As she glided across the white marble floor of the
courthouse lobby, Jasmine couldn’t help but wonder how it had come to this
moment.
Marble pillars lined the room like a courthouse pretending
to be a temple. The floor gleamed under fluorescent lights, polished to a
slick, unnatural shine. It caught the movement of strangers in fragments—heels,
briefcases, shadows sliding past one another without ever touching.
Everything felt too official. Too permanent. Like a place
designed to take something living and press it flat into record.
It still didn’t seem real. When she had called her business
manager, Kenneth Swipes, she thought she was just venting to a friend—pacing
barefoot in the kitchen, staring at the ring John’s coffee mug had left in the
wood.
“John and I are breaking up.”
But he didn’t give the sympathetic, sassy response she
expected. Instead, there had been a pause—sharp, calculating.
“This is the worst thing you could have said. Call your
lawyer immediately.”
“We aren’t married, Ken. I can just move out.”
“Jesus, Jasmine. You can’t move out. You’ve lived there for
years. You have tenant rights. That might be your only leverage.”
“No, no, no. Ken, it’s not like that. I want him to move on,
be happy. Just end it peacefully.”
“Jasmine, use your head. There’s a bestseller sitting in a
lot of American homes with evidence that he could have a claim to your
intellectual property. He could end your career. But maybe…” A sigh. “I’m not a
lawyer—call your lawyer. You can set up camp in the house and use that leverage
to get him to sign a contract.”
“He isn’t even named in the book. He doesn’t want that.”
“Girl, in a breakup, you don’t know what anyone wants.”
The conversation had woven a quiet, persistent fear into
her—something that set up camp inside her and stayed there. It made her replay
every conversation with John, examine every gift for hidden meaning, question
what love even meant—and whether this was the real ending. Not the controversy.
Not the audience.
A man.
A man she loved.
That was the start. Or maybe it had begun long before
that—some small fracture she hadn’t noticed at the time.
Regardless, it had led to this: mediation. More amicable,
more private, more flexible than court. That was how it had been sold to her.
By a business manager, a lawyer, and eventually John.
For weeks, she sat in the same beige room—walls the color of
parchment, a faint hum from the air vent overhead—with her lawyer, Karen Dent,
a shrewd woman who spoke in clean, decisive sentences, and Kenneth, whose
flamboyant suits seemed to grow louder with each session—emerald one week,
electric blue the next, patterns that demanded attention in a place that
drained it.
John sat somewhere else. Another room. Another version of
this conversation.
Perhaps with Marvin. Perhaps with a lawyer.
Jasmine hoped he wasn’t alone.
No phones. No communication. No glances, no accidental
touches, no shared looks across a table.
No manipulation.
Just the mediator—a stout, perpetually winded woman who
carried the weight of both rooms with her, breathing too heavily, speaking in
careful, neutral phrases.
“The other party concedes point number eight.”
Not: John agrees.
Never John.
Back and forth, door to door, statement to statement.
Jasmine began to measure time not in minutes, but in the mediator’s
footsteps—each entrance a shift, each exit a pause.
She watched, with a strange, detached clarity, as the life
they had built together—face to face, hand in hand—was dismantled separately,
impartially, institutionally.
This was their third mediation session. How many more of
these orchestrated dances Jasmine would have to endure, she didn’t know. It
felt rehearsed now—like both she and John had entered asking for more than they
wanted, only to slowly whittle things down to what they had wanted all along.
A clean break.
The mediator burst through the door, already slightly out of
breath.
“Quick review of the current terms and conditions before we
proceed.”
She placed a warm stack of freshly stapled papers on the
table—the metal of the staple gleaming—and disappeared again before anyone
could respond.
Karen flipped through the pages with practiced efficiency.
“This is good,” she said. “It has the house being sold,
contents included, with the proceeds split fifty-fifty. That’s more than you
could get in court.” She tapped the paper lightly. “He’s giving you full
intellectual property rights to DommyMommy. He’s asking for a public statement
announcing the breakup, plus a nondisclosure clause about his identity—which we
expected. All the gifts are yours.”
