Face-Slapping12 min read
Seventy-Two Hours of Silence
ButterPicks31 views
I never thought an empty apartment could have a sound of its own.
"I left. Don't call me," Felicity said, and the door slammed.
I put my headset back on and aimed my crosshair at a moving target. "Fine," I muttered to the mic. "See you later."
I wasn't proud of how easily I let the door close behind her. We'd had arguments like this every few weeks, the same hurricane, the same tidy calm afterward. "She'll cool off," I told myself. "She always does."
When the house fell into silence, I dove deeper into the game. The night sweated on, the clock nudged past two, and the lobby music of the game blurred into background noise. I stretched and decided to go to the bathroom before sleep.
The bathroom echoed.
"Where did she put her—" I started aloud, turning the light on.
The sink was bare. Her pink towel that always hung like a flag on the door rail was gone. Her tiny bottles, the shampoo she liked, the night cream—gone. The closet by the bed yawed empty like a mouth.
"Felicity?" I called, louder this time.
No answer. My throat tightened. I opened the bedroom door.
Clothes on the floor—my dirty shirts, her absence. Her suitcase was gone. Her toothbrush gone. Even the little hair tie, the one she fixed with a thread at the edge, the black thing she swore she'd never toss—missing.
My hands were cold. I dialed Jaqueline.
"Jaqueline… is Felicity with you?" I asked into the phone.
"Who? What are you doing calling me now?" Jaqueline's voice was loud and expectant, like someone already in the middle of a story. "You two fight again?"
"Is she there?" I repeated.
"No. She's not here. Are you serious?" She sounded irritated, not helpful.
I hung up, sat on the couch, and for a ridiculous second, felt free. Her leaving meant she'd be gone for good, maybe. I pictured the bed all to myself and grinned stupidly. "Good," I said, and lit a cigarette on her side of the bed like reoccupation ceremony.
I fell asleep thinking of the watch I’d sent—an expensive four-leaf pearl thing I'd ordered for our anniversary. I pictured how the sales assistant had flirted while swaddling the box. "You have good taste," she had said.
At noon I woke, sunlight stabbing the blinds.
"She didn't close the curtains," I complained, then reached, found emptiness, and the woman's absence landed on me like a physical hit. I fell back into sleep, until afternoon.
I went to work half-asleep. I kept pawing at my phone, thumb flicking through the conversation thread titled "Felicity." The last message: "Red wine and steak. Come early." I scrolled farther back—memories as cheap as my denial.
At dinner that night I ate with someone else.
"Mr. Bryan, a parcel for you," the front desk said. Jaden Bloom smiled as she handed the package. She smelled like linen and city perfume.
"Thanks," I said, then before I could think, "Take it."
She blinked. "Are you sure?"
"Yeah. Go." I boxed the moment like something edible and pushed it away.
She left me holding the watch box while memories of Felicity's weekend pancakes and late-night porridge rose like a ghost. Jaden's laugh was still in the air; I tucked the watch into a drawer as if hiding an unsaid promise.
That night at the batting cages, I swung until my arms trembled and felt a dull ache that wasn't exhaustion but something like guilt giving itself a shape. I called Felicity and heard a voice—someone else answered for her and hung up. Then she blacklisted my number.
I tried Jaqueline again. This time I found her apartment and levered the door open when she cracked it a finger-width.
"Clifford—" she started.
"Where is she? Why is she not with you? Tell me the truth."
"She isn't here, Clifford. She left," Jaqueline said. "You two fought? Honestly, man, she was done."
"Done?" I said, too loudly. People in the lobby looked up.
"You messed up, Cliff. Big time," Jaqueline said, like the verdict was appointed.
On my way out a vigilant security guard ushered me out of the building. Jaqueline glared. "You roped me into this, you know. For what? To beg? No thanks."
I left in a huff and drove like a fool.
The car slipped. The guardrail rose up like some metal god. I hit the barrier. Then the ambulance. Then a hospital lamp and the groan of fluorescent. "Clifford? Clifford!"
"Felicity," I croaked later, when fever and pain cleared enough for me to say anything.
Maddox came. "What did you do, man?" he said, more annoyed than concerned. He was there because she had called him, apparently. "You hit a railing, you idiot."
"She called you?" I asked, the ache behind my ribs worse than the crash.
"Yeah. She panicked. You drove like you didn't care."
