13. Melody
— ? —
Melody
We order food at midnight because neither of us remembered to eat. Thai, because of course, because he knows a place that delivers even at this hour, because apparently when you own half the hotels in Southeast Asia, pad thai materializes whenever you want it.
“This is ridiculous,” I say, sitting cross-legged on his bed in one of his t-shirts, chopsticks in hand. “This whole situation. You realize that, right?”
“Which part?”
“All of it. A month ago I was walking down an aisle toward a man who was planning to steal my inheritance. Now I’m eating takeout in a penthouse with his cousin.”
“When you put it that way, it does sound like a soap opera.”
“It is a soap opera. We’re living in a soap opera, Noah.”
He reaches over and steals a bite of my noodles. “Good thing I’ve always liked drama.”
“What happens now?” I ask, setting down my chopsticks. “After the papers are signed. After the dust settles. What does this look like?”
“What do you want it to look like?”
“I asked you first.”
He shifts closer, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “I want you here. Not hiding. Not sneaking around. I want to take you to dinner and hold your hand and not care who sees. I want to wake up next to you and know you’re staying.”
“That sounds terrifyingly normal.”
“Is that bad?”
“No.” My voice comes out smaller than I intend. “It’s just... I don’t know if I remember how to do normal. The last four years of my life were built on lies. I don’t know what real looks like anymore.”
“Real looks like whatever you build next,” he says.
“Speaking of which,” I say, before I can lose my nerve, “I did something today. Something insane.”
“More insane than this?” He gestures at the takeout, the penthouse, us.
“I resigned. Emailed it this morning while you were in the shower.” Saying it out loud makes it real, and real makes my hands shake a little, so I put down the chopsticks.
“Eight years. And the email took me four minutes to write. I want to start doing it on my own, without a boss who takes all the credit, for the work I do.”
“Wow, that was very brave. How do you feel?”
“Terrified.” I look up at him. “And so light I could float out that window. Is that crazy?”
“That’s the second door you’ve closed this month,” he says. “I’m sensing a theme.”
“Yeah, well.” I steal back my noodles. “Turns out I’m very good at endings lately. Beginnings are the part I haven’t figured out.”
“Then we figure it out together.” He takes my hand, threading his fingers through mine. “One day at a time. No rush. No pressure. Just... this.”
“Just this,” I repeat.
“Is that enough?”
I look at him - rumpled hair, tired eyes, chopstick sauce on his chin - and I feel something shift in my chest. Not the dramatic earthquake I kept waiting for with Leo. Something quieter. Something that feels like it might actually last.
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s enough.”
***
Noah
I wake up to sunlight and an empty bed.
For one terrible moment, my chest tightens. I reach across the sheets, still warm from her body, and find nothing. The space where she was sleeping is just an indent in the pillow, a ghost of her presence.
She left. Of course she left. They always leave eventually.
But then I hear it - the soft pad of footsteps in the living room, the clink of a glass, the quiet sound of her humming something off-key. My pulse settles. My lungs remember how to work.
Not everyone leaves. Not everyone is Leo.
I find her standing at the windows in one of my t-shirts and nothing else, coffee mug in hand, watching the city wake up below. The morning light catches in her hair, turning it gold at the edges, and she looks so beautiful it actually hurts to look at her.
“You’re up,” she says without turning around. “I was going to bring you coffee in bed. Very romantic. You ruined it.”
“I’ll pretend to be asleep. We can start over.”
She laughs, and the sound does something to my chest that I’m not ready to examine too closely. “Too late. The moment’s gone.”
I come up behind her and wrap my arms around her waist, pulling her back against my chest. She fits there perfectly. Like she was always supposed to be here.
“How’d you sleep?” I ask against her hair.
“Better than I have in months.” She turns in my arms, looking up at me. “Years, maybe. I didn’t wake up once.”
“Must be the mattress.”
“Must be.” But she’s smiling, and we both know it wasn’t the mattress.
“You hungry?”
“Starving, actually.”
“Good. Sit down. I’m making breakfast.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “You cook?”
“I make exactly three things well.” I steer her toward the kitchen island, depositing her on a barstool. “This is one of them.”
“What are the other two?”
“Reservations and coffee.”
She laughs again, and I decide right then that I’m going to spend the rest of my life finding ways to make that sound happen. I pull out the ingredients - eggs, fish sauce, a lime, day-old jasmine rice from the fridge - and get to work while she watches from her perch.
“Is that fish sauce?” she says, watching me whisk. “A man of many talents.”
“I have hidden depths.”
“Clearly.”
