Beth lay wide awake in bed most of the night, working the clue over and over in her head, racking her brains trying to figure out if there was somewhere else she was supposed to go, something that she’d missed.
She even summonedOne Fine Dayon Netflix and watched it through from beginning to end, staying up until the wee hours of the morning and considering every possible New York location at which the movie had been filmed, searching for potential relevance.
She was so sure that she had got it right again: that the answer to the clue lay with the Bethesda Fountain. That was the turning point in the movie – it had to be where she was supposed to head. Maybe, if nothing else worked, she would return tomorrow and scope it out again.
Finally catching some sleep around three o’clock in the morning, she rested fitfully until her phone buzzed at eight, signalling an incoming text. While she expected some sort of excuse from Danny again that morning, she was surprised when instead it turned out to be Ryan. He was wondering if she was able to steal away for a bit and grab some brunch. Obviously he wasn’t on shift in Carlisle’s today either.
Not expecting to see Danny any time soon – he was sure to keep up the ‘working late at the office farce’ – Beth agreed to Ryan’s proposal. She had nothing else planned for her day off.
Though she wondered now if this out-of-the-blue request meant that she had indeed missed something yesterday, and that as a result Ryan needed to drop some hint – inadvertent or otherwise – to help spur her on in her search.
Jumping from bed, she agreed to meet him outside the building in half an hour. Her decision to allow him to come that close to her apartment was based on the knowledge that Danny was likely waking up in his lover’s arms right now.
The notion made her reckless. ‘I can’t think about that now,’ she told herself as she carefully applied her lipstick in the bathroom mirror. ‘Don’t think about it, you’ll drive yourself crazy.’
So she turned her thoughts to Ryan, and took extra care as she styled her hair and chose what to wear. She selected a fluffy red cashmere sweater and a great pair of skinny jeans, and, even in light of her restless night’s sleep, she had to admit she looked pretty good.
As she stepped into the crisp cold of the morning outside her building, she turned to the left and immediately saw Ryan strolling her way from the direction of the subway. She waved at him and couldn’t deny that her heart sped up just a little as he returned the greeting.
‘Well hello, gorgeous, fancy meeting you here,’ Ryan grinned, dimple in full view. He reached forward and enveloped her in a friendly – albeit borderline intimate – hug, and then took a step back, a look of obvious admiration on his face. ‘Wow, you look beautiful today, Beth. How on earth did your guy even let you out of the house?’
She knew he was joking – laying it on thick – but she still felt a small pang of guilt bubble up in her throat. Of course he had no idea what had happened yesterday. Should she tell him? Was it a kind of betrayal to spill her secrets? To implicate Danny without talking to him first?
Beth didn’t know. She was completely unsure of proper protocol here, but then the image of Danny and that woman entered her mind and she remembered her vow of entering the ‘next act’ in her life.
‘Well, Danny has no idea how I look, actually. And frankly, he probably wouldn’t care,’ she replied airily. ‘So where are we going for brunch?’
Ryan was obviously curious, and Beth saw something hungry in his gaze. ‘Hold on, you don’t get off that easy,’ he said. ‘What’s happening?’
She shrugged and tried to look evasive. ‘Oh, it’s a long story. I’ll tell you once we get in out of this cold. But you have to keep it a secret, OK?’ Suddenly realizing she was nervous to be standing out in front of her building gossiping about Danny, she had the urgent desire to leave – get out of there – before she saw anyone she knew: Billy, Mrs Lovejoy, Courtney, anyone who might question what she was doing. ‘Come on, let’s catch a cab.’
And just as Ryan helped Beth into a cab, a bike messenger pulled up to the front of the building with a package.
***
Regardless of any initial worry or hesitation she might have had, Beth was soon telling all over brunch. She related to Ryan everything she had seen on her way to the Waldorf yesterday, which elicited appropriate expressions of shock and indignation.
Of course, it also caused Ryan to do something else – something she wasn’t prepared for just yet – move his chair closer to her and put his arm around her. It wasn’t a pushy gesture – more sympathetic – and he was just trying to comfort her, she knew, but there was still something that was very intimate about the action.
Beth wasn’t ready for that sort of thing yet. Even though she felt the electricity between them, she reminded herself of her beloved grandmother’s mantra that two wrongs don’t make a right.
She couldn’t overlook that – not just yet, no matter how tempting it was to get closer to Ryan. Beth noticed that he kept looking at her lips, and was now barely disguising his attraction to her, but she also knew that was because of the information she had just provided. She had introduced the possibility of trouble in her relationship and Ryan was seeing it as an invitation.
And why shouldn’t he? she supposed. He’d surely noticed the sparks between them as well.
‘Beth, dump him,’ he said suddenly, his gaze lingering on her face. ‘You don’t deserve to be cheated on. The guy should have his head examined. You know that, don’t you? I swear, if I had a girlfriend like you—’
Her heart skipped a beat.
‘If I had someone like you,’ he continued, shaking his head ‘it would be downright impossible for me to evenlookat another woman. Honestly, leave him.’
Beth blushed and looked down into her lap, unsure how to respond, when she felt Ryan put a finger under her chin and direct her gaze to his. ‘I mean it.’
She swallowed hard.Oh God, is he going to kiss me?He was getting closer, leaning in; hewasgoing to kiss her. And right then Beth realised that she wanted to be kissed. Indeed, she could feel the attraction pulsating throughout her body.
But then, something dawned on her. The next act of her story. It couldn’t start like this.
Two wrongs don’t make a right…
