Sweet Romance14 min read
Wrong Place, Right Heart
ButterPicks13 views
"I have a delivery for Room B12," I said, stepping into the private lounge with the food box in my hands.
Before I could finish the sentence, hands clamped around my wrists and metal clicked. Cold cuffs bit into my skin.
"You're under temporary detention," a voice said, calm and clipped. "Keep quiet and cooperate."
I blinked at the handcuffs, at the sudden pin-drop silence in the velvet room, at the polite faces that had turned into accusing ones. Then I looked up.
He stood there in uniform, tall, sharp-angled, like a picture cut out of a magazine. His eyes were cool, but they had a laugh hidden somewhere behind them. He gave me the kind of look that made you feel both exposed and seen.
"Name?" he asked.
"Amara Rizzo," I answered, which felt like saying my own name into a microphone for a courtroom. My voice sounded small in the big, soft room.
"Age?"
"Twenty-three."
"Delivery worker?"
"Yes. Three months."
He raised an eyebrow. "Three months?" The corner of his mouth twitched. "You're new to this."
A woman in a yellow uniform yelled from the next booth, "I'm a delivery worker too! Why are you taking us?"
I closed my mouth. We were both in delivery uniforms—one tidy, one messy—and apparently we fit the VIP club's checklist for suspicion.
"Do you have your manager's number?" the officer asked.
"Yes," I said. "Crew Dickerson, he runs the platform in my district."
I could almost feel my manager's grin through the phone when I finally got him on the line and made him come down to the station with my employee card and timesheets. Crew arrived two hours later, looking both apologetic and amused.
"You're a beautiful mix-up," he said once the cuffs were off, "but your delivery box looks like it's been to war."
He laughed. I wanted to vanish. He laughed louder and clapped my shoulder. "Want to get some barbecue after this? My treat."
"I do not want barbecue," I said, and then we both laughed because I didn't want to be dramatic and he'd already drained my dignity with his grin.
That night, as Crew and I sat under fluorescent lights at a street barbecue, a giant billboard of me being mistaken for a suspect played in the theater of my head. I chewed lamb and tried to breathe normal. "You gonna keep doing this?" Crew asked between bites.
"No," I said. "Tomorrow I quit."
"Quit and do what?"
"Anything else," I said. "My family's meat stalls are boring but steady. My dad's waiting, and they'll tease me, but at least my hands won't be cuffed."
"You're stubborn," he said. "You like the ride."
"Don't make fun of me."
"Then come work here full-time," he suggested. "We could use someone who actually knows how to deliver food without looking guilty."
I shouldn't have smiled at that. I did.
A few nights later, I ended up at my aunt's massage parlor, trying to hide from being memorable. My aunt Aurora Vogel ran the place like a weathered captain—steady hands, firm advice. She told me to sit in a private room and wait. The door slid open and he walked in.
"Isaac?" my breath wanted to betray me.
He didn't notice me, because I was wearing a mask. He shed his shirt the way people shed armor—without comment. He stretched and lay face-down on the table.
I froze at his back, muscles like sculpted hills. I couldn't help myself; my hands itched to work. My aunt had taught me massage when I was sixteen to earn extra cash, so I approached and rested my palms over his shoulders.
"You can push harder," I said automatically.
He tensed, then relaxed against my hands like a hinge opening. "You trained?"
"Aunt taught me," I said, careful. "It'll help you. Put your screen higher."
He gave me a look—half-surprised, half-amused—and then he flashed a small, cannot-be-read smile. "You're not who I thought," he murmured when I finished.
"Because I'm delivering food? Or because I'm secretly a spa masseuse?" I said.
"You were at the station," he said. "I remember you."
"No way. You... you do?"
He walked out without answering, leaving a scent like soap and youth.
