3. Melody
— ? —
Melody
Three drinks in and the bar is nearly empty.
It’s one of those open-air places that only exist in resorts like this - teak wood and soft lighting and the sound of the ocean just past the railing.
The kind of bar where beautiful people drink beautiful cocktails and talk about their beautiful lives.
I am none of those things right now. My mascara gave up somewhere around drink two, and I stopped caring about it somewhere around drink three.
The bartender has learned not to make conversation. He just keeps the glass full and finds reasons to be at the other end of the bar, which is the most kindness anyone has shown me in forty-eight hours.
I stare at the candle on the bar top. It’s one of those little glass votives, the kind that flickers and dances and makes everyone look softer than they are.
The flame is hypnotic. I watch it sway and think about nothing, which is harder than it sounds when your brain keeps trying to replay the same conversation over and over.
I take another drink. The alcohol burns going down and settles warm in my chest, and for a second I almost feel something other than the hollow ache that’s been living under my ribs since I walked out of that suite. Not better. Just different. I’ll take different.
The stool beside me scrapes against the floor.
I don’t look up. I don’t care who it is. The bar is nearly empty and whoever just sat down probably has their own problems, and if they try to talk to me I’ll pretend I don’t speak English.
“You look like someone just broke your heart.”
The voice is male, with that particular warmth that makes everything sound slightly amused. I keep my eyes on the candle.
“That obvious?”
“The mascara’s a tell.”
I laugh before I can stop myself, short and sharp and surprised. “I stopped caring about the mascara about an hour ago.”
“Fair enough.” He doesn’t move closer. Doesn’t try to look at my face. Just sits there, a comfortable distance away, like he’s got nowhere else to be. “Can I buy you a drink, or would you rather be alone?”
“I don’t know.” I finally look up.
He’s tall. That’s the first thing I notice.
Tall and broad-shouldered, with dark hair and blue eyes and forearms that make me briefly forget how to form sentences.
He’s got his sleeves rolled to the elbow and his jaw has that end-of-day shadow that looks deliberate, and he’s looking at me like I’m a person and not a mess, which is more than I deserve right now.
“You don’t know if you want a drink, or you don’t know if you want to be alone?”
“Both.” I take another sip of whatever’s in my glass. “This was supposed to be my honeymoon.”
He doesn’t wince. Doesn’t reach for my hand or make a sympathetic face. He just tilts his head slightly, processing. “Was?”
“He was cheating. The whole time. I found out yesterday.”
“Yesterday being day one of the honeymoon?”
“Day one. Hour three, technically. I went through his phone while he was in the shower.” I don’t know why I’m telling him this.
I don’t know why the words are coming out so easily.
Maybe it’s the alcohol. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s a stranger and I’ll never see him again.
Maybe I just need to say it out loud to someone who won’t look at me with pity.
“Six months. He was sleeping with someone else for six months, or God knows how long. He told her he loved her. He told her-” My voice catches.
I take a breath. “He told her she’d never know.
On our honeymoon. While I was asleep next to him. ”
“That’s shit.”
The flatness of it startles a laugh out of me. “That’s your response?”
“What do you want me to say? That’s shit. It’s the shittiest shit there is. The man’s a bastard and you deserve better.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“Don’t need to. I know what he did. That’s enough.”
I look at him for a long moment. He’s not trying to fix anything.
He’s not offering solutions or silver linings or the particular brand of toxic positivity that makes you want to scream.
He’s just sitting there, acknowledging the truth of it, and something in my chest loosens for the first time in two days.
“I’m Melody,” I say. “This is a weird way of meeting someone.”
“Noah.”
“Hi, Noah. Thanks for not telling me everything happens for a reason.”
He smiles, and it changes his whole face. Makes him look younger, warmer, like someone you’d want to tell secrets to. “Hate that phrase. Nothing happens for a reason. Things just happen, and then you deal with it.”
“That’s bleak.”
“That’s honest. I prefer honest.”
The bartender appears and Noah orders something without looking at the menu - whiskey, neat, top shelf. He doesn’t ask if I want another drink. He just nods at my glass and the bartender refills it without being told, and I realize this is a man who’s used to being in charge of rooms.
“So,” he says, swirling his whiskey. “Your husband’s a cheating bastard. What happens next?”
“I have no idea.” I take a drink. “I told him I want a divorce. He told me I wasn’t thinking straight.”
“Of course he did.”
“And then I came down here and I’ve been drinking ever since.
” I gesture vaguely at the empty glasses the bartender has quietly cleared away.
“I don’t have a plan. I don’t have anything.
I just have a room I’m paying for and a trip I’ve dreamed about for twenty years and a husband who-” I stop.
