Sweet Romance14 min read
The Strawberry Scar I Dug Out
ButterPicks13 views
I never meant to fall in love with the supporting role in someone else's story.
"I thought I would love Forrest forever," I say into the dark when the city hums below the open window, "until I saw Estelle's photo."
"Forrest?" My own voice answers like it's a stranger's. "You waited three hours for me on my birthday. She posted a picture that day, from inside a car, with words that might as well be a knife."
"You mean the one that read, 'After all these years, only you would sit in the rain for three hours waiting for me'?" my roommate, Brooke, asks later in the kitchen.
"Yes."
"You called him?" Brooke pours coffee like it's a small ritual.
"No." I stare at my hands. "I waited for him for three hours on my birthday."
Brooke looks at me with a softness that stings. "Alex, why did you wait?"
"I don't know. Because I wanted him to love me. Because I believed I was patient enough. Because I wanted to be the person who could stay."
That night I learned two things with a clarity that hurts:
One, everyone knows Forrest loved Estelle before me. They loved loudly for four years, until Estelle left to study abroad. Two, I had been waiting in the wrong place for the wrong person.
The apartment door opens and cold air slips in like an accusation. Forrest takes off his coat and freezes when he sees me.
"I forgot the medicine," he says, as if this explains everything. "You asked me to get it."
I am supposed to respond with gratitude. I used to. I used to say, "It's okay, I know you are busy," and it would tie us together like a small forgiving ribbon.
"You're angry?" he asks, frowning.
I want to tell him that I'm not angry about the medicine. I want to tell him that the thing that hurts is that he could spend three hours in the rain for someone else and forget that I was waiting.
Instead I say nothing. I slip past him to the door, and he grabs my hand. His fingers are large, rough at the joints from piano practice and other small labors. For a moment I feel the old sorrow—the small wish to be noticed—but it's thin now, like paper.
"You won't forget it again," he says, earnest.
"Thank you," I hear myself say.
He almost has something else to say, and then he doesn't. The streetlight throws our shadows long and thin. My right hand is warm; my left is numb.
We were together three years.
"In college you were everyone's dream," a friend says once. "You were the boy on the stage with sunlight around you." He is right. Forrest was the boy who stood at the podium and made the auditorium hold its breath.
When Estelle left, it had no drama in our version. When she decided to study abroad, she left. Forrest cried; he said he could not imagine life without her. He refused me when I confessed—at first—but after she didn't come back, Forrest agreed to be with me. He said he was ready to try again.
"I will love you," he had told me then, and I wanted that to be true with a child's faith.
But people change. Or perhaps they stay the same.
The next day I go looking for a medicine in a convenience store that promises to be open twenty-four hours. It's closed. The light inside is off, a promise someone forgot to keep. So I walk back into the cold and pass a figure leaning by the stairwell—Forrest, wearing just a black cashmere turtleneck, hands in pockets.
He takes my bag and my hand. "How is it so cold?" he asks gently.
I answer with a single "Hmm" and feel ridiculous.
"You were hurt by something," he says finally, "I'm sorry. I won't forget again."
"Thank you," I say, and feel lighter and heavy at once. He means well but the word "again" hangs in the air like an admission I wasn't meant to hear.
That night I'm restless. I wake from a nightmare and see Forrest leaning over. "I'll make you breakfast," he says. I've never known him to cook. He goes to the kitchen like it's a dare.
"Don't bother," I say. "There are toast and milk."
He hands me milk. "You're lactose intolerant, right?"
I look at him. "Estelle was allergic to nuts. You forget things."
He freezes. For the first time that morning the smile slips. He says, "Why would you bring her up?"
I don't answer. He sits down heavy like the chair aches. "I'm done," he says after a moment. "You can eat."
He is the kind of man who leaves those small marks, the absent-mindedness of someone who loves with an old photograph. It is not malice, it is an old habit.
For days the house is quiet though we sleep under the same roof. Forrest goes out. The phone buzzes. I scroll through my feed and see Estelle's posts—calm captions about work and late studios. On my birthday she posts the rain photo.
I am angry, but the anger is not new. It is tiredness.
I go to a nearby bar to drink away the noise.
The singer on the stage begins to strum a guitar and suddenly I feel like I'm being watched by memory. He looks like a boy from high school: hair messy, smile dangerous. He runs a hand through his hair and grins when he sees me.
"Fruit?" he calls.
I blink. The nickname echoes years back to high school—my round face, my early blushing.
"Akira?" I ask, though the light is dim.
"Alex!" he says, and throws a phone into my hand. "You left it here at the bar."
He hasn't changed except for better posture and a stranger's steadiness. He used to be my neighbor at school, the boy who borrowed my notes and stole my fries. He had left without a goodbye; I had never known why.
