Face-Slapping13 min read
Snow, Lies, and the Hard Way Back
ButterPicks15 views
I slammed the hotel door and the wind threw snow at my face.
"You're soaked," Camilla said, taking my coat.
"I am," I said. "Shut the door."
Camilla Conley didn't shut the door. She leaned back, hands on her hips, like she always did when she wanted to punish me with her stare.
"Kaia, you look like you slept on a piano," she said.
"Very funny." I tossed my bag on the sofa and peeled off wet boots. "What time is dinner?"
"Eight-thirty. You're late."
"I used the slow line." I rubbed my face. My head throbbed, a dull drum in the back of my skull. Pills and coffee had been my weak alliance for years. "You promised me no crowds."
"You promised you would act normal," she shot back. "Act normal."
"I can't act normal. I don't have a script."
Camilla laughed and opened the minibar. "Then improvise. Eat. Smile. Get drunk."
I stared at the hotel room light. It looked too bright. The city outside—South Bay—was polished, glass and lights and the kind of people who traded favors for smiles. I used to want that world. I told myself I still did.
"Who invited Erick?" I asked.
Camilla blinked. "Erick Blackwell? He's on the guest list. Graham said he might be there."
My throat closed. The name had been a small animal I tried to ignore for eight years. Erick Blackwell, the boy who had been everything and then left me with a hole I dressed up as cold efficiency.
"Don't," I said. "Don't make me run into him."
"I didn't invite him." Camilla's voice softened. "But if he shows, you can handle it. You always do."
I didn't always do anything. At twenty-one I’d learned how to look like I did.
"Give me the lipstick," I said. "Make my mouth look like it means business."
She handed it to me. I painted, breathed, painted again until the lipstick cut a line across my lip and the world felt faintly more manageable.
We walked into the event and the room bathed us in a glow. Celebrities smiled. Cameras blinked. My name on the guest list opened doors. I moved like a program on loop: smile, nod, drink. Work had taught me to sell motion when I had no interest in the product.
Someone said my company was for sale.
"Is it true?" a man wanted to know.
"Not yet," I said. "Talk is talk."
"Erick Blackwell is in town," another voice said.
My pulse hopped like a bird. I kept my tone flat, as if the man had asked about the weather. The small talk swallowed me, and yet everywhere, Erick's name felt like cold wind.
Later, Camilla tugged my sleeve. "You okay?"
"I have a meeting tomorrow," I lied.
"Sure. You also slept four hours, bought nonsense at midnight, and like every year, you try to drown eight years in one night."
She smiled like she meant it. "Come on. One more drink."
The next morning my head was a field of muffled bells. I managed to get to the office. The elevator opened and there he was—Erick—standing by the window, tall, hands folded, looking like he'd always belonged to a better light.
"You're early," he said.
"I have work." I sounded smaller than I wanted.
"Good." He worked the way he lived: quiet, exact. He had the look of a man who had already fixed something: the lines at the corner of his mouth, the calm. He was the kind of person who could make a room make sense. I made the room stay messy.
Meeting after meeting blurred. He sat across from me with a small smile that didn't reach his eyes. He asked questions and I answered. We were at war by degrees: a word here, a clipped sentence there. It felt like high school in suits.
"Why did you leave?" he asked me mid-meeting, softer than a tap.
"What?"
"East Bay. You left the day after the exam. You left without a word."
"I had reasons," I said. The real one sat like a rock. I had traded everything to buy a small future: a place to sleep alone, a quiet couch that cost more than sense. I had done things I could never say.
He watched me. "We were friends."
"We were classmates," I corrected. "You acted like I was a rival."
He nodded. "You were never a rival."
When the finance team started showing red numbers, the room snapped. Graham Fernandez—my boss, my complicator—paced and swore softly under his breath. He loved gambling with other people's futures. He loved the idea of a company becoming shaped under his making.
"One week," Erick said to the finance director. "One week to pull the books together."
"One week?" Graham barked. "That's impossible."
"It can be done," Erick said.
People turned to look at him like he was a sun.
After the meeting, Graham called me into his office.
"You're in charge," he told me. "Prove me wrong."
"Of course." I wanted to say no. My head was full of static. But the business was my life—my bedrock. I had to fight.
I worked. Coffee and late nights. My team and I drafted and redrafted until our hands ached. I learned the smell of boxes and filings. I learned that you can make people move by promising rewards no one will ever see.
And all the while Erick watched. I thought he judged. Maybe he did. I thought he kept his distance. Maybe that distance was the only protection for both of us.
A week passed and deep tasks pressed on me. Then my father called.
