Face-Slapping9 min read
She Bought a Ring, I Bought a Plan
ButterPicks17 views
"I think we should talk tonight," I said, lighting a candle.
"It’s Friday," Brooks said, smiling like he always did on our ritual nights. "Our deep talk night."
"I know." I poured the wine. "Just—let's be honest, okay?"
He laughed and kissed my temple. "Always honest."
Then I saw it: a fresh red spot on the back of his shoulder, right by the spine. It looked like someone had popped it earlier that day.
"Who did that?" I asked instead of asking anything subtle.
"I—" He didn't fumble. "I popped it myself in the mirror at work."
"You were popping a back pimple in a public mirror?" I asked, trying not to picture it.
"Yes." He shrugged like it was normal.
"Show me," I said.
He stripped and did a ridiculous contortion in front of the vanity, twisting his arms behind him, craning his neck and rolling his eyes to see. I knew his body; he isn't a show-off. I watched him for a beat too long, then decided to let it go. The night could be saved.
"You’re weird tonight," he said, grinning as he wrapped his arms around me.
"Maybe I'm petty," I muttered. But after five years of marriage, pettiest decisions can be survival choices.
When he slept I took his phone. My rule is simple: if something smells wrong, find the source. It unlocked with one of his fingers.
The home screen wasn't mine.
"Whose selfie is that?" I said aloud to the empty room.
The wallpaper was of him with a young woman, her head on his shoulder, both smiling like honeymooners. The apps were sparse. His old phone was a messy map of productivity; this one was neat—almost staged.
I opened WeChat. Messages started three months ago. "Tao-ge," she wrote. "Baby." He called her "baby" too. He'd bought this phone three months earlier.
I woke him and sat him on the edge of the bed.
"Who is she?" I asked.
He blinked, like a man who'd been discovered with mud on his hands. "It's—" His voice dissolved. "I can explain."
"Explain what? A second life?"
He told me about dual systems on phones and different fingerprints. "I didn't mean to hide it," he said. "I just thought—"
"You thought what? That hiding makes it okay?"
"Covering a truth is wrong," he whispered, "but so is ruining a life."
I threw a pillow at him. He took it without flinching, like a child being corrected.
"Who is she? Where did this start?"
He hesitated. I threw another pillow and then his confession came out like a slow leak. "She's pregnant," he said finally. "Three months."
"Pregnant with whose child?" I demanded.
"A choice—" he started.
"Don't," I said. "Don't 'choose' to hurt me. Don't make me the fool."
He knelt and swore he’d delete it, swear he’d stop. He was good at kneeling. He was good at asking forgiveness.
I didn't forgive him. Not then.
He tried to be better the following days, calling, circling me at home, doing the dishes like he'd been awarded good behavior. On our anniversary he booked a restaurant and gave me a necklace—cheap sparkle, but it did the job. My heart, predictably, softened.
"Can we eat? Can we try?" he asked with his mouth and tried to hug me.
I took his arm and swallowed the knot in my throat. "Maybe," I said. "Let's eat."
While he went to the bathroom, I opened his laptop to pull a work file. It was logged into a different WeChat account—the same "baby" account. The woman sent messages I read while my stomach dropped.
"I miss you," she wrote.
"I dreamed of you," she wrote.
I saw his reply light up on the synced desktop. "Me too," it said.
He had promised to stop. He had not.
So I made a plan that wasn't just for me.
The first move looked like madness: a trip to a bungee platform high above the valley he loved bragging about. He squeezed my hand in the elevator, smiling like nothing was wrong.
"Why bungee?" he asked.
"To make you remember today," I said.
"Then hold tight."
He did. Too tight, like someone clutching a rope of safety.
At the top, I unlocked my foot strap and stepped back.
"What are you doing?" he shouted.
"Just a joke," I said and shoved him.
He fell backward with a sound I still hear. People screamed. I walked to the elevator like I was stepping into a silent theater.
He had a heart episode on the drop. He was rushed to the hospital. He survived, mostly. The shock did him in—enough to land him under an IV. My plan had been to scare, not harm. But sometimes plans have teeth.
At the hospital, a girl in a pale suit ran in. Handsome face, perfect hair—the same girl in his wallpaper.
"Brooks!" she cried, and then she was at his bed, kissing his forehead, stroking his cheek, calling him "Tao-ge" right there with tubes and machines.
"Elora?" he mouthed.
"I was worried," she said, eyes round. "Someone said someone was hurt and I came."