He explains now. "My family and I didn't agree on my choices. I ran away for music. I went to Beijing. Then to London. Now I'm back."
He opens the car for me—an old gesture. I get in, half-caught by the old easy of being seen by someone who once had a claim on me that was nothing but friendship.
At my building I see a light in the window. Forrest is there. He shuts the curtains when he sees me looking.
The smell of smoke hits me. He has started smoking again—he had said he'd quit because Estelle hated it. He sits with red eyes like someone up at a funeral.
"You were out?" he asks.
"Yes."
"You used to tell me if you went out late," he says, as if that binds the past.
"I thought you were with Estelle tonight," I say. "I thought you might not come home."
Forrest stammers something about safety and distance, but the words are thin. I cannot fight anymore. "I understand," I say. "Good night," and close the door.
For the Lunar New Year, he invites my parents. "We should fix a date," he says. He wants to introduce me as a fiancée. The idea should thrill me. Instead it feels like the final weight of a life I traded.
He almost smiles when he hears me refuse. "You don't want to marry me?" he asks, incredulous.
"Not anymore," I tell him.
He grabs me and says, "I'm scared of losing you, Nia. I'm scared of losing what I had."
"I'm not yours to be scared of losing," I tell him, and the sentence is colder and cleaner than anything between us for months. "If you can't love me because I'm me, then don't call it love."
He begs. He cries. I sit on the couch and weep because I am losing a person I once wanted to save.
The dinner with my parents is a strange theater. Forrest arranges it like a play. He asks me to play along. The moment his phone rings and he answers with a woman's voice on the other end, his face changes. "Estelle had an accident," he says. "I have to go."
I look at him and feel like something in me finally breaks.
I tell him to go.
He leaves.
He doesn't come back all night.
When he returns a day later, I have made a decision. I type, "We should break up," and press send.
Forrest's world unravels slowly and loudly. He calls. He storms. He becomes the person he was when he had felt empty when Estelle left. He is not evil. He is still Forrest. He simply is no longer on the side of me.
I pack my things. The apartment is messy; his cigarettes have turned our home into a different life. I stand with a bag in hand when he comes in.
"Please don't leave," he begs.
"I'm tired," I say. "I can't keep living in second place."
He asks, "I was wrong. Can't we try?" His voice is a child's in a man's throat. "I thought of us a dog, a small life—"
"I'm done," I say. "I can't. It's over."
He tries to tell me otherwise, and I tell him "yes" or "no" like flipping a switch he can't reach.
Then I close the door.
I move to an apartment near work. Not five days after I move in, I walk into the hallway and meet Akira. He is walking a golden retriever that looks at me like it's known me for years.
"You live on the eighth floor," he says. "I've been on the seventh."
"You've been very close," I say, smiling.
"Close is how I planned it," he says, and we both laugh like old friends at some private joke.
He helps me move boxes. He makes coffee that is too strong and insists it smells like home. He comes by with a dog that thinks my shoes are toys and a face that looks like a friend and maybe something more.
"Where's your head at?" he asks one night as we sit on the balcony watching the city lights.
"Fried," I say. "I have a hard time convincing myself to be okay."
"Then be not okay with me," he replies. "I'll be your not okay."
His jokes crack a shell around me I didn't realize I had built. He knows things about me like how I used to cry when I was a teenager because math would not budge. He remembers a hundred tiny humiliations with care.
Over months he becomes the permission I give myself to be small and sometimes loud, to be silly, to be human.
"Do you still think about Forrest?" Akira asks once while we are sharing a blanket in my small living room.
"Sometimes," I say.
"You deserve someone who remembers your lactose, who remembers your old songs, who waits in the rain for you," he says.
"Or someone who brings the umbrella without thinking of a reason," I answer.
He laughs, and the laugh is something that anchors me.
Then Estelle returns to town. She meets me in a coffee shop under the pretense of "closure." She is polished, like a picture everyone keeps in a frame.
"You're lucky," she says bluntly once we are seated. "Forrest loves me. He told me he regrets."
"You'll get him," I answer flatly. "Do you want my congratulations?"
She sits upright then, suddenly fierce. "You said things to him," she blurts. "You told him he already made his regrets."
I look at her, incredulous. "I didn't tell him anything but the truth."
"You stole him." Estelle's voice trembles. "You stole him away."
"Stole?" I repeat. "You left and told him to wait. You came back to claim what you never carried."
"Then give him back!" she demands, eyes wet. "I can't live without him."
"Why would I sell him?" I ask. "He's not a thing."
She begs me with all the intensity of a woman ransomed by feeling. She kisses my hands, cries, wails. I sit across and watch another person unravel because of the same man who once waited three hours in the rain for her photo.
I do not pity her. I have been her.
