Sweet Romance12 min read
I Was Her Assistant, He Was My Past — The Kiss That Changed Everything
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1
"I always told you: fame is a pendulum," Gloria said the night she moved my life into her huge flat.
"You made a mess, I'll clean it up," she added, popping another dumpling into her mouth like nothing had happened.
I smiled because she smiled. I packed my broken dream in two suitcases and followed her into the warm glow of her living room.
"I didn't think you'd actually do it," I replied.
"Do what?" she asked, with that dizzying, open face that had gone from our hometown nights to billboards in two years.
"Help me, take me in, make me her assistant," I said, then laughed too loud and bit my lip.
Back then I was Clara Cochran, campus darling—the sort who could break a dozen necks walking past a lecture hall. One drunken, brave punch at a producer and my luck vanished like footprints in rain. Gloria's luck didn't just keep going; it double-jumped and sprouted wings. She signed, rose, and the world favored her like it favored cheap luck.
"Clara, what will we eat when I have to film?" she asked in the kitchen that first morning.
"You'll eat, I'll just be the one holding the hair clip," I said.
She clapped, "That's my Clara—always dramatic."
2
"Don't be silly, we promised," she always said when I tried to refuse the assistant role. "You are my lucky charm in the closet and the unpaid stylist of my life."
I learned to iron with a poker face. I learned to fold gowns like origami so photographers could believe in miracles. I learned details that saved time and kept tantrums small. I learned to love sleep that came in odd naps and bus seats. I learned to accept the tiny invisible wages of devotion.
"I know you hate him," Gloria once whispered, "but please don't take sides. This is the shoot we need."
"Gloria, he's my past," I said. "He doesn't belong in our present."
Colin Lemaire—he had the face of a movie poster and the patience of a shark. He wasn't exactly cruel; he had a way of making ordinary acts feel like tests. When his eyes landed on me the first day on set, something like a storm passed over the white cheeks of his calm.
"Maybe it's nothing," I told myself.
"Maybe he sees you as a ghost," Gloria teased, squeezing my hand.
3
That night, insomnia crawled up my spine and I clicked through an interview that used to be my compass. Colin's smile in the clip was precise, the kind practiced at mirrors. Then the interviewer asked, "How do you treat someone who once hurt you?"
Colin looked down. He lifted his head slow, like a man opening a book no one should read. "I forgive," he said softly. The camera cut to a thousand laughing comments and the internet decided whether he was saint or snake.
I shouldn't have opened his messages later. I shouldn't have drunk the tea he sent me with a sticky note that said, "To Clara."
"Drink up—it's the team's order," his assistant smiled.
"Order? From whom?" I asked, when the assistant leaned in conspiratorially.
"From Colin. 'Look her in the face and hand her the cup.' It's for the cameras."
He stood under a prop peach tree, white costume like mountain snow. He offered me the tea with a glass-calm face I remembered from campus. "You're not scared?" he asked when I choked on the first sip.
"I like danger," I said, but the tea tasted like lying.
4
"I thought you were done with him," Gloria said when I told her he would be male lead.
"I was," I lied.
Later, as the cameras rolled, he made scenes into knives. He tripped me twice—deliberate stumbles, tripped by a hand, unhelpful glances. A missing prop glue, a wrong cue—things that only one person on set orchestrated: him.
"Colin," I said in a quiet corner, when the crew's hum became background, "what game are you playing?"
He smiled in a way that made me older. "Rehearsing empathy," he said. "For art."
5
Then the night the wardrobe fell onto me—because Gloria's left wrist was slung out of joint and she couldn't do the shot—my job changed. They dressed me as her. The director's eyes flicked from my face to the swooping fake veil. "You can do it," Katherine Fleming told me, very plain.
"Me?" I said.
"You're right here already," she said. "Take the stage."
I had been an actress once in college, a different life and a braver Clara. I stood in the wing, lips trembling, and realized the kiss that would define a scene was not just a fingernail on cinema; it was an invitation to forget the past. Colin watched me, and I knew: the past had not forgiven me either.
6
"Stay professional," Katherine whispered before the shot.
I tried to be professional. He tried to be distant. The first take ended with a mid-air freeze because his mouth refused to land.
