Page 86 of Angels Are Falling

Ruby pushed a shot in my direction, and I indulged in that without question. When the bouncers weren’t looking, we took bumps off the table. Ruby was good company. She didn’t question my pensive mood. Instead, she talked about the contest, the final lineup, and the upcoming Istanbul leg.

I laughed twice, real ones, which I hadn’t expected. The drugs helped. The alcohol helped. The shots helped more.

I was midway through the fourth shot when Ruby leaned across the table to show me something on her phone. A location she was considering for the Istanbul shoot. She leaned in close, angling the screen, and as she did, she put her hand flat against my chest to steady herself. The casual, unthinking contact of someone who had been working in close proximity and had stopped monitoring the distance between them.

It was nothing. Her eyes were on her phone. Mine were on the screen. It lasted approximately three seconds. Yet I felt the shift in the air before I identified its source.

I looked up.

Across the terrace, maybe fifteen meters away, a woman stood, staring at us.

For a moment, I didn’t register it.

Then I did.

Amelie.

In Beirut.

Amelie was in a terracotta dress, her dark hair loose, looking directly at me. She was so insanely beautiful that it was impossible to miss her.

I sat completely still, eyes locked on my wife’s. The shock on her face arrived and stayed. It wasn’t anger. Just the raw, unprocessed expression of someone whose brain was trying to process what shouldn’t exist. Her husband. In Beirut. At a rooftop bar. In the city he had told her was Istanbul.

“Amelie—”

Her eyes moved from my face to Ruby’s hand, still resting against my chest.

Ruby became aware of the situation approximately one second later, but the dynamic had already been established. The leaning in, the hand, the closeness. To anyone standing fifteen meters away, it looked exactly like what it wasn’t.

I stood up. My chair scraped back.

“Amelie.” I said her name again, louder, starting toward her.

Her eyes held mine for exactly one second to make sure I understood how much I had hurt her at that moment. How much I had broken her heart. She turned and walked out of the bar.

I followed and called out her name, but she didn’t stop walking.

“Amelie, stop.” I caught her elbow right as she called the elevator.

“Let go of me,” she said, quiet and controlled, which was worse than her shouting at me.

I released her arm. I didn’t know how to explain this, so I asked the worst possible question. “Why are you here?” It came off accusatory, even though I should be the one on trial for my actions.

“Funny.” She fished out her phone from her purse, sent a text, and then turned to look at me for the first time. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“This isn’t what it looks like.”

She exhaled through her nose. A short, precise sound. “So, you’re not in Lebanon right now after you told me you were in Istanbul?”

Okay, so it was exactly what it looked like.

“Istanbul. Just landed. Incredible city,” she parroted my text.

“You didn’t tell me you were in Lebanon, either.”

“I asked you to call me so I could tell you.” Her eyes were dry, which made it worse. As if I wasn’t worth shedding tears over. “But you straight-up lied to me. You did it so easily.”

“I didn’t want to upset you.”