The cab driver practically had to snap his fingers in front of Beth’s face as a signal that they had arrived, so fraught with confusion was she.
‘Miss, we’re here, the Waldorf,’ he said. ‘Miss? Miss? You OK?’
Beth came to attention and stared blankly at the man talking to her from the front seat. She was still trying to process what she had just seen. It didn’t make any sense.
Or did it?
‘Sorry, what?’ she mumbled, honestly forgetting what she had originally set out to do.
‘We’re here, at the Waldorf. It’ll be fourteen dollars.’
Beth shook her head in an effort to get rid of the cobwebs that cluttered her brain and reached for her purse. Pulling a twenty out of her wallet in one absent motion, she handed it to the cabbie, not asking for change, and getting out of the car before he had time to thank her for the tip.
What was it she’d just seen? Danny – with a woman… No, it couldn’t be; Danny wasn’t like that. He wouldn’t cheat on her.
But then she thought again about his recent strange behaviour. She had been well aware that, of late, things had been off with how he acted: those long nights at the office, the fact that he’d jumped all over her that time she’d offered to go through his pockets, not coming near her until he had a shower. Indeed, if Jodi had been here at that moment, assessing the situation with her, she would have been screaming ‘cheater’ at the top of her lungs.
Standing on the path in front of the hotel, the reality once again hit Beth and left her weak and breathless with horror.
Oh my God, he truly was having an affair. This wasn’t just a rough patch in their relationship. Danny, her boyfriend of seven years, was cheating on her.
With that woman. That stunning-looking woman who looked to be Beth’s opposite in every way. Stylish, beautiful, poised… everything she wasn’t.
Feeling crushed afresh, she chided herself then, unable to believe that she had felt so guilty about her steadily growing feelings for Ryan. Now, in light of all this, she found it so embarrassing that she felt stupid for worrying. When she was dealing with all of this internal conflict, Danny had already taken the lower road. He’d betrayed her, kept secrets from her, cheated.
Cheated…
Yet still, even with everything that Beth had just seen, her subconscious was telling her not necessarily to believe her eyes. Maybe she wasn’t seeing the whole picture.Talk to him. Maybe there’s more to it.
But how could she talk to him? How could she tell Danny that she’d seen him on the street with some woman? It would open up a can of worms that Beth wasn’t sure she was ready to deal with.
Now, she peered up at the façade of the hotel, festooned with twinkling holiday wreaths and garlands. Just a taxi ride ago she had wondered, but now Danny’s name was definitely crossed off the list of possible suspects behind this treasure hunt. After all, why would he bother doing something fun and romantic if he was falling in love with someone else?
Falling in love, thought Beth, and a sob caught in her throat. He had fallen in love with me at one time, too.
She thought back to that time in Venice: to their locking their love on that bridge; tossing the key in to the canal below. To that moment when she thought it would be the two of them – for good. So much for the love of a lifetime.
But what did that matter? What did any of it matter now? Against her will, a tear escaped from her left eye, and then her right. She put a hand to her face quickly, afraid of what bystanders on the street would think of her standing in front of the Waldorf crying.
It was almost like a piece of a movie-reel, Beth thought. A tearjerker, to be sure. And she was the loser in all of this – she was the one who was going to be left on her own. She was the one who wouldn’t have a happy ending.
She swallowed hard and took a ragged breath when suddenly her subconscious chimed in again. Maybe this – the reason she was here at all – was leading her to another, better ending?
Beth faced the hotel once again and steeled her features into an expression of resilience. She supposed there was only one way to find out.
Casting Danny from her mind, and instead calling upon Scarlett O’Hara’s famous mantra to ‘think about that tomorrow’, Beth stepped forward towards the building, determined to find the answer to this latest clue.
As she approached the ornate entrance to the famed New York hotel, she looked up at the art deco angel standing sentry above the doorway and was immediately struck by a sense of history – and also longing – as she pushed her way through the revolving door, and was deposited into the opulent lobby.
There was nothing that quite epitomised the luxurious, classic and iconic New York like the Waldorf Astoria, Beth thought. A study in elegance and luxury, with soft lighting from table lamps, dark wood, potted palms, and sumptuous seating, this place had featured in so many of her favourite movies – had been the focal point for so many wonderful New York love stories:Serendipity,Maid in Manhattan,Catch Me If You Can –the romance of it was cemented in her mind. And at this time of year in particular it was even more magical.
She’d always thought that if she ever got married, she’d want it to be somewhere like this, she remembered, as she headed up the marble staircase into the lobby, the cheery sparkle of the huge chandelier above, and twinkling Christmas trees on either side almost mocking her anguish.
She’d decided long ago that such a major romantic moment in her life would surely have to take place in New York rather than back home in Ireland. Looking around, and trying to picture herself making a grand cinematic entrance up these stairs in a beautiful white dress, she realised how empty that thought – that fleeting hope – seemed now.
Of course, marriage had not been a recent focus of Beth’s, not outwardly anyway, though it had been in the back of her mind, a thought that was always present, even though she and Danny hadn’t spoken about it seriously, not in quite a while at least.
But now, that very faint hope of being married to Danny seemed dashed altogether. It didn’t even seem possible. She had to admit that it had been increasingly hard to picture herself in a white dress, walking down the aisle wearing her grandmother’s beautiful vintage shoes, towards her groom in this city. The vision was obtuse and unformed and, unusually for her, Beth could no longer even summon it in her head, almost as if her mind was putting a block on allowing her to consider a future with Danny. It wasn’t even allowing her to think about him. Not after what she had just seen on the street. Not now her heart felt as if it was broken in two.