"Cut," Katherine barked, but there was no heat in her voice.
"Try again," he said to me later, not as a direction but as a challenge, and when his forehead brushed mine on the second try, my reason cramped and the take held like a photograph.
"You're stealing scenes on accident," he said softly afterward.
"Good," I returned, breathless. "I'm practiced at taking things I don't deserve."
7
Small cruelties followed. A misplaced ice cream with a note: "Wasabi flavor" on my cup. A deliberate herb tower of cilantro piled on my lunch. A stumble near his chair that became a rumor. People stopped looking like family and started looking like audiences.
"You okay?" Gloria asked under the bright lights of lunch.
"If I fall apart, it's your fault," I told her.
"Then don't," she said, and she meant it like a spell.
Katherine, always on the hunt for a better frame, pulled me aside one afternoon. "You have an eye, Clara," she said. "Stop being so apologetic for your talent."
"You'd be my teacher?" I asked, heart pocketing a strange hope.
"Watch the light tomorrow," she answered. "Tell me if it lies."
8
We rehearsed, took repeated shots, perfected the wrong things into better things. Colin's icy shell softened in glimpses: a hand that steadied mine when I burned my wrist; a whisper about lines that landed like comfortable gloves; a protective poise when a paparazzi lens flashed too close.
"You can't be soft on me," I told him one night as we walked under a stage sky.
"Why not?" he asked.
"Because I will be soft back," I said.
He laughed a sound like someone surprised to find a treasure in a drawer.
"Then be soft," he said, and the words warmed me like a bad but necessary fire.
9
Then the scandal hit. A marketing account—the sort that eats rumors for breakfast—leaked a set of photos: me and Colin at a late-night bar. The images were ambiguous; I was crying into his shoulder, and they made a feast out of that shadow.
"Gloria," I called, breath fast as a cat's.
"What happened?" she said, already steady, mouth set.
"It looks like I am his girlfriend," I said. "People will chew on this."
Agn Agneta Zeng had arranged the initial plan—she was Gloria's manager. Or rather, she was the woman who brokered my second wind into a role wearing someone else's name. She had charm like silk and a plan like a machine. When the leaks pointed clearly toward a publicity push, her face remained the same.
"Let them talk," she told Gloria in a hard smile. "Heat is the market. We simmer now, then we sauté."
10
When the photos turned into headlines, I felt the old shame like a wet blanket. The studio spun the narrative toward a soft romance and Gloria played hurt like an art elle. I told myself I'd be fine. I said I would be fine.
"Did you sign something?" I asked Agn one evening in the quiet of her office.
"No," she said. "Not yet."
"Then what was that night?"
"A misstep by friends," she said. "A mistake that looks like sacrifice."
I started to find holes. Contracts that appeared unsigned on my desk. Calls returned late, then unanswered. The more I looked, the less accidental everything felt.
11
The hammer fell on Agn in a way she never bought. The exposure wasn't just gossip; it was legal proof. Someone—someone careful—had leaked calls, emails, and a recording I had once hidden in a drawer like an apology. The recording was of her telling me, in a coffee shop, a plan: trade a friend for heat, use old photos, engineer a personal crisis to seed the public.
When the story came out, the company called a press meeting in a glass atrium building, the kind where sunlight felt sharp and unforgiving.
I had to be there. Gloria had to be there. So did Colin. So did the dozens of people who'd sustained on rumors for weeks.
12
The atrium filled with a buzz like a beehive. Cameras bobbed like mosquitoes. I sat near Gloria; her hand found mine like we had never missed a beat. Agn walked in late, the sort of woman who timed her entrance to say, "I expected applause." She wore a pale suit and a smile that did not reach her eyes.
"Ms. Zeng," a reporter started, "we have emails that show you orchestrated the 'staged leaks.' Why did you do it?"
Agn's smile went small. "I orchestrated nothing illegal," she said at first. Then she took a breath, and the room leaned in.
"My job," she said, "is to make sure my stars are seen. We were trying a new plan—an ambiguous relationship story to generate sympathy. It was a calculated professional move."
