Chapter 25 #2
For the rest of the day, I told myself I made the right call.
Besides, Beirut was extraordinary, and I didn’t want to ruin it.
The picturesque backdrop was enthralling, and I understood why Amelie loved it so much.
That thought came to me throughout the day, and although I tried not to examine it too closely, the little white lie I told Amelie festered in my mind.
I hated deceiving my wife, especially about something as big as visiting her homeland.
She had been wanting us to visit Lebanon since the moment we got together.
It would kill her if she knew I went without her.
But what was the alternative? It wasn’t like I planned it. This was beyond my control. A business trip.
Just as Ruby promised, the contest was a roaring success. The local talent was remarkable, young singers hungry for opportunities. The judges were unanimous on their selections. We found ten contestants who’d sing at the finale.
Despite a successful shoot, I felt restless upon returning to our hotel. I decided I needed a drink. Several, ideally.
Ruby found me in the hotel lobby and fell into step beside me without being asked, which was the thing about her.
She had an instinct for when a person needed company and when they needed to be left alone, and she was consistently right about which was which.
Tonight, she had correctly identified that I needed company, specifically the kind that didn’t ask questions.
We ended up at the hotel rooftop bar, the kind of place that Lebanon apparently did better than anywhere else in the world.
Open sky, string lights over a stone terrace, the city dropping away below in layers of light, the Mediterranean dark and vast at the edge of everything. The bar was busy without being loud.
“Who are you texting?” Ruby asked, without looking up from her menu.
“No one.” I had been staring at my last text exchange with Amelie. I missed her, and though I wanted to, I didn’t fire up another conversation because that meant telling her more lies.
Amelie had always raved about Lebanon. I’d vowed to bring my wife here after we saved up enough money. We finally had the means to travel and childcare for my siblings. The first thing I should have done was take her to visit Lebanon. Why didn’t I?
My wife took on the responsibility for my family members without complaint. She worked late nights to support them. She even entered a marriage with Kai for my sake. Why didn’t it cross my mind to do something for her that I knew would have made her infinitely happy?
The guilt arrived fast and settled heavily. The same one I had felt since arriving in Beirut.
“Whatever you’re looking at, it must be very interesting. You’ve barely looked up from your phone.”
I put my phone face down on the table.
Ruby pushed a shot in my direction, and I indulged in that without question. When the bouncers weren’t looking, we took bumps off the table. Ruby was good company. She didn’t question my pensive mood. Instead, she talked about the contest, the final lineup, and the upcoming Istanbul leg.
I laughed twice, real ones, which I hadn’t expected. The drugs helped. The alcohol helped. The shots helped more.
I was midway through the fourth shot when Ruby leaned across the table to show me something on her phone.
A location she was considering for the Istanbul shoot.
She leaned in close, angling the screen, and as she did, she put her hand flat against my chest to steady herself.
The casual, unthinking contact of someone who had been working in close proximity and had stopped monitoring the distance between them.
It was nothing. Her eyes were on her phone. Mine were on the screen. It lasted approximately three seconds. Yet I felt the shift in the air before I identified its source.
I looked up.
Across the terrace, maybe fifteen meters away, a woman stood, staring at us.
For a moment, I didn’t register it.
Then I did.
Amelie.
In Beirut.
Amelie was in a terracotta dress, her dark hair loose, looking directly at me. She was so insanely beautiful that it was impossible to miss her.
I sat completely still, eyes locked on my wife’s. The shock on her face arrived and stayed. It wasn’t anger. Just the raw, unprocessed expression of someone whose brain was trying to process what shouldn’t exist. Her husband. In Beirut. At a rooftop bar. In the city he had told her was Istanbul.
“Amelie—”
Her eyes moved from my face to Ruby’s hand, still resting against my chest.
Ruby became aware of the situation approximately one second later, but the dynamic had already been established. The leaning in, the hand, the closeness. To anyone standing fifteen meters away, it looked exactly like what it wasn’t.
I stood up. My chair scraped back.
“Amelie.” I said her name again, louder, starting toward her.
Her eyes held mine for exactly one second to make sure I understood how much I had hurt her at that moment. How much I had broken her heart. She turned and walked out of the bar.
I followed and called out her name, but she didn’t stop walking.
“Amelie, stop.” I caught her elbow right as she called the elevator.
“Let go of me,” she said, quiet and controlled, which was worse than her shouting at me.
I released her arm. I didn’t know how to explain this, so I asked the worst possible question. “Why are you here?” It came off accusatory, even though I should be the one on trial for my actions.
“Funny.” She fished out her phone from her purse, sent a text, and then turned to look at me for the first time. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”
“This isn’t what it looks like.”
She exhaled through her nose. A short, precise sound. “So, you’re not in Lebanon right now after you told me you were in Istanbul?”
Okay, so it was exactly what it looked like.
“Istanbul. Just landed. Incredible city,” she parroted my text.
“You didn’t tell me you were in Lebanon, either.”
“I asked you to call me so I could tell you.” Her eyes were dry, which made it worse. As if I wasn’t worth shedding tears over. “But you straight-up lied to me. You did it so easily.”
“I didn’t want to upset you.”
“Upset me,” she repeated indignantly, as if the words tasted awful.
“Ruby added Beirut to the contest at the last minute,” I explained. “I knew how much it would hurt you, me being here without you. I thought if I just got through the trip and came home and—”
“And what? Never told me about it?” She laughed, a short, brittle sound. “Who even are you?”