I tell her, "You and I both had him. It's not about possession. If you still want him, fight for him on your own terms."
She looks up, eyes hollow. "Can't you just give him back?"
I stand, let my chair scrape back, and walk away.
Weeks later, the city gossip tastes sweeter than it should. Forrest is getting married. Not to Estelle. But the air hums with an invitation. I receive a card with careful handwriting: "Forrest Nicolas & Claire. Sunday. Small ceremony."
I have choices. I could ignore it. I could go. I could write him a letter. I choose to go because some doors only close when you go to the lock and turn them.
The church is a place of soft hush. I sit in the back, a guest among others. Akira's hand finds mine and squeezes.
"Are you sure?" he asks.
"Yes," I say. "I need to see the script end."
Forrest walks down the aisle like a man with a polished smile. Claire is a woman who looks like she is capable of fiercely practical love. I watch the vows tremble in the warm light.
After the ceremony the hall swells with congratulations. People stand and talk in small knots. Then, like a thread pulled, I step forward.
"Can I have a word?" I hear myself say.
Forrest looks surprised. Claire blinks. The room hushes.
"Forrest," I say, so everyone hears, "you have been my home and my exile. You have always had a way of loving what's not you. You have blamed time and distance, and you have blamed me. Today we are here with witnesses. There are things people should know."
A woman near the buffet gasps. A cousin turns. Someone pulls out a phone.
"Forrest," I continue, "you loved Estelle. She loved you. You two were honest with one another, and then you built me into the place you put your loneliness. You called me when you needed comfort and you left when you did not. You promised more than you could keep."
Forrest's face flushes, the smile falters. "Alex—"
"Don't," I say, and the word cuts.
The crowd leans in; the bride stands frozen, confusion and hurt on her face.
"Forrest," I say more softly now, "I am not here to curse you. I am here to tell people the truth so it does not become a story of betrayal told behind closed doors. You deserve better than being someone's second option. They deserve the truth. You deserve honesty."
People begin to murmur. A cousin who once admired Forrest stares at him as if seeing him anew. "Is this—are you breaking up the wedding?" someone whispers.
Estelle is not here. She had begged me not to do anything. But I could not hold the weight of silence any longer.
"Forrest," I say again, "I forgive you." My voice surprises me with its calm.
The room is silent. A woman clap breaks on the other side of the hall—disapproving, sharp; then another voice: "She stood up for herself." A man starts clapping and others join—applause swelling into a chorus.
Forrest's expression changes in stages. First: surprise. Then entitlement—he opens his mouth to dismiss me. Then shock as people around him lean away. Then denial, as he says, "You shouldn't—this isn't your place."
"Isn't it?" I ask, and a reporter, who had been invited, steps forward with a camera. Someone else "accidentally" records on a phone. The video hums later, in bars and in feeds.
Forrest tries to laugh it off. "This is ridiculous," he says to the room.
"You left her waiting in the rain for three hours," I say, and I tell the room the small cruelties: the night he chose to leave the house without a word; the texts unanswered; the dinners where he was distant. I do it calmly, not to shame, but to make a record. "I could have been his entire life, but I was used like a convenient friend. That is not low—it is dishonest."
People react. A woman covers her mouth. An uncle who had once toasted Forrest's career looks at his nephew with a new thinness to his face. "How could he?" someone mutters.
Forrest shifts uncomfortably, hands palm-flattening on the rim of his glass. He tries to choke back his words. "You are making this a show," he says, small and wounded.
"I'm making it a truth," I answer. "Truth is the only way we move forward."
Forrest's face breaks then—from hurt to anger to pleading. "Alex, please—" he says.
"Please what?" I ask. "Beg? Deny? Promise?"
He tries to charm the room back—"We were young," he starts—but the charm doesn't fit anymore. People are different when they know.
A group murmurs: "He has had so many flings since Estelle left." Others nod. A close friend of Forrest, who once looked at him with admiration, whispers, "He never changed."
Forrest's public face finds strain. He becomes smaller. Then he begins to unravel. Hands that were steady tremble. His denial cracks into frantic pleading, "No, no, no—this isn't true!"
A woman from the catering team, who had once confessed she admired his speeches, comes up and says quietly, "We all saw it. And we wanted to tell him, but we stayed quiet."
The crowd begins to turn. Cameras click. People take out phones, some to record, some to call someone. The energy is a wave that breaks against Forrest.
He changes: first a blush of embarrassment, then fury. "Stop!" he shouts. "You can't—"
"Watch me." I say.
He tries to explain, to justify, to downplay. He says, "That was before. That was different." He looks at Claire, who now looks like she would rather be anywhere else. "We worked this out," he tells her.
"Did you?" I ask. "Did you tell her that you were still missing someone else? Did you tell her you'd been using others as a mirror?"
