Sweet Romance11 min read
The Umbrella I Gave Away (and the Man Who Came Back for It)
ButterPicks12 views
I threw myself into Lailah's arms and let the exhaustion break open like a dam.
"Ugh, I don't want to try anymore," I said, forehead warm against her shoulder.
"You don't have to," Lailah murmured, and then, with the kind of grin that always made trouble seem like an adventure, she added, "I have a shortcut."
"A shortcut to what?" I asked, wiping my face with the heel of my hand.
"To not working for money all your life," she said, eyes bright. "Take my uncle. Be his wife. Be my aunt. Give me double pocket money."
"You're joking," I said, but Lailah's grin only widened.
"Lisa," she said my name the way a cat announces a plan, "my uncle is the kind of man who keeps his cards close and his doors wide open. Cedric Ford. Big company. Big money. You take him, I get extra spending. What's the harm?"
"The harm," I told her, "is that you are literally pushing your uncle on me like a plate of leftovers."
"Then don't be rude. Take it as fate." She poked my ribs experimentally. "Besides, you always said you wanted a shortcut."
"Not that shortcut," I said. "Not like this."
She shrugged. "Suit yourself. But I'm going to order hotpot again."
"I thought you already had two days in a row," I muttered.
"You sound like you forgot how to accept free food." Lailah stuck out her tongue and picked up the phone.
We were at the hotpot place before I remembered work, before I remembered that the man I cursed every week—the one with the crisp shirts and the little disappointed frown at every timecard—was, apparently, Lailah's uncle.
"Uncle!" Lailah called, waving like a beacon.
A voice replied, low and familiar in a way that made my heart hiccup.
"How could this voice sound like Cedric Ford's and not ruin my life?" I thought.
"You came to eat?" Cedric asked as he stepped into the restaurant, his suit casual but impeccable.
I froze, my soup chopsticks mid-drop. I knew that voice. His tone, the way he said "eat" like it was an invitation to be examined, not served. Suddenly, every insult I had whispered about my boss at midnight felt like a legal document stamped and filed in the universe.
"Cedric?" Lailah hopped up. "This is my friend—Lisa."
"Nice to meet you," I said automatically, and then the world narrowed to the line of his jaw and the way his eyes moved around the room and landed on me with something between curiosity and recognition.
"When did you two meet?" he asked, casually.
"At work," I said.
"At my office?" Cedric asked, an eyebrow twitching.
"No," Lailah lied for me, and I wanted to throttle her with my chopsticks. "Lisa's been my friend forever."
"Lisa," Cedric repeated, the name hitting some ledger in his head. "You work at Ford Enterprises."
I felt myself go red. "Yes."
"Come to my office tomorrow," he said. "Bring coffee."
"I—" My voice left me.
After that dinner, my life turned into a series of impossible meetings. Cedric—my boss—started folding himself into my day like a polite, commanding shadow. He made me remake a PowerPoint at two in the afternoon and then delayed the presentation to Friday, like a cat pushing a bell off the table for the fun of watching it fall.
"Finish this here," he said, standing in the doorway while I worked in the glass box of his office, his presence cooling and there and there again.
"Why are you doing this?" I asked once, at the end of a long day, when the city had settled into its neon hum and I wanted nothing but my duvet.
"Because," he replied slowly, "you sit with a carelessness that I find...recalling."
"Recalling?" I echoed.
"Yes. I remember an umbrella."
He told me the story the way some people tell fairy tales—simple details, then a big soft punchline. Years ago he had been a pale, sick boy, recovering from surgery and waiting out a rainstorm by the campus gate. I had been a college girl with nothing but a single umbrella, and I had handed it to him. He had memorized the line I left on his face in the rain and the way my fingers trembled when I gave it. He said he'd remembered me.
"You owed me coffee," he concluded. "Now you owe me more."
