Face-Slapping13 min read
Peach-Scented Promises and Public Reckoning
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I waited four hours at the subway exit before he finally appeared.
"You're late," I said when I saw him, though my voice didn't carry much accusation. It was rain-streaked glass and umbrellas and the city's tired light around us.
Yousef Michel stepped out of a black car. He smelled of beer, but his eyes were clear. He reached for my suitcase and moved the umbrella so the rain didn't fall on me.
"Why are you in North City?" he asked. "Visiting friends?"
I didn't look at his face. I watched his fingers instead—long, knuckled, one finger wrapped with a pink bandage with a tiny bear sticker. It made me angry and oddly calm at the same time.
"You came all the way here?" I said.
He shrugged. "I had some time."
We got into the car. The driver closed the door and the rain tightened like a drum.
"Why are you here?" I asked again, this time dropping the pretense.
He didn't answer. He only stacked the wet tissue in the small plastic tray, folding and re-folding it like a boy playing with a puzzle.
"Is that all?" I asked, and then—because I had arrived to ask for one thing—I said it simply, "I came to ask you to come back."
He looked at me and smiled in a way that was both gentle and cruel.
"Do it properly then," he said.
I fastened my seat belt. I straightened my skirt. The white noise of the rain made me brave.
When the car braked hard, I jolted forward. Before I could process the motion, a strong hand caught my neck from behind and something hot and sharp—his mouth—hit mine. He tasted of whiskey and something like peach. My head spun. For a terrible moment time folded in on itself.
"Get in," he murmured afterward, a command tucked under tenderness.
The lights outside smeared; he smelled like danger and like home. I wanted to cry, but I did not. I wanted to laugh, but I only let my fingers close on the tissue. He peeled off one of my high heels with practiced ease like he had done this before.
"Why are you doing this?" I asked, breathless.
"For you," he said. "Because you came."
I fell asleep with my head on the window, watching the city drag past like a ribbon. He drove without talking. I believed—foolishly—that this time would be different.
The morning let me down a little. He had left money, a few curt lines, and a vanishing act.
I sat in a hotel room with his tissue and that pink bandage. I had tried every message. Each ping of my phone that wasn't his felt like salt.
The first night after, a stranger sent a photo to my QQ—the bag I had lost in the subway, my ID in plain sight.
"Come to Luxlan," the message said, "Don't call the police."
Someone had been playing chess in my life and I didn't know the rules.
"Why would anyone post this?" I whispered.
"You came here on purpose," Yousef said when I finally called him and he picked up, voice distance-thin. "Don't do anything reckless."
"Why did you leave?" I asked. "You kissed me and then you were gone."
There was silence. Then, "I had to handle something."
He was no longer the boy I remembered. "You used to be funny," I said. "Now you're always... distant."
"I'm not distant," he told me once, when I insisted too loudly. "I'm busy."
So I went to Luxlan because I couldn't not go.
The club was all lights and heat, a place for men who kept pockets heavy and voices light. I felt small there, and then someone bumped into me in the elevator and smiled—too practiced, too confident.
"You stood out," the man said after he'd checked me with a lens of appraisal. "You're new here?"
"No," I lied. "I came to get my bag back."
"You must be mistaken."
He led me to the bar, then to a back room. Hands moved like puppets around me until one man broke through—Yousef. He was different in this light. He walked over and said, "Gloria."
"You're here," I heard myself say, but I felt him before I saw his face. Then he reached for me, and the world narrowed to the peach-scent on his breath.
"You came," he said. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I wanted to—" I stopped. The words soured. He kissed me like we had never been apart.
Later, when I was calmer, someone posted a picture of me online, and it spread like a spark. Want to know who feeds vultures? Rich boys who like a show. My face, my bag, my ID—already it looked like a price tag.
"You're seeing someone," a voice told me over the phone one morning. "Someone important."
"Who?" I asked.
"Edgar Blevins," said Jett Hernandez. "He's been asking about you."
My stomach flipped. Edgar? The man who could pay for a room with a flick of a thumb? The man who'd once left a thousand in my account and signed it as 'spiritual compensation'?
I blocked Edgar's number and made plans to leave the city the next day.
"Don't erase him," Yousef said into the receiver. "He'll keep trying."
"Like a fly," I said. "Annoying and impossible."
He didn't argue. He sent three thousand to my account without a wink. "Take it," he said.
I took it because some bridges are not meant to be rebuilt with pride. I took it because I couldn't face North City without a tool kit.
When Edgar came to my school, the universe turned a corner.
"This is unacceptable," I said when I saw him standing there like a rumor.
