The Smile She Kept

The Smile on Every Screen

Belinda Jasmine never wore her own smile. The one the world knew — on billboards, perfume ads, glossy spreads — was practiced, luminous, a smile that turned strangers into believers. Her real one — crooked, too quick, a little lopsided — almost never left her apartment.

By thirty-three, she was the most recognizable face in New York. Not a movie star, but a lifestyle brand. The tabloids called her “the last true socialite,” though she was the daughter of a schoolteacher and a dental hygienist from Ohio. She had built herself from scratch- the right parties, the right friends, the right filters. Behind her trailed the quiet debris of what she’d shed.

On a Tuesday morning, Belinda padded barefoot across the marble floor of her penthouse, coffee mug in hand, scrolling through her phone. Her face filled half the world’s feeds that morning. The Daily Standard had published a spread of her in a backless gown at last weekend’s gala, head thrown back in laughter. Perfect, she thought.

The photo would circulate, re-circulate, and the deals with L’Oréal and Cartier would keep ripening.

Then she saw it. Belinda Jasmine's Brother Surfaces After Ten Years. She blinked. JD. A grainy news clip outside a soup kitchen in Columbus. Gaunt, unkempt, but unmistakably him. The headline beneath read- Homeless Man Identified as Model’s Estranged Sibling. Her mug tilted. Coffee spattered across her silk robe.

That night she was expected at a product launch. Cameras swarmed as she stepped onto the carpet, smile locked in place.

“Belinda, any comment on the article about your brother?” The word cut like broken glass. Brother. A word she hadn’t spoken in years. She kept walking, smiling. Inside, something long buried stirred.

When the party ended, she did not go home. Instead she asked her driver to circle the city until sunrise. Her brother’s face haunted her — gaunt, trembling hands, eyes she still knew. She remembered him at fifteen, teaching her to drive. “Never grip the wheel too tight,” he’d said. He had been her protector once. And then the fights, the arrests, the spiral she had fled from when she was remaking herself in New York.

Cutting ties had felt like survival. But now her brand was colliding with the person she had abandoned.

The next morning, she booked a flight to Columbus.

In disguise — cap, oversized coat — she walked into the soup kitchen where the clip had been filmed. Volunteers bustled with trays of pasta. At the end of the line was JD.

Her chest squeezed. He looked older than forty, beard ragged, hands shaking. She almost ran. Instead she whispered, “JD?” He froze. Looked up. Eyes widening. “Belie?” His voice cracked, rusted shut.

They spoke outside in the wind. “You shouldn’t be here,” he said. “This isn’t your world.” “You’re my brother.” “That didn’t seem to matter before.” The words stung, but she stayed. “I didn’t know how to help.” He laughed bitterly. “You can’t PR-spin a life. Not this one.”

Over the next week, she returned again and again. Soup on plastic trays, walks along frozen sidewalks. Sometimes they fought; sometimes they sat in silence. Her assistant’s texts buzzed — Where are you? Cartier needs you. Questions everywhere. She ignored them. Instead she listened as JD laid out the missing years- jail, halfway houses, addiction. He didn’t sugarcoat it, and though it broke her, it also freed her. Here there were no cameras, no captions. Just truth. One night he said, “You could walk away again. No one would blame you.” “I would blame me.”

When she finally returned to New York, her publicist pounced. “You can’t vanish like this! The press is circling. If you don’t get ahead of it, your career—” “My career,” she cut in, “isn’t the same as my life.”

For the first time, Belinda called a press conference. Not a staged photo op, not a red-carpet quip. A microphone, a plain podium, her unvarnished self. She spoke about her brother. About silence, addiction, shame. And then she did something unthinkable — she cried, on camera. The headlines split in two- some praising her vulnerability, others mocking her fall. But Belinda didn’t care. Because for once, the smile she gave the world wasn’t rehearsed. It was real.

In the weeks that followed, some contracts vanished. Others leaned harder, eager to bottle “authenticity.” Belinda let them. Privately, she and JD did the real work — counselors, slow steps toward recovery, the fragile beginnings of a bridge. It wasn’t clean. It wasn’t glamorous. But it was human.

And for the first time since leaving Ohio, Belinda allowed herself to be human too.

Spring crept in, slow and wet, the kind of season Belinda used to ignore because there were no galas for gray skies and slush. But now she noticed it — puddles swelling at street corners, the smell of thawed earth, a breeze that carried the faintest hint of grass. JD noticed too. “I always liked this time,” he said one afternoon as they walked past a shuttered church in Columbus. “World’s still ugly, but it’s trying.”

Belinda stayed longer than she planned. A week stretched to two. Her team back in New York panicked; her agent called twice a day until she stopped answering. Instead, she took JD to appointments, sat beside him in group meetings where men and women spoke their shame into fluorescent-lit rooms. She expected to feel exposed, but instead she felt small, humbled, and strangely safe. Nobody there cared about Belinda Jasmine, socialite. They only cared about JD, and by extension, the sister who kept showing up.

One night, he asked her, “Why are you really here? Guilt? Penance?” His voice wasn’t cruel, just weary. Belinda thought about it before answering. “Because you’re the only one who remembers me before I was a product. And I don’t want to lose that.”

JD didn’t say anything. But later, when they parted for the night, he hugged her first.

By summer, whispers in the city said Belinda Jasmine was finished. Another younger face was rising, one who smiled brighter and posted more. The world was fickle, and she had known this day would come. What she hadn’t known was that when it came, she would feel relieved.

She still returned to New York, eventually — contracts didn’t vanish overnight, and there were bills to pay, staff to support. But she came back different. She set limits- fewer parties, fewer campaigns. And when asked about her time away, she didn’t lie. She said, “I was with my brother.” Sometimes that shut down questions; sometimes it opened doors. She didn’t care either way.

Months later, she sat in a quiet diner across from JD. He was healthier now, clearer-eyed, though still fragile. A waitress refilled their mugs, and JD leaned back with a half-smile — the same crooked smile she carried. “You know, Belie,” he said, “you don’t have to fix me.”

“I know,” she said softly. “I just want to be here.”

For once, there were no cameras. No brands to protect. Just a brother and a sister, two faces the world might never see together. And that was enough.