Those words felt outrageous. I wanted to retract them every time. I wanted to say that I couldn't be the heroine of a neat story when my life was messy and lived out in the background of spreadsheets and group emails. But when Cedric's gaze was soft, I admitted, it was like a chair I wanted to sit in.
"Will you—" he asked one night in the parking lot, the fluorescent lights sharp and indifferent. "Will you give me a chance?"
"No," I said, because I was practical, and because he was my boss, and because Lailah had used me as bait. "I can't."
"Why?"
"Because office romance isn't allowed."
He smiled, which made my resolve wobble. "Rules can be changed," he said, as casually as if we were choosing a restaurant. "Boss says so."
That sentence made me furious and weirdly safe. "You mean...you?"
He shrugged. "Would you like to test the rules with me?"
"I said no."
We kept skirting. He became a presence that was not quite mine, not quite absent. Sometimes he watched me work with a look that was all business; sometimes he watched me with a look that suggested private libraries and late train rides. I kept my distance because I was not convinced of my own worth.
"You sure you don't want to come to the family dinner?" Lailah asked one weekend. "I'll introduce you as my aunt. It'll be funny."
"The idea of being an aunt to a woman my own age terrifies me on several levels," I said. "Also, you are the worst wingman of all time."
But when Cedric drove up in his black car to pick me up, because Lailah had 'forgotten' to come, I felt the ridiculous stirring of something that could be called hope. He introduced me to his family at a house where portraits marched up the stairs and the food tasted of tradition and money. They grilled me about my intentions and my plans with the sharpness of people used to having things decide themselves under their noses. I stumbled, answering truthfully that I had met Cedric at work. They nodded like a wave had lapped at their shoes and receded.
"Are you engaged?" asked a woman with a steady smile.
"No," I said.
"Not even dating?" another voice probed.
"Not officially," I said. I wanted to laugh, and I didn't know whether my laugh should be nervous or victorious.
After the dinner, in the car, Cedric turned to me with a caution. "Would you like to be my girlfriend?"
"I said no," I reminded him.
"Will you consider it?" he asked.
I agreed to think about it, which was not the same as a yes, and even that felt like stepping onto a moving walkway. I wanted to fall.
Then everything else crashed into view: my past, cheap, forgiving, and ugly like a garbage bag tied in a corner. A year ago, in that old, thinner life, I had given myself to a boy who left as quickly as he had come—the kind of man who treated love like a lease, breaking it before the end. Emeric Patel had been my mistake. He reappeared like bad weather.
"It's been a while," he said at a bar where Lailah and I were trying to drown our awkward feelings in wine. He moved like he owned the room.
"You don't own my memories," I replied.
"Lisa, you look amazing," Emeric said, and his eyes tried to claim me as if I could be taken. His laugh was syruped arrogance.
"Don't be gross," I told him. "And don't touch my drink."
"Please," he said, pretending hurt. "We could try again."
"You did worse than try," I said. "You cheated. You were with me and someone else."
Someone nearby laughed. Emeric leaned into the easy light, the kind that thinks you can buy attention.
"That's old news," he said. "People change. People grow."
A slow bruise of anger spread across my skin. Lailah nudged me under the table and mouthed, "Do something dramatic." I didn't need help to feel the heat rise.
"Do you remember my umbrella?" I asked Emeric, because I wanted to punch him with gentleness. "I gave it away once, when it was the only one I had."
He smirked like he expected a story where he was the hero. "Cute."
Instead of tolerating him, I called Cedric. I had not meant to. My thumb behaved like a traitor and hit call. Cedric answered.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"He's here," I said. "Emeric Patel. He thinks he's entitled to a second round."
"Stay where you are."
It took Cedric five minutes from his end to become a presence. He stepped into the bar like a tide—quiet and inevitable. Emeric went quiet, as if a bird sensing a larger predator had folded its wings. People noticed. Conversations hushed. My colleagues' faces turned toward the drama like lights turning to stage a play. Lailah kept her face a mask of Schadenfreude.