I told the nurses Felicity's number. "She'll come," I insisted. "She will."
But she didn't. Maddox sat on the bed like a patient storm cloud, fussing with my shoes, prodding at the IV.
"Go home," he said at last. "I'll watch." He actually stayed and then fell asleep in an armchair with his shoes off and his snore like a boat anchor.
At my apartment, I cleaned. I moved her things like evidence pieces, putting my shirts back into the closet and stuffing the bed back into a shape that might hold one. The house sounded too sharp. I cried and called it nothing.
My phone vibrated. Jaqueline was at the door with a carrier bag of food. "She left you a key," Jaqueline said, tossing keys on the table. "She said keep an eye."
"Keep an eye?" I repeated, stupid with relief.
"No," Jaqueline said, voice brittle. "She said she doesn't want to hear from you."
"She would come when she remembers," I said, a child bargaining. "She'll come and—"
"She doesn't belong to your timeline," Jaqueline said. "Clifford, you told her she couldn't be romantic. You told her to stop making steak, to stop wasting meat, to stop wanting nice things. You kept the salary card to yourself. You are not the kind of man who gives. You are the kind of man who keeps." She left the bag on the table and went.
Her words echoed. I wanted to make a spectacle to call her back. I thought of the ring and the sales assistant—Daisy—who'd told me how to measure a finger without her knowing. I thought of the little black hair tie, the souvenir from a hotel trip she said she liked.
I started looking.
Days are a bad map of time when you miss someone. I went down to the office building where Felicity worked. "She's on leave," the receptionist said, eyes sliding.
"Let me up," I said. "I'm Clifford Bryan."
"She hasn't been in," the receptionist answered as if she were closing a door. A colleague's desk had an appointment card circled with an old heart shape and a bunch of housing flyers—Felicity had been looking at new apartments. The sale brochures had photographs of model rooms and sunlight. I clutched one and the world narrowed.
At the open house for a suburban three-bedroom she had considered, I watched from a distance and saw her—Felicity—walking with a tall man. He carried a box of linens like a claimant. His shoulders were broad. His presence folded space. When she laughed he looked down at her with that look men give when they think they are the answer.
"I know him," I said, voice thin. "Gavin Nunes. Basketball squad, right?"
A memory snagged me—Gavin had been a star in college, a fast-moving forward. He had charm, not mine.
I walked forward, got stopped by a security guard, and then Gavin turned and saw me. "Clifford," he said, tone flat.
"What is this?" I asked Felicity when at last I got to their side. "What is he to you?"
Felicity's face was a calm of someone who had scheduled her reaction. Her eyes were not the same as the nights I had known. "Clifford, you pushed me away for years."
"I changed," I said. "I would change—"
"You left me," she replied. "You kept promises in your pocket and handed me lists."
Gavin's jaw tightened. He didn't need to say anything else. He moved to her side and protected a space.
I stood there and watched distance closing. "Please," I said. "Come back. We can work—"
She shook her head. "No, Clifford. Not like this."
She turned away, and something in me broke clean.
There was no dramatic scene. No slamming doors. Just the publicness of a new life displayed like a brochure. People at the open house glanced up, their eyes skimming my brokenness like they skimmed floor tiles. The model room smelled like lemon and new decisions.
I left.
Weeks later things shifted in a way that made my cheeks hot and my ears ring with more than the memory of my own mistakes.
Jaden Bloom kept showing up. She helped me when I was frail, sent messages that read like an instrument being tuned. She brought over food. She wore my present watch on a chain like a brooch. People talked. Jaqueline's gossip was a dry tinder she threw into any flame.
"Stop flaring your chest about it," I told Jaden once.
"I'm not trying to replace anyone," she said. "I'm just… being decent."
"Don't get used to decency," I warned, fragile. "I don't have it to give."
But things are not built on my warnings.
Then the day came when the world I had been leaning into with one shaky hand pushed back.
It started with a launch—an estate launch event at the clubhouse. The company had arranged a night for potential buyers, a display of how clean and correct life could be if you bought into it. Felicity had a ticket. I heard because Jaqueline texted me a picture: "Guess who bought a spot in the new complex? She's going tonight."
I didn't want to go, and then I wanted nothing more than to be a moth to the light of what I had lost. I showed up in a suit like an apology.
