“Mandy, I gotta tell you something kinda weird,” Clive whispered excitedly, gripping her hands like a man with nothing to lose.
There was no need for hushed tones—the restaurant was packed and loud—but Clive leaned in anyway, lowering his voice as if the walls themselves might be listening.
Though they’d only been dating six months, Mandy had never seen Clive this… animated. She’d also never seen him in a turtleneck. His face was flushed, beads of sweat collecting at his hairline.
“Are you okay?” Mandy slid a glass of water toward him, which he chugged in one go.
“I’ve never felt better. Mandy, will you be my girlfriend?”
Mandy blinked. “…Is that not what we’ve been doing?”
Clive let out a noise—something between a mumble and a squeak—startling even himself. A few nearby tables glanced over. He cleared his throat.
“Sorry, it’s like I have a gerbil in my britches.”
“What?” Mandy was really trying to find her footing in the conversation.
“Forget it.” Clive waved a hand. “Look, I gotta tell you something, but you can’t judge me.”
Mandy hated when people said that. “Hmm. Depends. I gotta hear it first.”
“Fair. No, yeah. I get it.” Clive ran a hand through his hair. “That’s what I like about you, Mandy—you don’t bullshit me. You’re a straight shooter.”
Clive glanced around, then reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small velvet pouch. With dramatic flair, he dumped its contents onto the table.
A pile of tiny black U keys.
Mandy frowned. “…I don’t know what I’m looking at.”
At this point, Mandy assumed Clive had a drug problem she’d overlooked. This bummed her out.
She’d fallen for Clive. He was the most normal, easygoing guy she’d ever dated—so normal it had actually given her anxiety at first.
“There has to be something,” she’d told her friends. Her therapist. Everyone has their shit. But time passed. No red flags. No weird habits. Just Clive. The perfect boyfriend. It took awhile, but Mandy finally let herself settle into it.
And now?
Now, hundreds of tiny black U’s lay scattered across the table.
There had to be an explanation. Clive didn’t do weird things.
It was fine.
Except—it wasn’t.
The next twenty minutes was an out of body experience for Mandy as Clive explained himself.
Clive worked in customer service for UHAP America—Ultimate Home & Appliance Protection.
“The job’s a job, but it’s chipped away at my dreams of stand-up comedy, you know?”
Mandy didn’t know. She’d never heard Clive mention anything like this.
“And if I have to say, ‘Your #1 choice in extended warranties for under-counter refrigerators’ one more time, I’m gonna lose my mind.”
A flicker of unease sparked in Mandy’s chest—small but persistent, like a thread tugging loose.
She knew Clive. She knew his childhood dog’s name, the way he liked his coffee, the fact that he used a separate towel just for his face.
She knew the little things. The big, important things. The things you learn when you’re falling for someone.
And yet—
“Wait, what’s an under-counter refrigerator?” Mandy blurted out.
Clive stopped mid-rant, staring at her like she’d asked him to explain gravity.
“It’s a mini fridge, sweetheart. You’ve heard me talk about this.”
His response landed with a dull, lifeless thud. Had she? She forced a nod. “Right. Got it.”
Clive barreled forward.
“So, I’m on a call with this hotel manager. Guy’s pissed—a mini fridge isn’t working, guests are complaining, and then he drops this on me—”
Clive deepened his voice, imitating the hotel manager - “A couple from Uganda unhinged the unit’s under-counter tubing, unleashing an unstoppable uptick in unusual humidity.”
Clive paused, letting the sentence land.
“That’s a lotttta U’s, Mandy! That’s a lot of U’s.” He scoffed. “So there I was, typing this stupid complaint, hammering the U key over and over—watching this asshole’s sentence unravel like some kind of twisted joke.”
He inhaled sharply.
“And I don’t know what came over me. Call it rage, call it deep sadness, call it a gerbil in my britches—but I snapped. I reached down… and ripped the U key right off the keyboard.”
Clive made a soft pop sound with his lips.
“It felt incredible.” He smiled. “The plastic socket where the U once was—soft, vulnerable. Like I’d uncovered a hidden nerve beneath the keyboard.” Clive looked almost nostalgic, as if reminiscing about a long-lost summer.
“And that was all it took. One U. I waited a few days before I took my coworker’s. Then another. And another. Until every keyboard in UHAP America was missing its U.”
Clive went on to explain how, after hours, he moved from desk to desk, plucking U’s like loose change—quick, quiet, methodical.
