Sweet Romance12 min read
The Wrong Bed, the Leaky Ceiling, and Joaquin
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The ceiling leaked again at midnight. A small, steady drip tapped my forehead as if the building wanted to remind me I was still alive and still poor.
I sat up, wiped my face, and cursed softly. "Not again," I said to the dark room, to the landlord, to the building, to the sky.
I packed a pillow and a spare blanket like a thief stealing comfort, then ran next door to Lucy Price's place. Her apartment was like a glossy pamphlet in the middle of my cheap little world: bright, safe, and very, very hers.
"I told you to call me sooner," she said, fussing over my wet hair with a towel as if I were a child. "Why do you keep living in that rooftop cellar?"
"I like the cheap rent," I said. "And I like being alone." I laughed, but the laugh tasted small.
Lucy patted the guest room bed. "Just crash. I'll make tea."
I slipped between the sheets and finally breathed like a drowning girl finding a pocket of air. Sleep folded me, slow and honest.
Then a solid weight folded around me.
"Why are you sleeping in my bed?" a voice said low, rough, and very, very familiar.
My hand landed on someone else's chest. "Lucy?" I whispered, hugging what I thought was my friend.
"You don't sleep in the master bedroom?" I murmured, half-asleep and half-proud of my cleverness.
My fingertips brushed hardened muscle. I froze. "Since when did Lucy get abs?"
A voice like an overdue storm broke the dark. "Emmalyn, you went to a lot of trouble to provoke me."
The voice. The memory of it cut through my fog. I switched on the lamp.
He stood there like something carved for posters—tall, dark, unreadable. Joaquin Ash. My ex who had the decency to be handsome and the indecency to look unaffected.
"What are you doing here?" I grabbed the blanket and tried to hide.
Joaquin's face didn't change. "You think I don't know how to bar doors?" His tone was more accusation than greeting.
"I—" I stammered. "I came here because my roof leaked."
"Right," he said, amusement curling. "And you thought my sister's bed would be safer?"
Lucy opened the door then, huge-eyed and prosaically loud. "Oh my God, sorry, sorry, sorry!" She saw us, blinked, then blurted, "You two continue. I'll leave."
She vanished like a panic. Her speed made everything worse and more ridiculous.
"You're my ex," Joaquin said, like a fact, like a sentence.
"Ex?" I echoed. "We broke up in college."
"Yeah." He shrugged. "For reasons that apparently keep repeating."
He tried to stand, but the blanket snagged. He fell, and his lips crashed into mine by accident and by law I don't think either of us would have called it an accident if anyone asked later.
Lucy apologized from the hallway and then laughed on her tip-toes: "My bad! My bad! Sorry!"
Half an hour later, I had moved from Joaquin's accidental embrace to Lucy's bed for actual, normal sleeping. We talked about nothing and everything in whispers.
"So he's your ex?" Lucy asked, wide and curious.
"From college." I told her the bare bones. "We split after I watched a movie and he said he didn't have time."
"That was it?" Lucy gaped.
"That was it," I said. "He said 'okay.'"
She stared. "Are you sure he wasn't hurt? He didn't seem like a 'just okay' man."
I wondered that very thing too.
I slept badly, woke badly, and in the morning his silhouette was in the doorway of Lucy's bathroom wrapped in a towel. I turned bright red.
"You went to my house last night to seduce me and now you show up again?" Joaquin accused, more like a spat than a question.
"I walked into the wrong room. Again." My voice was small and useless.
He grabbed my neck with a hand that was gentler than his voice. "You come and go like that and expect me to believe in coincidence?"
"Why do you bathe at dawn?"
He said, "Because I couldn't sleep, and the house had company. Because your roof leaks."
Something in me felt ridiculous, tender, and furious all at once.
We tried a truce. I slept in Lucy's spare room. Joaquin slept on a thin mattress on the floor. I pushed my luck, and then I poked him. He was like a stone until my fingertips wandered and then his arm tightened into a cage.
"Intentional?" he asked softly.
"Yes," I admitted.
He breathed out. "Fine. I can be firm."
