Misery's Company at the Ex's Wedding

The band’s opening chords for the first dance were a physical assault. They vibrated through the cheap white folding chair beneath me and up my spine, a jolt of pure, distilled misery. The air in the gilded ballroom was thick with the cloying scent of gardenias from the centerpieces and the collective, performative joy of two hundred guests. The clinking of champagne flutes sounded like tiny, sharp daggers.

And there they were. Claire, in her acres of lace and tulle, beaming up at a man I’d seen in exactly three Facebook photos. Mark. He worked in finance. He liked craft beer and hiking. He was perfect for her, which was the worst part of all. He spun her gently, and she laughed, a sound that used to be the cornerstone of my happiness but now felt like a betrayal scored for violin.

I’d come alone, of course. RSVP’d for one, because what was the alternative? Bring a date to your ex-fiancée’s wedding? It was a special kind of masochism, agreeing to witness the confirmation of your own failure. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t drink, that I’d be stoic and dignified, a silent ghost at the feast of her new life. That promise had dissolved somewhere between the ceremony and the cocktail hour. My third glass of aggressively mediocre chardonnay sat half-empty on the table, a pale yellow testament to my weakness.

“If you glare any harder, your face might actually crack.”

The voice came from my left, low and smooth, cutting through the saccharine symphony. I turned, the motion stiff. She was sitting at the edge of our assigned table, a place card with the name “Sloane” sitting next to a barely-touched piece of salmon. I hadn’t really registered her before, a blur of dark hair and black fabric in my peripheral misery. Now, I saw her.

She was beautiful in a way that felt like a challenge. Sharp cheekbones, a mouth that seemed perpetually on the verge of a smirk or a sneer. Her eyes, a cool, assessing grey, were fixed on me, not the dance floor. She wore a simple, elegant black dress that screamed New York or maybe Berlin, something entirely too sleek and urban for this Midwestern hotel ballroom. It was the dress of someone who had not come to celebrate.

“I’m not glaring,” I muttered, turning back to the spectacle. Claire’s head was on Mark’s shoulder now. “I’m… observing.”

“Observing with the energy of a scorned Victorian ghost,” she said, taking a sip of her own wine. “Let me guess. You’re the ex.”

The bluntness of it stole my breath. I looked at her again, the heat of shame crawling up my neck. “Is it that obvious?”

“Only to someone playing the same role.” She gestured with her glass toward the dance floor, a tiny, contemptuous flick of her wrist. “The groom. Mark. We dated for two years. He proposed to her six months after we broke up.”

The revelation landed with a shocking thud of solidarity. My own story—four years with Claire, a shared apartment, a shelved wedding Pinterest board, the slow, painful unraveling over her desire for a ‘traditional’ life I couldn’t give her—suddenly felt less uniquely tragic. It was just another data point in the history of romantic failure. This beautiful, bitter woman was a fellow casualty.

“I’m Rachel,” I said.

“Sloane.” She didn’t offer a hand. “The universe has a sick sense of humor, seating us together. The spurned exes table. They probably thought we’d commiserate.”

“Aren’t we?”

She considered this, her grey eyes tracing the line of my profile before returning to the dance floor. “I suppose we are. Though I’d planned on stewing in silence. You make a lot of noise without saying a word.”

“Sorry to disturb your brooding.” The wine was making me brave, or stupid.

A faint, genuine smile touched her lips. It transformed her face, momentarily softening the sharp edges. “Don’t be. It’s refreshing. Most people here are so fucking happy it’s nauseating. Your palpable despair is the most authentic thing in the room.”

We lapsed into a silence that felt different now. Charged. We watched as the dance floor opened up, filling with aunts and uncles and college friends. Every smiling couple felt like a personal rebuke.

“Who is she?” Sloane asked after a while, her voice quiet. “Your ex.”

