You can’t control the version of the story going around. You can control what people see from you next.

Once something is being talked about, the talking has its own momentum and no correction ever catches up with it. What you still hold is everything that happens afterwards: how you behave, what you turn up to, who you are around the people who heard. That evidence builds slowly and outlasts the story. Arguing with a rumour keeps it fed, while an ordinary life starves it.

Give yourself one unremarkable week. Go to the thing, do the work, be decent to people. Say nothing about it unless somebody asks you directly, and then keep the answer short.