He set his jaw and made a floor out of his dignity. I slept on the bed and he slept on the floor like he'd made a vow to himself to be cold at a cost.
That night, I fell onto his chest like gravity had rerouted itself. He made a face like a man being unfairly punished.
"Get off," he muttered.
"Not moving," I said. "You can move."
He moved. He brought two mugs to the coffee table to my surprise and sat by me as I cooked noodles. He said nothing about the way my hands moved or the way I chased a coriander leaf with my chopsticks. He stayed with me while I laughed at a talk show and then quietly slapped my head when I complained.
"This hurts?" he teased.
"It does." I rubbed my shoulder. "Be glad I have no desire to use your ribs as a pillow."
"Are you serious?" He looked at me with a softness like early morning light.
That was the first heart-flutter. "You made tea the way I like it," I said later, probing. He didn't brag, but his small, private attention was like someone letting me stand under a small sun that existed only for me.
Weeks passed and little things changed. He stopped answering "fine" to everything. He started noticing when my drawings crinkled with stress and when I needed someone to carry a box. He would, without being asked, take off his coat on nights it rained and drape it over my shoulders.
"Stop doing that," I told him once.
"Stop shivering," he answered, and kissed my knuckles like it was a fact.
Another flutter: the night he found my sketchbook and told me, "You draw like you breathe."
My cheeks warmed without permission. "That's not a compliment," I said.
"It is," he said. "And you make terrible jokes."
I laughed, and he smiled with his eyes for the first time in months. He told me he had warned a girl in college—Celine Santos—about crossing lines. He had, in his dry, distant way, protected me then without making a production of it. He had pulled strings, nudged situations, and smiled while pretending not to.
I felt like I had unwittingly been given a shield I never asked for.
"Why didn't you tell me?" I demanded one night.
"Because I didn't want to make you paranoid," he said. "Because I wanted you to be your stubborn self."
We bumbled forward like two awkward planets aligning.
Then the alumni reunion happened.
I considered not going. I told myself my life was modest and private. Lucy pushed me. "Go, Em," she said, straightening the hem of my dress. "For old times' sake."
So I went.
The banquet room smelled of lemon and expensive things. The tablecloths were immaculate. Faces I had not seen in years gathered in small storms of gossip and laughter.
A voice whispered behind me. "Emmalyn."
Aiden Alvarado—our old class rep—smiled and waved me over. He was steady as always. He hugged me with that warm, honest squeeze that says you were missed in the right way.
"You look… good," he said.
"Thanks." I sat by him and watched the others. Across the room sat Celine Santos like she owned the evening she had paid for. Her laugh was loud and practiced.
"She looks rich," someone murmured.
"She always did."
I tried to keep quiet until an old wound cracked open. Celine started in on me with a voice sharp as glass.
"So, Emmalyn, any new men? Any successful boyfriends?" she said, each syllable a needle.
"None," I replied simply.
"That's what I thought." She smiled with the politeness of someone who enjoys watching you fail.
I clenched my napkin. "You actually remember me," she said. "Funny."
"That was mean," said Aiden, standing up for me like he'd done in class years ago.
"Why do you still defend her?" Celine sneered. "Is she your charity project?"
"Leave her alone," Aiden said. "It's not kind."
Celine tossed her hair. "I'm just being honest. Not everyone can land a good man."
The words were small but heavy.
"Is this about old times?" I asked. "Did I hurt you then?"
"You did," she said flatly. "You had him and then you left. And now you want pity. Please."
My blood flared with heat and cold. Anger is strange; it can make you bold.
Before I could say anything, someone cut in. Joaquin had arrived quietly, like a shadow that only later showed its shape. He stood behind Celine like a judge takes the bench.
"Remember when I warned you?" he said.
Celine rolled her eyes. "Warning? Joaquin, you and your dramatics."
He smiled with zero humor. "You used to be cruel. You liked making people smaller to seem taller."
The table hushed.
"That's not fair," Celine said.
"It's very fair," Joaquin answered. "You followed us in college, you whispered while we dated, you plotted to make our days worse."
"Who told you that?" she snapped, but her voice trembled now.
"Do you really want to do this in front of everyone?" Joaquin asked.
