2. Melody #2
“Don’t.” The word comes out sharp enough to cut. “Don’t you dare stand there and make this my fault. Don’t you dare tell me you had to find comfort in another woman because I was too stressful while I was planning our entire wedding by myself.”
“You weren’t by yourself. I was there.”
“You were there? You showed up to the rehearsal dinner and complained about the chicken. You spent the bachelor party in Vegas while I was up until three in the morning finalizing the seating chart. You couldn’t even remember your own groomsmen’s names during the ceremony.”
“That’s not fair-”
“What’s not fair is standing in this room, this room I saved for, this room I dreamed about for two years, and listening to you tell me that your affair is my fault because I was too organized.”
“It’s not an affair.”
“You told her she’ll never know about me. You told her you want her in your bed. How is that not an affair?”
“We haven’t-” He stops. Swallows. “We haven’t slept together.”
I laugh. It comes out broken, more sob than sound. “And I’m supposed to believe that?”
“I’m telling you the truth.”
“You don’t know what the truth is. I don’t think you’ve ever known.” I’m moving now, grabbing my bag from the chair, shoving things into it without looking. Passport. Phrasebook. The little pouch of Thai baht I exchanged at the airport. “I’m leaving.”
“Melody, come on. Let’s just - let’s calm down and talk about this like adults.”
“I am calm.” I zip the bag with shaking hands. “This is me calm. This is me calmly telling you that I want a divorce.”
The word changes something in the room. I see it hit him - really hit him - and for a fraction of a second, something like fear flashes across his face.
“A divorce? We’ve been married for two days.”
“And you’ve been lying to me for months.
Longer, probably. God knows what else I’m going to find when I actually start looking.
” I sling the bag over my shoulder. “I want you out of this room. Tonight. Go back to the States, go to Alexandra, I don’t care.
But I’m not spending another second looking at your face. ”
“You can’t just - you can’t make that decision right now. You’re upset. You’re not thinking clearly.”
“I’ve never thought more clearly in my life.”
“Mel.” He steps toward me, and his voice goes soft.
Tender. The voice he used when he proposed.
When he told me he couldn’t wait to start our life together.
“I love you. I know I messed up. I know I hurt you. But we can work through this. People work through things like this all the time. Don’t throw away four years because of a few texts. ”
For one terrible moment, I waver.
I look at his face - this face I’ve loved for four years, this face I fell asleep looking at a thousand times, this face I thought I’d grow old beside - and I feel the pull of the life we built together.
The apartment. The routines. The friends and families we’ve woven into each other’s worlds.
Leaving him means unraveling all of it. Starting over with nothing.
And he sees it. He sees me hesitate. And something in his expression shifts - a flicker of triumph, quickly hidden.
“There she is.” He takes another step toward me. “There’s my girl. Come here. Let’s just - let’s sit down. Let’s talk. We can figure this out.”
His hand reaches for my face, and the tenderness of it, the practiced gentleness, snaps something inside me.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Mel-”
“I said don’t touch me.” I step back so fast I nearly trip over my own bag. “You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to look at me like that, like I’m the crazy one for being upset, like I should be grateful you’re willing to work through your own cheating.”
“I didn’t cheat.”
“You said you loved her. You said you wanted her instead of me. You spent six months building a relationship with another woman while I was planning our wedding. I don’t care what you call it, Leo. I know what it is.”
“You’re overreacting.”
“And you’re a liar.” I get the door open.
The hallway is bright and empty and I have no idea where I’m going, only that I have to get out of this room, away from the rose petals and the champagne and the man who has been lying to me so long he doesn’t even know how to stop.
“Sign the papers when I send them. Or don’t. Either way, we’re done.”
“Melody-”
“I’m getting out of here.”
“Wait.” His voice pitches higher, something desperate creeping in. “If you’re going back home, I’m also leaving. I don’t want to be here by myself.”
I stop in the doorway and turn back to look at him. He’s standing in the steam, towel slipping, hand outstretched, face arranged in an expression of wounded bewilderment that might have worked on me yesterday. The man who cheated on me doesn’t want to be alone. The irony is almost funny.
“I won’t go back home. I’m renting a place far from you, so don’t try to find me.”
I pull the door shut on whatever he says next.
***
The hallway stretches out in front of me, endless and silent, and I make it maybe twenty steps before my legs give out.
I slide down the wall outside someone else’s door and press my hands over my mouth to keep the sound in.
The sobs come anyway, ugly and raw, my whole body shaking with them.
A woman in a bathrobe comes out of a room down the hall, sees me, and quickly retreats back inside.
I can’t blame her. I wouldn’t want to deal with me either.
She’ll never know.
But I do know. I know everything now. And the knowing is so much worse than the wondering, so much worse than that nameless feeling I’ve been carrying under my ribs since the wedding.
This is what it was. This is what I sensed and couldn’t name.
My body knew before my brain did that something was wrong, and I ignored it because I wanted the dream more than I wanted the truth.
I don’t know how long I sit there. Long enough for the light in the windows at the end of the hall to shift from pink to purple to dark. Long enough for my tears to dry and my breathing to steady and something cold and hard to settle into place behind my sternum.
My phone is in my hand before I realize I’ve reached for it. Jessica’s name glows on the screen, and I press call before I can talk myself out of it.
She answers on the second ring. “Mel? Aren’t you supposed to be-”
“He’s cheating on me.” The words come out flat, dead. “Leo. He’s been cheating on me. For months. Maybe longer.”
Silence on the other end. Then: “What?”