Face-Slapping14 min read
That Night at Carlotte — A Dress, a Dog, and a Million Eyes
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I had driven into spring the way someone chases a late train — too many stops, not enough patience. The street was full of magnolia blossoms. The city smelled like wet earth and new things. I was already tired from five hours on the road when Ensley called.
"Where are you?" Ensley asked, voice bright as a bell.
"Half hour," I said.
"Slow down. Don't be reckless," she teased.
"Shut up, Your Royal Highness," I answered.
"Good. Your loyal subject is waiting."
We met at Carlotte. The music hit us like a wave as soon as we walked in. I can still hear the beat now, how it swallowed everything else — conversations, clocks, good manners.
"Surprise," Ensley whispered in my ear a little while later.
I didn't know what she meant until a line of men in tuxes came by with champagne. Ensley grabbed the slice of watermelon out of my hand and shoved me up to the table like I was a prize. The table got louder. Someone popped a bottle. I took a sip like a good actor.
Three booths away, three men were quieter than the crowd. One said, "Looks big."
"Too big," another said. "Someone arranged this."
"Good show," the last one — his voice low and smooth — said, and he didn't take his eyes off me.
I remember the way the man watched: like he was trying to remember something he’d forgotten. When I stood up to find the bathroom, I stumbled on the last step. Someone's hand steadied my waist. I fell into arms that were firm and warm.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
I looked up and saw his face for the first time. Clean features. Clear eyes that were cold at the edges. He had a young, handsome look I didn't have words for, but I said, "Your eyes are very pretty."
He smiled once, and then, guarded, he said, "Hands feel good."
I laughed. "Do you want to try?"
He didn't miss a beat. "Let's go see if the hotel has rooms."
By the time the car stopped in front of a five-star hotel, I had given Ensley a quick text: don't wait up. I knew nothing about him beyond a name he told me once later — Xander Cash — and I didn't want to. I also knew, suddenly, that I was glad I had not said no.
We went upstairs. He kissed me hard against the door and then gentled it. I kissed him back. The night did what nights do: it stretched, it blurred, it finished.
"Get up," I told myself the next morning. My body felt like I'd been used by fireworks. The sheets smelled like someone else. I slid the cover aside and there it was — a bruise that looked like a map. I cursed and gathered my clothes.
Back at my car, I called Ensley. "Where are you?"
"In the courtyard. I brought breakfast." She always brought breakfast.
I drove home, thinking of the man who had steadied me and then gone without a story. I thought of the pair of eyes that had made me give myself away.
"Where were you? Which man's bed?" Ensley asked on the phone. She sounded deliciously smug.
"Not telling," I said.
"You're hopeless," she said, and we both laughed.
Two days later, when a message showed up on my phone — "You coming to Pingsi? Want to see you play." — it was from a name I had not forgotten. Xander's message was simple. His plans were messy and sharp, like everything that touched him.
"You coming?" he wrote.
"I have work," I answered.
"Come to the match," he said. "Two p.m. First row."
"I'll try," I wrote.
I was a stubborn woman and a busy one. My company was small but hungry; we weren't the kind of company that got noticed without making noise. Yet I found myself at the gym the day before, lacing gloves, wanting to beat something into the bag. For a little while I was loud and heavy with exertion, and I loved it.
"Fight me," Xander said, appearing at the side of the ring as if he'd teleported.
"Yes," I said, because I hate saying no.
We fought. He moved like a cat that had learned to solve math. He didn't hit hard at first. He watched, and when I overreached, he took advantage and hit like a storm. Three rounds later, he won. He looked a little pleased and a little surprised.
"Nine a.m. I'll pick you up," he said, as if it were a fact we had agreed on a thousand times, not two hours ago.
"You won't catch me awake," I said.
"I'll be there," he promised.
He was.
He also liked provoking me with polite statements and soft fits of anger. He liked being a little dangerous and a little domesticated at the same time. He would show up at my company with sportswear and a hunger for simple food. He would send messages that read "Good morning" and "Don't forget to eat" and "Tell me something interesting" and then call when I didn't answer. He became a presence like a dog that had worn the doorknob soft.
"Do you have identification?" I asked, once.
"For what?"
"So you don't sleep on my couch and disappear when I make breakfast."
He laughed. "Try me."
We kept meeting like two planets that had accidentally been set on the same orbit. He took me to places I might otherwise have never gone: a bungee jump where I screamed so loud I made three families turn their heads, a university gym where he threw a basketball and made it sing through the net, and a private dinner where someone tried to be more important than they were.
"You didn't tell me the person you were with at that dinner was a friend," Xander said abruptly once, like a knife.
"He was just talking business," I said.
He didn't need to be told that a man leaning forward to hear me laugh had looked at him like a threat. He just felt it in the small hairs on his skin and acted.
"Don't talk to him again," he said.