The day we bumped into each other again was the day my friend's wedding turned into an opera. Gracelyn Chavez—bride and old-school rebel—was getting married in a hotel ballroom that twinkled like it had swallowed a dozen stars. I was a bridesmaid. Isaac was one of those people you felt like you'd seen only in the margins of life. He slid into the car next to me. He was quiet, focused. He looked at me in the rearview mirror and smiled like a secret.
"You're here," I whispered.
"Is that a confession or a complaint?" he asked.
"Both," I said.
At the ceremony, when the groom's mother fainted and the bride's father lost his temper, Gracelyn's ex, Liam Medina, burst through the doors, shouting. He clawed his way back into the story and into Gracelyn's heart, and then with a frantic cry they ran off together. It was the kind of scene that makes mothers faint and gives tabloid editors bonbons.
I didn't expect to be swept off my feet by the bride's escaping bouquet, but Gracelyn's flung flowers struck me dead between the eyes. I stumbled back and fell. Isaac saved me, covered me with his jacket so I'd not show more than a blush to the crowd.
"Are you okay?" he asked softly.
"Yes." My voice betrayed me; I hugged my knees to my chest, aware of the way my heart misread the situation as a trap and a doorway at once.
He put his jacket around me and looked at the commotion—a chaotic, glittery mess—and said, "Amara, I remember you. High school photo, right? Gracelyn showed me."
"You kept a high school photo of me?" I asked, which probably sounded like a line from a bad movie.
"I kept it because she kept showing it," he admitted. "You stood out even in a class of cluttered faces."
That night, after the dramatic chase ended and the couple reconciled like scene actors finally hitting their marks, Isaac walked me to my taxi and said, "I've got something important for you. Memorize it. The city's ordinance."
"I seriously don't want to memorize the law," I said.
"You have three days," he said with a smile. "I'll test you."
I rolled my eyes, more charmed than I should have been.
A week later, my life bent itself into an odd arc. My little brother, Boris Finley, who'd been dramatic since puberty and accidentally brilliant at eliciting my pity, decided to go joyriding with upper-class kids in their tired motorcycles. I, the dutiful older sister, chased and then dove onto a bike that wasn't made for girls like me. The wind was cold and my daring was louder than reason. And then—because fate has a neat sense of humor—we saw a police car with blazing lights behind us.
"Name?" Isaac asked, as if we'd never met, as if that first day at the station had been a rehearsal.
"Amara." I tacked on the "Rizzo."
He looked at me like someone assembling a map. "Three times this week, right? Arrested, again. You have an adventurous résumé."
I swore I would never ride another motorcycle out of principle. Isaac smiled at me like a warning and then offered to text my parents—an odd, ingratiating kindness that made my mother nod sagely later and set our home on a path of mock engagements.
My aunt and my mom conspired like matchmakers in a sitcom. Isaac's mother, who turned out to be an acquaintance of my aunt, arrived the next day bearing baskets of fruit and a curiosity that could not be sated.
"Amara," she said, "we should have dinner. Now."
I blushed. "We just met."
"Sit. Eat. We'll decide your future." She already had a list of things to buy for the "engagement."
"Engagement?" I squeaked.
"It will be fun," Isaac said, and in a terrified, foolish way I let them usher me into a story that wasn't mine yet.
Soon, shopping for gold set my pulse racing. "My mother—she insists on three gold pieces," I said, staring at the glittering displays as if they were the sun.
"She bought them because she likes you," Isaac said in a voice as soft as a promise.
We were playing pretend, at first—insisting to our families we were courting "for their sake," both trying to dodge life’s lances. It was supposed to be a lie we would tell and then quietly retreat from.
Then came the dinner with Isaac's friends. There was a woman there with the thin smile of someone who needs to take everything and then ask for more. Catalina Schreiber—slender, pale, a little too perfect—kept looking at Isaac like she was trying to open a locked box with the wrong key. She made tiny jokes at my expense and then kept pressing drinks into my hand until I dissolved into giggles.
"He's cold," Catalina said later, when Isaac and I were alone at the table. "Men like him are dangerous. They pull you in and you can't get out."
