Face-Slapping17 min read
I Am Allergic to Men (But Not to the One Who Keeps Me Waiting)
ButterPicks14 views
"I am allergic to men."
"I am allergic to women."
"I am allergic to fame," I joked once, and life decided to test me.
"I thought you were asleep," Haley said when she opened the car door and saw me rubbing my left eye.
"I am awake," I said. "Just tired."
"Jude texted again."
"He always texts," I said. "Ignore him."
"He says it's promotion. He says it's fake. He says he's sorry."
"Tell him I'm allergic to apologies," I muttered.
Haley Alvarez shot me a look like she wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. "Aya, you need to sleep on the plane. You need to rest your eye. You need—"
"I need an investor," I cut in, and the color drained out of my voice.
Haley blinked. "Right. The gala. The big investor."
"Yes." I pulled the invitation from my clutch. "Harrison Costa is there. He is the one who can save my film."
"Is he the mysterious one with no photos?" Haley asked.
"He is a myth. He is a rumor. He is the man with the black Maybach shadow," I said. "If his money moves, my whole crew breathes again."
We drove toward the villa. The garden smelled like clipped grass and fresh citrus. Chairs and lights glowed. Security checked invitations like prayer beads.
"Half an hour," Haley whispered. "You're okay to go in?"
"I have to try." I spread my fingers and put on what felt like armor: a dress, light makeup, and the stubbornness I'd learned surviving film sets.
Someone in a suit smiled at me. He had that practiced charm that said, I own a few companies and a few hearts.
"You're alone?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Where do I know you from?" he added.
I smiled politely and kept scanning the crowd. The whole evening felt like speed dating for deals. Men came and left with easy lines. One tried a crude compliment about my ring finger. Another hinted at my 'available' status.
"My boyfriend says no strangers," I said once, and the man backed off like he'd stepped on a thorn.
"You're allergic," another said, and I said, "Sorry, I'm allergic to men," and it worked every time. It was absurd, but after a while you run out of good answers.
Then a man came and changed the rules.
He stood like someone who had been carved to the right angles: tall, dark, and deliberate. He dropped something into my palm from a distance. It was a necklace—my necklace, a small L pendant Jude had given me when we started. I blinked.
"You dropped this," he said.
I must have looked like a fool. "Thank you," I managed. My pulse did that silly flip when something hurt and warmed at once.
He didn't stay. He walked away and then paused to speak with a man who called him "Mr. Costa" over and over. Harrison. My throat closed.
"That's him," I whispered to Haley. "That's Harrison Costa."
He reached my side not as a showman but as if he had a private life to protect. He looked at my pale hand and then said, almost dry, "I'm allergic to women."
It was my turn to be confused. "Allergic? Really?"
He didn't smile. He only said, "Sit. Talk. Ten minutes."
"I only need ten minutes," I said. "I need to show you the rescue plan for my film."
He didn't give me a warm heart or a cold shoulder. He gave me a test, and I decided to pass.
We sat in a quiet garden. I explained, breathless, the script, the problem: our two leads collapsed under scandal, money ruined, schedule dead, crew unpaid. I used the words producers dread: remake, reshoot, burn rate. He listened.
"You want me to invest?" he said finally.
"I want you to see the value," I said. "I want you to see the plan."
"Show me the plan," he said. "Then we'll see."
I handed him the binder with the rescue plan—my life wrapped in binder rings.
He skimmed it and said, "Send me the revised budget."
"Tonight," I promised.
"You asked for my time," he said. "You have my time."
When he gave me his WeChat, he looked as if adding me cost him something private. He added me instantly. "You're not deleting me," he said when I fumbled with the phone. "I noticed you deleted me."
"I didn't delete you," I protested. "I probably dropped my phone somewhere—"
"Work later," he said. "Not now."
"Okay."
I left feeling both victorious and small. The world hadn't split open. Harrison hadn't signed anything yet; but for the first time in a week the air smelled like possibility.
Two days later, I staggered back in with black under my eyes and a head full of legalese. The director sent a message: "Money? Now." The crew called my name like rope.