"Kaia," he said. "You owe us some help."
I shut the file cabinet with clenched fingers. The voice from home came with a history of demands. I had not spoken to them in years. They knew I had money now. They wanted it.
"Not now," I said.
"You can't keep walking away," my father said. His voice smelled like the bar he didn't own. "Give me a transfer."
"No."
"I am your father."
"Then stop acting like it," I said. "We are not family."
"You think you can cut us out?" he hissed. "You think we will starve?"
"They're using me," Camilla had said once when I'd told her about the calls. "They're vultures."
My father rang back with a different tone: softer, fake. They were practiced at this.
"Honor us," he said. "Remember where you came from."
I felt bile rise. "You don't get to speak for my life."
I slung the phone down and went to my desk. The office hummed. People typed. The bright screens were small suns. Erick came by while I was deep in spreadsheets.
"Everything okay?" he asked.
"No." I didn't even tell him about my father. It was private and ugly and I did not want him to see the strings that still pulled me.
"You should rest," he said. "You look thin."
"I can't rest," I said. "Not now."
He looked at me, really looked. His fingers brushed the top of my hand on the table, a quick, borrowed warmth. "I'll help."
"Help?" I stared at him.
He shrugged. "We can be better than our pasts, Kaia."
Later that afternoon the office conference room turned into a war room. Erick and I fought over decks and numbers, edging each other with the precision of old lovers who know how to hurt.
"You didn't tell me about this item," he said, flipping through a slide.
"You didn't ask," I said.
"You always hide things."
"I needed an edge," I said. "If you wanted to keep it clean, you should have been faster."
He leaned forward, voice low. "Do you still live with fear of being exposed?"
What he meant reached further than words. He had once believed something that I'll never give him back easily: that I had stolen a privilege he was meant to have. He had looked at me and seen scheming. I had looked at him and craved tenderness. Neither of us came away unscathed.
"None of us come out clean," I said.
He kept his mouth shut after that. We worked as if the meeting's air had smoothed us.
I did my job well. We kept investors talking. We bought time. But old ghosts are patient scars.
One night in the city—snow falling like brittle sugar—my parents found the crowd.
They walked into the school fundraiser like men who had rehearsed humility. The gym smelled of boxes and canned food. Alum mingled with students. Cameras flashed. They pushed through people searching for me.
"Kaia," they called. "Kaia!"
I was by the side, trying to breathe. The sight of them pulled a chord that did not like music. I felt the room tilt.
"Stay out of this," I told them under my breath, but they were louder now.
"You've come to see your parents?" a woman asked, and the murmurs started, small at first, then a wave. People looked from me to my parents, and the space grew electric.
My father took a step forward. "You left us," he said. "You walked out. Work is one thing. But children—"
"Not here," Camilla hissed.
"Let him speak," I said. My voice sounded small. I had planned something else. I had rehearsed a much darker, cleaner scene.
The hall quieted. A hundred eyes waited like a jury.
"Sit down," I said.
They did not.
"I want you to listen," I said. "To everyone here."
I felt a hand at my back. Erick. His presence steadied me like an anchor.
"You say you're my parents," I told the crowd. "But being parents has rules. You fall down on every one."
Some people turned away. Parents at a fundraiser exchange looks. They know how fragile the public mirror is.
"You think you deserve respect because you gave me life?" I asked. "You left me. You sold me. You used me."
My mother opened her mouth to cry, to plead, but I'd already set the screen.
"Project."
A screen at the gym lit up with a photo—a grainy text thread my mother had sent to a stranger, asking for a transfer. The thread had been saved. It read like a contract.
"She thinks she is owed," my father said, voice wobbling now. "We... we only wanted—"
"Money," I said. "You tried to sell me to my father. You wanted money from me. You came to the fundraiser to ask for cash for your gambling debts. You sold stories about me to reporters. You told people I was 'made' by men. You told them I had work because of lovers."
Gasps broke out like small bombs.
"You think this is private?" I asked. "You think anyone in this room would believe you were trying to help?"
A student aimed his phone at them. Cameras like beaks.
My mother pointed at me, face red. "You're cruel," she said.
"You're greedy," I snapped. "You tried to humiliate me in public and thought you could tell the story your way."
"That's not true," my father mouthed. He took one step toward me, then two. I sidestepped automatically.
"Enough!" a voice shouted. It was Mr. Ernesto Lombardo, the old classmate who had organized the charity. He stepped up to the mic and looked at my parents. "This is not the place."
"I will tell them everything," I said. "I will tell everyone why you sold me like goods, why you threatened people, why you came here with your hands open."
