Hello, Sunshine

by Laura Dave

  Then Danny smiled, and I relaxed in spite of myself. And maybe this was my first mistake. As soon as I took a breath, my phone vibrated in my purse.

  I went to grab for it, but Danny was already turning the doorknob, people already shouting surprise! as he opened the door.

  My eyes ticked around the room at everyone in attendance, a blur of smiles and applause and raised champagne flutes. Maggie, who designed our apartment (and who arguably had the most influential design blog in the business), ran over and gave Danny a hug. She had been a longtime friend of his and I was happy to see her. I was also happy to see that she had come alone. Maggie was as notorious for her terrible taste in men as she was for her great design style.

  I was about to reach in and give her a hug when Louis Leonard, the head of my publishing company, walked over to me with two martinis in hand—one of them with extra olives.

  Louis was in his early sixties, and a handsome guy, whom everyone liked. Even Danny had gotten close to him over the years. Ordinarily, I would’ve happily taken a drink from him and sat in the corner listening to him fill me in on everything interesting that had happened at the party before we arrived. Except my phone vibrated again, a message waiting.

  “Uh-oh,” he said. “That’s a bad face.”

  “Impressive that you still recognize the difference,” I said.

  Louis laughed and turned to Danny, whose arm was wrapped around Maggie. “How are you, my friend?” Danny asked him.

  “Doing great,” Louis said.

  Danny patted his shoulder. Then he followed Maggie into the room and toward the small contingent of our friends.

  Louis tilted his head and took me in. “Don’t think about it for one more minute. We all know who you really are.”

  I felt a twinge in my chest, but I pushed it down as he handed the drink over.

  Then he leaned down and whispered, “A woman who clearly knew about her surprise party.”

  I laughed and he tipped his glass in my direction.

  “Come and find me, but not until you’ve had at least one of those,” he said.

  He looked me up and down.

  “Maybe two.”

  I smiled as he headed off, and I turned to check out the crowd. How could I casually slip away now? And where on earth was Violet? I looked around the room at the guests—Derek and Michelle; Kelly Specter; Ryan and Meredith; Christopher, who photographed my cookbooks, and Christopher’s new fiancée, Julie Diaz. Julie was a partner at The Agency. She repped a lot of talent in the culinary world, and had made a play to be my agent, though Ryan (with his law degree) said there was no reason to bring someone else into the mix. What he meant was he didn’t want to hand over any of the money.

  I was about to lose it when I spotted Violet making her way toward me, a slider in her hand.

  “What’s going on here?” she said in a singsongy voice. “Why do you look like someone just gave you a bad oyster?”

  “My phone won’t stop buzzing,” I whispered.

  “How many emails do you get a day on average? Not to sound like Ryan, but you’re going to have to pull it together.”

  She was right. But I pulled my phone out, and I saw a familiar subject line.

  Hello, Sunshine

  I clenched my teeth. This was starting to get irritating.

  Did you think you’d get rid of me so quickly? #exhibit2 #comingsoon

  Violet, who was reading over my shoulder, laughed a little too hard, trying to suggest that it didn’t matter. “This freak can send all the emails he wants. Your Twitter feed is secure! No one is getting in there!”

  She pulled out her phone and showed me, like proof. No Tweets, not from me, not from the fake me.

  “What’s going on, ladies? Why are we standing in the doorway?”

  I looked up to see Ryan walking over, Meredith coming up behind him. She was dressed elegantly in knee-high boots and thin black pants, her long, honey-blond hair appropriately straightened. Her arms and thighs not revealing the three children she’d pushed out.

  “Aintnosunshine just wrote again,” Violet said, holding up my phone to show him.

  Meredith smiled tightly. “Our friendly neighborhood truth-teller?”

  It was loaded, and why wouldn’t it be? Meredith had been okay with this pact originally. It had paid for her McMansion, and she got to stay home and raise the kids. But, like Danny, like all of us, Meredith had never thought Sunshine Mackenzie would be such a star. And, well, who doesn’t want their share of the spotlight? Nobody.

  I took Meredith’s hand, looking her in the eye. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you backing us up on all this today.”

  “It was a lovely statement, wasn’t it? I honestly thought it was pretty close to what I would have written. You’re a real pro.”

  Another loaded smile.

  “Let’s everyone play nice.” Ryan stepped in. “And let’s try to put the events of the day in the rearview, shall we?”

  I held up my phone, the new email. “How exactly should I do that?”

  “Block his email address.”

  “That’s what you have to say?”

  Ryan grabbed the phone from Violet, shoved it back into my pocket. “No, what I have to say is there is press everywhere, so happy faces, people. And get out of the doorway. It makes you look short.”

  “Ryan, I thought this was handled.”

  “It was!” Violet said. “It is.”

  “This bastard can email all he wants, that’s all he can do at this point,” Ryan said. “We’ve cut him off at the knees.”

  The word knees was not even out of his mouth when my phone started to buzz again—when everyone’s phone started to buzz, that universal buzz letting you know you had an update on your Twitter feed.

  Ryan pulled his phone out as Violet looked at hers, confused. “Ah . . . guys.”

