Face-Slapping12 min read
I Burned the Old Love, Built a Studio, and Let Him Kneel
ButterPicks17 views
I did not cry when he called me a liar in front of everyone. I did not run into the night screaming. I walked out of the police room with my chin held high and my hand around Mallory's arm like a steadying rope.
"Indiana," Mallory said, voice thin with worry, "do you want me to call a lawyer?"
"No," I said. "I want to go see the sea."
The court clerk had been rattling the details of the complaint; the officer had explained the altercation; the recordings were already a mess on some chat groups. Efrain Willis—my ex—had a face that fit tabloids. He had a voice that fit threats. Tonight he had scraped at my dignity in public. I walked away and let the scandal make its noise.
Two hours later I was in a car wearing sunglasses so dark they were closer to a mask. Mallory whispered, "You okay?"
"I will be," I said. "I always am."
"How far are you going?"
"Far enough to catch my breath."
"Don't do anything stupid."
"I won't." I smiled and lied.
The autopilot of my life turned, like it always had, toward reinvention. I packed out of the apartment where everything of his had been stored in a neat garbage bag. I blocked numbers. I cleared out messages. I slid his photograph under a stack of shipping invoices and locked the drawer.
"I thought you'd scream," Mallory said as she watched me carry the last box down the hallway.
"I thought I would, too," I admitted. "But anger is better for pallets than sorrow."
Three days later, when the noise had calmed into a dull hum and the comments had started to split between pity and venom, I was sitting under a parasol at a street-side table in an old film town, staring at a bowl of soup and the way the sun made little coin-sized patterns on the water.
"Are you alone?" My phone buzzed. The name on the screen belonged to someone I knew only from posters and late-night shows—Egan Decker.
"Yeah," I answered. "Why?"
"I heard about the police thing. Do you need anything?" His voice was the kind you could fall asleep on; it was steady, slow, like a tide.
"No," I said, then added, "Maybe a cup of coffee?"
He sent a location. "Twelve minutes."
When Egan arrived, he was in a cap and a jacket that made him unassuming rather than celebrity. He sat down like he belonged there, like he had been waiting for exactly this slice of ordinary life.
"I shouldn't keep pestering you," he said. "But—" He shrugged. "When I saw someone pushing you at that restaurant earlier—"
"You mean when three paparazzi chased me and took six photos of me with my hat on?" I smiled. "I thought you were the star who had been chased. Irony."
"Don't say that." He laughed, then leaned forward and said low, "I can help. Not with money. Not with famous things. With... the next step."
"What next step?"
"Acting."
"I like my life," I said. "Jewelry, design, the little things."
"You design?" He cocked his head, surprised. "Show me, then."
We talked for hours. He wanted someone gentle to watch his back; I wanted a place to be useful away from gossip. The film town's work pounced on us like a tide. Production needed a stand-in makeup hand last minute. The day's official makeup artist fainted in the heat. Egan's team asked if anyone could help.
"I can," I said, because I'd done makeup for friends a thousand times.
"You sure?" Egan asked, worry lining his brow.
"I am."
He handed me a palette. "Be my miracle."
That day, under forty-three degrees of sun and a relentless set, I learned to hold a sponge like a secret and to read a face the way I had read gem cuts. The man I painted sat still and watched me work like an artist watching paint dry and rediscovering color.
"Brows longer," I suggested. "Eyes shaped this way—"
"You're good," he said.
"You act like a man with a secret plan," I said, and he laughed.
"Maybe I am."
He gave me water, then coffee, then advice. We rode together in a van full of lights and wires, and he made sure the dogs with cameras at the gate saw a woman who belonged to herself. When a paparazzo sprinted after us, I traded a hat with Egan and walked away under someone else's face. The man in the hat ran past me, breathless.
"Thanks," Egan said later, handing me a bottle. "You saved my day."
"Or I ruined another man's scoop," I said. We both laughed.
Days passed into an easy rhythm. I painted his face for hours while he rebounded through a role. He taught me how to stand under lights that were harsher than truth. He gave me scripts and a patient steadiness I would never admit I needed.