"Mornings for you now?" Haley asked, collapsed against a stack of paperwork.
"I have three days," I told her. "Three days to lock in an investor before the company gives the film to someone else."
"Don't panic," Haley said. "Don't destroy yourself."
"I will not," I lied.
Behind me, my phone buzzed. Jude Davis had texted: We need to talk. I ignored it.
"I don't want to fight him," I told Haley. "I just want this film."
"Good," Haley said, and smacked my hand away from my face. "And one more thing: don't drive your car into someone anymore. Your stunt yesterday cost us a car."
"You don't get it," I said. "He lied to me. He says it's promotion, but he has a new girlfriend."
"You punched him?"
I looked at Haley with a slow, ridiculous pride. "I did."
"You are impossible," she said.
We plotted instead of panicking. I wanted Harrison to see the plan with his eyes.
"Tonight," I said. "I will deliver the signed budget."
He texted, finally: Tonight. Time and place, he said.
I dressed in a way that made me feel like a person who could hold a room. I came with the binder. I came with my stubborn heart. I came with a plan.
He was late. I waited in the corner, counting people.
"Why are you smiling?" a voice asked. It was the man who'd once taken my necklace off my neck without touching me.
"Because I'm happy," I said. "Because for once I'm not drowning."
He sat opposite and pushed back a small cup of coffee. "Does your film survive this?"
"It has to," I said. "We will reshoot; we will edit; we will change the story. We will put the money into the actor replacements and the marketing that makes people care again."
He looked at me like I had said something impossible and precise at once.
"Tomorrow," he said. "Contract."
"Tomorrow?" I repeated.
"Tomorrow. Bring the repairs, the plan, and the company approval. Bring the cast list you propose."
"Yes. Thank you."
"I don't like begging," he said. "Nor simulation. I like results."
When he left, he did it in a way that pretended not to be present. He drove me home, and somewhere between the freeway and the gate I thought I smelled the shadow of a man who was trying to belong in my pockets.
Everything was fragile. Then the other shoe fell.
Jude Davis posted a photo with Ava Valdez.
Under a street lamp, a grainy picture, a laughing woman against a man who had his chin on her shoulder. Comments exploded. The actor I had loved was suddenly a headline.
Haley came into the office, breathless. "They announced it. Jude and Ava. They claim they've been together a year."
"It can't be true," I said. "He told me it's all promotion. He told me it's..."
"An excuse," Haley finished. "And he has no shame."
I called Jude. He picked up with a practiced voice: "Baby, don't blow this up."
"Why did you lie?" I asked.
"This is my chance. A role. A connection. It's temporary."
"It's not temporary," I said. "You told me you loved me."
He sighed. "I do. But I need to be a star. This girl has power."
"You're saying you're cheating to get better roles," I said. "You said it wasn't real."
"It's promotion, Aya." His voice softened. "I will come back."
"Come back?" I laughed. "You used me to get better. You used us."
"I said I love you." He sounded like someone ready to bargain love for achievement. "I still do, Aya. I still will."
"Pack your words with your suit," I said. "You will not have both me and the easy route."
He didn't beg me more than that. He turned the whole city into a rumor. He turned me into the woman who had been used. But I could not burn the set. I could not pull my crew into my wreckage.
I had to be cool. I had to be clever. I had to be the producer who kept the film alive.
The company meeting was a battleground. Hadassah Garza, the boss who believed in balance and numbers, said, "We need the film to survive. If the investor wants a new team, find a way."
"Who wants to take it?" Charlie Sanchez asked flatly.
"Charlie thinks he can do better," I said. "Charlie wants my project."
"Is that true?" Hadassah asked.
Charlie smiled like a man who had already won. "There's an investor interested. He has the contracts already."
For a moment I felt the floor slip. "Name," I said.
"Long Harbor Capital," Charlie said. "They already met."
"Who signed?" I asked.
"Mr. Nolan Parker has seen it," Charlie smiled too wide. "It is a done deal if you don't file."
"I have three days," I said. "That is all."