"Calculated for profits, or at the cost of people's real lives?" another reporter pressed.
There was a beat of silence where I felt all my years fold into a single page: college nights, the punch, Gloria's apartment, the slow rebuilding. The world was watching now like someone reading a confession.
Agn's face changed. The charm cracked. She tried to tilt into defiance. "We were playing within the rules of publicity," she said. But then the evidence slid across the table—screenshots of back-and-forth messages, the recording of her voice explaining how to use the photos, and a transcript of the line: "Let it hurt enough to be believable."
The first stage: smugness. "I was following industry practice."
The second stage: fluster. Her hand trembled; she pressed her palms to her cheeks as she tried to maintain posture. Cameras caught a bead of sweat. Her smile had stiffened into a rictus.
The third stage: denial. "You can't prove intent," she said. "Maybe someone edited our words."
The fourth stage: the slip. Someone played a clip—Agn's voice, unmistakable: "Two images, a broken woman and a man who waits—it's delicious."
Her eyes went wide, then hot. She opened her mouth, shut it, and the world seemed to tilt.
People murmured; a line of reporters divined prey. The public's mood shifted from curiosity to fury.
"What do you say to the actresses hurt by your plan?" a voice demanded.
She blinked. "I—" she started, and stopped.
Her denial dissolved into something raw. Her hands began to shake visibly. Studio executives shifted behind their protective bubble. Agn's breathing shortened.
"You call this business?" Gloria stood up, voice small but clear. "You call this practicing our lives for a market?"
The murmurs turned into applause—shock first, as people realized a star was striking the manager. Cameras zoomed on Agn. Her cheeks flushed from the camera's heat.
She tried to steady herself. "Gloria, I—this was to—"
"To what?" Gloria snapped. "To throw me into public humiliation? To sell me as a product? To—"
Agn's nostrils flared. She turned to the executives. "You all knew," she cried suddenly, voice breaking. "You signed the contracts for marketing. This was not my solo decision."
There it was: the shift from alone to accused. Heads in the back murmured. The legal team shuffled a paper stack. The producers realized the PR freefall that had begun.
13
Agn's reaction moved from defiance to bargaining. She began to speak more rapidly, hands folding and unfolding as reporters shouted questions. "We can apologize, we can offer compensation, we'll—" Her voice was a ladder climbing nowhere.
A man shouted, "Apologize now!"
She stumbled through an apology that felt like a rehearsed line. The cameras caught it and chewed it. The crowd reacted like an audience at the end of a bad play: some scoffed, others clapped—half in sarcasm, half in contempt.
Then she collapsed. Not literally at first, but her posture sagged. The press smelled blood: she had become a spectacle. One of the junior execs, white-knuckled, whispered, "We have to distance."
"You're fired," a studio rep said softly into a microphone, a near-imperceptible thunder in his voice.
"Effective immediately," he added, and the words landed like a gavel.
If Agn had expected a private exit, she had misread the script. They pushed a press release across the table. Someone in the crowd started a chant: "Accountability! Accountability!"
Now the fifth stage: breakdown. Her composure unspooled. She dropped her head into her hands. Cameras circled like sharks. Reporters leaned forward for the spectacle. She tried to stand, to reclaim composure, but hands shook and tears began to leak.
The crowd's reaction was a fossilized rush—cellphones rose, the air filled with the mechanical shutter of thousands of phones. People whispered, some in disgust, some in glee. Someone filmed her legs as she left the room; another uploaded the first clip with the headline: "Manager Falls From Grace Live."
14
Agn's face moved through colors: rage, disbelief, disbelief again, then pleading. She whispered into a mic like a child caught. "I will make this right," she said. "I didn't mean—"
"Meaning doesn't fix people's lives," Gloria answered coldly, and the reporters' eyes turned into knives again.
The public watched her shrivel. Colleagues shuffled away, some with pity—most with relief. A group of interns, the very ones who had never been heard, stepped forward to hand a printed apology from the studio to the women harmed. People recorded, reposted, and the clip spread like wildfire.
Her staff left in a scattering of skirts and suit jackets. Clients called their lawyers. Contracts were terminated. Her name, once whispered in club corners, was now a hot headline.