"You can try the small part," he said once, lowering his voice. "Not for fame. For practice. For stories."
"What if I fail?" I asked.
"Then we'll fail spectacularly," he promised. "Like friends."
I said yes. I said yes because the world had just been cruel enough to show me its teeth, and because Egan's presence made the edges smoother.
The studio dream had been bubbling in me for a year. Mallory said, "Do it. Build a place you like." Gillian Ball—my friend from the film town with bright lipstick and a braver smile—said, "Design is a way of making sense of the world. Make it sing."
I took a lease, cut the ribbon in my head and called it DR—Dreams Rendered. We built a little kingdom: design desks, sparkling cases, security systems that clicked like sleepy guards.
"You're a madwoman," Mallory said when she tried on a necklace prototype. "But it's the nicest madness I've ever seen."
We launched in a room full of people who wanted to believe in new things. Egan stood among the crowd and smiled like the man who tidied my edges. I showed them "Butterfly Wing"—my wedding-dress piece—and the sea-heart necklace I had kept secret. People clapped. The online orders ate the launch like a hungry tide.
"First day sales: ten million," Berkley Nakajima, my assistant, reported, whisper-shrieked into my ear.
"Ten million?" I laughed, half in shock, half in a kind of stunned relief.
Efrain Willis watched it all from every possible angle. The man who had loved me like lightning and left rubble behind had been watching for cracks. He thought he could buy me back into silence and shame.
His first attempt came like a crocodile: subtle, polished, and poisonous.
"Indiana," his cousin Phoenix Schulz's envoy began at a quiet café, "we can resolve this quietly. Take the money. Walk away. Don't make trouble for me—and for you."
"You're not negotiating about me," I said. "You're negotiating my life."
"Three million will make this vanish," the envoy insisted.
"I don't work for erasers," I said. "I'm not for sale."
"You'll regret this," Efrain said when he stepped into the café like a man who owned the furniture. He wore a suit like a weapon. He sat and smiled like a blade pretending to be velvet.
"Will you listen?" I said. "Do you think money buys me more than peace?"
"It buys the right to keep secrets," he said.
"I have my own rights," I said. "I have my own studio. Keep your money."
The next humiliation he planned—more theatrical, cruel—was a public one. He wanted to reclaim the narrative. He invited me, with all the gentle cruelty of a man who thinks walls can be rebuilt with charm, to the S City Charity Gala: a velvet night where the patrons sipped champagne like currency and clasped hands like contracts.
"You will apologize," he told a mutual friend before the event. "You will delete. It will be neat."
"Try your neat on someone else," I said.
I accepted his invitation, because silence is a stage too and I intended to perform. Mallory tugged at my sleeve. "Are you sure?"
"I am," I said. "Bring me the mic and a spotlight."
The night of the gala everything glittered like a trap. The room smelled of roses and old money. Crystal chandeliers cast our faces into soft sculptures.
"Indiana Bloom," a hostess said with too much sugar. "The floor is yours."
I walked onto the platform with Gillian Ball at my side, my hands steady around the microphone. Efrain sat in a circle of men who thought reputation could be patched with laughter. Many of them had been his partners. Many of them had been his judges in advance.
"Ladies and gentlemen," I began. "I am not here to beg, to beg for anything, not for silence and not for sympathy."
The room murmured. Cameras tilted like curious birds.
Efrain sat up. "What is this?" he hissed.
"This is the truth," I said, and I signaled Berkley.
Berkley stepped forward, handing me a slim tablet. On the screen—on the big screens that now fed the room with clean, bright light—appeared chat logs, bank records with timestamps, a list of transfers with amounts blasted clean as if scrubbed by sunlight. The biggest lie of the last month was about to meet daylight.
"Efrain," I said, voice steady, "you called me a liar. Here are the dates. Here is the proof. Every rumor you have tried to sell about me has been built from your slanders and the lies of those who profited from them."
The room had shifted; the air had changed. People stopped blinking and started reading. Phones came up like first responders. Whispers grew into audible questions.
