Dane is trying to pull his jacket back on, but she’s pawing at him, pushing her breasts against his chest and pulling his attention from the open door.
“Salma, I’m late,” he mutters. He sounds more amused than annoyed.
“I can’t help it. You know I can’t resist you in a suit,” she says, her voice high-pitched and breathy. I’ve heard her sound like that hundreds of times before.
In bars and restaurants.
At the beginning of new relationships.
In the thick of burgeoning sexual chemistry.
I should crash through the door and break up whatever the hell is going on between them, but all I can think is, How many times has Salma seen Dane in a suit?
A dozen times? Maybe more? We’ve attended weddings together as a group. Salma invited us to her company’s Christmas gala. My grandma’s funeral.
Did they have sex each time? And if so, how the hell did I miss it?
Because standing here in my perfectly fitted white dress, I feel stupid. And I’m not a stupid person. I worked my whole life to avoid being associated with that word.
But somehow, it snuck up on me. While I was making plans for the future, picking out flowers, and choosing between the salmon or the veal.
“Kiss me again,” Salma says in a loud whisper. A whisper that’s begging to be heard, like she knows I’m marooned in this hallway, helpless and watching. “Better yet, fuck me again.”
“I can’t, Sal. She’ll be waiting.”
She. I flinch at the way he throws the word out, so casual and unconcerned. No regard for the woman behind the pronoun.
But I lose focus on him as I wait for Salma’s response. Surely, this is all a sick joke. After all, it’s Salma we’re talking about, right?
The girl who held my hair back during the worst hangovers of my early twenties. The girl who encouraged me to be confident and fearless. The girl who sat up with me late at night and told me to pursue my dream of becoming a chef.
Is this that same girl? Or had I imagined her?
God, it’s amazing how quickly a life can fall apart.
“Will you think of me tonight?” Salma asks, her voice going low and raspy. “When you’re fucking her?”
“I always think of you.”
He laughs carelessly, but then he turns towards the door. The laughter dies on his tongue when he sees me.
Salma follows his gaze. Then, in perfect unison like some silly cartoon, their jaws drop.
She’s the first to speak. “Fuck,” she gasps.
I stare at both of them for a few moments. No one says a thing. A million different responses whirl sharply through my head, but I choose none of them. Silence says more than I ever could.
Instead, I turn and retrace my footsteps, storming back to the first floor. I hike up my ridiculous skirts as I practically sprint across the lobby and rush right out the massive doors of this awful, pretentious, nightmarish yacht club.
My right hand keeps tingling and shaking, but I dismiss it as I abandon my heels on the boardwalk and step out onto the soft sand of the beach.
I keep running and running until my breath comes in short, painful gasps. Then I stop and flop my ass down. As soon as I do, I know that it will take a miracle to get me back on my feet again. Bury me here for all I care.
The sun is setting in the distance. In another life, I would have been on an obnoxiously large yacht, toasting to my new life with my new husband.
I finally look down at my shaking hand and realize that it’s not shaking at all. I’ve been squeezing the bejeezus out of my phone this whole time and it’s vibrating.
I turn it over. My mother’s name is emblazoned on the screen for two seconds before the call cuts out. I check my notifications.