“Claire. The bride in the giant dress.” “Ah. And what was her reason? The official one.” I swirled the cheap wine in my glass. “She needed something simpler. A husband. Kids. A normal life. I was… the complication.” Sloane snorted, a dry, humorless sound. “Simple. Right. Because planning a wedding for two hundred people is simple. Because merging lives is simple. They just want the brochure version. No messy emotions, no hard conversations.” “What was Mark’s reason?” I asked, emboldened by her derision. Her jaw tightened. “He said I was too intense. That I ‘dimmed his light.’ Can you believe that? What a fucking cliché.” She took a larger swallow of wine. “He wanted a cheerleader, not a partner. Someone to smile at his jokes and not ask where the relationship was going after two damn years.” “So he found one,” I said, nodding toward Claire, who was now laughing at something Mark’s father was saying, her hand resting delicately on Mark’s arm. “So he did.” Sloane’s tone was flat. “And they look perfect together, don’t they? Like two people in a stock photo for ‘happily ever after.’” We sat through the toasts. Mark’s best man told an embarrassing but endearing story about college. Claire’s sister cried through her speech. Each word was a tiny cut. Sloane’s posture grew more rigid with each clinking glass, her fingers drumming a silent, agitated rhythm on the tablecloth. When the DJ started playing a terrible pop song and the dance floor flooded with drunk cousins, she leaned closer. The scent of her—clean, like citrus and cold air—cut through the gardenia fog. “I am going to scream if I have to listen to another Journey song or watch another middle-aged relative do the sprinkler.” “What’s the alternative?” I asked. “Leaving feels like letting them win.” “Does it?” Her gaze was sharp. “Or is staying and torturing ourselves the real defeat? Look at us. We’re prisoners of our own politeness.” She had a point. The weight of the evening, of the forced smile I’d worn through the ceremony, was crushing my sternum. “I don’t know where I’d go. My room is… it’s sad. It smells like carpet cleaner and regret.” A flicker of something crossed her face. Calculation, maybe. Or recognition. “I have a bottle of gin in my room,” she said, her voice dropping, becoming more deliberate. “Top-shelf. The mini-bar is an insult. I smuggled in the good stuff.” I swallowed. This was a pivot, a door swinging open into a different, darker corridor. “Is that an invitation?” She didn’t answer immediately. She watched a bridesmaid stumble in her heels, laughing too loudly. “It’s an alternative to watching them feed each other cake. An alternative to small talk with Mark’s frat brothers about cryptocurrency.” She finally turned her head, her eyes locking onto mine. The intensity there was staggering. “An alternative to this particular flavor of hell.” There was no subtext. It was all text, written in bold, stark letters. The desire to escape was a physical ache in my chest. But escape to what? To get drunk with a stunning, angry stranger in a hotel room? The danger of it, the sheer impropriety, sent a thrill through me that was wholly separate from the wine. My mind raced. This was crazy. Reckless. The kind of thing you read about in a story, not the kind of thing Rachel from accounting did. But Rachel from accounting was also the woman who’d been left behind for a ‘simple’ life. Rachel from accounting was sitting here, hollowed out and furious. That woman wanted the gin. Wanted the distraction. Wanted, with a sudden, shocking clarity, to feel something other than this gutting sorrow. My hesitation must have been plain on my face. “It’s just a drink, Rachel,” Sloane said, but the way her eyes traveled over my face, down to my lips, to the frantic pulse I could feel in my own throat, belied the simplicity of the statement. “No expectations. Just better liquor and worse company than you’d find down here.” That did it. The permission I needed, wrapped in a lie we both saw through. “Okay,” I said, the word leaving my lips before my brain could fully veto it. It felt less like a decision and more like a surrender to gravity. “Lead the way.” We didn’t make a show of leaving. We simply stood, two shadows in a room of light, and slipped through a side door near the kitchens. The sudden quiet of the carpeted hallway was a balm. The air was cooler, smelling of carpet cleaner and distant coffee. The muffled thump of bass from the ballroom receded with every step. Neither of us spoke in the elevator. The mirrored walls reflected our silence back at us—me in my lavender dress, looking flushed and wide-eyed; her in her black armor, a statue of contained tension. I watched our reflections, not each other. The space between us in the elevator car hummed with unspoken possibility. Her room was on the twelfth floor. A corner suite, because of course it was. Sloane moved with a quiet, efficient grace, unlocking the door and holding it open. The room was spacious, impersonal, but her presence had already imprinted on it. A leather jacket was slung over a chair, an expensive-looking laptop sat closed on the desk, and on the dresser sat a full, unopened bottle of Hendrick’s gin, a bottle of tonic, and two crystal-cut glasses from the hotel bar. “See?” she said, locking the door behind us with a definitive click. “Civilization.” She went to the dresser, her movements