"You seem to know the lesson plan," I said.
She smiled. "I know what I want."
The night became a blur I would wish to forget—too much wine, too many kisses that tasted like bad decisions. I woke up in a bed that wasn't mine to feel like it was the only place to belong. Isaac sat at the edge of it, watching me like he was memorizing the map of my face again.
"This is where you fell asleep?" he asked.
"I don't remember," I said, embarrassed.
"Good," he said. "Because I don't want you to remember everything either."
We stumbled toward a real feeling, clumsy and beautiful. We hung out, pretending the world wasn't pressing in, and between memorizing legal lines and buying foolish jewelry, we learned each other in odd little ways.
"Close the window when you leave," he told me once, in a voice that meant something small and intimate.
"Why?" I asked.
"Then I'll know you were here." He smiled like he held an inside joke the universe did not have the license to laugh at.
"But we're pretending," I said.
"Are we?" He leaned closer. "Amara, make me a promise."
"Of what?"
"Try not to fall too hard in three days."
"I can't promise that."
"Good." He kissed me like a punctuation and the house felt like a thousand tiny fires.
Of course, life is never as neat as a scene. On Isaac's friend's birthday, Catalina's smile cracked. She tried to set up a spectacle that would humiliate me and claim Isaac for herself. She arranged for a guest to play an old video of me—one Isaac's friend had recorded years before, a silly clip of me in high school being nervous and messy. She meant it to be a ridicule arrow.
"I thought you were better than this," Isaac said quietly when the screen flashed my younger face into a room full of stares.
"She set this up," I hissed, the embarrassment burning like acid. I felt like I'd been stripped of my present, shown up in an old costume, and told to act better.
Catalina smirked, delight painting her face. "Oh, didn't you ever think I could share nice things?" she said, with venom as sweet as honey.
I wanted to disappear. But Isaac did not let me.
"Is this supposed to hurt her?" he asked, standing up with the dignity of someone who always knew how to aim his force.
"It was supposed to make everyone laugh," Catalina said. "Isn't that what friends do?"
"No." Isaac's voice was cold, then hot. He walked to the front and took the microphone. Crowd silence snapped like a rubber band. "Let me be clear."
"Excuse me?" Catalina's smile twitched.
"This 'funny clip' was taken without her consent. She is a person, not a prop. If you think humiliation is entertainment, then perhaps you should refresh your morals."
Gasps and murmurs spread like an aroma. I watched Catalina's cheeks pale. Her smile faltered.
"You're making a fuss," she said, trying to spin it back into a joke. "It's a harmless prank."
"This is not harmless," Isaac said. "This assumes she exists for your amusement. That is unacceptable."
That night, Catalina's punishment began. But it wouldn't be the footnote in the book I deserved. Over the next weeks, little things came to light. Friends spoke up. A message thread surfaced showing Catalina had orchestrated more than one private humiliation for other women. Her next move was worse: she tried to push a rumor in Isaac’s social circle that I had seduced a married friend to get ahead. It was a lie, but lies can gallop.
Isaac did not allow that lie to stand.
"Tell them in the lobby, now," he said, when we were at a café and he handed me his phone. He'd collected the messages, found witnesses, and recorded confessions. He orchestrated a public moment that left Catalina on stage.
She arrived at the bookshop lounge where a dozen people had been gathered under the pretense of a discussion about ethical behavior. Isaac led her to stand under the warm lights.
"Play your clip," he said, and the room was silent.
She started with the practiced confidence of a person who had made bullying into a social sport. "This is—"
"I have copies of the messages," Isaac interrupted. "You coordinated humiliation. You attempted to spread lies. You attempted to ruin another person's reputation for your own amusement."
She laughed like someone taking pills for nerves. "That's not true."
"I invited witnesses." Isaac's voice had the precise coldness of someone who has built a case. "Talk to them."
