Mallory
The first thing I register is the light. Not the soft, filtered glow of my apartment, but a harsh, clinical slash of sunlight cutting through grimy blinds. It smells like bleach and regret.
My head pounds in a dull, rhythmic protest. A champagne headache. I pry my eyes open, and the world swims into focus. A popcorn ceiling, stained in one corner. Wood-paneled walls that belong in a bygone decade. A television bolted to a stand in the corner. This is not my room. This is not the hotel. This is… cheap.
The sheet beneath my cheek is starchy and thin, a universe away from the thousand-thread-count Egyptian cotton I’m used to. I’m still in my black dress from last night, crumpled and smelling faintly of smoke and a man's cologne I don't recognize. Panic, cold and sharp, lances through me.
I sit up too fast. The room spins. I press the heels of my palms into my eyes, trying to force the memories to surface through the alcoholic fog. The ballroom. Seraphina’s gloating smile. Julian’s pity. And then… him.
Victor.
My eyes fly to the other side of the bed. It’s empty. The pillow is dented, the sheet thrown back, but the space is cold. He’s gone.
A wave of something complex and ugly washes over me. Is it relief? Disappointment? Humiliation.
Yes. That’s the one. Humiliation.
“What did you do, Mallory?” I whisper to the empty room. My voice is a rough, unused thing.
The night comes back in flashes, disconnected and sensory. The feeling of his hand on the small of my back as he guided me out of the party. The rumble of his car’s engine. The way he looked at me in the dim light of the dashboard.
“Are you sure about this?” His voice, a low baritone that seemed to vibrate right through me.
“I’m sure I can’t go back in there,” I’d answered, my own voice thin and brittle.
I remember the raw, desperate need to feel something, anything, other than the crushing weight of Julian’s betrayal. I wanted to burn the good girl, the ‘good sport,’ to the ground. And this stranger, this Victor, was the match.
He didn’t push. He didn’t pry. He just watched me with those dark, assessing eyes.
“This isn’t about him anymore, is it?” he’d asked later, his fingers tracing the line of my jaw.
“No,” I admitted, the confession tasting like freedom. “It’s about not being her. The tragic figure everyone pities.”
“Then who are you, right now, in this room?”
“Someone who’s making a terrible mistake.”
He had smiled then, that slow, dangerous smile. “The best mistakes are the ones you don’t regret until morning.”
Well, it’s morning.
My gaze sweeps the room, looking for any other sign of him. His suit jacket isn’t slung over the chair. His shoes aren’t by the door. It’s as if he was never here, a phantom conjured by champagne and fury.
Then I see it. On the battered nightstand, next to a lamp with a crooked shade, is a single piece of paper. It’s a page torn from the motel’s notepad. My heart does a frantic, stupid flip-flop.
I reach for it, my hand trembling slightly. His handwriting is clean and strong, black ink against cheap paper. It’s just two lines.
Victor.
And below it, a phone number.
That’s it. No goodbye. No ‘I had a great time.’ No ‘sorry for ditching you in a fleabag motel.’ Just his name and a number.
The stark simplicity of it is somehow more insulting than a hurried, scrawled apology. It’s transactional. A business card left after a service.
“A business proposition,” I say, the words I used last night coming back to haunt me. I got exactly what I asked for. An escape. An escort. A warm body to help me forget.
So why does this feel so… hollow?
I sink back against the lumpy pillows, the note clutched in my hand. The defiant fire from last night has been extinguished, leaving behind cold, gray ash. I imagine Seraphina and Julian waking up in their penthouse suite, tangled in silk sheets. I imagine them laughing about me. The pathetic, drunken Mallory who stormed out with some random stranger.
I gave them exactly the ammunition they needed. Now I’m not just the jilted ex. I’m the trashy, jilted ex who picks up men in corners.
My phone is in my clutch on the floor. I should call someone. My best friend, Chloe, maybe. She’d listen without judgment. But what would I even say? ‘Hi, I just had a one-night stand with a complete stranger as part of a revenge plot that completely backfired. How’s your Tuesday?’
No. I can’t. This shame is mine to carry alone.
I stare at the phone number in my hand. What kind of man leaves just a number? A man who expects a call? Or a man who knows he won’t get one and doesn't care either way?
The arrogance of it starts to relight a tiny ember of my anger. He used me just as much as I used him. He was a willing participant in my self-destruction. And he just walked away, leaving me to deal with the fallout in a room that costs fifty-nine dollars a night.
I should rip the note into a thousand tiny pieces. I should burn it. I should flush it down the toilet and forget his name and his sharp jawline and the way he made me feel seen for the first time in months.
I bring the paper to my nose. It smells like nothing. Just paper. There’s no trace of him left at all.
But a different thought pushes through the shame. A stubborn, defiant thought. Last night, for the first time in eight years, I wasn’t Julian Croft’s fiancée. I wasn’t Richard Ellis’s dutiful daughter. I wasn’t Seraphina’s pathetic stepsister. I was just Mallory. A woman who made a choice. A reckless, stupid, and possibly catastrophic choice. But it was mine.
I stood up and walked across that ballroom. I made the offer. I walked out on my own terms.
It wasn’t a victory. I can see that clearly in the harsh light of morning. But it wasn’t a complete surrender, either.
I look at the note again. His name and a number.
A loose thread. A piece of the night I can’t account for. A mystery.
I stand up and walk over to the cracked mirror above the cheap dresser. The woman looking back at me is a mess. Her mascara is smudged beneath her eyes. Her hair is a tangled wreck. The expensive black dress looks out of place, a piece of a different life accidentally dropped into this one.
But her eyes… her eyes are different. They aren’t filled with the desperate, pleading grief I saw in the ballroom mirror last night. They’re shadowed with regret, yes, but there’s something else there, too. A hardness. A resolve.
This is the price of my little rebellion. Waking up alone in a place like this. Facing the whispers and the stares that are sure to come.
I will not call him. Calling him would be an admission of defeat, a sign that the night meant more than a simple transaction. It would make me the vulnerable one.
He will be a secret. A mistake. A ghost.
I fold the note carefully, the creases sharp and deliberate. My mind screams at me to destroy it, to erase the evidence of my lapse in judgment. But my hands have other ideas. I open my clutch, slip the note inside a side pocket, and zip it shut.
I don't know why I'm keeping it. Maybe as a reminder. A trophy of my own stupidity. Or maybe, just maybe, as proof that for one night, I was in control of my own destruction.
I smooth down my dress as best I can, kick off the heels I can’t bear to put back on, and lift my chin. There’s no point in slinking out. The damage is done.
I walk to the door, my bare feet silent on the worn, stained carpet. I don’t look back at the empty bed or the rumpled sheets. The past is the past. Last night is over.
I step out into the blinding morning sun, into the noise of the city waking up. I have no idea who Victor is, or what he does, or why a man like him was at my ex-fiancé’s engagement party.
And I vow, right here, right now, standing in the parking lot of the Sunset Glow Motel, that I will never, ever find out.