Charlie rose from his chair. "If you can't bring proof, the board will assign it."
"You will fail to know that I will not let a book be stolen," I said. I left the room with my binder like a shield.
Outside the glass of the conference room, the city went on, lights burning like millions of tiny challenges.
I had to move fast. I called Finnian Bowen, the director. "Can you rework the scenes? Can you scout new actors? Can you write a five-page amendment in an hour?"
"Yes," Finnian said. "But you have to promise not to faint."
"I won't faint," I lied. "I promised Harrison he'd see the budget tonight."
"We have it," Finnian said. "But we need the capital."
"Get me Long Harbor's contact," I said. "Then I'll race Charlie."
"I will, Aya." His voice was calm like a lifeline.
Later that evening, Charlie thought he had me beaten. He walked into Long Harbor with a grin, clasped a pen, and signed. A photo was taken—papers on the desk, a handshake on camera. He wanted to hand me the ruins.
I didn't run. I didn't cry. I did what producers do when burned: I showed up.
I went to the capital's front desk. "I have an appointment," I said. The receptionist looked doubtful.
"Which Mr. are you meeting?" she asked.
"Mr. Parker," I said, and she looked at the screen. "He's not here," she said. "But someone with your company came."
I waited all day, until late. People got weak in front of me. I did not. I stayed, patient and bright. When the clock hit five, I saw Charlie leave with his file. He walked too fast. He held the signed copy like a trophy.
I followed.
He took the elevator down. I took the stairs. I watched him get into a black sedan. I noticed which door he used and the badge he flashed. I took a taxi that followed him to a private apartment tower.
I should not have been there, but I was. I learned which floor the investors used. I knew where the clean air met the cold glass.
I waited outside until dark. It was reckless. It was childish. It was necessary.
Then Harrison's car pulled up.
"Why are you here?" he asked. He had put on a jacket that smelled faintly of tobacco.
"I want answers," I said. "Is Mr. Parker the investor you mentioned?"
He looked at me like I had asked him to split the sky. "No. That is Mr. Nolan Parker."
"You signed for the wrong project."
"No," Harrison said quietly. "Charlie did not sign as the lead for Long Harbor."
"Then why did the facade look real?" I asked.
"Because Charlie thought he could use his charm," Harrison said. "You? You were patient. You waited."
He drove me home again, and in the quiet of the car we stepped sideways around trust and the parts of us that wanted other things.
Two weeks of desperate hustle followed. I feverishly rewrote the plan. I called investors, I begged, I argued, I smiled. I did everything producers do behind the curtain. Sometimes it felt like I was inventing the film out of hope.
Then a rumor hit: Jude and Ava were hosting a "surprise announcement" at a charity gala. The entertainment news was hungry.
"Go," Haley said. "You should be there."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because some lies need a light," she said. "And you have a voice."
I went.
The gala was ornate: crystal, silk, and a crowd that smelled like perfume and public relations. I stood near the balcony like a statue with a throat.
Jude walked in smiling the blessed smile of someone used to being forgiven. Ava by his side looked like a porcelain doll—perfect face, quiet smile. Cameras found them like migrating birds.
At the microphone Jude gave a practiced speech: "We are in love. We are grateful. We are together."
The room applauded. I spit small, silent sounds into my throat like a defiant song.
Haley nudged me. "Do something subtle."
I had no subtlety left.
I went backstage.
"Miss Castro?" a man asked. "You need an appointment."
"No," I whispered. "I need the mic."
He looked at my badge then at me. "You can't go on."
"Please."
I forced my way through people—PR reps, lighting techs, interns with clipboards. My heart beat fast and stupid like a small animal.
When I reached the stage, a stagehand offered me a microphone like handing a soldier a flag. The world looked different from the lit floor: faces turned to lights, applause like a tide.
"I didn't come for the applause," I said. "I came because there are things you should know."
The crowd quieted. Cameras pointed. Lives paused on the edge of a sentence.
"Jude Davis," I said, and my voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. "You tell everyone you do this for art. You say it's promotion. You say I'm understanding. But you said other things, too."
