2. Melody #3
“I found texts. On his phone. He’s been - there’s a woman.
Alexandra. He told her he loves her. He told her she’d never know about me.
” My voice breaks, and suddenly I’m sobbing again, the words tumbling out between gasps.
“I planned this for months, Jess. I dreamed about this place. You know it more than anyone. I’ve been dreaming about it since I was twelve years old, and he brought me here, to my dream, and he was texting her the whole time.
On the plane. While I was asleep on his shoulder. He was texting her that he misses her.”
“Oh, Mel.” Jessica’s voice is soft, horrified. “Oh, honey. I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t know what to do. I told him I want a divorce and he said I was overreacting and then he tried to make it my fault, like I drove him to it because I was too stressed about the wedding, and I just - I can’t-”
“Where is he now?”
“In the room. The honeymoon suite.” I laugh, and it sounds unhinged even to my own ears. “With the rose petals and the champagne and the view I’ve been saving pictures of for two years.”
“Is he staying there? At the resort?”
“He said he’s flying home. He said if I’m leaving, he’s leaving too. He doesn’t want to be here by himself.”
“Good. Let him leave.” Jessica’s voice hardens into something fierce. “Then you stay.”
“What?”
“You stay, Melody. You paid for that resort with your own money. Every penny of it. You saved for two years while he spent his money on God knows what. That trip belongs to you, not him.”
“I can’t stay here. Not after-”
“Yes, you can. You stay, and you let him be the one who runs. You let him slink back home to his mistress while you take the vacation you earned. Don’t let him take that from you too.”
I press my forehead against my knees and try to breathe. The carpet smells like industrial cleaner and someone else’s perfume, and I’m sitting in a hallway in Thailand having the worst conversation of my life, and somehow Jessica’s voice is the only thing keeping me tethered to the ground.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” I whisper.
“You can. You’re the strongest person I know, Mel. You planned an entire wedding by yourself while working full-time and dealing with his useless family. You can handle a solo vacation.”
“It’s not supposed to be solo. It’s supposed to be a honeymoon.”
“It’s supposed to be whatever you decide it is now. He doesn’t get a vote anymore.”
I close my eyes. The tears are still coming, slower now, and I let them fall without trying to stop them.
“I hate him,” I say. “I hate him so much.”
“Good. Hold onto that. It’ll get you through the next few days.”
“What if he doesn’t leave? What if he stays and I have to see him?”
“Then you ignore him. You walk right past him like he’s furniture. You show him exactly what he threw away, and you don’t give him a single second of your attention.”
I take a shaky breath. Then another. The cold, hard thing behind my sternum is still there, but it feels different now. Less like grief and more like armor.
“Okay,” I say. “Okay. I’ll stay.”
“That’s my girl.” I can hear Jessica smiling through the phone. “Get a different room. Get the best room they have. Put it on his card if you can.”
“I’m going to get a single room and stay for a few days.”
“You deserve it, Mel. You always did.”
We stay on the phone for another hour, maybe longer.
Jessica talks me through the logistics - lawyers to call, accounts to separate, people who need to know.
She makes me promise to eat something, to drink water, to try to sleep.
She tells me she loves me six different times, and each time it lands like a small, warm weight against my chest.
By the time I hang up, the hallway is dark and my legs have gone numb from sitting on the floor.
I push myself to my feet and walk to the elevator on legs that feel borrowed.
***
The front desk is quiet at this hour. The woman behind the counter looks at my face - mascara-streaked, eyes swollen, expression vacant - and doesn’t ask a single question.
She just pulls up my reservation, finds a single room, and slides the key across the marble with a sympathy that feels more genuine than anything Leo has given me in months.
“The suite is prepaid through the fourteenth,” she says, reading my face more carefully than the screen. “If you’d like, I can release it and apply the balance to the new room. It’s...” she does the math with a delicacy I will love her for until I die, “...considerably more nights.”
Considerably more nights. A honeymoon suite converted into two and a half weeks of a bed, a window, and nobody. I’ve spent eight years negotiating room blocks for other people’s parties. It’s the first time the job has ever done anything for me.
“Do it,” I say. “Release it.”
“Room 412,” she says softly. “Fourth floor. Is there anything else you need?”
I shake my head.
“I’m sorry,” she adds, even though she has no idea what she’s sorry for. “I hope your evening improves.”
It won’t. I know it won’t. But I take the key and I thank her and I ride the elevator alone, watching the numbers climb, feeling the distance grow between me and the man I married.
Room 412 is small and plain and perfect. No ocean view. No rose petals. No champagne with cards that call us happy. Just a bed and a window and a silence that doesn’t expect anything from me.
I lock the door behind me and sit on the edge of the mattress and stare at the wall until the tears come back.
This time, I don’t try to stop them.