She silently continued through the agreement.
“This is too good a deal. He’s going to come back with
something.”
Kenneth leaned forward, rings overpowering his steepled
fingers. “We can’t lose the IP.”
Jasmine held her copy, the paper slightly thicker than
standard—legal weight. Important and permanent. She read the same sentence over
and over, the words flattening more each time.
“Karen.” She tapped her shoulder gently. “What does this
mean?” Her finger hovered over a paragraph.
Karen glanced down. “Oh. He just added that you return a
statue. Marble—Aphrodite. Gifted to the petitioning party.” A shrug. “You can
give him that.”
“But—”
The door swung open again.
“The other party is agreeable to these terms. Do you have
any questions or concerns?”
The mediator stood there, chest rising and falling, a sheen
of perspiration already forming at her collar.
“Jasmine,” Karen said, turning fully toward her, voice low
and firm, “this is a good deal. I encourage you to take it. It’s more than you
could get in court.”
“But it’s too much.” Jasmine’s voice came out softer than
she intended. “It’s much more than you said he’d agree to.”
“Who cares? It’s legally binding. He agrees to it.”
“I…” She swallowed. “I need more information about the
statue. Why does he want it?”
The mediator blinked, thrown off by the request. “I don’t
know, ma’am. I can go ask.”
“Please do.”
The words came out weak and brittle.
When the door closed again, the room seemed smaller.
Kenneth exhaled sharply. “Sweetie, it’s one statue. You’ve
got celebrities in your DommyMommy DMs who could buy you Michelangelo. Let it
go.” He tilted his head, lips pursed in campy sympathy.
Karen nodded. “It’s an exceptionally good deal. I wouldn’t
look a gift horse in the mouth.”
“But it was a gift,” Jasmine said, more to herself than to
them.
Kenneth waved the papers lightly. “You’ve got lots of gifts
here—and more to come. This is just one.”
“Okay. Okay. You’re right.” Jasmine smoothed a barely-there
crease in her skirt, grounding herself in the small motion. “Can the mediator
ask questions about anything?”
“Yes.”
They waited.
The silence stretched, filled only by the faint hum of the
vent and the distant murmur of voices bleeding through the walls.
Then—air displaced, door opening—
The mediator returned, visibly frayed, her composure
slipping.
“All he will say is that he wants it. It should be—” she
checked her notes, squinting—“and I quote—‘at home with him.’”
Something in Jasmine’s chest tightened.
“Tell him he can have it,” she said slowly, “and we
agree—but only if he tells me how much it cost. I want the price.”
The room stilled.
Karen frowned. Kenneth’s brows lifted.
Jasmine felt it immediately—that shift. As if she had
stepped out of line, broken the rhythm they had all been following.
The mediator hesitated, then nodded. “Okay. I will tell
him.”
Again, the door. Again, absence.
Kenneth leaned forward. “Girl, what is wrong with you? What
are you doing?”
“This is not the hill you want to die on,” Karen said,
sharper now.
Jasmine tuned them out.
She didn’t care.
Men played games—she knew that. She had built an entire
philosophy around it.
But not John.
Not him.
The mediator returned, more quickly this time, irritation
plain on her face.
“The other party cannot disclose the price,” she said. “I
can’t explain further. He shared information that prevents him from giving you
a number.”
Jasmine stared at the table, at the black type, at the
clean, final lines.
Something inside her gave way—not loudly, not dramatically,
just a quiet internal release, taking off a bra at the end of the day.
Even though she would walk out of this room with more than
she had expected—more than Karen had predicted—it didn’t feel like winning.
It felt like losing something she couldn’t name.
“Fine,” she said. “We agree.”
By the time she got home, the deal that had looked so clean
on paper already felt dirtier inside her. She had won. She knew that.