The ballroom was crowded. People sipped wine, eyes shiny with future plans. The model apartment sat under spotlight glass, with couples whispering as if negotiating destiny.
I found a place near the catering table and watched. Jaden was there, and she smiled at me like an offer. Gavin was not far from Felicity.
Felicity moved through the room with a grace I had stopped earning. Jaqueline stood near the entrance, arms folded, eyes darting. The sales assistant—Daisy—worked at the registration desk, her face a practiced neutral.
A projector clicked. A video began of the complex, sunlight on balconies. Then Felicity took the stage.
"Hello," she said simply, voice steady. The room quieted. "I have something to say."
I felt the ground tilt.
"I worked hard for this. I saved. I left because I couldn't breathe in a place where everything I wanted was described as a problem. I don't want to be someone who has to prove herself anymore." Her eyes found me like a lighthouse. "Tonight, I want to clear something up."
A murmur. The projector's glow painted her face.
"I want to show you who I was doing all this for." She pointed and a slideshow flicked on—the first picture was of a pancake-laden table, then a hair tie, then a ticket stubs pile. The photos were small domestic things and each frame had a caption—dates, little memories. The room fell into a hush of voyeurism.
"Clifford," she said. "You might think I disappeared because I was dramatic. But I left because I had to find a life that wouldn't suffocate under your 'practical' rules. I also want to say this—about someone else."
The air shivered.
She walked down off the stage and moved to the display table. "When I was packing, I found messages on my phone. Messages proving that someone at my office had been encouraging someone to be… something I never agreed to."
Heads turned toward Jaden. She looked at Felicity like a spider caught in the light.
"This is a copy," Felicity said, and Daisy's hands trembled as she passed small folded pages to the front row. The papers were screenshots—Jaden's texts to two different men, a casualness that felt like betrayal. One thread was to Gavin, trivial and friendly. Another thread was to me—screenshots where Jaden had described plans to make herself noticed, to flatter and to nudge.
"You're accusing me?" Jaden's smile cracked. It hardened into defiance.
"Yes," Felicity said. "And not just accusing. I want the truth to be visible."
She read aloud lines from the chats. "She wrote, 'Make him miss you. Make him need you.' She wrote, 'I'll bring him dinner, I'll be nice, take the watch.'"
"That's—" Jaden started. "I never—"
"You called him 'a man to collect,'" Felicity continued. "You said you liked the idea of being useful in someone else's life. That is not friendship."
The room made a sound that was half inhale, half a collective clench.
Jaden's face went through colors. From smug to startled. From startled to furious. "This is private!" she snapped. Her voice shook, and for the first time I saw real fear.
"You made it public," Felicity said. "Because I'm tired of living small scenes that are someone else's rehearsal."
"You're trying to humiliate me," Jaden spat. "You're jealous."
"Jealous of what?" Felicity asked. She didn't raise her voice, but people leaned close. "Of your attention? Your manipulations? No."
I felt something like a scalp-crawl through the crowd. Phones had already been raised; a dozen small record lights sprinkled the room like stars.
"She told people I was unstable," Jaqueline blurted out from the back, then she clapped a hand over her mouth. "I'm sorry."
Jaden's mouth opened, closed. "I only—"
"Stop," Felicity said. "Stop speaking. Listen."
Crowd members muttered. A woman near the entrance said, "Is this for real?"
"Public confession," someone whispered. Cameras clicked. A man behind me laughed nervously and then stopped, his laugh hollow. The murmurs grew into a ripple.
Jaden's shoulders collapsed as she tried to gather herself. "You're ruining me!" she cried, a last-ditch plea.
"No," Felicity answered quietly. "You're revealing yourself."
She stepped forward and turned to the room. "If anyone here thinks it's okay to plan someone else's heartbreak or to make a life an experiment, think again." She raised her hand and pointed at Jaden. "This woman decided to groom me out of his life using kindness as bait. I will not let that go unspoken."
A man from a neighboring table stood up. "You can't do that," he said to Jaden. "You lied to people you work with."
Another voice. "Why would you do that? For a watch?"
People began to hum with moral verdicts. Phones recorded. Someone started a live video and within seconds the number of viewers climbed. An old acquaintance at my company whispered loudly, "I always thought she was too smooth."
Jaden's countenance crumpled. It was a show of denial—then shrinking—then implosion. Her smiles dropped into a mess of pleading. "Please," she said to Felicity. "This is not what it looks like. I didn't mean—"
"Then explain it," Felicity said. "Explain to the live cameras. Explain to the people who trusted you. Explain to him."