"Who? Hassan?" I asked.
"Yes."
"He's a businessman."
"Then be a businesswoman," he said. "And don't charm him with the wrong parts."
Every time he said something possessive, I bristled. The habit of my childhood was to bristle from boys who thought they owned the room. Xander wasn't childish. He was precise. He wanted what he wanted.
We had our fights. We had our quiet days. We also had the night with the celebrity dress.
I was at the luxury boutique because Ensley had insisted on a dress for an evening I couldn't miss. There was a rush of people inside — social media girls, stylist boys, managers who smiled like sharks.
"This one," I said, holding a black gown like a trophy. The fabric was heavy and subtle, like water.
"Sorry," a voice snapped. "I want it."
I turned to see Giselle Blackburn, a celebrity with more followers than sense. She reached past me as if being rude were a kind of currency.
"Excuse me," I said quietly.
"Move," she said, louder.
The assistant was instantly cowardly. "Ms. Blackburn," she said. "We're arranging for..."
"Give it here," Giselle said.
I set my jaw. I wasn't used to people demanding things. "You can wait."
She lunged. Her assistant pulled out a phone like a weapon and called for help. The manager hurried over. I watched the manager's face go pale as I used the bare fact of influence. I called a name and a title. I said things that mattered to people who want good press.
"Bring the regional director in now," I told the manager. "And make sure your head office hears the details."
There was a hum of cameras on phones and bright faces now. Giselle's assistant tried to say something to the manager, but the manager looked at Giselle like someone whose own salary had been dipped in cold water.
"Ms. Blackburn, please apologize," the manager stammered.
Giselle laughed. "Why? She grabbed the dress."
"That's not how we handle customers," the manager said.
I didn't raise my voice. I don't like shouting. But when the cameras turned toward us, I had something else in mind.
"Everyone," I said, because the crowd had to know who was rude in that room. "This dress was first asked for. This is not a private suit. You should be careful when you use influence to take things by force."
Giselle's smile narrowed. "You think you're better than me? Who are you?"
"I run a company. I am someone who pays you to be here tonight. You can be polite or you can be famous and silent."
At that moment, someone in the crowd pointed their phone at her. Videos get made in half a second. The manager left and came back with a corporate lawyer and the store's regional director. The director's voice was smooth and dangerous.
"Ms. Blackburn," he said. "We do not tolerate this behavior. This is our flagship store. We must protect other customers."
She tried to laugh it away. "You can't fire me over a dress."
The director didn't answer. Instead, he raised his hand and said, "If we announce a formal apology and cancellation of contracts with the agency that insists on this behavior, would that be acceptable?"
Giselle's face went from amused to unsettled like a light changing color. She tried denial. "Who told you I did anything wrong? I was just here."
Someone in the crowd who knew her better — a PR person — stepped forward. "We have recordings. Your assistant called and asked for a signature and then recorded you taking the dress. She said hurtful things about another customer."
A hush fell. Phones recorded the hush. Then someone in the crowd hit play and the room heard Giselle's voice, louder than any rumor: "She doesn't belong here. We should get the dress out from under her hands."
Giselle's mouth opened. "That's not what I said!"
"Everyone has the clip now," the director said. "We will proceed with a formal announcement."
She started to laugh, a sound like breaking glass. "You can't do that to me! I have contracts! I have—"
"You will make a statement, now," the director said. "Publicly."
"Not now," she protested. "I'll get legal."
"Then we will post the footage," said a voice from the back.
She paled. And then, suddenly, the smugness cracked into panic. Phones rose like hands in church. People whispered. "She denied it," someone said. "She won't—"
"Turn it off!" Giselle shouted. She lunged toward the nearest employee, who had the nerve to hold a phone in front of her face. The employee flicked the screen. The small recording played across the room and across dozens of phones, the seconds stretching.
"Please," Giselle said. "This is a misunderstanding. I was—"
People who had gathered were filming. Others stared. Some whispered, "She was mean." Some laughed. One woman raised her voice: "She uses the brand for clout and then treats customers like dirt?"
A handler pulled at her sleeve, and the director said quietly, but with the weight of a gavel, "We will not be associated with this behavior. We terminate your contract. We'll make a statement within an hour. We will work with the designer to announce that the dress is reserved. Security, escort Ms. Blackburn out. If you speak to the media, we will respond."
Giselle's expression dissolved. She tried to push back, but the man standing with a camera phone recorded her attempt. She fell from arrogant to furious to pleading in a matter of minutes.
"I didn't do anything," she cried. "I didn't mean—"
"No one forced you to act this way," the director said. "Leave."
She fell to her knees then. The velvet of the boutique looked suddenly small. "Please," she begged. "Please don't ruin me."
The crowd shifted. Phones out. Someone clapped harshly. "She's lying," another voice called. "She snatched it!"
