Too Late to Beg: I'm No Longer Yours novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Candles
Marin makes a birthday wish and opens her eyes to an empty room, then watches her boyfriend, best friend and brother board a flight to Maui with a stranger wearing her ring, and walks out; the hotel booking is dated eight days ago and Troy texts that she will be back by Friday.
Troy pushed twenty-eight candles into the red velvet cake and told me to make a wish.
"Ninety-nine times in your head," he said. "That's the rule. Otherwise it doesn't come true."
I closed my eyes and did it.
I wished for one thing, a reason to tear up the plane ticket in my bag.
When I opened my eyes, the private dining room was empty.
The candles were still burning. Troy's chair was pushed back and his jacket was gone.
My phone buzzed on the tablecloth.
My best friend had added me to a new group chat.
"Happy birthday! Did we get you?" she had written.
Under it, my brother: "Maui, baby! Is that wild enough for you?"
Troy's name lit up the screen with a FaceTime call. I answered.
Four faces crowded the camera at an airport gate. Each of them held up a boarding pass.
"Wheels up in an hour," Troy said.
Danica, who had been my best friend for ten years, was wearing the butterfly clip I had saved up to buy myself.
Next to her, Leigh, the friend who had moved back from LA, held up her hand. She had on the silver heart ring Troy had given me at lunch.
It had been in a box beside my plate. I never saw anyone take it.
Troy had his arm around Leigh's shoulders.
My brother Dean stood between them, swinging our mother's silver necklace from one finger.
He had borrowed it that morning. He said he wanted to hand it back to me at dinner, as a present.
"Leigh loves this thing," Dean said. "She can wear it on the trip. Mom would want it to see the ocean."
"Don't be dramatic, Marin," Troy said, smiling at me. "We're back Thursday."
I hung up.
For six months, ever since Leigh moved back from LA, they had called me stiff. Rigid. The one who read the prices on the menu.
Last month Troy had said it at his own bar, laughing, with a beer in his hand.
"Freeze her out twice and Marin gets the message."
Everyone had laughed with him. I had laughed too.
The candles had burned down to the frosting.
A waiter opened the door and stopped when he saw me alone.
"Ma'am, the room is booked until nine. Here's your check."
It came to five hundred forty dollars.
There was a page of cocktails and appetizers. There was a bottle of champagne for three hundred twenty.
I had not ordered or seen any of it.
Then I remembered the big paper bag of liquor and snacks Danica had hauled onto the gate floor in the video.
They had made my birthday their send-off party, and I was paying for it.
I tapped my card on his machine. The waiter said nothing, and I was grateful.
At the door, the hostess hurried after me.
"Ms. Lowell? Mr. Hollander left this for you."
She gave me a paper bag. Inside was a hotel key card in a sleeve, and a yellow sticky note in Troy's handwriting.
"Booked you a room at the Ritz to make up for tonight."
I stood in the doorway and read it three times.
It wasn't an apology. It was the same thing he always did.
In five years, whenever I looked unhappy, Troy had told me to go cool off. Then he booked me a hotel room and called it giving us space.
My phone buzzed again.
It was Danica, writing to me alone.
"Stop sulking. Troy changed the plan to cheer up Leigh."
"She was diagnosed with anxiety last week. She needed this trip. Please be understanding."
"We didn't tell you because you'd have said no. You hate beaches anyway."
I didn't answer.
She sent a photo. It showed the Sky Club lounge in the airport.
Leigh sat in a leather chair. Troy knelt in front of her, fixing the strap on her sandal.
Then I saw his wrist.
He wore a thin braided leather bracelet. In the middle was a tiny silver charm engraved with the letter L.
Troy did not wear jewelry. He had told me once that it caught on the taps at work.
Danica sent one more line.
"If you love him, don't make it harder on him by acting out."
I slid the sleeve out of the paper bag.
A confirmation slip was folded inside it. The date printed at the top was eight days ago.
He had not booked this room to make up for tonight. He had booked it before the cake, before the candles, before he asked me to make a wish.
He had planned the whole evening, and he had planned where I would sleep afterward.
I took a cab home and packed in twenty minutes.
My laptop. My mother's photo. The folder with the signed note for the forty-eight thousand dollars I had lent Troy for his bar.
The shelf by the door held forty framed pictures of the two of us, over five years.
I looked along it once. Not one of them had his parents in it.
Troy always said they hated visitors. I had never met them.
I left the Ritz key on the counter, next to his spare keys.
In the cab to the airport, I opened my bank app and froze the second card on my account, the one Troy used for the bar's supplies.
So I stepped out.
My phone lit up while I was in the security line.
"You'll be back by Friday," Troy wrote. "You always are."
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