"You're the wildest little thing," he said, smiling in a way that made my skin crawl. "You should be grateful."
"Grateful for what? That you tried to buy me?"
He laughed like it was funny. "You don't understand how things work. I only want to take care of you."
"Take care of me?" I echoed. "You think money is a leash."
Later he showed up again and again: a message with a picture, a series of transfers I tried to return, a dinner invitation that turned into a public claim—"You belong with someone who can offer you the world."
"Please," I said to him when I blocked him and he still found ways to stand in my path. "Stop."
He took a step closer. "You think you can choose a boy like Yousef?"
"Yes," I said, because in the dark I could still remember his hands and the way his breath smelled like peaches.
The first time he pushed me into alley, it was other men who saved me—an old policeman and the noise of the street. The second time I was grabbed outside a late-night stall, and this time Yousef arrived like a storm.
"Don't touch her," he said.
"She belongs to no one," Cason Hughes, the man holding me said. "She's the prettiest thing I've seen tonight."
"Let her go," Yousef said, and in two pulls he had the thug on the ground and me free.
I clung to Yousef like a lifeline.
"You should never go out alone," he said, in that voice that asked me for rules as if I were already a child.
"Did you run all over the city looking for me?" I asked, cheeks pink with a mix of shame and something else.
"I ran to where I thought you'd be," he said. "That's better."
We sat in a doorway as emergency lights strobed in the distance. Daniel Christiansen came by—police, civil, all blunt comfort.
"You're safe now," Daniel told me. "We'll take a report."
"Thank you," I said, to Daniel and to Yousef and the little things in the world that still behaved like good people.
Time continued in staccato: one course of action followed another. I studied, I danced more to quiet the nights, I texted him, and he answered in fits. We met in rooms that smelled of hotel soap and made do with stolen minutes.
Then the money returned—again and again—and with it, Edgar's face appearing in the corners of my life: at Luxlan, waiting at my gate, sitting next to my aunt like he belonged there by default.
"Why does he follow me?" I asked Yousef, once, half-laughing to keep from crying.
"Because he can," he said. "And because you are a mirror a lot of men like to look into and then decide they want to own."
"That's cruel."
"It's true."
My plan was simple: keep my head down, do my work, dance until my legs ached. Yet Edgar would not be denied. He thought money could solve everything, and he thought I was the sort of person who could be priced.
Enough patience is a brittle thing. At last I did the only thing I could think would hurt him beyond a check.
I wrote down everything I had: messages, screenshots, bank records. I asked Daniel to help. He searched the right boxes and smiled that tired smile lawmen have when they find a thread.
"We can revoke accounts," he said. "We can make your voice louder."
"I want him stopped," I said. "Publicly."
"You want a scene," Daniel said simply.
"Yes."
So we prepared the scene.
A charity forum had been planned by Edgar Blevins, who was not only rich but theatrical. He had invited the city's movers and shakers and lined up a speech about responsibility and care. It would be televised. People would watch.
"You want to confront him there?" Yousef asked later, hand on mine. "That's dangerous."
"It has to be where the lights are," I said. "Where he has to look at people who have trusted him."
We worked quietly. Daniel arranged legal permission. Jett Hernandez smuggled in a laptop. Valentina Gentile, Yousef's cousin and a merciless ally, spread the word among journalists she knew. Kiera Andreev, my friend from the dance circle, recorded it all with a steady hand.
On the night of the forum, Edgar stood at a podium like a king who'd never known a rival. He sipped water and smiled as the cameras rolled. He talked about philanthropy, about how money was a tool for good, about the responsibilities of privilege.
"Charity is not just what we do," he said. "It is who we are."
"That is a fine speech," I whispered to Yousef.
"Don't start yet," he said. "Let them listen."
Jett handed me a microphone that was supposed to be a show prop. I slid it into my palm and walked on stage with confidence I had borrowed from somewhere I didn't know.
"Excuse me," I said into the microphone. "I need two minutes."
There was laughter, a sudden silence, and then the polite clap of the innocent. Edgar's smile faltered in a way that made my heart race. Cameras swung.
"Who is this?" he demanded.
"I am Gloria Brun," I said. "And I am here to ask a favor. I'd like the truth to be as public as your philanthropy."
He laughed. "This isn't a platform for personal disputes."
"It is when you use the same platform to hide things," I said.
"You're mistaken," he said. "Security—"
"Please." My voice didn't shake. "Play the messages."
A technician cued the laptop. The screen behind Edgar shifted, and the first thing that came up was his name and a string of messages.
