Chapter 25
Chapter
Twenty-Five
STEFAN
Dubai was everything I had imagined—dramatic, golden, a photographer’s fever dream.
The city was glamorous in its own right, but there was also a quieter side to Dubai, such as the desert’s emptiness.
The sight of it at dusk made me want to call Amelie and describe it.
I didn’t, because it was past midnight her time, and I was more tired than I had accounted for.
I tried messaging her instead. The texts were delivered, but she read them hours later.
By the time she responded, I was at work.
We were still able to provide each other with the pertinent information.
She was fine. The kids were fine. Work was fine.
There was a distance between us that had never existed before. Unsure what to do, I shipped her expensive gifts. It was the only way to express my love—by spoiling her rotten. I hadn’t received much feedback and had no idea how my affections were being received.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much time to ponder.
The competition buzzed with excitement as young hopefuls gathered around the hotel to perform in front of the three judges.
The skyline behind them was a vision in its own right.
The crew filled twenty memory cards, and I stayed up until two in the morning, culling through the shots that would have made my college self weep with envy.
To celebrate our successful shoot, Ruby arranged a party at Eclipse, a rooftop club on the seventy-third floor of a tower that overlooked the Gulf like a god surveying lesser geography.
The kind of place where the drinks cost what I used to make in a day, and I didn’t even blink.
Matt, Will, Marcus, the rest of the magazine crew, and a handful of regional clients filled the private section.
This was the energy of a city that knew how to celebrate.
The city glittered below in every direction, the water dark and vast beyond the skyline, and the music was the kind that moved through the floor and into your chest before you consciously registered it.
Despite my reservations about leaving Amelie behind, I was, by any reasonable measure, having the time of my life.
It could be the drugs running through my veins.
We each did a line at a private party before arriving at the club.
Cocaine wasn’t just illegal in the UAE, but there was a zero-tolerance policy.
It didn’t seem to be a problem in high society, though.
One of the clients sourced it through a contact, the kind of arrangement that existed only if you knew the right doors to knock on.
Everything felt enormous and manageable at once. That was the thing about cocaine, it made the world feel like it had been built specifically for the person standing in it.
Ruby found me at the railing, looking out at the water.
Two men craned their necks to check her out in her leather pants as she passed.
Men were always staring at Ruby and usually gave me a knowing smirk, assuming we were together.
Everyone at work thought the same. They teased me nonstop about her being my work wife because we were always together.
A part of me reveled in their approving glances, and for pairing me with a renowned rock star, even if it was in their imagination.
Who would have thought my childhood idol would end up becoming a close friend, let alone someone I was romantically linked to?
Nonetheless, I explained to them several times that I wasn’t in an open relationship.
They still grappled with Amelie having a second husband while I remained faithful.
I smiled as Ruby approached me.
“Check your email,” she said, drink in one hand, her phone in the other. “I just sent you an updated itinerary.”
I unlocked my phone. I read the email, frowning. Read the third line twice. Beirut. According to the updated itinerary, we were leaving for Lebanon in the morning, followed by a week in Istanbul.
“What is this? We just got to Dubai. We’re supposed to be here for two more nights.”
“I couldn’t secure a venue for more auditions. We’ll return after Istanbul. We’ll have a venue booked by then.”
“Why are we adding Lebanon to our itinerary?” I stared at the email. “And why am I seeing this now?”
Ruby smiled, tucking her red hair behind her ear. “It was a last-minute thing. Beirut has such a great music scene. One of my friends managed to line up some auditions with some up-and-coming singers. I didn’t want to pass up the opportunity.”
Coke had a way of sharpening certain thoughts while blurring others, and the thought that sharpened now had a shape I didn’t entirely like. Ruby had added Lebanon. Beirut specifically. The city that Amelie had described a hundred times. The city that made her homesick.
And Ruby had added it to our itinerary. Without telling me until it was too late to bring Amelie with me.
“Amelie’s from Lebanon. Did you know that?” I asked, keeping my voice casual.
Her brow furrowed. “That’s a coincidence.”