Breathe. “Sorry. You didn’t ask for my life story. ”
“You’re not telling me your life story. You’re telling me about the worst day of your life. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
“Yes. One is a monologue. The other is just honesty.”
Something in the way he says it makes me look at him again. Really look. He’s watching me with those blue eyes, and there’s no judgment in them. No pity, either. Just attention. Like I’m worth paying attention to.
“Can I ask you something?” I say.
“Go ahead.”
“Why are you here? At this bar, I mean. Alone. At-” I check my phone for the first time in hours. “Jesus. It’s almost midnight.”
“I couldn’t sleep.” He shrugs, easy. “I come here when I can’t sleep. It’s quiet. Nobody bothers you.”
“Except me.”
“You’re not bothering me.” He smiles again. “I approached you, remember? Figured anyone staring at a candle that hard needed either a drink or a conversation, and the bartender had already handled the drink.”
“What if I’d told you to go away?”
“Then I would have gone. But you didn’t.”
“No,” I admit. “I didn’t.”
We don’t talk about Leo again. That’s the strange part - the part I’ll think about later, when I’m lying in my empty room staring at the ceiling.
We talk about everything else instead. The terrible food on the flight over.
The worst concerts we’ve ever survived (his: a jazz fusion band that played for three hours without a break; mine: a college boyfriend’s acoustic set that included a song he wrote about my hair).
He asks what I do, and I tell him the truth: I build perfect days for other people. Galas. Launches. Weddings, mostly. A ballroom packed with guests, doves on cue, not a single crooked napkin.
“You plan weddings,” he says slowly, “and yours is the one that-”
“Yep.”
He doesn’t laugh at the irony. He just nods, like it’s a real thing that deserves a real face, and refills my glass. “For what it’s worth, I bet yours was flawless.”
“It was,” I say. “That’s the worst part. The wedding was perfect. It was the marriage that was badly planned.”
“Weddings are theater with catering,” he says. “The marriage is the actual show. Most people rehearse the wrong one.”
“That’s a very specific opinion.”
“I have a lot of specific opinions.” He tilts his head. “Your turn. Give me one.”
“One what?”
“One specific opinion. Something nobody asked about.”
I think for a moment. “Pineapple on pizza is fine.”
“That’s not specific, that’s just correct.”
“Okay. Um. I think people who say they don’t like to read just haven’t found the right book yet.”
“Better. Keep going.”
“I think the best meals are the ones you eat with your hands. I think morning people and influencers are lying about something. I think-” I pause, surprised by what’s about to come out of my mouth. “I think I stayed too long because I was afraid of starting over.”
Noah is quiet for a moment. The candle flickers between us.
“I don’t think that’s an opinion,” he says finally. “That’s rather a confession.”
“Maybe.” I finish my drink. “Maybe I’m just drunk.”
“You’re not that drunk.”
“How do you know?”
“Because drunk people don’t look at you like that.” He meets my eyes, and something in his gaze makes my breath catch. “Like they’re trying to figure out if you’re safe.”
“Am I? Safe?”
“Depends on what you’re afraid of.”
I don’t have a response to that question.
The bar has emptied even more - just us and the bartender now, the ocean a low murmur past the railing, the sky thick with stars I can’t see at home.
The hours have disappeared the way they do when you stop counting them, and I realize with a start that I haven’t thought about Leo in hours.
I haven’t replayed the conversation. I haven’t cried.
I’ve just been here. Talking to a stranger. Feeling like a person instead of a wound.
“It’s four in the morning,” I say, looking at my phone again.
“It is.”
“There’s nobody here but us.”
Noah stands when I do. He’s taller than I realized, tall enough that I have to tip my head back to look at him, and the motion makes me dizzy in a way that has nothing to do with alcohol.
“Where are you staying?” he asks.
“Here. I took a single room.” I pause. “After.”
He smiles like that’s the best news he’s had in years. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Will you?”
“If you want to.”
I should say no. I should go back to my room and sleep and wake up tomorrow with a plan, a real plan, something that involves lawyers and phone calls and the systematic dismantling of a life I thought I was going to live.
I should not be standing in an empty bar at four in the morning feeling something warm unfurl in my chest at the way a stranger is looking at me.
“Yeah,” I hear myself say. “I want to.”
“Then I’ll find you.” He touches my elbow, just briefly, just enough to make my skin prickle. “Get some sleep, Melody.”
He walks away before I can answer. I watch him go - the easy stride, the broad shoulders, the way he moves like he owns the space around him - and I feel lighter than I have in two days. Lighter than I have in months, maybe. Like something has shifted inside me without my permission.
I don’t know who he is. I don’t know anything about him except his name and his taste in whiskey and the fact that he also likes pineapple on pizza.
I have no idea that he owns every inch of the building I’m standing in.