"Don't embarrass me tonight," the messages read. "Nobody will believe her, but if you accept the money, she'll keep quiet."
The room hummed. Edgar's face changed from amused to curious, then from curious to small, like a mask slipping.
He said, "This is a fabrication."
The screen moved to bank records: a transfer with his name, an annotation that read like an insult. Then a screenshot of a voice message he'd sent—recorded proof of a plan, a voice saying, "She is just a treasure to be placed properly." The room shifted—those in attendance traded looks.
"That's impossible," Edgar barked. "I did not—"
"Your assistant's mail shows a pattern," Daniel said from the side, and then he stepped forward, folder in hand. "The transfers were automated through shells. We traced the routing."
Edgar's jaw ticked. "That's illegal," he managed.
"We know," Daniel said. "How many times did you send money with conditions attached?"
Faces around us sharpened. Phones lifted. Journalists murmured into their recorders. A woman in the front row leaned forward, eyes wide. Someone shouted, "Show us everything!"
"Stop this," Edgar said, and his old practiced composure clung like a second skin. "This is slander."
"Is it slander to show your own messages?" I asked calmly. "Is it slander to show how you told me I was a trophy? Is it slander to show when you called me a convenience and a marketable rumor?"
His lips moved and then found no shelter in words. He went from furious to frantic.
"I—" Edgar began. "You're lying. I never—"
"Look," I said, and the room went quieter than I'd ever heard. "If you had wanted to be kind, you would not have attached terms to the money. If you wanted to help, you would not have turned my identity into a rumor engine. Tonight, you have a choice. Admit it, or we let the public decide."
"Admit what?" he demanded.
"That you've been using your money and your position to try to own people's choices," I said.
A phone recorded. A light blinked. A host whispered into his earpiece. The cameras continued to feed. Edgar's face had gone the color of a stale grape.
"You're nothing," he said finally, hearing his voice flounder. "You're trying to ruin me."
"Maybe," I said. "Maybe I'm trying to help other girls who can't afford to be brave."
At that, a man near the back of the room applauded. A slow ripple of claps moved through the audience—uncertain at first, then louder. The murmurs turned into whispers. Phones divined their way out into the air like paper birds.
Edgar's expression flew through the stages: smug, shocked, denial, collapse.
"This is libel," he cried. "Sue me! Sue—"
"Did you ever think about apologizing?" I asked.
For a moment, he was a caricature of power rendered useless. Then he grabbed at the podium, breath sharp.
"Get this off the air," he ordered. "Security—"
"Stop," Jett called from the back voice like iron. "You gave her a thousand and told her to 'keep quiet.' These messages are yours."
There was a sound like a catch in the air and then the whole room seemed to settle on those two words. Around us, phones recorded, people swapped quizzical looks, someone tapped a tweet, and the lights of the cameras shone too bright.
Edgar's face split—first a perfect mask, then a twitch, then honest panic. He stepped away from the podium as if the floor had become liquid. "This is a setup," he said, voice uneven. "A frame."
"Is it?" Daniel asked. "Because the transfers went to accounts registered under the names of businesses you control."
He glared at Daniel. "You have no right—"
"I have every right," Daniel said. "You're using your money to manipulate people. That's coercion."
Edgar's eyes turned inward. He tried a smile and it came out wrong. Someone in the crowd began to hiss.
"You're a bully," a woman near the front called, voice trembling with anger. "How dare you."
Others began to shout too: "Shame!" "Hypocrite!" "Scammer!"
The center of the room had shifted. Edgar's color drained as more evidence flicked across the screen: a photo of him whispering into another woman's ear, a recording of him misrepresenting his intentions, an invoice showing the elaborate setup.
He went from shouting to whispering. His hands shook. Then, suddenly, he reached toward me.
"Please," he said, voice breaking. "Please, Gloria—"
"Say sorry," I told him.
"No," he said at first. Then the syllable broke in his throat. He seemed to discover his knees without meaning to. The room went very loud then—the ambient noise of cameras and murmurs and the thud of a man collapsing.
He dropped to his knees at the foot of the stage in front of five hundred people.
"Please," he begged, voice small now and shaking. "Please, I'm sorry. I didn't mean—"
People gasped. Someone laughed. Hands held phones to faces. A woman took a picture and the flash bloomed like a blossom. Edgar's suit was rumpled and for the first time it betrayed him. His hands, which had been used to the smoothness of silk, clawed at the carpet.
"Get up," someone said behind me.
"No," I answered. "Not yet."
He tried the old line of denial.