"Cedric," Emeric said, his voice trying to stretch into lightness. "Long time."
"Emeric," Cedric returned, the word like a judgment. He didn't touch me. He stood close enough to block Emeric's escape route.
"Is there a problem?" Emeric asked too loudly, and heads definitely turned.
"Yes," I said, and then, to my own surprise, I did something I had only dreamed of in the solitude of my apartment: I stood up and pulled out my phone.
"What are you doing?" Emeric hissed.
"Showing the world your truth," I said. "And doing it loudly."
I had prepared because I had always been the type who kept receipts. Screenshots, messages, friend confessions—all the ugly proof of his choices. I held up my phone like a bright sign and started to scroll.
"Look," I said. "This is my message from last year. And this is him with Jenna. And this—" My voice steadied as proof glowed on my screen. "—is the message where he says he didn't want to commit."
It was supposed to be private, but my chair had a view. People leaned in. My coworkers did what crowds do—they leaned, they recorded, they reacted. Emeric laughed at first, the brittle sound of a man who thought shame could be bluff-faced away.
"You're embarrassing yourself," he said.
"You're the one who lied," I said. "You cheated on me. You told me I was everything, then you left."
He tried to deny. "You don't know—"
He did everything wrong. He tried to charm, to gaslight, to minimize. He said that I was making a scene, that I was hurting his business reputation—an odd claim for a man who had once broken a girl's bank account for groceries and called it romance.
Then something happened. The crowd didn't just watch; they spoke.
"Is that him?" someone asked.
"That's the cheater," another voice cited, and a ripple of disgust moved through the bar.
My colleagues, people I've shared deadlines and coffee stains with, stood up. Hugh Weber came forward, his expression a mixture of protectiveness and professional pride.
"You," he said to Emeric, cold as glass, "are not welcome here."
A woman at the next table—Brielle Rasmussen, whom I'd shared an awkward seminar with once—stood up with her phone recording. "People like him deserve to be known," she said. "You lied to women. You used them."
Emeric's smugness cracked into fury. He spun toward me, words flaring like flames. "You think this is justice? You're making a mockery of me."
"Someone has to," I said. "Someone has to tell the truth when you've been telling lies."
He lunged for my phone. People gasped. A man grabbed Emeric's arm. A waiter stepped in. The entire bar became a courtroom of instant witnesses: the barman, the students in the corner, the two traveling salesmen, the family sharing dessert, and my coworkers with their phones out, faces lit by the small blue screens.
Emeric's face changed in stages. At first, he was indignant, certain his charm would buy him escape. Then he grew incredulous as recordings spread across tables. "They're recording this," he said.
"They're only recording what you made them see," Cedric replied, quiet and final.
"I demand you stop," Emeric snapped, voice tight.
"Stop what? Lying?" I asked.
"My reputation—"
"Your reputation is what you made it," Brielle said sharply. "You can control what you say about yourself. You can't unmake the hurt you caused."
He started to lose control. Then, the worst kind of public humiliation for a man who valued image above all bared itself: someone he worked with walked in—someone from his firm, a young man named Vernon Foster who was in the bar for a charity auction. Vernon's jaw tightened as he saw Emeric.
"Is that Emeric Patel?" Vernon asked, incredulous.
"It is," a voice confirmed.
"Oh," Vernon said slowly, as if a ledger were being closed. "You were on that contract I nearly gave you last month. You lied."
The word "lied" carried weight. Conversations moved like dominoes. Emeric's phone began to buzz with messages from clients who had been listening. A client texted: "We're reconsidering." Another: "We can't be associated."
I watched Emeric's expression shift from anger to panic. He tried to apologize, but the words had nowhere to land. His colleagues watched, bewildered by the man they'd once considered clever and charismatic. He had been small talk and big promises; now he was trembling under the weight of recorded evidence and human witnesses.
Finally, he turned to me, voice thin. "Please. Please don't do this."