The kitchen fills with the smell of hot oil and garlic as the eggs hit the pan and crisp golden at the edges. She’s quiet for a moment, just watching me, and when I glance over she’s got this look on her face that I can’t quite read.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just - this is nice. Domestic.” She shrugs. “I’m not used to nice.”
The words land somewhere tender. I slide a plate toward her, a crackling Thai omelet folded over rice, a wedge of lime on the side, and watch her take the first bite.
She actually moans. The sound goes straight through me.
“Okay, this is obscene,” she says around a mouthful. “Where did you learn to make this?”
“The pad thai grandmother taught me.”
“Of course she did.”
We eat at the kitchen island, her legs tangled with mine on the barstools.
I’ve had the newspaper delivered for years - an old habit from my grandmother that I never bothered to break - and we trade sections back and forth, reading headlines out loud, arguing about politics, stealing bites off each other’s plates.
It’s domestic in a way that should feel too soon, too fast. We’ve known each other three weeks. Three weeks ago she was married to someone else. Three weeks ago I was a stranger in a bar watching her cry.
But it doesn’t feel too fast. It feels inevitable. Like we’ve been doing this for years in some other timeline and finally caught up.
“I could get used to this,” I say, watching her lick the last of the lime off her fingers. “Waking up with you every morning. Making you breakfast.”
She looks up at me, something flickering in her eyes. Hope, maybe. Or fear. “What about your work? What about when you have to go back? Travel to all those properties you pretend you only vaguely mentioned?”
I set down my fork. “I’ll figure it out.”
“Noah-”
“I’m serious. I’ve spent the last ten years living out of hotel rooms because it was easier than putting down roots anywhere. Because there wasn’t a reason to stay in one place.” I reach across the island and take her hand. “Now there’s a reason.”
“You can’t just restructure your entire life because of someone you’ve known for three weeks.”
“Watch me.”
“That’s insane.”
“Maybe.” I bring her hand to my lips, pressing a kiss to her knuckles.
“But I’ll still have to travel. The properties don’t run themselves, and I’m not ready to hand everything over to managers.
I’ll need to go back and forth. Thailand, Bali, the others.
But I can base myself here. I can make Chicago home. ”
“You’d do that?”
“I’d do a lot more than that.”
She stares at me for a long moment, and I can see her trying to process it. Trying to figure out if I mean it or if this is just another promise that’s going to crumble the moment reality sets in.
“We can make it work,” I say. “If you want to. Flights aren’t that long. Video calls exist. And every time I come back, I’ll cook you the omelet the grandmother taught me and we’ll sit here and argue about the newspaper and it’ll feel like I never left.”
“That’s very optimistic.”
“I’m a very optimistic person.”
“What if it’s harder than you think? What if the distance is too much?”
“Then we solve it. One problem at a time.” I squeeze her hand. “I’m not going to promise you perfect, Melody. I can’t do perfect. But I can promise you that I’ll show up. Every time. However far I have to travel to get back to you.”
Her eyes go bright, and she blinks hard, looking away. “You can’t just say things like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’ll start believing them.”
“Good. You should believe them. They’re true.”
She’s quiet for a moment, staring down at our joined hands. Then she looks up at me, and there’s something new in her expression. Something that looks almost like trust.
I watch her finish her coffee, watch the way the morning light plays across her face, and I let myself imagine it.
Really imagine it. Not just this morning, but hundreds of mornings.
Thousands. A lifetime of waking up to her humming off-key in the kitchen, of tangled legs on barstools, of trading newspaper sections and stealing bites off her plate.
I’ve built an empire out of beautiful places. Resorts that people dream about, beaches they save for years to visit, rooms designed to make them feel like they’ve escaped their ordinary lives. I’ve spent a decade creating homes for everyone else while never having one of my own.
But this - her bare feet on my kitchen floor, her laugh echoing off the windows, her hand warm in mine - this feels like something I didn’t know I was missing.
I want to try. I want to try so badly it scares me.
I’ve never been scared of anything. Not business deals, not risks, not the kind of gambles that make other people lose sleep.
But this woman, with her bruised heart and her careful hope, terrifies me in the best possible way.
Because for the first time in my life, I have something I can’t afford to lose.
So I’ll fly back and forth. I’ll rack up enough miles to circle the globe ten times over. I’ll learn to hate airports and love the moment I walk through her door. I’ll figure out time zones and video calls and all the messy logistics of loving someone when your life is scattered across continents.
Because she’s worth it. She’s worth every inconvenience, every sleepless flight, every moment of missing her.
I don’t tell her any of this. Not yet. It’s too much, too soon, and she’s still learning to trust that good things can last.
But I think it. I hold it in my chest like a promise I’m making to myself.
I’m going to make this work. Whatever it takes.