Giselle's assistant wept and said, "No! We didn't mean—" The director signaled security.
She crawled to the table where the dress lay. "I'm sorry," she said, repeating the single line like a broken record.
The public recording was already out — a hundred eyes, a thousand feeds. Within minutes the boutique's announcement hit the internet. Within half an hour, her agency had a statement of disassociation. Her manager called frantic messages. Her fans, shocked and splitting, posted: "She apologized" and "She did it?" and "I can't believe it."
Giselle's face went from pale to red to empty. First she tried to deny, then she gasped for explanation, then she pivoted to blame, then to tears. She mouthed "I'm sorry" to the cameras until the words were hollow.
Someone in the crowd — someone who had a face used to headlines — lifted their phone and said, "Get a shot of this. She can't act like that and stay." People laughed. People took pictures. People filmed it for the world.
Giselle pressed her palms to the floor. "Please. I'm sorry." She looked up and her eyes were large and raw. "Please."
The director said nothing; his people were moving. The employees stepped back. Everyone had already recorded exactly what they needed.
She knelt, then crumpled, and for a moment the boutique felt like a courtroom where everyone was the jury and no one was dead enough to make the final call. Some in the crowd cheered. Some filmed. Some walked away. I watched, numb and sure that I had not wanted this. But justice is a strange thing when it is public: it demands witnesses and a verdict the crowd will not forget.
Later the world would call it an outing, an exposure, a fall from grace. The brand's post had interlaced the clip with the manager's apology and the statement that all contracts were under review. The next day she was dropped from a film and a campaign. The day after, the "apology" she posted to a streaming service looked small under the larger sun of the footage.
She went from raised chin to pleading knees in the space of an hour. That is the way some people fall: all at once, with everyone taking pictures.
The public punishment stayed in the air for days. People watched the clip, shared it, argued it, made memes. She tried to get angry, to delete, to deny, to attack us who had shown she had claws. She begged managers, she called agents, she sent texts to celebrities who could bail her out. They did not. She found herself on her knees in more than one place, the sound of knees on marble like a heart breaking.
At the boutique, she had been the villain in five hundred words worth of drama. Friends and enemies watched the show. Her voice moved from a confident soprano to a thin whine, then to begging. Her handlers texted to tell her to stand up. She couldn't.
People pointed phones. They took photos. Someone started a live stream. The live stream had comments in a foreign language and in my language: "Finally," "Serves her right," "I can't watch," "She is crying." She recorded one more video where she tried to explain, but the clip existed and what she said before could not be erased.
"They will remember," someone in the crowd said.
"They will, and they will post," another answered.
She tried to get up. She couldn't. She ran outside like an animal. The crowd followed. People yelled. Some threw insults. Someone else took a video of her kneeling on the pavement, her face wet with tears, while a teen shouted, "Where's your agent now?" She screamed, "I was provoked!" and then, "No, please!" and the sounds changed tone.
She was left with fewer doors open than before. She had the same voice, the same look, but each camera made her smaller.
When the press contacted me to ask about the incident, I said what was true: "I stood my ground. I asked for an apology. The brand acted. Cameras recorded. I didn't want a person to be destroyed. I wanted cause and consequence to meet."
Later she would say I had "ruined her life." But she had played with other people's dignity like it was a sport. The internet found the callousness more painful than the apology. The public turned and recorded the fall with the same instruments that had raised the idol.
When the dust settled, I went back to work. Xander stood at my side like a shadow that wanted to be the sun.
"You're not supposed to be my hero," I told him one night.
He looked at me like he'd always been waiting to hear that. "I don't want to be a hero," he said. "I want to be yours."
We moved like that for a while: small domestic acts and large, bright fights. He once brewed coffee so bad it tasted like a shoe, and I laughed so hard I nearly choked. He once climbed a ladder in my office to fix a light and left the ladder there like a monument to his goodwill.
There were softer things. He learned my music — I play piano when I need to be alone — and he would sit and listen. Once he sat at my white piano and played a few chords. "Show me," I said. He smiled, and what he played was quiet and honest. It felt like being wrapped in an old, warm sweater.
When my company started shifting towards the capital, something complicated happened at home. My grandfather, Theodore Martin, surprised us by splitting a piece of our family fortune. He named me and Falcon Danielsson — my cousin, the boy who used to barrel into the yard like a comet — as recipients of a modest but meaningful stake. It wasn't a takeover; it was a nudge.
"Don't forget who you are," he said when we called from his study.
I had made my life on my terms. But I couldn't deny the weight of family and the options that opened brittle doors.
So I moved — not because I had to, but because I wanted to see what would happen if I drew a line through the sky and replaced my working headquarters with a new one.
"You're taking the business to the capital?" my mother, Suzy Martin — a woman with the kind of eyes that watch the weather and the markets — asked at dinner. She wasn't pleased that I had chosen the move without a detailed plan.