"Why would I?" I asked. "So you can go back and do it again?"
He bent, not unlike someone seeking shelter. He knew people would remember. He knew that his clients had heard. He knew the worst punishment in our small world: lost trust.
Someone laughed behind us, gentle and satisfied. Then the laughter became louder, and not cruel so much as the sound of justice tasting sweet.
Emeric left the bar that night under the eyes of strangers and former friends. The next day, his phone started to buzz with cancellations. The firm he freelanced for quietly removed his name from pitches. A profile piece that had been in progress was pulled. Word moved fast now; reputation is a paper ship on a digital tide.
That punishment scene, public and sharp, wasn't a melodramatic collapse but a thorough unwinding. He lost not just the pretense but the market for it. We watched, the crowd that had witnessed him, as he went from a smirk to a limp apology, and then into the thin hospital of consequences. It was slow and exacting—worse than a punch because it seeped and hollowed. He tried to reclaim dignity in the days after, calling, promising to change. He sent messages that read like scripts. People stopped returning them. The ones who had once called him brilliant sat in morning meetings and explained why trust mattered.
I never wanted humiliation for anyone, even him. But what he had done deserved an answer, and the publicness of it was because his lies had been public in effect. He had convinced people to invest time and affection; what he stole had to be paid back with something heavier than regret. So he faced it—first in the bar with our phones like witnesses, then with the neat, efficient erasure from professional circles. He called, begged, offered to fix things, and one by one the doors closed. He was left with what he'd always been: his choices.
The aftermath wasn't just Emeric's ruin. It was a reconsideration of alliances. Cedric's steady presence through it all became less of a rumor and more of a fact. He stood beside me in the bar until the crowd thinned. He listened to proof and said nothing until it mattered. He didn't make a spectacle of himself. He treated it like a careful instrument.
"Are you okay?" he asked me after Emeric left.
"I am. That was needed," I said.
"You didn't have to do it in front of everyone," he murmured.
"I did," I said. "Because I wanted to make sure it stayed where it belonged."
He nodded.
After that night, things changed—not abruptly, not with fireworks, but like the slow rearrangement of furniture. Cedric and I took tentative steps. He texted, then called. He bought a plane ticket to the far north to see the aurora with me because once he said something romantic about light, and I liked the idea of experiencing light after so many office fluorescents. He respected my pauses. He never used his position to push. When I needed room, he gave it. When I needed a hand, he held mine.
We traveled to watch the aurora. Snow crunched beneath our boots. The sky was a slow painter, pouring green ribbons over the dark. Cedric wrapped his coat around me when the wind bit.
"Do you remember the umbrella?" he asked suddenly, voice low.
"I do," I said. "I remember handing it to you like it was the last coin in my pocket."
He smiled, the memory making him a boy again. "I have been keeping that coin."
"How?" I asked, incredulous.
"In small things," he said. "In memory. In thinking about things you do without expecting reward."
"Is that a fortune or a habit?" I teased.
"A habit," he said. "Of keeping the small things you give me."
I looked up at the sky. The aurora moved like breath. "Then keep this," I said. "Keep me. But gently."
He kissed my forehead. "Only gently."
We walked under the green, and I let the cold take everything but the warmth that followed him like a shadow. The world was quieter there—no e-mails, no pushing ideas, just two people who had found a way to keep each other by being honest in public and private. The umbrella had been a small payment; the aurora was the receipt.
When we came back, the office felt the same and also a little different. People greeted me with a new kind of respect—a mix of the awkward and the fond. Cedric and I were careful at first. We were not a headline; we were something that grew in the margins.
"Do you regret making me your girlfriend?" I asked one night, pulling my cardigan around me.
He laughed softly. "You are the most inconvenient person to love and the easiest."
"Convince me," I said.
He kissed my nose. "I will. With small, annoying things. And the occasional umbrella."
That was our promise: not dramatic endings, but small, stubborn continuations.
The End
— Thank you for reading —