The humiliation wasn't a single blow; it was an unspooling, public disassembling. She tried to salvage, tried to call names, pointed fingers at others, but those hands had already been washed free. She tried to beg for time. People asked for compensation, for personal apologies, for the truth. Some wanted her banned. Some wanted a private conversation.
And when she walked out, the atrium's glass reflected a woman smaller than her suit had promised to be.
15
Watching it, I felt a strange emptiness.
"This proves my point," Gloria said later, softer than I expected. "People do what pleases them when they think they can sell it."
"What about forgiveness?" I asked.
She shrugged. "Forgiveness isn't a marketable product."
16
Agn's fall was not the end. Days later, leaked memos and her own emails confirmed that she had often traded people's lives for clicks. She resigned. The industry ran a cleanup operation. People debated ethics on morning shows. Legal suits threatened to bloom like a bad weed. But the main thing was this: there was public reckoning. The people she used came together: creatives, junior staff, actress friends. They demanded change.
Her punishment had been public, humiliating, and perfect for the circle she had spun. It was not violence, only exposure—and exposure can kill a career. She had nothing left to manage but her own apologies.
17
After the storm, things settled into an odd rhythm. Gloria's career wasn't ruined; if anything, she became more guarded and deliberate. Colin and I, no longer hiding, had to decide on terms.
"Why did you do it—make that bar night public?" I asked him one evening, sitting on the rooftop with the city breathing around us.
"I didn't," he said. "But I didn't stop it."
"Why not?"
"Because I thought telling my story would be enough," he said. "I didn't think it would become yours."
He looked tired and honest and terrible with his apology. I wanted to be angry forever, but the world demanded easier reactions. More than once we had to rehearse public stances for cameras: the careful smiles, the soft lines. We practiced weightless honesty.
18
"Will you sign that contract?" Gloria asked me weeks after the scandal cooled, handing a glossy paper across the kitchen table.
"My life would be inside it," I said.
"You can be an actress or a director, Clara," she said, eyes that had learned to plan. "You can do both if you want."
Katherine pulled me aside some months later and said, "You have a director's eye. I could use someone like you on my set."
"Me?" I said, alarmed and delighted.
"Sure. The ad spot—can you helm it?"
I said yes. I said yes even when I thought I wasn't allowed to say yes.
19
We filmed a chocolate ad that felt like a tiny miracle. I stood on the other side of the camera for the first time in years and said, "Action." The crew clapped after we wrapped. People congratulated me like I had invented the sun.
Colin came by, not because he had to, but because he wanted to see me in my new skin. He kissed the back of my hand in the doorway.
"Clara," he said, serious as a judge, "what do you want now?"
"I want to be held to my choices," I answered.
"Then choose me," he said.
"I choose me," I answered first.
20
We didn't get an easy ending. We had messy photos, headlines, and a thousand small unshared thoughts. But I found a way back to myself. I kept the hairpin he had gently put back in my hair once—crooked, bent at the tip. It became a talisman of the strange kindness between us.
"You're not the girl who punches producers anymore," he said quietly once.
"No," I said. "I'm the one who writes the shot list."
He smiled. "Good. Then don't let me write your story."
21
In the months that followed, Gloria found a road that fit her: a sweet rom-com that suited her smile. Katherine taught me to see a frame as if with two eyes. Colin and I rebuilt boundaries slowly, awkwardly. My name stopped being a rumor headline and became a credit line.
"Clara," Gloria said one evening as we sat on the same sofa where we once set our lives on fire, "remember when you packed your suitcases into my place and said you had no future?"
"I do," I said.
"And now?"
"Now," I replied, "I pack fewer things and carry better reasons."
She held up a box of chocolates we had used for the ad. "To the director."
"To the girl who used to be a campus goddess," I said.
She laughed. "And now a working director."
22 — The Unique Ending
I keep the chipped hairpin in a drawer labeled "evidence." Sometimes I take it out, rub the bent metal with my thumb, and remember how it felt to have someone's fingers fix my hair. Not a grand final line about "always" or "together forever"—instead, a small image: a bent hairpin, time-stained and honest, a quiet relic that still fits in my hand.
The End
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