“HR. Sales. Customer service. IT. We’re talking floors, Mandy.” His eyes gleamed with something unholy.
At first, no one noticed. A few typos. A Slack message that didn’t make sense. But then? Chaos.
“Customer service froze—no one could type ‘uninstall,’ ‘return,’ or ‘support.’ IT flagged it as a phishing attack. Employees were locked out—too many passwords had U’s. Sales proposals stalled. Complaints skyrocketed—no one could type, ‘Your warranty is still valid.’”
Clive spoke with a feverish intensity Mandy had never seen before.
“By Friday, the CEO was involved. Vendors thought we’d been hacked. IT wiped every computer in a panic—took out the entire database.”
Clive let the U’s trickle through his fingers like sand.
“I’ve never stolen anything in my life,” he admitted. “But I couldn’t be there anymore. I couldn’t take it.”
He sighed, scooping the pile back into his pouch.
“In hindsight, I probably should’ve just quit. But… I don’t know.” He shook his head, as if settling something only he could understand. “People do crazy things.”
“Problem is, I’m on every surveillance camera in the building.” He tapped the table. “A minor detail I… didn’t really think through. I was so caught up, you know? And, well—Corporate sent out a company-wide email this morning.”
He exhaled. “They’ve hired the FBI.”
Mandy felt her stomach drop.
“So, to wrap this whole thing up —I gotta get the hell out of Dodge.”
Clive looked at her like she was the only thing keeping him tethered to earth.
“Mandy, I love you.”
“What?”
“I knew from the moment I asked you out—you were it. And I know it sounds wild, but this is the most alive I’ve ever felt. The most clear.” He squeezed her hands. “Run away with me.”
“What?!”
“I booked us two tickets to España. We leave at 6 PM.”
Mandy was speechless.
“That’s Spanish for Spain.” He pressed on. “Look, I booked us two—one-way tickets. We can disappear into the European lifestyle. Ride bikes to the market. Drink wine at 2pm. I’ve saved up enough money to last us years. What do you say?”
Mandy should have said something. Anything. But her mouth wouldn’t move.
Her worst fear—that she’d missed something huge, that a red flag had been waving right in front of her this whole time—was true.
So that night, Mandy did what she’d only ever seen in rom-coms—excused herself to the bathroom, looked in the mirror, panicked, and climbed out the window.
Clive must have understood—because silence followed.
There was nothing on the news about a man fleeing the country for stealing U’s off company keyboards.
UHAP never released a statement.
And when Mandy called a few weeks later, just to see, the receptionist barely paused.
“Clive? Oh. We haven’t heard from him in a while. Kinda weird. He was always cracking jokes in the break room. Said he wanted to be a comedian.”
With time, Mandy regretted leaving the way she did. She hadn’t seen Clive—the real Clive— unraveling right in front of her, desperate for help.
Fired? Probably. Fleeing the country? The man just needed a hug.
Mandy wished she’d stayed a little longer. Let him take a breath. Suggested a walk around the block. Maybe told him she loved him, too.
Weeks passed. Then months. And Clive never really left her mind. She started seeing U’s everywhere.
And if Mandy was honest with herself, her own job felt just as pointless. Just as soul-sucking. She wasn’t ripping keys off keyboards—but most days, she wanted to.
Perhaps, then, Clive’s red flags hadn’t been warnings at all. They’d been a mirror—a reminder that life didn’t have to be so careful, so predictable.
Mandy had spent so much time looking for someone normal. But maybe normal wasn’t what she needed. Maybe what she needed—what she wanted—was Clive.
The realization knocked the wind out of her. And it wasn’t just that she missed him—it was that he was gone. Clive had completely wiped himself from the internet—no trace, no way to contact him.
Mandy grieved. Cried. Convinced herself she’d let the love of her life slip through her fingers.
And then, one night, nearly a year later, Mandy’s phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number with a European area code;
“U, up?”
Mandy stared at the screen and laughed. Because finally, she understood.
The thrill. The chaos. The ridiculous, beautiful, maddening way Clive moved through the world.
And that’s when Mandy finally got it.
The gerbil in his britches.
The unshakable, electric feeling that made you do something completely insane—like steal U’s off every keyboard in the office.
Or maybe, like getting on the next flight to Spain.
Happy weekend, everyone! ☀️
A classic!! Still laughing. Love you.
😂