One by one, the people who had once laughed stepped forward. There were names, dates, screenshots. Employees from the game bar admitted Catalina had offered them money to play the joke on the screen. Her closest friend admitted to receiving a voice note in which Catalina described the plot with glee.
Her face went through a brutal transformation. Confidence cracked to confusion, to panic, to pleading.
"What are you doing?" she said, voice high and brittle. "You're ruining me."
"We're showing you what your actions did to others," Isaac said. "Do you know how many people came to me crying because of you? Do you know how many jobs almost ended? Do you think this is a game?"
Crowd murmurs tightened. A woman from the bar approached and said, "She made me edit footage of a girl—she laughed when I had to crop the girl's face out. I hated it then, but I needed the job."
"I didn't—" Catalina's denial thinned like paper.
"Do you want to explain to the women you targeted why you thought that was okay?" Isaac asked.
Tears prepared themselves on Catalina's lashes. She tried to summon an apology like a pallid card trick. "I—I'm sorry," she said. "I was trying to be funny."
"Apology doesn't undo the footage," Isaac said. "It doesn't take away the nights spent explaining to family or the way this city mocked people for your entertainment."
She sat down like she'd been struck. People filmed quietly. Someone patted her shoulder. The friend who had helped admitted her role. The man who had played the video at the birthday sent a text apologizing on the spot.
Catalina's face crumpled. "Please," she said, "I can fix this. I'll delete things. I'll—"
"Deleting evidence doesn't repair the damage," Isaac said. "You should own it. You need to make amends to every person you targeted. And you're going to publicly apologize in every place you made a joke at someone’s expense."
People clapped—not the mock applause of a mean mob, but the slow, real appreciation of those who had waited for truth.
She crumpled more, her eyes darting for an exit. The people around her were not cruel. They were disappointed. They were tired of being the punchline of someone's cleverness.
In the days that followed, her social cachet faded like a poster left in the rain. The bar where she had friends refused to host her events. The group chats that had once echoed with her quips drained her content. Her uncle, a small-time influencer, tweeted a thread about accountability and mentioned her by name; the thread spread like a polite flame. At the market, where I sometimes worked, vendors pointed as she walked by. The times she walked into rooms, conversations paused and then resumed with new topics. She was not jailed, but something worse to her pride occurred: she had to face herself every morning in a mirror that finally had honesty.
When she appeared at a public panel weeks later, she read an apology letter with hands that trembled. "I was selfish," she said. "I treated people like props. I thought I was entertaining. I'm sorry to all I hurt."
It was not a victory lap for me. I did not gloat. I was exhausted from being the subject of other people's games. But I felt relief—like a bruise finally stopped throbbing. People who had once laughed with her started to treat people differently. I saw the slow effect of one public reckoning: that a city that chose to shame to placate itself could also choose to correct.
The punishment scene had been long: hundreds of messages, many witnesses, a public forum where she was called out. It had phases: her smugness, the unravelling, the public evidence, the whispers that turned to actions. The crowd's reaction had the rhythm of a tide: surprise, then murmurs, then supportive testimony, then the silence that says, "We saw you, and this is not okay." She went from entitled to apologetic in less than an hour. The bystanders filmed, some clapped, others shook their heads. She begged. People reacted: some left, some stayed to testify. The change in her was visible—her face collapsed, then flickered between denial and breakdown, until finally she sat, small and human.
After that, life settled into other patterns. Isaac and I continued the odd courtship. We did everything couples do when both are secretly terrified: we cooked bad food, we made up half-truths about our pasts, we fought about nothing and then made up over toast. He pressed me to memorize city regulations as some bizarre form of intimacy—"You telling me a line proves you're mine," he'd say, and I'd roll my eyes and recite the paragraph anyway.
"Do you love me?" I'd ask sometimes, testing the fragile ladder of romance.
"Yes," he'd say simply, and then kiss me in a way that made the world narrow to the taste of coffee and breath.
