to say something witty and profound, but the jade bracelet on my wrist chimed against the box like a tiny bell, and everything else—the hard days, the ridiculous tears, the quiet victories—seemed to settle into the space between us.
"Stay," he whispered.
"I will," I said.
We walked home, hands laced, the green bracelet warm against my skin, his gold-rimmed glasses tucked into his shirt pocket, the scar near his lip kissed by lamp light. The city hummed its late-night song.
That night I slept with my hand in his, the jade bracelet catching the moonlight like a promise. When I woke, he was awake too, watching me.
"You don't have to say anything now," he murmured. "Just be you."
"That's dangerous," I said.
"That's my favorite kind of trouble," he replied.
I smiled, reached for the cool green circle around my wrist, and thought of the little hospital garden, of a small girl who told stories, of a man who had waited and learned to speak. I thought of how strange and perfect it was that we had found one another. His lips met mine, gentle, sure; his scar was warm beneath my thumb.
"Good morning," he said, the way only he could, both private and public.
"Good morning," I answered, and the bracelet slid against my skin, steady and sure, like the tide.
The End
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