"Yes," I said.
"Good," she said. "But you better do it well."
I did not tell her everything. I never do. I told her what needed telling.
At the new building, I called on an old friend, designer Joe Yi, who came back from an island stint smelling like salt and good ideas. We set up the space with loud plans: white walls, a wall of glass, art that made the lobby feel like a living room. I dusted off a team and gave them a mission that burned like a promise: build, and build fast.
Xander was training, but he slipped in: he came to meetings and sat by the white piano as if it were a hearth. He met my assistant Berkley Voigt and left a careful impression.
"Is he jealous?" Berkley asked me once, battling a spreadsheet.
"Of what?" I asked.
"Of the men who look at you," she said.
"Maybe," I replied. "Maybe he just likes to own a piece of my attention."
"They look like they'd like to own everything," she said.
"Let them try," I said.
We went to parties, we took meetings, we argued and made up, and sometimes I forgot the sound of the world without Xander in it. He made me safe in a way that was not suffocating. He made me feel like someone who could finish a sentence.
Then there was the night of the late summer gala, where a financier's garden glittered like counterfeit diamonds. I wore a black dress that should have been illegal, and people turned like angels at a sudden light. Xander took me by the waist and told me, softly, "Don't hide."
Later, at the edge of the party, a man from an old neighborhood — Hassan Alvarez, who was both sweet-smoky and the kind of man who looks like trouble wrapped in a silk tie — asked me about a partnership. Xander watched, his jaw a small hard thing.
"Is he a problem?" Xander asked, when we were back in my car.
"He's not more than dinner," I said. "Do you want me to be more than dinner?"
He drove away slowly and then paused the route as if weighing the map of me with his hands. "I don't want to share you with people who love the idea of you," he said.
My life got complicated in that honest honest way: business and heart and old friendships that hurt the way old paper cuts do. People came to me with emails and deals and odd small disasters. We built offices, we negotiated contracts, we kept the company alive and fed, like a tremendous animal that required discipline and warmth.
Someone asked me, once, on an interview, "Are you in love with success?"
"No," I said. "Success is a plane. Love is a room."
Xander would later make me promise little things like "text me when you get there" and "don't drink things you don't see poured." I said that I would not be caged. He said he did not want to cage me. We laughed about traps and keys and how neither of us liked the same locks.
There was a quiet winter night when he fell asleep at my house after a long training session. He was pale in the light, his jaw soft. I watched him and then rolled over and pressed my forehead to his shoulder.
"Don't ever leave," I said.
He smiled in the half-sleep and said, "I thought we agreed on eternity in installments."
We had a dog for a while. Ensley insisted. She sent her little white Pomeranian, a bouncing ball called Maru, to my apartment with a note: "Can you babysit?" I found out quickly that I was terrible at dog care. Maru left little trails that marked my living room like confetti. I called Xander and he appeared in ten minutes with cleaning people and bags and patience.
"What's the reward?" he asked, carrying Maru like something that deserved worship.
"A dinner," I said.
He took the dog, like taking a promise.
People watched us. They asked, "Who is she?" and "Is she his boss?" and "When will they marry?" They asked everything except the things we cared about. Xander grew more jealous in small ways — a glance, a message unanswered. He did not like it when other men looked like they might take me away.
The thing that solidified everything was not fireworks or a public vow. It was a series of small days: the times he held my hand while I made decisions I didn't want to make by myself, the nights he made awful coffee and believed himself charming, the afternoons of quiet when he sat by my white piano and listened, the weeks when he learned to pack an extra jumper in my bag.
Once, when a person from the past — an old boy, a small bully turned moderate man — tried to use old closeness to look like privilege, Xander did something blunt and gentle. He took my hand in the presence of polite people and then said, evenly, "She's mine. Stay away."
That night, the man left feeling small.
Sometimes people ask me, "Did he ever go from proud to pleading?" And I remember the night at the boutique, when the bully fell on her knees and begged. People filmed it. Justice got its way. Sometimes justice is public. Sometimes mercy is private.
"Stay," Xander said once, and I didn't have to translate the sentence. I didn't have to think about the word I said back.
"I am staying," I answered.
We grew together the way vines grow up a trellis: close enough to hold, far enough not to smother. When the office opening night came, I sat at the window and watched the white piano, and I knew which way the city leaned: toward lights and toward people who made them.
"Good night," he said, at the door, before he left. "Don't let the piano gather dust."
"I won't," I said.
I tightened the covers and set the alarm for the morning I would return to work. The city outside my window smelled of cold air and coffee cooling on the edge of a cup. Maru slept on the rug, and my phone chimed a single message from Xander.
"See you at nine," it read.
I put the phone down and smiled in the dark. It felt like an ordinary promise, but promises can be everything when they are kept.
The End
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