Then he pointed toward the waiters, motioning for them to start dinner service.
“I’m going to step outside with Sunny and Violet to deal with this silliness, if everyone wants to start on their cacio e pepe. And please save me some!”
Except then everyone’s phones beeped again.
A new tweet.
What I was doing while Meredith Landy was cooking. #part2 #herhusband
This photograph hadn’t been taken at the studio. It was taken in a hotel room in Aspen—a naked photograph. I was just out of the shower, looking at myself in the mirror, and if you looked closely you could see a man (visible in the mirror’s reflection) taking the photograph from the doorway.
Ryan.
The room went silent. Movie-theater-at-a-good-movie silent, except for the ambient music playing. Which, I swear, got louder.
My face turned bright red. I wouldn’t look at Danny—I didn’t want to look at anyone—until I figured out something to say so they’d stop looking at me like I was a stranger. Only a stranger, after all, would cheat on her husband—on their friend. And only a stranger would be involved in what was shaping up as fraudulent behavior across the board: recipe-stealing, husband-borrowing, infidelity.
Meredith turned toward her husband, her voice hushed. “What’s this, Ryan?”
For a moment, Ryan—yes, Ryan—was speechless. He shook his head, like this was all ridiculous. Then he managed to find his words.
“That isn’t me!” He pointed at the photo. He was pretty hard to make out. He motioned in my direction, urging me to jump in. “Sunny, tell them!”
I felt my throat close up. You would think that with all my experience lying, I would easily lie in this moment.
But the day had taken its toll.
I took a breath. And then, I told the truth.
“I’m just going to need a minute,” I said. “I’m a little too mortified that there is a naked photograph of me circulating online to defend against a ridiculous story as to how it got there.”
I didn’t dare look toward Danny still, but everyone else nodded, understanding—their looks moving from accusation to something closer to sympathy. Maybe the truth sounded different.
Ryan latched onto their belief like a life preserver. “Yes! Out of respect, everyone please delete those posts while Violet and I get to the bottom of this terrible exploitation of someone we all adore.”
Adore. It was the wrong word to use. Very un-Ryan. And I could see that Ryan knew it. He knew it before he even looked over at Meredith. Adore was the one word he shouldn’t have used in that moment when he was hiding the fact that he and I had made a mistake. Or at least that’s what I called it, that night in Aspen.
“You son of a bitch!” Meredith whispered under her breath.
“Meredith . . .” Ryan said. “Please.”
Violet touched Meredith’s arm. “Meredith, come outside with me, okay?” she said.
Meredith, rightfully, pushed Violet away. Then she slammed out of the private room, her knee-highs causing a ruckus on the stairs.
Ryan kept his smile plastered to his face. “Folks, if you’ll excuse me!”
He followed Meredith outside, walking quickly out of the private room and breaking into a run, the stairs giving him away.
I looked toward where Danny had been standing, but he was gone. Then I heard him behind me. Rather, I felt him, his hand touching my shoulder.
“Hi, everyone. I can’t speak to what is happening right now with Meredith and Ryan, probably one martini too many . . . though, just to be clear with you all, there is nothing about that photograph that is a problem except that it ended up online. I took that photograph of Sunny. It was a private moment between us, which someone has posted without permission.”
Everyone looked at Danny mesmerized, partially because he was mesmerizing and partially because he had to be telling the truth.
“And more importantly, tonight’s spinning away from what we’re all here for. And that’s to celebrate Sunny.”
I looked at him with such gratitude I thought I was going to cry.
“So you all should sit down, eat, enjoy your evening.”
Then he took my hand, really took it, gripping my fingers in his. And we walked through the restaurant and outside, Greenwich Street uncharacteristically empty.
This was when he turned and looked at me, his eyes no longer kind.
“I probably bought you a day back there to get your story straight.”
I didn’t want to look at him, so I looked down, cobblestones under my feet, my shoes sinking into each other.
“Was that a hotel bathroom?”
I didn’t answer.
“What was he doing with you there?”
My voice came out like a whisper. “Danny, I don’t know what to say.”
He lifted my face and forced me to meet his eyes.
“Say something,” he said. “Say something, or that’s the last kind thing I’ll ever do for you.”
“It isn’t what you think. It was just one night.”
“Just one night?” he repeated.
I nodded. Because, in that moment, I thought my ultimate loyalty was on the line. I believed that on one side of it, my husband of fourteen years and five apartments and all of my love (as flawed as it was) would be able to forgive me for a small transgression. One night, nothing in the scope of things. And on the other side of that line, there was nothing I could say—not I love you, not I’m sorry—that would make him understand.
He kissed my cheek softly, his skin rough, his lips quick. “I was wrong,” Danny whispered into my ear. “You should have said nothing at all,” he said.
6
I couldn’t bear to go back to the party. And going immediately home felt even worse. So I walked south down Greenwich Street, heading across the West Side Highway to Battery Park. I sat down on a bench, the night wind blowing, and looked out over the Hudson River, the world so beautiful and serene, it seemed impossible that my life had just imploded a few blocks away.
I couldn’t begin to touch what had just happened with Danny, which might be why I focused on myself. Damage control. The fifty people at my party, several of them with microphones to the world: How was I going to turn this around before they used them? Was Danny’s speech enough to hold them? Those embarrassing photographs—had Violet gotten Craig to pull them yet? How much damage had they done on a Friday night before she did?
I could only hope that, somehow, Ryan had figured out how to make it all salvageable. If he had managed to calm Meredith down, I knew we had a shot. He would go back inside, Violet alerting him to Danny’s speech, and he would do the rest. Ryan raising a glass to a birthday gone wrong, but a year ahead that would be full of goodness and friendship, etc.