Forrest's voice drops. He looks at the floor. "I never wanted to hurt you," he whispers to Claire.
"You did," she answers, small and brave.
The crowd hums with a different intensity now. Some people clap; some hiss. A journalist who had been invited asks to speak. "Is this a scandal?" the reporter asks into a camera.
"No," I say. "It's a lesson."
Forrest steps outside, hand over his face. He is surrounded by whispers. For a long minute, the room fills with commentary—some cruel, some relieved, some incredulous. People who used to smile at his name now register his fall like the passing of a weather front.
Forrest's reaction changes with each second. Pride cracks. He tries to salvage dignity. Then he tries to deny. Then he tries to charm. The last act is collapse—his shoulders folding as if a weight is placed on him. He takes a seat and weeps.
"Please," he says to no one and to everyone. "I'm sorry."
People in the crowd shift. Some nod—like judges who have reached a verdict. A friend he had once stood on stage with turns his face away. Someone records Forrest's tears and posts them; in hours, his expression is replayed, dissected, mocked.
The public punishment is not a single blow. It is a ripple. The ones who had once thought him charming look away. Invitations he had long taken for granted go unanswered. A brand pulls a campaign when sponsors see the trending videos. He loses a steady praise; he loses the illusion of heroism.
At the end he stands alone, a man who still has a career but not the easy trust he had. He tries to apologize to Claire in the hallway, but she refuses him. "You should have been honest," she says. "I won't be the person who fixes what you were never willing to know."
He falls apart in the doorway with people looking on. Some offer pity; some offer the cold shoulder. A woman says loudly, "You hurt her for years." Another person laughs—mean, brittle. A child nearby asks his mother, "Why is he crying?" The mother answers, "Because he cannot hide anymore."
Estelle knows about it all later. She hears the recordings. She calls Forrest that evening, but he does not respond.
Forrest's life becomes, for a while, an example. The crowd's judgment is a mirror.
After the scene, I go home with Akira. He holds me steady.
"You did the right thing," he says.
"I stood up in front of a room and told a truth," I say. "It felt like stepping out of a mold."
"Good," Akira says. "You deserve better."
Months pass. Forrest is a name that appears sometimes, a cautionary tale. Estelle leaves the city again, this time with less fanfare. Forrest tries work, tries to rebuild, but the mirror he once loved reflecting his image is broken.
I don't gloat. I don't dance on his ruin. But when I hear that a brand had dropped him, a voice in me pities him. When I see him a few years later at a distant venue, smaller, labeled by his own history, I feel a small honest compassion I did not have before.
After all of it, I marry Akira.
"Why him?" my mother asks once while helping me put a veil on.
"Because he was patient," I answer. "Because he taught me how not to disappear into someone else's story."
On our wedding night, as the city sleeps and the air is warm, I scroll through a feed and stop at a new photo: Forrest's wedding. He looks older. The bride is not Estelle. They smiled in a way that looks practiced.
Akira squeezes my hand. "You okay?" he asks.
"Yes," I say. "I am."
I slide my phone away, and sleep comes. In the morning, Meatball—the golden retriever—nudges at my heel. Akira gets up before me and makes coffee. He fumbles with the cups, knocks one over, laughs, and I fall in love with him again in the small way of mornings.
We build a life that is small and loud and honest. My mother says once, "You were brave to leave."
"No," I answer, "I was tired of being second."
We keep a photograph of that night in the church—the only record of me standing up. Akira jokes that it's a best man speech gone rogue. I laugh.
"I'm glad you went," he says. "You planted a seed."
"I planted a scar," I say. "Then I dug it out."
"Better than hiding it," he says, and kisses the place under my ear.
The days are ordinary. We adopt the golden retriever who used to visit my apartment building. We call him Meatball. He sleeps with his paw on Akira's shoe and snores like a small engine. Once when I go online, I see Forrest's name floated in a headline—someone quoted an old interview and called him "the boy once adored." I smile to myself and go back to the dishes.
Sometimes I think about Estelle. I don't hate her. She was a version of me—someone who loved loudly and then not at all. She had broken for other reasons.
Forrest? He learns to be alone in a new, hard way. He tries to fix what he can.
If anyone asks me whether the public scene I exposed was cruel, I answer: "It was necessary. People should know that a kindness you carry into another life cannot be a habit you keep for everyone but the one you live with. You must choose. And if you do not choose, the world will choose for you."
Akira squeezes my hand. Meatball barks because the neighbor is outside with his own dog.
"I love you," he says.
"I know," I reply.
We make coffee, and the city hums. Outside, the leaves fall and rise like steady breaths. The scar is gone; the memory is there. The life we build is relentless in its smallness, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.
The End
— Thank you for reading —