CHAPTER 15

@lucianacarter girrrrrlll you is epic #restaurantgate #lucyissaratchet

@lucianacarter are you still with your man?

@lucianacarter when you threw the champagne glass on his face crying laughing emoji

@lucianacarter i've been in your situation and I just want to say I'm so glad you've finally seen the light. you're an inspiration for us women out here

@lucianacarter you don't deserve your boyfriend. You said he was the best guy for you yet you acted the ho actions speak louder #restaurantgate

@lucianacarter you went soft on that coon, I woulda did worse. You should have told your parents and reported his rapist ass to the police #restaurantgate

@lucianacarter hey Luciana, we're a women's empowerment group, and we'd love to interview you about your experience. Send us an email at for further discussion

@lucianacarter after seeing the video, it gave me the courage to leave the unhealthy situation I was in. and though im still heartbroken I know ill be okay, so thank you

I was so grateful to God that my parents were pretty much Luddites and they didn't have much of a clue of what was going on. But I had to tell them.

Their daughter was now Twitter famous, Instagram famous, Facebook famous. The unphotogenic girl of yesteryear was now on everybody's timeline.

All they knew though was that there was a footage of me online that didn't show me in the best light – and that was just putting it mildly.

No matter how much I cringed watching myself I couldn't stop pressing the play button over and over again. It was like a scene from Cheaters. I was the Mad Black Woman v2.0.

I sat in the taxi on my way home my eyes glued to the screen of my phone. My fingertips were burning from tapping and my thumb ached from scrolling through my notifications. It was safe to say that Christmas was a drag. But everything that happened around it was the opposite.

The outpouring of women from all over saying how grateful they were to me for standing up for emotional abuse was overwhelming.

Liam had received several violent threats from people online, and I had to publicly tell people to stop. Was this even real life? People were actually paying attention to what I had to say.

And then there was the other issue, the biggest issue - my heart.

Angelo wanted time. He wanted space. Sure, I'd said to him, I could give him that.

In the meantime I had to deal with the aftermath of Restaurant-Gate where even though I had overwhelming support of people, there were other very opionated keyboard warriors who had typed some very choice words at me, attributing me to a whore.

As someone who'd never been in a position before to be publicly scrutinised over a very personal issue, I had several ways to feel about it. I was heartbroken. I wanted my happy ending to only be with Angelo, yet everything was hanging in balance.

And to have people I didn't even know attack me I'd felt lonely as fuck. Yet Sara was the last person I'd expected to reach out to me.

Apparently Angelo had told her everything. And still she was very forgiving about how everything had turned out, especially when my last weeks in Madrid I'd been avoiding her texts and calls and not bothered to get back to her once I got to the States.

Part of the reason had been because I was scared she was going to convince me to get casted for the telenovela.

She's said she missed me and wanted to meet up. I was no doubt in panic as I settled on a date with her on the phone.

My head was still reeling from the meeting. She said she knew people that could help put me in the right direction to present me with the right opportunities. Then she started mentioning book deals, speaking engagements, brand endorsements, blogging, and I just couldn't help but smile thinking how typical it was of Sara to make a lemonade out my lemon of situation.

It was what Phoenixes do.

And I couldn't help but think that maybe it was my turn to let my story known.

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