economical. She poured two generous measures of gin, added a splash of tonic, and handed one to me. Our fingers brushed. Her skin was cool. I took a gulp, the juniper burn a welcome shock, cleaner and more bracing than the wedding wine. “To miserable company,” she said, lifting her glass. “To not being the only ghost at the party,” I replied. We drank. The silence stretched, but it wasn’t awkward. It was thick with everything we weren’t saying. We stood by the window, looking out at the city lights glittering below. The vast bed, neatly made with sterile white sheets, dominated the room. It felt like a third presence, a question mark. “He’s probably telling that story about the time he got lost in the Denver airport,” Sloane said, her reflection ghostly in the dark glass. “He tells it at every party. It’s not even that good a story.” “Claire will be making sure her grandmother is comfortable. She’ll be doing that thing where she laughs with her mouth wide open but her eyes are scanning the room to see who needs a drink.” I took another sip. “I know all her moves. Every single one.” “It’s horrible, isn’t it?” Sloane murmured. “Knowing them better than they know themselves, and it meaning absolutely nothing in the end.” We stood there for a long while, sipping our drinks, emptying the room of small talk. The shared bitterness was a tangible thing, a rope binding us together in the quiet space. I finished my gin, the warmth pooling in my stomach, loosening the tight knots of anxiety. When Sloane turned from the window, her glass was empty too. She leaned back against the cool glass, studying me. “You’re thinking too much.” “I have a lot to think about.” “Sad is boring,” she stated, placing her glass on the windowsill with a soft click. “Anger is better. Anger has… energy.” “What are you angry about?” I whispered, though I already knew. I was angry about the same things. She took a step toward me. Then another. The space between us crackled, shrinking from feet to inches. “I’m angry that he gets this. The perfect day. The approval of everyone. I’m angry that I wasted two years. I’m angry that he’s probably forgotten what my mouth tastes like.” Her eyes dropped to my lips, lingered. “I’m angry that you’re standing here looking like that, and all I can think about is how I want to make you forget your name for an hour.” The air left my lungs. It was the most direct, raw thing anyone had ever said to me. Claire had been all softness and implication. Sloane was a lightning strike. My body responded before my mind could, a flush of heat spreading from my core, my skin prickling with awareness. My nipples tightened against the lace of my bra. The reaction was immediate, undeniable. “I don’t think that’s just anger,” I managed to say, my voice unsteady. “No,” she agreed, closing the final distance. She didn’t touch me. She just stood there, letting me feel the heat radiating from her, smell the clean, citrusy scent of her skin mixed with gin. “It’s not. But anger is a hell of an aphrodisiac. Don’t you think?” I was trembling. With residual grief, with shock, with a desire so sharp it felt like panic. This was madness. A rebound with a stranger at my ex’s wedding. A beautiful, venomous stranger who looked at me like she wanted to devour me and my pain together. “Sloane, I…” The hesitation was real. This was a cliff edge. My heart hammered a frantic rhythm against my ribs. She saw it. Her expression shifted, the hardness melting into something more nuanced, more predatory in its patience. “You what? You think this is a bad idea?” Her hand came up, but still she didn’t touch me. Her fingertips hovered a hair’s breadth from my cheek. I could feel the static charge of their nearness. “Tell me to stop. Tell me you want to go back downstairs and watch them smash cake in each other’s faces. Tell me you’d rather be alone with your misery.” I couldn’t. The words wouldn’t form. Because she was right. I didn’t want to be alone with it. I wanted it consumed, transformed, burned away by a different, more immediate fire. My reluctance wasn’t a ‘no.’ It was the last trembling barrier before the flood. It was the ghost of who I used to be, trying to cling to propriety. “I don’t know you,” I breathed, a final, feeble protest. A slow, devastating smile spread across her face. “Good. Then you have nothing to be disappointed by later.” Her fingertips finally made contact, tracing the line of my jaw. It was the barest touch, a whisper of skin on skin, but it sent a jolt straight through me, settling low in my belly. All the resistance, the nervousness, the doubt, coalesced into a single, piercing point of need. My eyes fluttered shut. “Okay,” I whispered. That single word was the permission she’d been waiting for. Her hand slid into my hair, fingers tangling in the pins, tugging just enough to tilt my head back. And then her mouth was on mine. The kiss was not soft. It was not exploratory. It was a conquest. A claiming. Her lips were demanding, her tongue sweeping into my mouth with a taste of gin and defiance. I moaned into her, my hands coming up to clutch at the sleek fabric of her dress. All the bitterness, the jealousy, the heartbreak—it all channeled into that kiss, a furious, desperate exchange. She kissed me like she was erasing something, and I kissed her back like I was trying to be erased. When we broke apart, we were both breathless. Her