17. Victoria
— ? —
Victoria
I used the key card a week later.
For seven days, I had carried it with me everywhere.
In my purse during the day, tucked into the small pocket where I usually kept my lipstick.
In my hand at night, when sleep wouldn’t come and I found myself tracing the edges of it in the darkness, feeling the weight of what it represented.
Sometimes I would take it out during lunch and just look at it, this small rectangle of plastic that held so much possibility, so much risk, so much of everything I had been afraid to want.
Daniela noticed, of course. She always noticed.
“You’re going to wear a hole in that thing,” she said on the third day, watching me turn the card over and over in my fingers while we sat on her couch pretending to watch television.
“I’m not ready.”
“I know you’re not.” She reached over and squeezed my hand. “But you will be. When you are, you’ll know.”
I didn’t feel ready on Thursday evening either, but something had shifted inside me during the day.
I had been sitting at my desk at work, staring at a spreadsheet that refused to make sense, when I realized I was tired.
Not tired of fighting for my marriage, not tired of trying to figure out what I wanted.
Tired of being afraid. Tired of letting fear make my decisions for me.
So I drove to the hotel.
The building looked exactly the way I remembered it.
Tall and elegant, all glass and stone and the kind of understated luxury that whispered money rather than shouting it.
The kind of place that had cost more per night than I had made in a week when we were first married, back when I was still working the front desk at a gallery and Timothy was just starting to make a name for himself.
We had splurged on it anyway. Timothy had insisted, back when insisting on things meant romantic gestures rather than work obligations.
He had said that the first week of our marriage deserved to be special, deserved to be something we would remember forever.
I had laughed and told him we couldn’t afford it, and he had kissed me and said he didn’t care, and we had spent seven days in this hotel pretending we were the kind of people who belonged there.
Now I was back, alone, with a key card in my hand and no idea what I was walking into.
I took the elevator to the top floor.
The ride felt endless. Each floor that ticked by on the display gave me another chance to change my mind, to press the button for the lobby, to walk away before I saw whatever Timothy had prepared.
But I didn’t press the button. I stood there with my back against the elevator wall, watching the numbers climb, feeling my heart rate climb with them.
The key card worked on the penthouse suite.
I stood in the hallway for a long moment after the light turned green, my hand on the door handle, unable to push it open. What was waiting for me on the other side? What had Timothy done with this space, this suite that held so many memories of who we used to be?
I pushed open the door and stepped inside.
The room was beautiful, all cream and gold, soft lighting that made everything glow like it was touched by sunset.
A massive bed faced floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the city, the same view I had woken up to every morning of our honeymoon, the same view I had memorized while Timothy slept beside me and I wondered how I had gotten so lucky.
But that wasn’t what made me stop breathing.
The terrace.
I could see it through the glass doors, transformed into something that made my chest ache with recognition.
String lights were draped along the railing, the same kind we had bought at a dollar store during our honeymoon because we wanted the balcony to feel magical and couldn’t afford anything fancier.
Candles flickered on every surface, their flames dancing in the evening breeze.
I walked toward the terrace, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. My hand trembled as I pushed the glass doors open and stepped outside.
On an easel beside the railing sat something I hadn’t seen in years.
The honeymoon itinerary I had written by hand at twenty-four.
I had forgotten about that itinerary. Or maybe I had made myself forget, because remembering it hurt too much.
I had spent hours putting it together in the weeks before our wedding, mapping out every day of our honeymoon with the kind of optimistic detail that only someone young and desperately in love could manage.
It had been full of cheap adventures, because we were young and broke and didn’t care about expensive restaurants or fancy tours.
Museums with free admission days. Picnics in the park with sandwiches I had made the night before.
A walking tour of the city that I had planned out using a library book because we couldn’t afford a guide.
Each day had been carefully organized, with notes in the margins about what time things opened and how long it would take to walk between locations.