My father's eyes flashed. He was used to threats going the other way. He lunged toward me, and cameras blurred.
"People. Stop," Erick said quietly, his hand on mine.
"What did you do?" my mother snarled.
I triggered the next image. It was a voicemail. My mother begging, the voice small and greedy. "Transfer the money or he will not stop," she said. Then, "You must help us now."
"My God," whispered someone.
"Show the messages from last month," Camilla called.
I did. There was proof: bank screenshots, ugly words. I had collected them over months. I had evidence of how they had been selling my life.
My father was white as linen. "This is fake," he croaked.
"Then tell us why you lied to my college and said I had been 'kept' by a man," I said. "You told guests I was living on someone's money. You told reporters I was morally loose."
He blinked. "We wanted to help."
"By selling lies?" I shouted. People around the gym began to talk loudly. Phones rose.
"Please stop," my mother said, voice failing.
Erick pushed through the cheap folding chairs and stood in front of them. He did not speak. He let the room watch the two people who had shaped me into a recoil.
"Call the police," someone shouted.
"They will laugh," my father answered. He hadn't expected the pressure.
"Shame is not law," I said. "But reputation is. And you're standing on the edge of ruin."
I laid another slide. It showed emails my mother had sent to a shallow magazine editor, offering a story about "the girl who made it." The editor wrote back: "How much for exclusives?"
Suddenly my father's knees gave way. He looked toward the back wall, where students whispered. The knees buckling made his face collapse like paper. He went down on one knee without thinking, hands before him.
"Please—" he said. He hadn't planned the words. They came out as a plea. Phones zoomed in.
"Don't!" my mother cried, hiding her face with her hands.
Around us, a hundred phones recorded the scene. People murmured. A man who ran a local blog patted his camera. "This is viral," he said.
My father prostrated himself on the gym floor. For the first time in my life he looked small.
"Stop filming," my mother cried, later, but the phones kept moving.
"You begged me when I left," I said. "You begged the wrong people. Now you bow and ask the crowd for mercy. They will not give it."
My father's voice broke. "Kaia. Kaia, please. I was wrong. I—"
"Beg me," I said. "Get up. Beg me."
He couldn't. A hand under his chin, his legs trembling, he raised his head slowly.
"Please," he said. "Forgive me."
A woman near the front started to clap in a small, angry way. "How can she forgive you for this?" she muttered to the person next to her.
My mother started to cry properly, high and noisy. Her sobs were like a radio tune everyone knew.
Then the unthinkable: among the crowd, a man I had once trusted—my old professor, Gregory Palmer—stood up.
I had not expected him. Gregory had been long-retired, more rumor than man in my memory. He had smiled at alumni events before, his hand soft like a trap. He had been at the edge of my worst night years ago, the night he had tried to touch me when I was young, a night I had pretended away with a knife of calm.
Someone in the crowd hissed. "That's Gregory Palmer."
He stepped forward, palms open. "Kaia," he said in a calm voice like paper. "You owe me an apology."
"You do not deserve an apology," I said. "You deserve truth."
"That night—" he started.
I cued the next slide.
The gym froze.
Messages poured onto the screen—text after text, voice memos, a shaky recording of his voice asking for a meeting, requests that had been thinly veiled as mentoring but were not. I had held that evidence like oil-red glass for years, waiting for the right break. I had gathered messages from other girls, from other years.
"You see," I said. "You told me then that if I wanted academic help, I would be the one to pay with my body. You told me that being quiet would be better for my career."
His face drained. He reached out. "That's not—"
"You think you are above the law," I said. "You used your power to make me small."
Phones clicked like teeth. A man in near the stage shouted, "Call security!" But people were already talking to each other, heads bent, eyes bright.
Gregory's smile melted into something like fear. He took a step back. "This is slander," he raged, voice small. "You liar."
"Are you going to deny the messages?" I asked.
He stammered. He tried to pull the attention away, but the crowd had seen the texts, heard the voice calls. A younger woman near the back raised her hand and said, "I have messages, too."
Like a landslide, more people spoke. The gym filled with names, voices, accusations unspooling. The professor's authority evaporated.
"What do you want?" he snarled. "Why now?"
"I want people to know," I said. "I want them to understand how people like you survive on fear. I want you to have no place to hide."
He looked at the crowd, his face empty. A student lifted a phone to his face. "Are you sorry?" she asked.
He could not answer. There was no plan. He made a step forward and then sank back, shaking.
"Get him out," someone ordered.