grey eyes were dark, pupils blown wide. “Tell me you want this,” she commanded, her voice a rough scrape. “I need to hear you say it.” “I want this,” I gasped. The truth of it was terrifying. “I want you. Please.” That ‘please’ did something to her. A low sound escaped her throat. Her hands went to the zipper at the back of my dress. “This lavender atrocity has to go.” She made quick work of it, the sound of the zipper loud in the quiet room. She peeled the dress from my shoulders, letting it pool at my feet. The cool air of the room hit my skin, raising goosebumps. But her gaze was hotter. I stood before her in just my simple ivory bra and panties, feeling more exposed than I ever had. Her eyes raked over me, not with clinical appraisal, but with a hungry appreciation that made my knees weak. She took her time, her gaze traveling from the slope of my shoulders, down over the swell of my breasts held in lace, the curve of my waist, the pale skin of my thighs. “Beautiful,” she murmured, more to herself than to me. Then her own hands went to the single strap of her dress. It was a simple matter of slipping it from her shoulder. The black fabric whispered to the floor, revealing a lean, elegant body in matching black lace. She was all pale skin and sharp angles—the elegant line of her collarbone, the subtle definition of her abdomen, the dramatic cut of her hip bones. She was a sculpture of contained power and grace. She stepped out of the dress, kicking it aside. She closed the distance again, her bare skin pressing against mine. The feeling was electric. The warmth of her torso against mine, the softness of her breasts meeting mine through the lace, the brush of her thighs. Her mouth found my neck, biting and sucking at the sensitive skin there, surely leaving a mark. Her hands slid down my back, over the curve of my ass, her fingers digging in slightly as she pulled me hard against her. I could feel the strength in her, the controlled aggression, and the firm, lean muscle of her body. “The bed,” she said, her voice muffled against my skin. I went, scrambling back onto the crisp white duvet, the fabric cool against my back. She followed, a panther claiming its territory. She didn’t lie down beside me. She knelt over me, straddling my thighs, looking down at me with that intense, focused gaze. Her own breathing was slightly elevated. In the soft light from the window, I could see the faint dusting of freckles across her chest, the tight bud of a nipple visible through the black lace of her bra. Her hands settled on my waist, thumbs stroking my hip bones through the silk of my panties. “You’re thinking about her,” Sloane stated, not a question. I was. A flash of Claire’s smile, the way she’d say my name when she was annoyed, had flickered behind my eyelids. Guilt lanced through me, hot and sharp. “I’m sorry, I—” “Don’t be,” she interrupted, leaning down until her lips were a breath from mine. Her scent enveloped me—gin, clean skin, and something uniquely her. “Think about her. Think about him. Let it fuel you. Then I’m going to make you forget they exist.” Her mouth descended on mine again, swallowing my gasp. One hand left my hip and skimmed up my ribcage, the touch feather-light yet searing. She found the clasp of my bra. With a practiced flick, it came undone. She peeled the fabric away, her mouth leaving mine to trail a searing path down my throat, over my collarbone. She took her time, her lips and tongue mapping my skin, until she finally took a nipple into her mouth. I cried out, my back arching off the bed. Her tongue was relentless, circling, sucking, biting just on the edge of pain. It was nothing like the tender, almost reverent way Claire had touched me. This was about sensation, about obliteration. Her free hand slid down my stomach, fingers slipping beneath the waistband of my panties, finding the wet heat waiting for her. I was soaked, embarrassingly, overwhelmingly so. My hips bucked against her hand involuntarily. She made a satisfied, humming sound against my breast, the vibration traveling straight to my core. “So ready,” she whispered, her fingers tracing through my slickness, not entering, just stroking, teasing through the folds. “All that misery, and here you are, dripping for me. Does it feel wrong?” “Yes,” I moaned, because it did. It felt transgressive and perfect and like the only thing that made sense in the world. “Good.” Finally, she pushed a finger inside me, and I gasped, my inner muscles clamping around her. She was not gentle. She set a hard, deliberate rhythm, her thumb finding my clit and circling with relentless pressure. “Let it feel wrong. Let it feel like revenge.” And it did. With every thrust of her fingers, with every scrape of her teeth on my skin, the image of the wedding downstairs fractured. The pain was being siphoned out, transformed into a brutal, building pleasure. I was panting, clutching at the duvet, my heels digging into the mattress. The room faded away—the city lights, the sterile furniture, the distant memory of a wedding march. There was only this: the pressure of her hand, the smell of sex and her perfume, the dark intensity of her eyes watching me. “Look at me,” Sloane commanded. I forced my eyes open, meeting her storm-grey gaze. She was watching me unravel, her own expression fierce with concentration and arousal. A faint sheen of sweat glistened on