I watched the performance and finally saw the script. She kneeled to him, put out a diamond the size of a gull’s egg and said, "If I offended you, I'm sorry. This is yours." She smiled at my necklace and then—like a practiced move—she placed her own ring next to it, matching a set: his cheap pendant, her big ring.
"It was part of a set," I said quietly. "Brooks bought two pieces."
She blinked, sweet as sugar. "I thought he bought them together."
Something in me broke loose. I slapped her. Hard.
"You liar," I said. "You took another woman's place and a man's vows and turned them into your ladder."
"He—" Brooks started, pale.
"Don't defend her." I spat the words. "You hid her. You bought her champagne and silence."
Elora dropped to her knees like it was part of the act. "Please," she said. "I didn't mean to—"
She pretended to weep. My mother-in-law, Greta, walked in and acted like a sheltering mother. She wrapped Elora in her arms and whispered, "Poor child, let me handle this." My mother-in-law's touch was warm. Her look at me was ice.
"You are unreasonable," Greta said to me in the corridor. "She is delicate. You can't push yourself into her life."
"She’s pregnant with someone else’s baby and you stand there?" I asked.
"She is carrying his child," Greta said. "We should be kind."
Kind? I felt flayed by their kindness.
"Fine," I said. "Divorce."
They handed me a paper. "Sign this, and be civil," they said.
My father arrived. He loved me, but he loved peace more. He told me to go back to the hospital and apologize so they could reconcile.
"She didn't think of the consequences," he said. "Forgive him."
"No," I said. "Not this time."
Greta threw a sheet at me with the divorce clauses: the house belonged to Brooks’s father; the accounts were his from the stock awards. "Sign and leave quietly," she said like a verdict.
I refused to sign. I argued the law—marital assets, community property. She laughed the laugh of people who never fear loss. Then the neighbors congregated like vultures when blood smells. They took sides, and my father, worn down, begged me to sign to avoid scandal.
"I will sign," I said finally, and the paper left my hands like a fresh wound.
We divorced in quick time. Brooks walked out with Elora, who flashed a victory sign as they entered the civil registry. I watched them and felt hollow. My phone rang. It was Elora.
"Stay away from Brooks," she said, voice low and dangerous. "He's mine now."
"You stole him," I said. "You think you own people?"
"I own what I buy," she sneered, then hung up.
My father tried to soothe me by taking me out. At the sushi place I kept hearing neighbors—Greta's allies—laughing about the divorce and praising the new bride.
I snapped and smashed a dish.
"Enough," my father said, embarrassed. "Control yourself."
The anger smoldered into a new plan. If she wanted to parade her lie, I would turn her stage into a courtroom of truth.
I hired a hacker. I paid him to dig into Elora’s background and the hotel records. The hacker came back with a map: one night at a hotel with Brooks, lots of staged photos, and a string of transactions—loans, payoffs, and a pattern linking Elora to a high-end courting agency that trained women to identify wealthy targets.
"She's a professional," the hacker said, "trained to look like a daughter of privilege. She used a stage name. Her real life is—" he clicked through folders and my jaw dropped.
Her past wasn't pretty: started at small parlors, learned charm, then learned how to monetize attachments. She'd been in training camps, coached on how to say the right things to men who were lonely. She wasn't the victim story she sold. She was a business.
I gathered allies: old men and women who had been conned by her in other towns. I paid for people from her past to come forward and be visible. I hired a "father"—Cade Denton—silent and stubbornly proud, with a pair of sun-worn hands and an accent that belonged on stage. I called four women who had worked with her in small parlors—Hudsyn, Delilah, Khalani, Kendra—and a bigger enemy: Catherine, the wronged wife of one of her earlier patrons who had evidence and, crucially, the appetite to make a scene.
"I want the wedding," I told them. "I want her stripped down in public. Not beaten, not broken—exposed."
They nodded.
The wedding day came like a gaudy, confident storm. The hall smelled of lilies and money. Greta glittered in crimson and everyone smiled like they were being paid to be happy.
I sat in the back, mask on, heart cold.
The ceremony was mid-speaker when Cade walked up like he'd lost his mind.
"Hold on!" he cried, voice cracking through the speakers. "My daughter—who are you marrying?"
"Who are you?" Elora screamed. "Security!"
"I raised her in a small town!" Cade shouted. "She used to sit on the well and eat peaches!"
The guests turned. Elora's smile faltered. "I don't know this man!" she said.