Security moved. A man in a dark jacket grabbed Gregory's elbow and shepherded him toward the exit. Cameras followed. Outside, someone pushed a microphone into his face and he nearly collapsed.
"Please," Gregory said. "I didn't mean—"
"You're going to be on every feed tonight," someone said coldly. "Good luck explaining."
The crowd's reaction was raw: anger at parents, disgust at the professor, relief to see some unclean things pulled into light.
My body trembled. After I finished the last slide, people stood. Some applauded; most did not. A few people walked up to me with condolences. Others stood in the doorway, phones still in hand, filming.
Erick touched my shoulder. "You did the right thing," he said.
"Did I ruin them?" I asked. My voice was small.
"No," he said. "You exposed them."
My father crawled forward on the gym tiles, hands outstretched, face wet. "Kaia," he begged, "forgive me."
"Get up," I said. "Get up and walk away."
He tried. His legs were weak. He turned to the crowd and then, like a broken actor, started to beg out loud. "I'll leave the city," he cried. "I'll leave and never come back."
People recorded. A thousand small screens caught the posture of a man kneeling in defeat. The footage spread in minutes. The world outside the gym now knew what had happened in whispers for years.
I sat down. My chest ached. Camilla leaned over and offered her hand. Erick sat next to me, quiet and near.
"People think justice is neat," Erick said softly. "It's messy. But this is a start."
"Start of what?" I asked.
"Start of them paying for what they did. Start of people stopping the predators. Start of you stopping being their target."
He was saying the things I wanted to hear and feared. He was certain. I wanted to believe him.
The night turned slow. The gym emptied, but not entirely. My father and mother were taken to a small office for questioning. The professor had been escorted off campus by security and someone from the alumni relations said he would be fired pending investigation.
Outside, the snow had begun again. The lights made it look like blowing sugar. I felt smaller in the white.
"Thank you," I told Erick.
He looked at me with something like regret and something like worry. "You okay?"
"No," I said. "And yes."
He swallowed. "I shouldn't have left."
"You left because you were scared," I said. "We were both scared."
He held my gaze. "If I could make the last eight years less sharp, I would."
"I can't give you that," I said.
"Then live," he said. "Live from now."
Weeks after the fundraiser, the videos had millions of plays. My parents left town. They called a dozen times begging, but the police had made it clear they were now public. The older professor was stripped of duties. Several other women contacted the school. Meetings were scheduled. People started to use words they hadn't used in public before: predator, abuser, liar.
Work continued. Investors still called. The company still needed me. Graham smiled through press releases like a man who had weathered a storm and come out with his suits intact. Erick checked in. He brought coffee, asked about my meds like a man learning how to care.
"I found your medicine," he said one night, sliding a small bottle across my desk.
"You didn't need to," I said.
"I wanted to," he said.
He sat with me on a bench outside, watching a street where the lights made lines in the snow.
"We are both messier than our past shows," he said. "And we have to admit it."
"I spent years trying to transform the ugly into a plan," I said. "Now the ugly is on the screen, and people are talking."
"That's courage," he said.
"Maybe it's revenge," I shot back.
"Maybe it's both."
We looked at each other like two people who had both climbed into a shallow trench and had to learn to walk without tripping over old bones.
After the storms, life was a kind of trembling repair. I kept going to therapy and to the doctor. The pills made my head fuzzy, but the doctor was firm: rest, get sunlight, try trust. I tried to trust people like Erick, like Camilla, like myself.
"Will you work with me?" Erick asked months later, when the acquisition talk had quieted into a manageable hum.
"Yes," I said. "If you behave."
He smiled, earnest and terrible. "I'll try."
Months later, when the vestiges of my parents' lies had been scrubbed by law and the professor's influence had been ended, I stood on stage at a small tech forum and spoke.
"Success," I told a crowd of tired entrepreneurs and hungry journalists, "is not a thing you steal. It's the thing you build after you stop running."
After the panel, Erick waited in the wings. He didn't hold a dramatic speech or a grand apology. He held a paper cup of coffee and a small bouquet—just a few white daisies.
"Why daisies?" I asked.
"They don't ask for much," he said. "They stand in the cold and keep their faces up."
"Good metaphor," I said. I took the flowers.
"Do you want dinner?" he asked.
I looked at the flowers. I looked at him. I had wanted him to kneel and beg in the past. I had imagined a thousand punishments for what he'd done—leaving, the way he'd disappeared when I was young and scared. I wanted him to be small. But people who kneel publicly often mean nothing inside. People who rise and stand beside you might mean everything.
"Yes," I said, and we left the forum together, the city lights catching the snow, the daisies small and white in my hand.
The End
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