Timothy had teased me about it at the time. Called me adorably Type A. Kissed the furrow between my brows and said he would follow me anywhere, even if anywhere was a free museum and a park bench.
Now that same itinerary was framed. Preserved behind glass like something precious, like something worth keeping.
And beside each stop, in Timothy’s handwriting, was something new.
The gelato place - you laughed so hard you cried when the scoop fell off your cone and landed on your shoe, and I almost told you I loved you right there in the middle of the street but I was too nervous, too afraid you would think it was too soon, even though we were already married and I had loved you from the first moment I saw you.
The fountain you made a wish at - you wouldn’t tell me what you wished for no matter how many times I asked. I wished you would never stop smiling at me like that. I wished I would never give you a reason to stop.
The morning I watched you sleep - I woke up before dawn and just lay there looking at you, and I decided then that I would never need anything else. That you were everything. And then I spent five years proving myself a liar.
I pressed my hand to my mouth, but the sob escaped anyway.
“I know it’s not enough.”
I turned, my vision blurred with tears.
Timothy was standing by the outdoor kitchen area, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, a pan in his hand. He was cooking. Badly, from the looks of it. Whatever was in the pan had curdled into a lumpy gray mess, and he had flour on his shirt, on his forearms, even a smear of it across his cheek.
“On the honeymoon,” he said, his voice rough with something that sounded like hope and fear tangled together, “you told me you would rather eat something I ruined than something I bought. You said it meant more when I tried, even when I failed. So I’ve been practicing.
” He glanced down at the pan, and something that might have been embarrassment flickered across his face. “I haven’t gotten much better.”
A laugh escaped me, unexpected and raw, tearing out of my chest before I could stop it.
“Please tell me that’s not supposed to be carbonara.”
“It was supposed to be carbonara an hour ago.” He set the pan down on the counter, admitting defeat. “Now it’s something else entirely. I’m not sure what. Possibly a war crime.”
I crossed the terrace, my heels clicking against the stone, and took the spatula from his hand. Looked down at the contents of the pan, at the congealed mess of pasta and what might have once been eggs and bacon.
“This is unsalvageable.”
“I know.”
“You’ve somehow made it both rubbery and raw at the same time. I didn’t even know that was possible.”
“A unique achievement.” He was watching me with that same expression he had worn at the aquarium, like I was something miraculous, like he couldn’t quite believe I was standing in front of him. “I considered it a personal challenge.”
I laughed again, and this time he laughed with me. Really laughed, the sound of it filling the terrace, mixing with the distant noise of the city below. For the first time in years, we were laughing together, at something stupid and small and completely unimportant, and it felt like coming home.
The laughter faded slowly, naturally, leaving behind a silence that was warm instead of heavy.
His hand came up to my face, his fingers brushing against my jaw, his thumb wiping away a smear of flour I hadn’t realized was there. I must have gotten it on me when I took the spatula, or maybe it had transferred from his hand when he touched me.
His thumb stayed.
Rested against my cheek, gentle and warm, not demanding anything.
The air between us shifted, thickened, became something charged with possibility.
“When did you stop being the man from that week?” The question came out before I could stop it, before I could decide whether I really wanted to know the answer. “The man who wrote those notes, who remembered those moments. When did he become the man who stopped coming home?”
He didn’t flinch from the question. Didn’t pull away or make excuses or try to deflect. He just stood there, his thumb still resting against my cheek, and faced it head-on.
“I don’t know the exact day.” His voice was quiet, thoughtful.
“And not knowing is what terrifies me most. There wasn’t a moment where I decided to become someone different, some defining choice where I picked work over you.
It was smaller than that. More insidious.
” His thumb traced my cheekbone slowly, reverently.
“It was a thousand small choices. Staying late instead of coming home because there was always one more thing that needed to be done. Taking you for granted because you never complained, because you were always so understanding, because I told myself your patience meant I had time. Letting the silence grow between us because silence was easier than facing what I had become.”
“And now?”