her upper lip. Seeing her watch me, seeing the raw power and the naked desire in her face, pushed me higher, closer to the edge. “I’m going to come,” I warned, my voice a broken thing. “I know,” she said, and curled her fingers inside me, pressing against a spot that made stars explode behind my eyes. The orgasm ripped through me, violent and shocking in its intensity. It was a wave of pure, mindless sensation that obliterated every thought, every memory. I screamed, my body bowing off the bed, my fingers tangling in her dark hair as I held her to me. It felt less like pleasure and more like an exorcism, a convulsive purge of everything I’d been carrying. As I crashed back down, trembling and breathless, Sloane slowly withdrew her hand. She brought her glistening fingers to her mouth, never breaking eye contact, and sucked them clean. The obscenity of the gesture, performed with such cool deliberation, made me shiver again. Before I could recover, she was moving, shifting her body down the bed. She hooked her fingers in the sides of my panties and pulled them down my legs, discarding them. Then she pushed my thighs apart, settling between them. Her own lace panties were dark with her arousal. “My turn,” she said, her voice husky. “I want you to taste my anger.” She lowered herself onto my mouth. She was already wet, her own arousal a potent, musky flavor. I hesitated for a split second, overwhelmed, but then my hands came up to grip her hips, pulling her down harder. If this was the transaction, the price of my own oblivion, I would pay it gladly. I licked and sucked, following her hissed instructions—“Harder,” “Right there,” “Don’t stop”—learning the rhythms that made her thighs tremble and her stomach muscles clench. Her bitterness was there, in the tension of her body, in the sharp commands, but it was fused with a desperate, driving need. I lost myself in the act of serving her, of being the instrument of her release. Her fingers tangled in my hair, not guiding, but possessing, holding me in place. The scent of her, the taste, the sounds she made—it was all profoundly intimate, a far cry from the angry transaction it was supposed to be. When she came, it was silent but for a sharp, punched-out gasp. Her body went rigid above me, then shuddered violently. I felt the pulses of it against my tongue. She collapsed to the side, breathing heavily, one arm flung over her eyes. For a long moment, we just lay there in the wreckage of the bed, the only sounds our ragged breathing and the faint, constant hum of the hotel’s HVAC. The world, the wedding, it all felt a million miles away. The misery was still there, but it was quiet now, sated and sleepy, a dormant beast instead of a raging one. I felt hollowed out, scraped clean, and utterly exhausted. Eventually, Sloane shifted, propping herself up on an elbow to look at me. The harshness had bled from her face, leaving behind something more contemplative, almost vulnerable. Her hair was a mess, her lipstick was gone, and she looked real in a way she hadn’t before. “Feel better?” she asked, a trace of wryness returning to her voice. I managed a weak smile. My body felt like liquid. “Strangely, yes. I don’t feel much of anything. It’s… quiet.” “Good.” She reached out and traced the love bite she’d left on my neck, her touch now oddly gentle. “A temporary ceasefire with the ghosts.” We cleaned up in silence, a strangely domestic interlude in the sterile bathroom. We didn’t speak about what came next. We just found our way back to the bed, under the covers this time. She turned off the light, plunging the room into darkness save for the city glow around the edges of the curtains. I expected her to turn away, to claim her side of the bed. Instead, she shifted closer, her back to my front, and guided my arm around her waist. The intimacy of the spooning position, after the sheer carnality of what we’d just done, was more disorienting than the sex itself. Her body was warm and solid against mine. I held her, my nose buried in the dark silk of her hair, inhaling the scent of sex and hotel shampoo. “They’re probably doing the bouquet toss,” she murmured into the darkness, her voice sleepy. “Mmm. Claire would be aiming for her cousin Jessica. She’s been desperate to get married since she was sixteen.” A low chuckle vibrated through her. “Mark’s frat brother Steve will probably catch the garter. He’ll make a show of putting it on some poor bridesmaid’s leg. It’ll be awkward and everyone will laugh too loudly.” We painted the scene together, exorcising it with shared, cynical detail. The sharp edges of our pain were blunted, wrapped in the strange comfort of our mutual understanding and physical exhaustion. We talked a little more, in fragments—about the terrible wedding band, about the suspicious chicken entrée, about the sheer absurdity of the entire institution when your heart was broken. It was easier to talk in the dark, our bodies tangled. “Thank you,” I whispered, the words slipping out before I could question them. She was quiet for so long I thought she’d fallen asleep. Then her hand found mine where it rested on her stomach, and she laced our fingers together. Her grip was firm. “Don’t,” she said softly. “It wasn’t a kindness. It was a mutually assured distraction.” But she didn’t let go of my hand. We fell asleep like that, two strangers anchored together in the dark.