"Yes," I said before I thought. "Yes! Do it."
He took in the room like a man counting witnesses. "You spread rumors about Emmalyn. You accused her of things you invented. You followed us and tried to sabotage her."
Celine's eyes flashed fury. "That's a lie!"
"Is it?" Joaquin asked. He stepped closer. "You stalked her. You sent messages to people to ruin her reputation. You sent fake notes to make her seem unstable. Do you remember the ‘help’ messages at the library door? You do, because I found the paper with your handwriting."
Her face went from daring to pale.
"I didn't—" She started, then stopped. You could see her thinking of a defense like a child arranging stones to keep water out.
"Everyone here," Joaquin said, "saw how you treated people. You liked the power. You thought you were untouchable because of your money and your theater."
"You're lying!" she shrieked.
Aiden stood up. "This isn't the first time Celine's name has been linked to trouble," he said. "It was cleaned up because she had influence. Not now."
"Now?" Celine laughed a laugh without humor. "You all think this is so righteous."
A crowd gathered. Phones lifted, not to pry but to record a truth they had sensed for a while. People leaned forward. Faces in the crowd shifted from curiosity to disgust.
"You thought you could hurt someone and we'll all look the other way," Joaquin said slowly. "Tonight, someone finally told the truth."
Celine's face flickered through stages: anger, denial, shock, then a desperation so blunt it looked like a comic strip of human ruin.
"You can't do this," she said, voice cracking.
"I can," Joaquin said. "Because I won't let you make others small anymore."
She lunged toward him and clawed the air between them, fingernails out like a small animal. Someone stepped between them. A murmur swept like wind.
"You're pathetic," Joaquin said. "You had a chance to grow, to apologize, but you chose to use what you had to crush others."
"You're jealous!" she screamed. "You're a liar!"
"Jealous of what?" Joaquin asked. "Of you? Of your schemes? I've had your kind found out before. This time, you're not only exposed—you've lost your audience."
At that, a woman nearby—one of the classmates Celine had once bullied—snapped, "I kept quiet for a long time, too. But you ruined my job. You messaged my boss. You told people I was unreliable. I have the screenshots." She tapped her phone and a set of messages flashed onto the banquet room projector—screenshots of lies, threats, and manipulations. The room gasped.
Celine's mouth formed an "o." She stumbled backward, as if someone had pushed her with an invisible hand. Her eyes rolled from one face to another. Her mask slipped.
Now the punishment unfurled, public and inexorable.
The projector showed messages and photos. People whispered, leaned in, and then looked at her with that cold, organized disappointment that kills pretense.
"Someone recorded you bribing a student to fake an incident," Aiden read from a printed statement. Hands whispered "What?" The room hummed.
Celine tried to reach her phone, tried to contact someone to save her, but the angle of the lights and the number of witnesses turned every action into evidence. A younger woman—she used to be on the receiving end—walked to the center and told a clear, low story about how Celine had cost her a scholarship.
Celine's defenses began to fall like wallpaper pulled loose. She switched from guiltless rage to shaky denial. "You don't know me!" she cried.
"We do," Joaquin said. "We know exactly who you are."
Phones took pictures. Someone uploaded a short clip and within minutes the clip was shared in a small circle. The sound of fingers typing was like a new kind of thunder.
Then the cruelest thing happened: people turned away.
No one cheered her on. No one rushed to her defense. Her allies were either silent or looking embarrassed. A business woman who had been laughing near her earlier closed her lips and picked up a napkin as if the gesture could hide involvement.
She begged. "Please, please. I didn't—"
"Save it," someone cut in. "We have proof."
She tried to slink toward the exit, but steps were heavy and the door had witnesses. At the threshold, a few people snapped her photo and left it on the table. Someone whispered into a phone. "She's being exposed."
She made a face like someone seeing a spider. "You think you can ruin me?"
"You already did," Joaquin said. "By being yourself."
She pounded her fists on a table like a child. A chorus of disappointed faces closed in. For the first time, she had no public stage, no applause, no fallback. She was naked in the light, and the light was merciless.