But she did not feel like celebrating.
She wanted to call John.
But couldn’t.
The one thing she wanted most—cut off completely.
All part of the process. All direct communication between
the parties had to go through the mediator until the agreement was fully
executed and both sides had upheld the terms and conditions.
The end was too clean, measured, legal. Everything the start
of their relationship wasn’t.
She dialed her father’s number. A man she could call now—and
who would answer.
“Hey, kiddo! Finally found time for your old man, huh?”
“Hi, Dad. It’s been crazy.”
“Well, I try to keep up with the news. You know I don’t get
it, but I’m so proud of you. Always been the smartest and most driven. I knew
you’d be successful.”
The compliments came fast and familiar—and landed hollow.
She traced the edge of a framed photo of her and John.
“It’s not all success.”
“Well, of course the old guard complains. Hypnosis… that
rapid-eye thing… it all sounds weird and new—till it works. They shut up.”
He chuckled, pleased with her. With himself.
Jasmine slid the photo from its frame. The paper stuck
slightly before releasing. She placed it carefully into a moving box already
half-filled with books pulled from the shelves. One by one, she emptied the
frames and returned them to their places—silver rectangles, blank and
reflective.
They would be sold for a few dollars. The money split
evenly, like a judgment from King Solomon.
As if that were the fair division of a life together.
“It’s not the business part,” she said. “That’s easy. It’s…”
She hesitated. “The mediation is over. Papers are signed. I have to move out. I
can’t even talk to him until it’s all done. Until the house is sold. Until
everything on that paper is done. Until we both complete our side of the deal.”
There was a pause on the line—not for her, but for him to
decide how to respond.
Her hand drifted to the Aphrodite statue. The white, smooth
face seemed almost lifelike as Jasmine frowned at the statue. Like any minute,
the goddess’s plump lips would begin to speak, her arms wrapping around
Jasmine.
“Jazz,” he said finally, “you are beautiful, rich, famous. I
don’t think you need to worry about finding another man. You know, kiddo—one
more your equal.”
He let it sit.
“You know.”
She did know.
Even though the breakup wasn’t public yet, the verdict had
already been delivered. In comments. In message boards. Across social media.
Anonymous usernames, verified pundits, her business manager Kenneth—everyone
had an opinion about her relationship—many without knowing his name, how he
took his coffee, his favorite kind of pie, or the shape of his heart.
The consensus—unsolicited and absolute—was that Jasmine was
too good for John.
That she needed to move on.
“Yeah,” she said. “You’re right. I’ve gotta get back to
work.”
“Jeez, kiddo. You’re always working. Surely now you can slow
down a little. Rest?”
Jasmine looked around the library—John’s library, though the
idea for it had been hers. Half-filled boxes. Gifts. Clothes. Books. The
curated remnants of a shared life, reduced now to whatever she was allowed to
keep. Her hand drifted to the cool marble face she couldn’t.
“I will,” she said. “But right now, it’s more important than
ever. I’ve got a lot to do.”
“I love you. You know, I always wanted a daughter, and your
mom—she was ready to give up. Five boys. Five! But I’m so glad we didn’t. I’m
so proud of you. I’m always bragging about my smart, rich, famous daughter. The
guys, everyone I talk to—they can’t believe I’m the father of the DommyMommy.”
He emphasized the the, because there was only
one.
Her. His daughter.
“I love you too, Dad. Bye.”
She hung up.
For a moment, she stood still, her hand resting on
Aphrodite’s face. The goddess stared past her—serene, perfect, unknowable.
Jasmine lifted the statue and carried it to the kitchen
table, placing it with the growing pile labeled, in her mind, return to
John.
Maybe, after all these years, she had finally become exactly
what her father had always said she would be.
Smart. Rich. Famous.
Perfect.
And like this fucking statue, she would never know what it
had cost her to get there.
“Hey, beautiful,” she said to the statue. “Guess it’s time
for you to go live with John.”