I woke to pale morning light filtering through the gaps in the curtains. For a blissful, disoriented moment, I didn’t remember where I was or why. Then I felt the warmth of the body beside me, saw the dark hair fanned across the pillow, and it all rushed back: the wedding, the misery, Sloane. She was still asleep, her face relaxed in slumber, the sharpness softened. In the grey light, she looked younger, almost innocent. The marks I’d left on her shoulder and the vivid bruise on my neck in the bathroom mirror last night told a different story. We were a map of each other’s temporary madness. Carefully, I extricated myself from the bed, the cool air raising goosebumps on my naked skin. I found my discarded dress and underthings, feeling a surreal disconnect as I put them back on. The lavender fabric felt like a costume from another life. I was quiet as I dressed, not wanting to wake her. This wasn’t the kind of encounter that demanded a morning-after conversation. It had been what it was: a night-time pact between two wounded creatures. Daylight felt like an intrusion. I was scribbling a note on hotel stationery—just Thank you for the gin. -R—when I heard the sheets rustle. “Running away?” Her voice was morning-rough, devoid of its usual sharp edge. I turned. She was sitting up, the sheet pooled around her waist, watching me. Her grey eyes were clear, unreadable in the flat morning light. “I have a checkout time,” I said, which was true, but also a coward’s answer. She nodded, accepting it. “Right.” An awkwardness descended, the daylight exposing the raw, transactional nature of what we’d done. The shared darkness and shared enemy had receded, leaving two strangers in a rumpled hotel room. She looked at me, fully dressed, and I looked at her, naked in the bed we’d shared. The distance between us felt vast. “Last night…” I began, not knowing how to finish. Was I supposed to say it was nice? Meaningful? It was neither of those things. It was necessary. “Was last night,” she finished for me, her tone closing the door on sentiment. She swung her legs out of bed. She stood, gloriously unselfconscious in her nakedness, and walked to the dresser. She poured the last finger of gin into a glass and knocked it back with a wince. A morning rite. She turned, leaning against the dresser, arms crossed over her chest. “It served its purpose. For me, at least.” “For me too,” I said quickly, needing her to know that, needing to affirm the pact one last time. A faint, ghost of her smirk returned. “Good. Then we’re square.” She paused, her eyes flicking over my reassembled self—the lavender dress, the repaired hair, the woman trying to look put-together. “For what it’s worth, Rachel… you’re not a complication.” She said it plainly, a simple statement of fact. “You’re a fucking force of nature. She was an idiot.” The words landed like a blow to the chest, but a healing one. They weren’t romantic. They weren’t sweet. They were an assessment, a final piece of battlefield triage from a fellow soldier. They were exactly what I needed to hear, and because they came from her—this sharp, angry, beautiful stranger who owed me nothing—I almost believed them. “And Mark was a coward,” I replied, the words feeling true and solid as I said them. That earned me a real smile, small but genuine. “Damn right.” There was nothing left to say. The note on the dresser seemed stupid now. I picked up my small clutch. “Goodbye, Sloane.” “Goodbye, Rachel.” I let myself out, the door clicking shut with a finality that echoed in the empty hallway. The elevator ride down was quiet. The lobby was bustling with departing wedding guests, some looking worse for wear, others still buzzing with residual festivity. I saw no one I knew. I checked out, handed over my key card, and stepped out into the bright, ordinary morning. The sun was warm on my face. The bruise on my neck throbbed gently under the high collar of my coat. I stood on the hotel steps for a moment, taking in the world. The misery wasn’t gone. The heartbreak over Claire, over the life I’d thought I’d have, was a real thing that would need to be faced, in therapy and in quiet, sober moments. It was a suitcase I still had to carry. But it was no longer a suffocating fog. It was a fact, a scar. And alongside it, woven into the same night, was another memory: the taste of gin and defiance, the feeling of powerful hands on my skin, the look in a pair of storm-grey eyes as they watched me break and remake myself. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t a new beginning. It was a dark, perfect, and necessary detour. A shared defiance that left me hollowed out, yes, but also strangely clean. We had used each other, brutally and honestly, and in doing so, had granted each other a temporary pardon. Misery had loved company. And for one night, in a hotel room high above the wreckage, that company had been everything. I hailed a cab, gave the driver my address, and didn’t look back at the hotel once.