I felt the eyes sink into me, like a thousand small judgments. "Explain," someone demanded from the crowd. "Tell us what you actually did."
Jaden babbled, sentences tripping over themselves. The witnesses closed in with questions. "Why the texts? Who did you speak to? Why when he was sick did you come over? Were you planning this the whole time?"
Her face folded. She searched the room and found no ally. Even Daisy looked away, embarrassed. A couple of office colleagues edged back in collective disgust.
From smugness she slid into shock, then the shock turned to denial. "You don't… you can't admit this," she stammered. "Clifford—"
"No," Felicity interrupted. "Let him decide. Let him hear."
People were talking now, not politely. "She set him up," someone said. "She wanted the watch—" Another voice, bitter, "and the drama."
A woman took out a napkin and began to write something, then held it up: "Shame is not a currency." Laughter and a few scattered claps followed, not supportive but against deceit.
Jaden broke. She started to sob, then to shout, then to beg. "I made mistakes—"
"Own them," Felicity said. "Here. Now. Own them where people can see."
The crowd watched as Jaden's mask melted. Some people filmed, some stood in stunned silence. A little boy in the corner asked his mother, "Why is the lady crying?" The mother hushed him.
Then something else happened. Jaden turned on me.
"It was his watch," she accused, voice raw. "He gave me things and let me in."
"No," I said, but my mouth felt dry. I had no defense that wouldn't sound like more concession.
My shame became the second punishment. Women who had once looked at me with warmth now looked with an accusing calm. One of my colleagues said, "You held her money. That's the truth. Maybe you both were wrong."
Jaden's face collapsed into pleading. "Please—this is humiliating," she cried again. People murmured. A few stepped away, uncomfortable at the public theater.
Felicity turned to me one last time. "I didn't come to ruin," she said quietly. "I came because the truth needed to breathe."
Then she walked off the stage and slipped out the door. People followed with eyes and phones and whispers.
Jaden remained in the center like a candled wick. Her transformation had been complete: from schemer to accused, from confidence to collapse. She begged for apologies, for privacy. Her voice reduced to a raw plea. Some walked away; others recorded until their fingers tired.
It was a punishment not of law but of witness—a social verdict. Jaden's face had changed; she begged, pleaded, cried. People shook their heads; a few clapped in disapproval. Someone called out "shame" and the word clattered like a gavel.
Later the social video had thousands of views. Comments labeled her manipulative; others debated the messier truth. HR at her office began to receive polite emails. Daisy's manager was embarrassed. People who had enjoyed her smile suddenly avoided eye contact.
It was public. It was precise. It was ugly in a way that left me hollow.
Afterward, when the room had emptied and the lights dimmed, Jaqueline approached me.
"You okay?" she asked.
"No," I said. "Not really. But at least the truth's out."
She looked at me, long. "You put both of them into an impossible space," she said. "You were selfish too. She didn't deserve that—neither did you."
"Maybe," I said. I thought of the little hair tie, of the watch tucked in a drawer, of my lingering excuses.
That night, I sat on the curb outside the clubhouse and watched my phone light up with messages. Some were angry. Some were sympathetic. Many were new followers to a drama they'd only just discovered.
And in the midst of the noise, I learned a bitter thing: punishment can be public and it can be unequal. Jaden had been exposed and undone. I was exposed too, but I remained in the story as the man who had to live with the consequences alone—buckets of regret instead of the spectacle of shame.
I never expected a crowd to cleanse me. I only expected, absurdly, that Felicity would return to the only life she had known with me.
She didn't. Instead she walked past the dim streetlights into the new world she'd built, hand on Gavin's arm, face held like a note never to return.
I watched them go and felt the weight of all the things I should have done. The city moved on. The live clips aged. Jaden's messages were archived. My phone filled with empty texts. Felicity's life, once threaded through mine, now flashed on a screen a neighborhood away.
Sometimes I still set the watch by the bedside and feel its small, precise beating. It ticks without blame.
I keep the little black hair tie in my palm like a relic. It has a frayed edge, and I find myself thinking of the hotel where we'd laughed and planned time away. I keep it because it once belonged to someone who stayed when I couldn't be better, and because I have to remember the shape of what I've lost.
The End
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