FAITH
After a while, Aiden’s words start to blur together. I stop listening. There’s those whiskey eyes, that mouth that made me feel like I was coming out of my body. It doesn’t feel right being in this room.
Virginia is so still I almost forget that she’s in here. She’s the most dressed down I’ve ever seen her, like she’s trying to blend in. But she’ll never blend in, even if she wears jeans and a simple top. Her dazzling diamond earrings wink at me in a cruel way. Did she look this way when they met? Did they meet at a bar like I did? Was he working that night?
I know the answer in my heart. He couldn’t have been, because I don’t think even Aiden could have faked that kind of sadness.
It doesn’t matter. Even if I could forget the fact that he’s an escort, I can’t ignore that he lied to me. That this picture is how I found out. Would he have told me eventually?
He says that they called things off, that moment captured in this overexposed photograph.
Of all people, why did it have to be her?
I can’t listen to him tell me he loves me because it doesn’t mean anything now. All of that love, that stupid head-in-the-clouds love I had this morning is gone. So I just start talking. I throw the photo on the table. Her wine glass is there with her lipstick on it.
“Don’t look at me. Don’t text me. Don’t call me. Pretend I don’t exist.”
I walk out that door and he doesn’t stop me.
But Virginia does.
God, he calls her Ginny.
I’m going to be sick. I hit the door close button, but she gets in anyway.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” I tell her, rage foaming at my mouth.
“Faith, please. You have to understand.”
I press the ground floor button, but the elevator stops at the rooftop balcony level. I need to get out. These metal walls are too close, too tight. Everything about this enclosed space makes me want to scratch my skin raw. Her perfume is too cloying. Does he like to smell her? Her freshly manicured nails, the red blush on her cheeks, catch the hazy yellow light.
“You knew,” I say, pushing through the confused hotel guests that get in. I step out and she follows me. “Yesterday at the nail salon. You knew it was Aiden. That look on your face.”
Even with her splotchy, teary-eyed face, she manages to look regal. Women like her, they can have everything. Why did it have to be this one thing, too?
“I figured it out,” she says. “You have to know—”
“I don’t have to know anything. It’s done. I’ll see you with your husband at the masquerade ball.” All I can think is that I need to run. But I can’t stand here waiting for the next elevator. Angie’s working tonight. She’s at the rooftop bar. At least, I hope she is, because I know that one look from Angie and Virginia Moreaux will shrivel into her sensible Chanel loafers.
But she’s relentless, and she’s right beside me as I pull the glass door open and step into the pool area. Angie’s at the bar, but there’s a swarm of people trying to get drinks. The sun is setting, casting cotton candy light over the white furniture of the rooftop. The pool has a dozen tipsy bodies in the shallows and one on an ice-cream-shaped floaty in the deep end, so I stand there.
“My husband is cheating on me,” she says.
She holds herself so elegantly, like she’s used to standing beside someone who is angry and fuming at her. Like I am right now.
I glance around to see if anyone is paying attention to us, but almost everyone is drunk and in their own worlds. For her to say that out loud—she must really want me to listen to her.
“Does that make it okay that you did the same?” I ask her.
“We never slept together, if that means anything to you,” she says.
“It doesn’t.”
“I was lonely and angry. I was tired of the same old song and dance. I felt trapped by everything I’m supposed to be. Aiden happened to be there and he just shines. From the inside out.”
I want to say that I know that. I know that Aiden feels like sunshine on my skin. That I bask when I’m with him. But my lips tremble and my throat burns, so I don’t chance speaking.
“The day Aiden and I called things off, I already knew he’d met someone. That was you. He shouldn’t have kept things from you and I’m not saying to forget all of this, but to believe when he says he loves you.”
I take a step closer to her so she can look into my eyes. “Love isn’t enough.”
She shakes her head. “Sometimes it can be.”
I hate that this woman is here telling me all these things, as if she knows my life. But I spent all morning asleep. My body shut down at the sight of that photo, and all of a sudden, everything was too much to process. When I woke up, I crumbled the whole thing up. Then I grabbed it from the trash.
Everyone was trying to get in touch with me, but all I could do was scream and cry because I should have known. I should have been smarter.
When I glance over my shoulder, Angie’s eyes are wide. She’s making her way to me.
The worry in her eyes and the sadness in Virginia tugs at my anger. It deflates, and now all I’m left with is the hurt part. It’s hard to talk to her because I don’t want her pity. I don’t want her life lesson.
“Today,” I say, taking one last step so we’re shoulder to shoulder, “today it’s not enough.”
I go.
I don’t look back. She doesn’t follow.
And neither does Angie.