She staggered from the room, eyes bright with shame and fury, while a dozen people muttered, "I remember that," or "She did that to me too," or "I kept quiet." The murmur turned into small confessions and then into small confrontations as others at other tables came forward with their own stories.
By the time she reached the door, she had been judged by more than one person. Her infamy began like a rumor but consolidated right there—public and unavoidable.
She left not with dignity but with the wild look of someone who had miscalculated the extent of cruelty she could incite and the extent of honesty she would meet.
People applauded quietly—not at her humiliation, but at the courage of those who spoke. Cameras clicked. A few brave classmates hugged me at my table and said, "Thank you." I had nothing to do with the exposure, but standing there, cheeks burning, I felt a fierce relief wash through me: truth had been set on a path it could not be bribed off.
Celine's punishment had many parts. The immediate, public shaming; the collective turning away; the exposure of messages and bribery; the social unmasking that would follow her on social feeds and in small circles. Her reactions changed from angry dominance to stuttering denial to a collapsing grief that was equal parts fear and the sudden absence of control.
The crowd's reaction was a study in breather-turned-audience: first shock, then recognition, then disgust, then slow, tidy solidarity. Phones recorded the moment. Someone later posted a clip. Comments labeled her "manipulative." The story took a life of its own.
From my seat, I watched the fallout. Some called her cruel. Some said justice finally arrived. A few were more practical—wondering what this would mean for their own reputations. That was human. That was messy. That was enough.
After the exposure, things resolved like a slow tide. People stopped granting her warm smiles. Invitations dried. One of the larger companies in the room—one that mattered—quietly uninvited her from an upcoming event. A charity she had hoped to co-host moved her name off the list. That was different from legal punishment, but it was a consequence that fit the time and place: a public unseating.
She didn't collapse dramatically to her knees in a viral scene. She crumbled privately afterward. I heard later that she tried to call a couple of old friends and was met with a cold silence. Her parents, proud and used to smoothing problems, were cornered by gossip and retreated. Fame had been a scaffold that came down.
I don't like to relish defeat. But I don't pretend it wasn't necessary. She had made a hobby of hurting people.
After she left, Joaquin took my hand and squeezed like he meant it. "You okay?" he asked.
"Yes," I said, "and no."
He nodded like he understood both. He sat down and wrapped an arm around me like he was keeping the night from sliding away.
We walked home under a sky that was indifferent and safe. He held my hand and the city hummed, quiet and full.
Later, in my apartment with the sound of the old pipes and a tiny new lightness, I asked him, "Why didn't you tell me earlier you were protecting me?"
He looked down at our linked fingers and said, "Because I thought you'd hate me for it. And because I wanted you to be your honest, stubborn self."
"That sounds like a very selfish litany," I said.
"Maybe," he admitted. "But I wanted to know you, not the version you might become under my watch."
I laughed, and he laughed too. The sound was not the same as everything that had come before.
We kept mending the old pieces like small carpenters.
He started leaving me small things—a wrapped tea bag, a warm sock, a hand-drawn star on a napkin.
"Why stars?" I asked once.
"Because you said once you liked little folded stars," he answered. "You used to make them in class."
I felt honored like someone handed a medal.
Midnight leaked through the ceiling once more weeks later, but I didn't panic. I packed a towel and a mug and went next door, not because I had to, but because someone scratched his head and said, "Move back. The bed isn't a battlefield."
I laughed. He laughed.
The wrong bed had become an odd sort of beginning. The leak had become a motif: a reminder that life drips surprises at your face, that you either curse or you move to a warmer room with a better mattress.
"One condition," Joaquin said one evening while brushing away a stray hair from my forehead. "You owe me your stubbornness and your best drawings."
"Deal," I said.
"And you owe me—"
He paused like someone counting favors, then grinned. "A kiss."
"I think that is overdue," I said.
We kissed—less clumsy now, more like two people practicing being brave.
I still live with the memory of water tapping my forehead in the old rooftop apartment. I still laugh about the first night I got into the wrong bed. But every time the ceiling drips, I remember the way he once stood up to let me have the blanket, and how he later stood up to let me keep the bed.
The leak and the wrong bed became ours—small, stubborn, and oddly warm.
The End
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