I looked at the itinerary again. The thought was still there, sharper now, taking on an uncomfortable geometry.
Did Ruby add Lebanon deliberately? Had she routed me to Amelie’s dream destination on purpose, so that I’d be there without her, so that she would find out, so that… So that what, exactly?
I pressed the heel of my hand against my eye socket.
“Are you all right, Stefan?” Ruby asked.
“Amelie’s been wanting to go back to Lebanon.” I kept my voice neutral. “But it never seemed like the right time.”
“Hm.” Ruby placed her phone in her cross-body purse. She had a way of making a single syllable carry the full weight of a counterargument. “And you want to invite her.”
“Of course I want to invite her.”
“To a work trip.” Ruby looked at me now, not unkindly, just practical. “Stefan, on a good day, we work fourteen hours. Permits, setups, the whole production. You won’t have ten minutes to play tourist.”
“I wouldn’t have to,” I argued. “She is from there.”
Ruby sipped on her drink, shaking her head. “It’s a bad idea.”
“Why?”
“Because a lot of these guys have wives and girlfriends. I’m sure they would have loved to bring them along, too.”
“I’ll pay for her fucking ticket. It’s not like I’m putting it on the company dime.”
“You are the company. The president. What does it say that you get paid enough to bring your loved one when no one else can afford it? The optics aren’t great.”
Optics. That was exactly what Kai had said.
“I’m just saying this as your friend,” she continued. “You can obviously do as you please.”
“Fuck, you’re right.” I closed my eyes, yielding. “I’m just not looking forward to telling her about this.”
She shrugged. “Then don’t tell her.”
My face went blank. Amelie and I didn’t lie to each other.
“Look, if you tell her now, the night before we land, she’s going to think you knew about it all along and didn’t invite her purposefully. She’ll just be upset. You can tell her that you didn’t know sooner, but that’s not what she’ll hear. She’ll only hear that you’re visiting Beirut without her.”
The logic of it was airtight. That was the thing about Ruby. She understood relationships with a clear-eyed, unsentimental efficiency that I found refreshing.
“Don’t tell her,” Ruby pressed. “It’ll upset her, then you’ll spend the whole time managing her feelings from eight time zones away.” She punched me playfully. “Which means my work husband will be too emotionally distraught to do his job. None of us wants that. Do you?”
I stared at the email.
She glanced at me sidelong. “It’s one city,” she pressed.
“You’ll take her back to Lebanon some other time.
Do it for an anniversary or something.” She smiled, and it was the kind of smile that made the thing she was suggesting sound entirely reasonable.
“Don’t make this into a whole thing when it doesn’t have to be. ”
I pressed the lock button on my phone and put it in my pocket.
She was right. Of course, she was right. It was work. And the other thought, the paranoid, cocaine-sharpened thought about Ruby routing me through Beirut on purpose, that was the kind of thinking you did when your blood was buzzing, and everything felt slightly too significant.
Why would Ruby do that?
I was paranoid.
Telling Amelie now would do nothing except start an argument neither of us had the bandwidth for. I would take her back. Properly. When I had time to do it right.
The thing about arriving somewhere on a private jet was that the city didn’t know you were coming.
No terminal shuffle. No luggage carousel.
No forty-minute wait for a cab outside arrivals.
Cars were waiting for us on the tarmac when we landed, and it wasn’t long before we were speeding into the city.
Amelie: Hi. Where are you now?
I stared at the message for a moment, then at the highway sign that read “Welcome to Beirut.” My thumb hovered.
Stefan: Istanbul. Just landed. Incredible city.
Amelie: How long are you there?
Stefan: Few days. It’s beautiful here. You’d love it.
Amelie: Sounds amazing.
Stefan: It’d be more amazing if you were here. Miss you, baby.
Amelie: Can you call me later?
I gave her a thumbs-up and pocketed my phone. The lie had arrived before I could talk myself out of it.
Istanbul. I’d picked it because it was the next city on the itinerary. Because it was plausible. Because the alternative—I’m in Beirut—had no version I could deliver without further souring things between us.
What’s a little white lie?