The screen behind us flicked to life. People murmured. I felt the safety of my plan hold its breath.
"Play it," I told the stage tech.
On the giant screen: texts. Screenshots of messages with Jude calling another woman 'my ticket' and a private chat where he wrote, "Just play the boyfriend, I'll climb with her." There were also voice memos, meant to be private but now loud enough to be poison.
"How low," someone in the front gasped.
"Is that—" a woman whispered.
Jude's smile faltered.
"Turn it off," he hissed.
"It's promotion," Ava said into a camera, her face a mask of hurt and surprise. "We are a couple."
"Turn it off," Jude shouted, his voice like a snapped rope. He lunged for the console. The crowd leaned forward. Phones flashed like beetles.
"Stop," I said. "Listen."
I held the microphone like a gavel. The lights were hot and bright. I saw people who mattered: investors, press, friends, a couple of producers who had been burned by men like him.
"I have watched my team sleep three nights on set to keep this film alive," I said. "I have lost money for people who promised. And the man who lied to me stood in private and wrote the truth out of scorn."
The room hushed. Jude took a step forward. He was still composed but his composure had hairline cracks.
"That's my private life," he said. "You don't get to do this."
"You brought it into the public," I said. "You put it on a trolley and pushed it into the street. You used names and faces and promises."
He laughed—too loudly. "You want to be dramatic. Fine. I will be dramatic right back. You have no proof."
The techs played another clip. This time it was audio: Jude's voice boasting about "using that girl for leads" and "closing that investment with a kiss."
He staggered. He tried to recover his smile but it slid off his face like a mask in water.
"Keep playing it," I told the tech without flinching.
The room's mood changed like a window closing against wind. Phones recorded. A woman in a designer dress started to clap uncontrollably. People raised their hands to film. Someone shouted, "Shame!"
That was the beginning.
At the end of the clip, Jude lunged toward me. A security guard separated him. He pushed, and the guard had his hands on him like holding back a storm.
"Get out," Jude snarled, voice raw. He was no longer the polished star. His shoulders were smaller under the light.
"No," I said. "You used my name. You used my trust. You used our private life."
"You're being petty," a man nearby said.
"Petty," I answered, "is choosing power over respect."
He tried to speak, voice rising. "You will ruin me."
"You already ruined yourself," I said. "I didn't ruin you. You did."
Ava, the woman beside him, looked stunned and then furious. She walked to the microphone step and faced the crowd. "I didn't know," she said. "I believed him."
"Who doesn't?" someone shouted. "We forgive the famous because it's convenient."
"Mr. Davis," a journalist called, "did you lie to her?"
He opened his mouth. He tried to plead. First he said, "I was promoted." Then he said, "It was a mistake." Then he went quiet.
The crowd started murmuring in a thousand small waves. Phones recorded. A man with a camera began to livestream. Comments filled it with angry hearts and scathing hot takes.
"Tell them," I said to the hotel manager. "Make a note of this. I want a public record."
He nodded. People around us leaned in like they were waiting for a better scandal.
Jude's face changed. He went from polished to pale. Sweat showed at his hairline. He glanced at Ava, who had begun to cry, but her tears were not soft—they were the hot sorrow of someone betrayed.
"No—" Jude began. He tried to laugh it off. "You don't know—"
The crowd's reaction shifted from interest to judgment. Women in the front row whispered. Men who had smiled earlier now fanned themselves with programs. Someone smacked their hand to their forehead and said, "How could he?"
"Turn on your phones," I said, and people did like a flock obeying a single call. Video spread like oil.
He reached for me again. A wealthy guest shouted, "Security!" Several people moved in, and the hotel staff formed a ring.
He fell to his knees in front of the stage as if struck. The sound of his suit fabric sliding over the marble echoed. Someone recorded him sobbing. Someone else shouted, "Beg for it. Beg for our forgiveness."
He looked up at me. "Please," he whispered. "Please, Aya."
I saw the old man who had taught me to keep my head up when the weather was bad. I saw a company's lawyers. I saw my crew. My throat tightened.