"She has a mole on her butt," Cade shouted, suddenly intimate. "A small mole I used to pinch when she was a child—right there!" He laughed like a man who's watched too much television.
The room lunged toward her like oil toward a flame.
Elora's eyes darted. She called security, called for order. But the show had been lit.
Then the four women marched in, tight skirts, loud heels. They hugged her like old friends and flashed banners.
"Congratulations, Jiao Jiao," they sang sarcastically, and then they unfurled red banners that said: "Congrats on getting ashore—From the Spring Garden Sisters."
Gasps. Phones were out. The banners unfurled like wounds.
Elora paled. She tried to cover, but there is nothing you can do when the internet is hungry.
Finally Catherine came to the microphone—the rich wife's hair a crown of grief and fury. She didn't need to shout. Her voice was a blade.
"This woman ruined my life," Catherine said, then explained how Elora had courted her husband, how she had extracted money, how she had sent threats and flowers and then claimed victimhood when shown the door. Her words were slow, careful, and lethal.
Elora staggered back. The guests recorded everything. The live stream—because of course it was streamed—picked up every whimper.
"You're a liar," Catherine said. "You sold stories, sold men, sold futures. And today you sold a husband for appearances."
Elora's face collapsed like a paper mask. She begged. "Please," she croaked. "I—"
"Save it," Catherine said. Then she slapped Elora hard and fast, a sound like a closing door.
People gasped. Some cheered. Some cried. For a moment the hall felt like a tribunal, and Elora was the accused.
The dominoes fell. The men who'd been conned by Elora—Flynn, Mateo, Jax, Eben—walked in, faces weathered like men who had learned to hate. They demanded money back. The groom's father, watching his family's reputation crumble on cigarette-laced gossip, folded. Greta clutched her pearls and realized the laughter had rounded to jeers.
Elora fainted in the middle of the aisle. People surrounded her. The ambulance came later, but the damage had been done. She was taken away in a haze; news would say later that she had miscarried—her claim to power gone. Rumors said she had staged pregnancy photos; others said the stress had taken its toll.
Brooks stood like a selvedge of grief. No one wanted him now. Men who had loaned money wanted him to collect debts. He had to face every man he'd promised for her. The town, which had once applauded the new bride, now watched the groom's shoulders bucket under other people's unpaid promises.
A week later, he came to my door. He looked like a man who hadn't slept in months.
"Can you help me find her?" he asked. "Elora—where is she?"
"You abandoned our vows," I said. "You married a story."
"I made mistakes," he said. "I need to fix this."
I opened a drawer and pulled out a folded paper. It was the old medical report he had signed five years ago before our wedding.
"You said we had agreed to be childless," he whispered.
"You hid a truth," I said. "I hid one too." I placed the report in his hands.
His face crumpled when he read it: 'Azoospermia—no sperm detected.' The doctor had told me five years ago that natural children weren't possible for him, and I had kept the secret because I didn't want him to be haunted by questions that might rip him apart. We had chosen a life together without children.
"You didn't tell me?" he said, tears leaking.
"I didn't tell you to spare you pressure," I said. "I didn't tell you so you wouldn't become a target. You're not a victim to be pitied—you're a person who made choices."
He knelt, again, begging for forgiveness, but this time his begging felt like a plea to rewrite the past.
"I won’t be the one who cleans the mess you bought," I said. "I won't be the reason you avoid your debts. I won't be the prototype of forgiveness for a man who keeps secrets."
He begged and promised, and then I closed the door.
Days later I learned that Elora had vanished—no forwarding address, no trace. People chased her like a rumor. The men got their money back in pieces or not at all. Brooks's reputation was tattered. His father didn't call me. Greta's smile dulled.
I kept the cheap pendant he gave me. It was small and unimportant. On the inside I kept the clinic slip folded tight: a paper strip that had been the map of our choice. I stowed it in a drawer with the blister pack of the pills I'd thrown away that night—the night I decided I would not be a vessel for silent pain.
One evening, long after the storm, I sat at the window and opened that drawer. I took the pendant and the pill blister and held them together.
"This is what you gave me," I whispered, not to him, not to her, but to myself.
I slid the clinic paper into the pendant and closed it. The hinge stuck for a second—then clicked.
"I won't be your doormat," I said aloud. "I won't be anyone's second chance."
The pendant clinked in the dark, a tiny sound like the final tick of a small clock. It was private, loud, and mine.
The End
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