  Ryan’s face turned bright red.

  Violet opened the door, motioned for me to step outside. She clearly didn’t want me to read whatever it was in that room. “You’ve been hacked again.”

  “I don’t fucking believe this,” Ryan said.

  I reached for my phone, my heart pounding. “What happened to ‘No one is getting in there’?”

  Ryan shook his head. “Violet?”

  “I don’t know how they got back in,” she said. “I mean, Jack put up the firewalls . . .”

  “Well, Jack is fired,” Ryan said.

  I stopped listening, looking down at my Twitter feed.

  What I was doing while Meredith Landy was cooking. #herhusband

  There was a link to my Instagram account, where there were two new photographs posted. They were outtakes from a photo shoot for my new cookbook—a day a film crew had come in to do a “behind the scenes” feature.

  The first photograph was of Ryan and me laughing in a corner, Ryan feeding me a brownie. Not exactly innocent, but not convincing, either. The next photo was a little worse. Ryan and I were leaning against the chef’s table, a little too close together. My hand was on his chest. His mouth was moving right up to mine.

  We should have stepped outside. Instead, we found ourselves in the front of the room as everyone looked up, as if in unison, eyes darting between Ryan and me—and Meredith.

  Ryan let out a laugh. “Guys, this was the photo shoot for Sunny’s new cookbook,” he said. “Outtakes. Further proof that anything can be taken out of context to appear a certain way.”

  “It was.” Violet pointed to a spot in the photograph’s corner. “That’s me in the background. I was there.”

  The ease and strength with which they lied was astounding.

  But that was the key to lying, wasn’t it? Believing it yourself? Or finding something in the lie that you could believe? We had done a photo shoot that day. Violet had been there. This was just long after she went home.

  I looked at Danny, who was standing in the back of the room with our college friends, looking down at Derek’s phone. It was my great luck we
were separated—if only by a few feet. If we hadn’t been, if he had been right next to me, he would have known immediately what I had done. Now I had a chance to convince him, to convince everyone.

  Meredith, bless her heart, put her hand on Ryan’s shoulder and helped do just that.

  “So someone wants to turn this into an eventful evening!” she said.

  Violet jumped in. “Spoiler alert! Sunny will inhale any brownie someone puts in front of her.”

  I laughed. It was such a perfect thing for her to say, defusing the moment. If I didn’t know better, I’d believe her. And something about my laughter—truthful, real—furthered that cause. People started to put their phones away, wanting to be on the inside of a joke, the inside of a story, that they could talk about later. What a start to Sunny’s birthday party! She got hacked again, and it was hilarious.

  Even Danny, who now was looking up at me, didn’t seem fazed. I didn’t dare smile at him, though. I shrugged as if to say, I have no idea. I shrugged because it was the only thing I could do that wouldn’t give away my guilt.

  Ryan gently wrapped his arm around Meredith’s shoulders. And luckily, she was looking back at him with love in her eyes, totally convinced.

  “When we throw a party, we really throw a party!” he said, giving me a wink.

  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 birt
hday gone wrong, but a year ahead that would be full of goodness and friendship, etc.

  If their fingers were in the dam, at least for tonight, if the New York Post and Food & Wine and all the press at the party tweeted our side of the story, we could deal with this tomorrow in some way. Couldn’t we?

  The truth was, as I asked myself the question, as I tried to breathe in the possibility of the answer being yes, I knew it all came down to convincing the world that my relationship with Ryan was platonic. If there was one thing women couldn’t forgive each other for—if there was one thing they didn’t want to forgive—it was another woman being adulterous. You could abuse drugs (an addict, not your fault) or railroad someone at work (it’s business), but if you slept with another woman’s husband, it was like you slept with everyone’s husband. It was like you betrayed all womankind.

  Until, of course, it was you who found yourself in the role of adulterous bitch.

  And, for whatever it’s worth (and if you’re even able to believe me), my situation with Ryan was more complicated than the naked bathroom photograph would initially suggest. I only slept with Ryan once. Do I sound like a politician trying to get out on a technicality? Perhaps. So let me be clear. From day one, we flirted. We were more involved than we should have been, spending time together that we should have reserved for our spouses, and sharing pieces of ourselves that they longed for and we too easily gave up to each other instead.

  The hotel in the photograph was the St. Regis in Aspen. We had been there for the Food & Wine Classic last year, so I could judge a new chef competition. At the party that night, Ryan drank too much champagne and lost his hotel room key and ended up on my floor. And when he got up and climbed into the bed, I let him in.

  How had we gotten there? Into that hotel room together? Ryan was the only one who knew—truly knew—all my secrets. Maybe it was a justification, but it didn’t feel like a justification. Sometimes you create a world so intricate, so nuanced, that only the two of you can understand it. And that was what we did. It was never about love or anything like love. It was about something that felt completely real.

  And the point is, the very next morning, I told Ryan it had been a mistake. Did I confess the transgression to Danny? Why tell him? It would only cause him pain. I guess that’s what all cheaters say. But in this case, it was true. Nothing had to change between us. I moved on and, with the exception of a little leftover weirdness, Ryan moved on too.