I had three particular moments that made me melt. The first was when he, who hardly smiled at strangers, gave me a full grin in a crowded lobby, the kind that announced me like a secret prize. The second was the night on the mountain when the corset slipped and he, embarrassed and present, helped me breathe, and our proximity turned the wind into a chorus. The third was simple: he once rearranged his schedule to bring my brother home from a late-night ride and sat quietly while Boris ranted, offering small, steady solidarity like a blanket. They were small actions but they announced intention.
We pretended a lot for our families. I pretended to be steady and he pretended to be disinterested in romance and we both pretended to be acceptable and then, bit by bit, those pretenses dropped like theater curtains between acts.
One night I found an old wooden box in his closet. In it was a photograph—a girl in a messy ponytail with a shy smile. "Gracelyn gave me copies of her graduation photos," he said when I asked. "I kept one. I didn't tell you because it felt childish."
"That's me," I said.
"I know," he admitted. "I remembered you from that one week back in high school photos and waited, a ridiculous little patience."
I felt seen and small and enormous all at once.
By the time the market season came around, my father—Pavel Conrad—and my mother—Lea Caldwell—got along with Isaac's family well enough that planning a real dinner wasn't out of the question. We were not engaged, but we were not pretending either. My life had whirlwinds and warm places, mistakes and mends.
The old tree on Moonlight Hill still had wooden plaques. Gracelyn and Liam had hung theirs back up after the wedding fiasco; they were not perfect but they had found each other in a messy, honest way. When Isaac and I went to leave a small tag—my name and his—on the tree, he took my hand.
"Do you want to say your name?" he asked.
"No," I said. "Let's write 'Amara and Isaac' and see how stubborn the tree is."
He laughed. "You're always dramatic."
"You're always patient," I said.
He kissed my knuckles and then the plaque and then me. I pressed our names into the wood like a promise and not like a contract.
"You remember the ordinance," he whispered, grinning.
"I remember," I answered, and then I added, because I could not help myself, "You were very intimidating in that public thing."
"I only wanted to do right," he said simply.
He walked me back down the path. The city seemed to hum with people doing small, decent things. The old tree creaked like an old friend.
At home that night, I slid the photograph—a high-school Amara with a clumsy grin—into the wooden box Isaac had given me. I shut the lid.
"Keep it," he said. "Some things are better kept safe."
I did. I kept the box under my bed where the sun did not reach it often. It smelled faintly of cedar. When I felt embarrassed or clumsy, I opened it and saw my younger face, and it made me both laugh and forgive myself.
We did not have a cinematic ending. There were no fireworks, no grand declarations. There was a lot of coffee and arguing about the proper height of a computer screen, me teaching his nephew to braise onions, Isaac writing out little reminders on post-its and sticking them on my steering wheel. There were crooked days and better ones.
One evening Isaac and I sat by the window, our hands hooked together like two parts of a puzzle. There was a clock ticking softly.
"You kept the ordinance in your pocket," he said, sliding a crumpled sheet into my palm.
"I did," I admitted.
"It was cute," he said. "You tried to memorize it by reading aloud in the laundromat."
"I had to be doing something," I said. "Walking home alone at night? I'd rather memorize laws."
He kissed my temple. "You're ridiculous."
"I'm your ridiculous," I answered.
Outside, the old tree’s wooden plaques clacked in the wind like small, approving applause. I closed my eyes and felt the world fold around me. I thought of all the places I had been cuffed and released, the times I'd been mistaken and forgiven, the moments when right and wrong tangled like old ropes. Holding his hand, I felt like the patient survivor of many small storms, patched and better for it.
At bedtime I slid the photograph into the old box again and closed it. The box was small, but it held a lot—past embarrassments, future promises, a public lesson learned on the taste of accountability, and a police officer who learned how to be gentle and how to be brave. I slept like someone who had lost the habit of hiding.
When morning came, sun cut across my face in a warm line. I woke and smiled, and it felt like the start of a small, good day.
The End
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