"This is a smear," he mumbled. "This was doctored. Get a forensic—"
"Stop," Daniel said. "We've checked it. We have timestamps. You lied."
Edgar's wall finally broke. The denial crumpled into pleading, then into an animal fear. He looked into faces and saw people taking in what he had been, not what he pretended to be.
"You think you can buy my silence," he said, voice strangled. "You think you can make me go away."
"You're on your knees," a voice called. "Do you want us to say 'help'?"
A dozen phones rose like geometric birds. The cameras ate his shame.
"Please," Edgar begged again, now to the entire room. "Please, I can fix this. I can—"
"No," said a chorus around him. "No."
He sobbed then, not controlled, not curated. He begged for forgiveness, for mercy, for the shelter of his money to be returned to him as absolution. He put his hands together, a fool's prayer, and hissed, "Please."
People recorded. People re-breathed. A woman started clapping slowly, then the sound grew, not of support but of a verdict.
"Good," I said, voice low. "Let them hear it."
The videos trended overnight. Comments numbered in the thousands. He lost sponsors in a week, then positions on boards he had once controlled. He tried to call his friends, but cameras waited on porches. He went to court to try to stop the spread of the evidence and instead found subpoenas.
When the formal punishment came, it was a different kind of spectacle. Edgar was asked to stand in a public hearing where donors, partners, and victims could speak. He sat in the seat where victims told their stories. He was asked to explain why he thought money could rewrite consent.
"How long did you think you could string people along with your generosity?" a reporter asked.
He muttered and then, in a move to salvage his reputation, fell to apologizing in the same breath he begged. But apologies delivered under the lights of the court and with cameras clicking do not travel as absolution. They travel as recordings.
He tried to stand tall once, to arrange his face into dignity, and the public memory recorded the collapse.
When the final administrative punishment came, it involved the kinds of things paper cannot hide: reputational bans, removal from power of attorney, public listings naming him as disbarred from certain committees. Business partners stepped back. Partners severed ties. He was made to attend sessions where he listened to testimonies from those he'd disfigured with power. He was made to answer questions under oath.
They made him apologize in a public square, to those he had humiliated.
He went through the expected stages: first he was smug, sure that some check or name would save him. Then he was shocked as his name trended with "abuser" and "fraud." Then he denied everything and demanded forensic proof. When the evidence was played again, he crumpled. Then he visibly fell apart—knees collapsing, voice brittle, eyes hollow. Then he begged on the floor in front of strangers, trying to drag from them some mercy that power had always given him without asking.
The crowd watched, recorded, and reacted. Some people left in fury. Some stayed silent and filmed. Some wept. Friends who had once smiled at his parties now kept a careful distance. He lasted in the sunlight of attention only long enough to be punished, and then he was left with himself.
"Are you satisfied?" Yousef asked me after the dust had settled.
"No," I said. "But I think justice is a small thing. It's just that it should be on view. Maybe it will help someone else think twice."
He pulled me into his arms then, and there—under a sky that felt cleaner—I smelled peach again, faint and real.
We returned to a quieter life after the storm. Yousef and I kept awkward hours. He had office trunks and a seriousness I still couldn't fully read. I had rehearsals, classes, and friends who kept me fed and busy. We met when we could and fought when we had to. He sent me money, and I pretended not to notice until I couldn't.
"Do you trust me?" I asked him on a night when the city felt like our own.
"What kind of question is that?" he asked.
"The dangerous kind," I said.
He smiled like a moonline, thin and bright. "I trust you don't hand your phone to strangers."
"But—"
"You trust me enough to get into a car with me," he said. "Isn't that some kind of trust?"
I laughed and kissed him because the math of our lives had become deliciously small: a room, a bed, the peach scent on his breath, the little pink bandage he always forgot he wrapped in places that no one but me noticed.
We kept each other's secrets. We kept each other's wounds. We argued like lovers and made up like children.
"Stay," he said one rainy evening, holding me tighter than usual.
"I will," I said.
And when I look back, months later, when the nights are long and I smell peaches in a market I had not visited since those first strange days, I remember the pink bandage with the tiny bear and I smile.
"You always were hard-headed," Yousef had said to me once.
"And you were always reckless," I retorted.
"Maybe that's why we fit," he said.
"Maybe," I agreed.
He kissed my forehead as the city hummed, and the small bear bandage on his finger had faded, but the memory of its pink cheer remained, a private laugh between us.
I closed my eyes to the sound of his heartbeat, and heard the peach-scented whisper: "I like you."
"I like you," I answered, and this time I meant it for a thousand quiet mornings.
The End
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