"What is this?" someone asked behind me.
"You gave her three billion," I said into the microphone. "You wired it. You expected gratitude, not a public thank-you. You sent that money, left a trail, and thought the trail would be invisible."
Efrain's face, which had been a practiced sculpture of contempt, altered. First he looked annoyed. Then he looked irritated. Then confusion cracked through his face like lightning through glass. "This is theft—"
"It is a ledger of your transfers," I said. "Not theft. Transparency."
He barked a laugh that sounded like a cough. "You're trying to humiliate me!"
"No," I said. "You humiliated me. This is called accountability."
Phones pushed forward like small bright beaks. Someone in the back called, "Play the video!"
Berkley tapped and a recording from years ago, of a private conversation where Efrain had called an associate about how to manage "public affairs," flickered onto the screens. A thousand eyes widened. A table near the front began to rustle; forks clinked like alarms. The host's polite smile froze; the orchestra tapered off out of respect or fear.
Efrain tried to rise. It took effort. His skin flushed the color of shame under cheap lighting. He attempted to laugh, a thin layer over red. "This is defamation," he shouted. "You are a liar. You will—"
"You will what?" I asked. "Will you go to the police again? Will you threaten to sue? Will you release more doctored footage?"
"Yes!" he screamed, hoarse. "I will make you regret this."
At that word, a ripple of something like pity moved through the crowd—people who had seen men dressed as Gods on facades crumble like fine sugar. A woman three tables over took a photo. A man in a suit put his phone down slowly, looking like someone concluding a sad book.
Then Efrain's expression panicked.
"Why are you panicking?" someone in the room asked. "Are you scared of being exposed?"
The crowd started to circle verbally. "Is it true? Did he transfer the money?" a hostess murmured into a microphone as a producer hustled around trying to keep cameras rolling.
Efrain's mouth opened like a bellows, then closed. He searched faces, as if for a friend willing to lie louder than he had. His allies shuffled. One man turned his head away. Another pretended to cough. The climate of backing him up had shifted; the tide had turned.
"Turn it off," Efrain begged suddenly, voice small and cracking. "Turn the screens—"
But the screens stayed on. Someone had already gone live; others were filming with their phones. The chatter turned into judgment.
"Is he going to apologize?" a woman near the orchestra asked, but the tone was not curious. It was demand.
Efrain crouched into a seat like a man needing a shield. He looked ridiculous and human at once—like a king who had misread his title. He rose again, knuckles white on a chair. "Please," he said. "Please."
The plea landed like a dropped coin. No one rushed to help him. Cameras clicked. Phones recorded. Streams bulged with incredulous observers. A gossip blogger, who had been following the story for days, stood up with a dramatic flourish and asked for audio records. A young woman—one who had once been ejected by his security—handed a stack of receipts to the hostess. The receipts matched the ledger I had just shown.
"Do you want to speak?" I asked him, keeping my composure. The microphone felt like a magistrate's gavel.
He stammered. "I don't—"
"Speak to all of us," I insisted.
"I—" Efrain swallowed. He looked around the room that had supported him and realized their eyes had switched to me. He had no stage, no script.
He knelt then, suddenly, as if the wooden floor had a gravity all its own. It was not a theatrical knee; it was a raw, instinctive collapse. His tie fell to one side. His expensive shoes were out of place. The sound of his hands hitting polished wood was loud, like a retainer's final payment.
"Please," he whispered, voice raspy. "Please don't—"
"No," I said, the single word a physical thing. "Stand up."
He shook his head. "Please—"
He went from anger to confusion to denial to pleading in a matter of breaths. "You can't do this to me. You said—" He listed the slanders he thought protected him: prestige, money, people he had edited into loyalty. As the room recorded him, he tried to deny, to bargain. "This is false," he repeated. "You paid people. You fabricated—"
"Fabricated what?" someone shouted from the crowd.
"It's garbage!" Efrain argued. He was no longer smooth; he was unraveling. People around him who had once laughed at his jokes now murmured, recorded, debated. Some clapped slowly, ironically; one person cleared their throat loudly and said, "You built this."
