Triplets Make Five

My eyes were already dripping with tears and I felt my entire body prickling with the rush of emotions. Both the reminder of sadness and the sudden exhilaration of renewed hope.

I flipped to the final page in the book, and this time there wasn’t a typed passage or illustration. There was just a note, penned in deep black ink.

‘Daisy, I can’t beg you to understand or forgive me… all I can do is beg that you’ll give me the chance to explain myself. I thought I was protecting you, but it’s obvious to me now that I only managed to hurt you. The truth is, I would have been proud to call you mine that day. I asked for your trust, and I hope you’ll give me the opportunity to earn it. If you’re willing to give me another chance, you can find me where we shared our first date. (That’s right… I called it a date).’

‘Sunday night. You pick the time… I’ll be there, waiting for you. If I don’t see you by midnight, I’ll accept that you’ve moved on and I won’t bother you again.’

I was staring at the words, and then the realization hit me. Sunday night. That’s tonight.

Caleb was waiting for me, right now, at the NoMad Hotel. I clicked on my phone, bringing the home screen to life. It was 11 pm. That meant that I had less than an hour, less than an hour to shimmy out of my sweatpants and make it from Brooklyn to midtown.

I felt a dose of panic added to the emotional stew brewing inside of me, and then I jumped from the bed, downed the rest of my wine, and reached for a pair of jeans and my MetroCard.

In this fairytale, the queen is taking the subway to find her king.

20

CALEB

I pushed up the sleeve of my suit jacket, revealing the face of my Rolex in the dim light of the NoMad Hotel bar.

It was11:59, and I knew she was not coming. I knew it at 6 pm, when I got here. I knew it at 7, when I finished the gin and tonic that I was sipping. I knew it at 8, when the bartender asked if I wanted a magazine and I slipped him a stack of hundreds to leave me the hell alone and keep my glass full. I knew it at 9, and at 10, and I became certain at 11… she wasn’t coming.

Still, I clung to my foolish hope that I’d be wrong. It got harder to hope as the night went on. And then, at 11:59, I had one minute of hope left; one final granule of sand in the hourglass that was tonight.

I pushed the gin and tonic away on its soggy coaster and I leaned forward on the bar, willing myself to stand up and accept defeat. I made an effort. That was all I could do. Maybe it had been wrong to involve Emmy and get her hopes up; watching how eagerly my niece had illustrated my rewritten ‘fairytale’ had only confirmed how much Emmy missed Daisy. I had no idea how I would fill the void left in my own life, let alone in Emmy’s.

12:00 my watch ticked. I slid forward off the barstool and threw a final hundred dollar bill onto the bar, then I turned towards the door and step straight into a black suit.

“I’m terribly sorry, sir,” the man bumbled, taking a step backwards, and I deduce from the gold name badge inscribed ‘concierge’ that he was hotel staff.

“Don’t worry about it,” I mumbled, stepping around him.

“Erm… are you Mr. Preston, by chance?” he called after me.

I glanced back, then I glanced around the rest of the bar. Besides a couple making a baby in a corner booth and a pair of Midwest thirty-something soccer mom tourists who came to New York hoping for their Sex and the City experience, the bar was empty. No other potential Mr. Preston’s there.

“Yes,” I admitted reluctantly.

“This is for you,” he said, handing me an envelope. Then, in a loud whisper, he added, “It’s urgent.”

He waited around for another few seconds, probably to see whether I opened it, before he nodded politely and scurried back towards the hotel’s reception area. I debated whether I should just stuff the envelope in my pocket or tear it open there, and in the end, it was the concierge’s emphasis on the word ‘urgent’ that made me curious enough to pry open the envelope and see what’s inside.

I find a note,

scrawled in red pen ink on hotel stationery:

‘Someone once said that there’s something sensual about hotels; the guests are like strangers exploring a foreign land, and should two of them meet and the mood strike, then pure bliss is just a room key away. Well, here’s to testing that theory. 615.’

I remembered that line, and I remembered who said it. I told Daisy that on our first date, right here at the Hotel NoMad. I glanced into the envelope and even though I already had a pretty good idea of what I’d find inside, I still felt a jolt of excitement when my eyes landed on the black rectangular room key.

Room 615.

It was her.

I slipped the note into my pocket and headed for the elevator. My pulse was like electricity, throbbing as it pulsed through my veins. I was hard as fucking steel by the time the elevator doors slid shut, and even though I had an entire script planned for tonight, the apology, the groveling, the explaining myself and revealing my feelings, I had a hunch that Daisy had other plans for the night.

But when the elevator dinged on floor 6 and the doors slid open, I hesitated. I told Daisy once before that things between us couldn’t be meaningless. And I meant it. If the past week has proven anything, it was that there was something real between us, something dangerous and fragile, but something real nonetheless.