"You asked for my silence," he said. "You begged me to keep it quiet."
"You used me," I answered. My voice didn't shake. "You will not ask me for my mercy."
He tried to stand. A crush of flashes hit him like tiny stones. People pointed. Phones zoomed in. Someone in the crowd said, "He has always been a user."
His change was a show: from confident to furious, from furious to pleading, from pleading to collapse.
"No," he said again. "I didn't mean to—"
"Back up," I told the security guard.
He put his hands on Jude's shoulders and shoved him back. Jude slid to the floor like a man who had been shown the map to his own failure.
People clapped like judges. Some hissed. A woman spat out, "Good." Another shouted, "Justice!"
He crawled to the edge of the stage and grabbed the curtain, like a child reaching for comfort. He tried to scream, but his voice sounded small. "It's not like that," he begged. "I didn't mean—"
"No one will arrest you now," someone said. "But your public life will be different."
He was a man who had thought himself immune. He was not. I had not shattered his career with law or violence, but I had fed the public truth and the public decided.
He held the microphone as if it were a rosary. "I will apologize," he whispered. "I am sorry."
Phones recorded a public apology that had leviathan undertones—regret, yes, but thin, rehearsed regret.
The camera crews carried the footage off the stage. The stream exploded online. By dawn there were millions of views. People who had never met me sent messages of thanks. My inbox filled with notes, investors offered support, strangers praised my courage.
Jude's face had gone from smug to shock to denial to collapse. He begged. He was filmed begging. People took photos, saved them, pasted them as memes.
"Don't touch me," Ava said finally, and stepped away. "I trusted you."
The public punishment had all the steps: the man who had thought himself untouchable now on his knees, the crowd watching, the camera lenses like a modern jury. He had gone from a man to a spectacle.
The scene met the rules of the world we live in: he was humiliated, he pleaded, the crowd reacted—some cried, some applauded, some filmed. He could not hide anymore.
After the gala, the rumbles moved it into business. Harrison's phone buzzed. A board of Long Harbor received a message. Contracts were delayed. Our film had traction, not because of stars but because it mattered.
Charlie Sanchez, who had tried to take my project, saw the shift. In a boardroom later, I watched him reach for his phone and call Nolan Parker. His face looked like a sinking man. He had pulled out the wrong map.
I confronted Charlie in front of the contract department. "You can't steal people's work," I told him.
"You think one evening changes anything?" he sneered.
"People saw the truth," I said. "They saw more than glamour. They saw the cost."
He staggered when I asked the legal team to check his signatures. He'd used a forged approval.
"Your signature is wrong," the lawyer said flatly. "You risk career ruin."
Charlie leaned back like the air had gone out of him. He tried to yell at me. "I had a deal!"
"You had theft," I said. "And now you have to answer."
We held a meeting where his actions were documented. People watched him go from confident to shocked. Counselors shook their heads. He tried to spin it—"miscommunication"—but the legal department had records. He had used company power to grab a deal. Now the room had witnesses.
"Public," I said. I asked that the breach be shared with the entire company and the investors—transparent, not revengeful.
They read the report in the boardroom. People gasped. Charlie's face crumpled. His tone changed. He went from defiant to pleading. "Please," he said. "I misread the moment. I can fix this."
"No," the committee said. "You will attend a review meeting. You will apologize in public and remedy the damage you caused."
He had nowhere left to go. He fell down the ladder he had tried to climb and then begged for mercy. The crowd that had watched him lift his chest now watched him lose his breath.
This time the punishment was procedural, legal, and also public: a company-wide meeting where he explained what he did and apologized while the HR file grew fat with proof. His colleagues murmured, some shocked, some angry. People chatted, some with sympathy, most with a cold sense of justice. Some filmed. Some applauded when the firm announced they would reassign the project to me and open an internal audit.
He knelt figuratively, then physically in front of the board, hands together, voice trembling. "I didn't know I would be caught," he said.
"You knew," Hadassah said. "You chose anyway."
He begged. He promised. He was recorded. People took off their watches and gave them as symbols of time lost. Someone clapped. Someone else walked out.