"Please," he begged to me, then to the room. "Delete it. I'll give you anything. Three million—five—"
"No," I said again.
He stood up for a moment, hands reaching like a drowning man grabbing for life rings. "I'm sorry," he said, and then he said, "No, I'm not." The contradiction was almost like a confession. The crowd responded like weather: sudden gusts of condemnation, people filming, someone whistled. Phones made tiny halos of light in hands.
"You're done," a voice near the back said—sharp with the relief of a justice meted out.
He fell to pieces. He looked to his circle and saw their faces harden. The hostess walked away. His lawyer handed him a card, eyes down. One of his earlier allies took his phone and started scrolling it as if looking for a better version. No one offered him a drink; no one extended the courtesy of a quiet exit.
Efrain's mask broke. He dropped his head into his hands. "I'm sorry," he cried, and for the first time his voice sounded like the admission it was, not a weapon.
People around him recorded the ache. Some laughed, some cried, some simply watched. Someone took a step forward and snapped a photo. Another person started an impromptu live stream titled "Willis Breaks."
He got to his knees and then sobbed openly. "Please," he begged, voice small. "Please—"
No one rushed to help him. A hush descended that was not reverent but decisive. He had intended to command the night. Instead he was exposed and small with his dishonesty in a room full of witness.
When the media storm finally left the room, it carried his humiliation with it. The evening's headline the next morning was not about the charity or the luxury; it was about a fall from an ego. People uploaded the clip as if proof were splinters removed from their feet. For hours the video trended. For days it haunted him.
It satisfied the rule I had set for myself: if someone hurts you publicly, let them be held by the same light.
After the gala, orders to DR flooded in like applause. The sea-heart necklace flew into private bids; the "Butterfly Wing" sold to a collector who promised to wear it to the opera. We kept working: clients, designs, editing drafts, shipping samples, teaching interns to cut satin like a seamstress of the old world.
Egan sat with me often in quiet corners. One night, under a thin moon, he said softly, "You didn't have to ruin him."
"He ruined himself," I answered. "I only opened the lights."
"You opened my eyes too," he said. "I never told you that."
"You never have to," I murmured.
He kissed me there, in the dark, small and respectful, like a promise. Later, when I signed papers with my brother Phoenix Schulz giving me shares in a place built on my family's history—shares I had not wanted but accepted for duty—the world felt less like an enemy.
"You're not alone," Phoenix said. He was a man of decisions and of rare tenderness for the things he loved. He handed me the documents like armor.
When my second donation splashed through the press—three billion given anonymously to children's charities and announced later as my choice, not his—the world changed tone again. People learned I had not kept Efrain's money. They learned I had thrown it away like a bad dream.
Egan held me then and said, "You make art and then make the world less cruel."
"You make it softer," I said.
The end of the year came with the opening of a second DR boutique, an award for design, and a quiet life built of small mercies. Egan's new drama premiered and critics praised his steady depth; every time he won something he would wink at me like we had a private currency.
The last time I saw Efrain in public he sat behind velvet ropes at a function. He had dignity left like a brittle card. People would watch him now through older eyes, like a cautionary tale.
"Did you ever want to take him back?" Mallory asked once, sipping tea in the office where the light came through glass and touched the display cases.
"No," I said. "But I wanted to be fair. I wanted him to face his actions."
"Wasn't it cruel?"
"It was necessary." I touched the sea-heart that lay on the top of my desk. "Some hurts you can only fix by showing them a mirror."
Egan squeezed my hand.
"Promise?" he asked.
"No promises," I said, and kissed him like the sea was wide and our boat was steady.
At the opening night of the second DR boutique, he stood in the crowd with a small gift: a watch he had bought with the label "Star Trail"—a symbol of nights racing and hands keeping time. I put it on, and the faces in the room saw a woman who had burned down an old life and had built something honest from the ash.
"To our new life," Egan said.
"To our new life," I echoed, and smiled at the people who had come to celebrate perseverance, truth, and what it means to be brave every morning.
The End
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