By the next day, Kenneth had moved on to what came after
loss: narrative.
As expected, Kenneth was overdressed in tailored metallic
trousers and a white, billowy silk blouse. Multiple pearl necklaces peeked out
from the deep V-collar.
“So, I have a drafted statement ready for release. John has
seen it and approved.”
Jasmine read through the brief paragraph. It felt overly
curated and deliberately vague. The relationship was over. It was mutual,
amicable, and clean.
“Ken, I don’t want to say the wrong thing.”
“In this world, there is no saying the wrong thing. You just
say exactly what the public wants. They want it done, packaged up, and for you
to move on. Honey, this is practically the same statement every famous couple
uses when it’s over. It’s just the way it’s done.”
“Did he seem okay? When you spoke to him? About the
statement?”
“It was email, sweetie. He responded quickly. I didn’t
chitchat, darling.”
He reached into a leather folder.
“Girl, let’s quit talking about John and get to all these
strapping young lads.” Kenneth giddily waved a stack of press photos covered in
notes. “Each man has been in your DMs—look at the photos. I’ve got their names,
brief bios, net worths. I already know which one is my favorite, but I’m dying
to hear your thoughts.”
Jasmine didn’t even know where John was living. Probably
somewhere smaller. Quiet. Dark. The way he liked it—lights off, blinds
half-closed, coffee going cold beside him. He had never wanted all this
attention. Maybe the only thing she could do to make it right was shine the
spotlight on someone else.
She looked over the faces—smiling, touched up, meticulously
groomed. Hair perfectly tousled, just messy enough to suggest effortlessness,
but clearly engineered that way. Every jawline sharpened, every flaw softened,
every man curated into something sellable.
She didn’t really want any of them, but she felt obligated
to choose, so she began pulling out the ones she recognized.
An older actor whose sitcom had been popular when she was in
high school—the kind of show her mother watched reruns of in the afternoons. He
had played a lovable, slightly incompetent nerd. In the headshot, he was trying
for serious now.
A celebrity chef known for his fusion
cuisine—Korean-Italian, Peruvian-Japanese, and photographed well under warm
lighting and expensive plating. She had seen clips of him shouting in kitchens,
then crying in interviews about his childhood.
A boy band singer turned solo indie artist—leaner now,
sadder, tattoos creeping up his neck like ivy. His eyes carried that practiced
vulnerability that translated well to album covers and late-night interviews.
“Ken?” she said, unsure.
Kenneth didn’t look up right away. He was leaning back in
his chair like a man at a fitting, one ankle resting on the opposite knee, the
silk of his blouse whispering as he moved. He flipped a photo with a manicured
finger, a gemstone on the nail, probably real.
“Yeah, baby. I like these too. Famous enough to strengthen
the brand, but not enough to diminish you.”
His voice had that warmth he used for clients.
“No, not that. Um…” She paused, trying to find the right
entry point, the right framing. There should have been language for this—there
was always language—but this felt harder. “It won’t be like in my book. They
need to know. No sex, none of that. Just for… appearances.”
The word hung there, weaker than she intended.
"Hmm...makes my job harder."
Kenneth’s eyes flicked up, sharp for a moment, assessing—not
her, but the implication. Then he relaxed again, twisting one of the longer
pearl necklaces between his fingers, the beads clicking softly.
“Rumor is this one’s gay,” he said, tapping the corner of a
photo without fully lifting it. “Closeted. Maybe that’s an angle. Discreet
arrangement, mutual benefit, very modern.”
He slid that one aside, already losing interest.
“But I think maybe this one—” he lifted a black-and-white
headshot between two fingers—“this is more our speed.”
The man in the photo wasn’t smiling. Late thirties, maybe
early forties. Handsome in a way that had once been undeniable, now just
slightly worn at the edges. The kind of face people recognized but couldn’t
quite place without help.
