My Fiancé Cheated in Our Hotel, and My Father Booked the Room novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Dressing Room

Ingrid hides in the dressing room of 1408 and records Preston and Marisol, who talk about a vote on the shares and say Ingrid will get exactly what she was promised, though no one has promised her anything.

The service door of 1408 opened on Mateo's card without a sound.

The suite was empty and the bed was made.

On the coffee table stood a bottle of champagne in a bucket of fresh ice, two glasses beside it, set out by someone who knew the routine.

There was a dressing room behind the bedroom, with louvered doors and a rack of empty hangers.

I stepped in, pulled the door almost shut and left a slit the width of two fingers.

Then I opened the voice recorder on my phone and set the screen to black.

At 2:58 a card clicked in the front door.

Preston came in first, loosening his tie.

"She's in the building," he said over his shoulder. "She's at a vendor lunch till four. Nobody's looking."

Marisol came in behind him and kicked off her heels at the door.

She dropped her work bag on the armchair, and she was laughing.

I had heard that laugh at my own birthday parties.

"I told Ingrid it was the florist," she said. "Eleven hundred peonies and a truck in the wrong borough. I'm going to hell."

"You're going to a much nicer place first."

He caught her around the waist and walked her backward toward the bed.

I stood very still behind the louvers with my phone pressed to my chest.

I will not write down everything I heard.

I will say it was not the first time, and it was not a mistake, and neither of them had to ask the other what to do.

I will say my hands were steady the whole time, and afterward that scared me more than the rest.

Afterward they lay on the bed in the pale light and talked, with the champagne open.

"Five weeks," Preston said. He sounded happy. "Five weeks, then the vote is behind us and we stop sneaking around this hotel like thieves."

"I hate it," Marisol said quietly.

"I know."

"I hate lying to her, Pres. She brought me soup when I had mono. She flew to my grandmother's funeral."

"She's a good person. That's why it works."

"That is a horrible thing to say."

"It's the truth." He rolled onto his elbow. "Mari. Look at me. Do you want to be sitting in the third row at the wedding, or do you want to be standing next to her at the altar? Because those are the options, and you know why."

She did not answer.

Then she said, in a much smaller voice, "I want to tell her. Before the wedding. Not after."

"Not before the shares vote. That was the deal."

"I know what the deal was."

"Then trust it."

"She's my best friend."

"I know," he said. "That's the part I can't fix."

I held the words "shares vote" in my head and could not place them.

My mother's shares were the only vote I had, and nobody had ever said anything was coming.

Marisol sat up and reached for her bag.

She took out a plain gold band and slid it onto her left hand, and she held it up to the light and sighed.

"Just for the afternoon," she said.

"There she is," Preston said gently.

I read it as a game.

I read it as the cheapest, saddest game, two people pretending in an empty room, and I wanted to put my fist through the door.

Marisol stood up and walked to the dressing room.

She was coming for the robe on the hook, three feet from my face.

She put her hand on the louvered door and pulled it open six inches.

I did not move.

The light from the bedroom fell across my shoes.

She looked right at the hanger rack, and I saw her eyes land on it, and I saw them skip past me.

"Never mind," she said, and let go of the door. "It's wet. I'll leave it."

She went back to the bed.

I stood with the smell of Preston's cologne in my nose and my back against the wall.

"What about Ingrid?" Marisol asked from the bed. "After."

"What about her?"

"What happens to her? When it's done?"

Preston laughed, low and easy.

"Ingrid gets exactly what she was promised," he said.

I had not been promised anything.

I stood in that closet and understood that someone had made a promise on my behalf, and that it was not me.

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