Justice, small and large, had been served in public for both men. One was the star humiliated on a stage; the other a colleague exposed in a boardroom. Both went from smug to pleading to collapse, with witnesses who watched them fall.
The aftershock was a strange peace. Investors called. Finnian called. Nolan Parker looked good from a distance but loyal in his own lane. In the end, Harrison Costa signed the contract, but only after he told me, quietly, "You did not need me to shame him. You needed a path to keep the film alive. I respect you."
"I am allergic to men," I said again, smiling for the first time in weeks.
He looked at me like a man who knew fewer jokes than truths. "You're allergic to weak excuses," he corrected.
We laughed like kids in trouble.
People said harsh things and soft things. Ava called and confessed she had not known. Jude's apology trended for a day and then became a cautionary tale. Charlie's name dropped in the office hallway, and fewer people waved at him.
"What's next?" Finnian asked over the binder of new draft pages.
"We rebuild," I said. "We make it honest."
We rebuilt. We recast. We rewrote the scene that had once been about a fallen star into something truer: the story of a person who learns to speak and be heard. We found an actor who wanted the challenge more than the marquee. We found a woman who could hold a camera like a storm, and a crew that felt we had lost and now found something new in the center.
The contract signed. The money arrived. Long nights and cheap takeout built the film back like a new house on an old foundation. I learned to trust my judgment more than gossip, and to use anger like heat to reshape, not to burn.
Harrison and I had a few dinners that looked like interviews and began, slowly, to look like something else. He teased me about my sock collection—yes, I buy socks when anxious—so he called me ridiculous and charming. He wanted the company of someone who was fierce and soft.
"Why socks?" he asked one night when he caught me hand-delivering a box of matching striped pairs to the office.
"They're cheap therapy," I answered. "Twelve pairs, twelve breaths."
He smiled that small smile and said, "You are a problem solver in socks."
"You are my problem," I countered.
"Am I?" he asked.
"Yes," I said, and his hand found mine.
On the day the film wrapped the reshoots, we held a small party. The suit jacket he had given me months ago had become an asset: it covered my thin dress for comfort; it made me feel like a person with options.
I walked to the center of the courtyard, and a few people clapped. Cameras were there, but they were friendly this time.
"You did it," Harrison said quietly when he came up beside me.
"We did it," I corrected. We clinked two flutes of champagne. The L necklace dangled under my collarbone like a thin promise I no longer needed to trade for safety.
He leaned in and said, "You keep getting better at asking for what you need."
"I keep getting better at saying no," I replied.
He laughed softly. "And at making people pay attention to the right things."
"Not paying attention to men who hurt you sounds better to me," I said, and he chuckled.
Months later, the film premiered. I stood in the wings while credits rolled. People walked out of the theater with wet eyes and nervous smiles, and I knew we had mended something.
Jude Davis rarely appears in stories anymore. Charlie was assigned a new role—paperwork and compliance. Public punishment had done what lawyers and whispers sometimes cannot: it marked them as flawed in a world that once let that slide.
In the end, I kept the necklace. Harrison joked that it matched my sock collection. We both laughed.
And when someone asked me how I survived that season, I said, "I wrote a plan, dropped it into a man with a Maybach shadow, and I waited like a stubborn wound until the right people noticed. I used my anger like a tool, not a weapon. I didn't want to break them; I wanted to stop letting them break what mattered."
He squeezed my hand, the lights from the press burning soft in the night. "Aya," he said, "you are allergic to men who are cowardly. I think I can live with that."
I smiled. "Good. Because I'm not allergic to you."
He kissed me then, a private thing in public that felt like the last line of a long script.
The film did well. People called it brave. Investors smiled. We kept building, one honest step at a time.
At home that night, I hung Harrison's jacket on a hook and left mine on the chair. I took the L necklace off once, put it in the drawer, then took it out again. I held it for a long time.
"Maybe one day," I thought, "I will give it away."
For now, I kept it, like proof that my story had a spine.
The End
— Thank you for reading —