“Desperate to be relevant again,” Kenneth continued. “Not my
first choice, but definitely willing to play ball. Lots of stints in facilities
for exhaustion—” he made a small air-quote motion with his free hand—“very
public about his depression. We can work that in easily. Redemption arc.
Reinvention. Healing through you.”
Through you.
Jasmine felt that land.
She took the photo from him.
The man’s eyes looked past the camera, like he had been
instructed not to try too hard.
Jasmine held the glossy paper and looked at the face of her
future. A comedian she had never heard of—with the lowest net worth of the
bunch. Chance Darrick.
“I’ll reach out to him,” Kenneth said, already shifting into
execution. “Make sure he understands this is PR only. Clean boundaries. Clear
expectations.”
He leaned forward now, energy sharpening.
“But his career’s been in the tank. Last I heard, he’s
mostly doing twenty-dollar autographs at conventions. Signing old headshots for
women who used to have crushes on him in 2007.” A small, dismissive smile. “So
even if he doesn’t want it to be just PR, he’ll take it.”
He placed a reassuring hand on her knee and winked.
“He’d be stupid not to.”
Jasmine didn’t respond.
Her thumb traced the edge of the photo, just slightly
bending it before she caught herself and flattened it again.
A man she didn’t want, but a story she could sell.
And somewhere, out of reach, a man she couldn’t even speak
to. Not yet.
Two weeks later, Kenneth’s choice had become her date. In a
hotel suite stripped and restaged for glamour, Jasmine stood beside Chance
Darrick while a styling team prepared them to be seen.
Jasmine felt uncomfortable as the stylist and crew dressed
and undressed her, then dressed her again, working to get the right look for
the premiere. Chance Darrick had a small role in a limited series released on a
popular streaming service. It wasn’t expected to be a hit, but it was the
biggest break he’d had in years.
Jasmine stood next to Chance, then stepped away, then back
to his side as the team reviewed them separately and together.
“It’s important to make sure the looks are cohesive for the
photos. Solo shots included,” a small woman with a pen in her mouth explained.
“It’s her necklace,” a man sitting on the floor stated
matter-of-factly. “Too small.”
The team began going through velvet boxes of
necklaces—sapphires, jade, diamonds, platinum—all on loan from the small
Italian jewelry company Jasmine was a brand ambassador for.
“Maybe the tiara?”
“God, Whitney, no. Stop. That’s fucking awful.”
As the team squabbled over final touches and pulled out
lookbooks and notes from the styling meeting, Chance rolled his eyes and looked
at Jasmine.
“I’ve done book signings and events, but nothing like this.
Not…” she trailed off.
“Red carpets are easy. Someone tells you what to do the
whole time. Stand here. Walk to the next person. Stand here. Photographers
yell—‘to your left,’ ‘to your right.’” He sighed and pulled out
his phone. “You’ll be fine. Done this too many times.”
Jasmine picked up her own phone—not because she expected
anything worth seeing, but just to have something to do as she stood there.
Her hands shook with disbelief as she read the email
multiple times, making sure she understood it.
The mediator confirmed that the agreement was fully executed
and her role was complete.
Jasmine’s mind began racing through possible next steps, but
it wasn’t about the deposit into her bank account—not about the intellectual
property, or even the marble statue.
It was about the man.
She took a deep breath in and let it out slowly, deciding
she would text him—but not yet.
“Okay, Jasmine, Ms. DommyMommy, come here so I can put this
on you,” a young, gazelle-like woman said, holding a loose, woven diamond
necklace.
As she felt the clasp close and the base of her neck, the phone in her hand vibrated softly. She had just decided to wait when the phone made the decision impossible.
Friends. Jasmine almost laughed.
As if there were a word for what they had been.
As if there were a smaller version of it they could safely
return to.
She read it again.
Maybe.
That was the part that stayed with her.
Not an ending.
No regret.
An opening.
Her thumb hovered over the screen.
For the first time in weeks—
there was something she was allowed to choose.
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