The Accidental Honeymoon

by Portia MacIntosh

  In the mirror in front of me, I see the lady behind me twirl around in her chair.

  ‘This is men for you,’ she shrugs, her French accent strong, but her English perfect. ‘My boyfriend, he just gambles all the time, he has no time for me. Right now he is in the casino and he thinks that he can just give me money, send me here, and it will be fine. It’s not fine.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ Liv, the lady who is about to do my hair, agrees.

  We all live thousands of miles apart, but we all have the same stupid man problems. That said, I think I can top all of them. In the age-old words of the internet: hold my beer – or my third glass of complimentary champagne, more accurately.

  ‘I caught my fiancé cheating on me,’ I say quietly. ‘Literally, like I walked in on him doing it. With his assistant.’

  For the first time since I arrived, no one is saying anything. Nothing but the whirr of a hairdryer and the dulcet sound of Justin Bieber’s latest hit can be heard. Then the responses come all at once. Gasps, expletives and questions from all angles.

  ‘His assistant?’ Liv shrieks.

  I nod.

  No one ever really stops and thinks about what they’d do if their significant other cheated on them, do they? No one has a contingency plan in place, in case of adultery. Some might say cheating is cheating, whereas others might see the difference between a drunken one-nighter and full-blown affair. Not only was my fiancé stone-cold sober, but he was at it in my bed – probably still warm from my getting out of it.

  ‘What happened?’ Liv enquires gently.

  ‘I got up for work, had my breakfast, got dressed and left the apartment with my fiancé fast asleep in bed. He doesn’t work office hours, so when I go off to work, he’s always still in bed. While I was on the way to work, not long after I left actually, I just decided I’d go home. I had loads of things I needed to do before this trip, but that wasn’t the reason. I just decided I didn’t want to go to work that day.’

  The women look at me, puzzled.

  ‘You were suspicious?’ Liv asks.

  ‘I wasn’t,’ I tell her honestly – at least, I don’t think I was.

  I should have known that moving to LA with dreams of becoming an actress was a long shot, but I had big dreams when I was younger. Instead of becoming an actress, I simply wound up becoming someone’s other half.

  I work temp jobs, just taking whatever I can get whenever I can get it. A short-notice job came in for yesterday morning, filling in for a receptionist in a law firm. Work has been in short supply recently, so I accepted it, safe in the knowledge I could finish at lunchtime and then go home to pack our bags, ready for travelling today.

  Perhaps on a subconscious level I knew something wasn’t right, but I don’t think so. I really did think we were happy.

  ‘I just didn’t want to go to work,’ I say softly.

  ‘Well, thank God you didn’t, honey,’ New York lady says. ‘You’re so lucky.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I reply, although I don’t feel it.

  ‘So you thought you’d come to Vegas to forget about him?’ she asks.

  ‘Not exactly,’ I reply. ‘We were supposed to be flying to England in the morning. I’ve been a bit nervous about it, so my fiancé booked us a romantic night here, to get the trip off to a good start. The plan was to fly from LA to here, spend a night having fun and then head back to the UK for a family wedding. But now it’s just me, and the hotel and flights were already booked, so here I am.’

  ‘So you’re on a romantic trip alone?’

  ‘I am on a romantic trip alone,’ I repeat. ‘And open to whatever you suggest as far as my hair goes.’

  Liv teases my shoulder-length, mousy-brown hair with her fingers and pulls a face.

  ‘It’s not that this isn’t nice,’ she says tactfully. ‘It just doesn’t go with that smoking-hot outfit you’re wearing.’

  I glance down at the gown I’m wearing to protect my clothes and cringe as I think about what’s lurking underneath.

  When your heart has been broken, you don’t think straight, do you? Bad ideas seem like good ideas. Perhaps it’s a way of protecting ourselves, but we immediately snap into this ‘I have to show him what he’s missing’ mode. Whether it’s to prove a point to our exes or ourselves, I don’t know, but that’s what we do.

  John is a well-known orchestral pianist (well, well known if you’re into that sort of thing). I played the role of his girlfriend perfectly, dressing and acting the part, which is probably why I’m acting out now.

  I’m wearing a little red cocktail dress I’m now certain was intended for someone with fewer curves than I have, but, like I said, I was grief-stricken. I wasn’t thinking straight. And now, here I am, sitting awkwardly in my dress that is possibly too tight (and short, and low), in my heels that are probably too high, about to let Liv loose on my hair, which definitely has to be my worst idea yet. Oh, and for the first time since John gave it to me, I am out without my engagement ring.

  ‘So, you wanna know what I’m doing or you want me to just do it?’ she asks.

  I think for a moment. When I started seeing John, the spontaneity slowly drained from my life. Everything had to revolve around his schedule, everything we did for fun was always on his terms. As a teenager I was a total wild child, but now… I don’t know what I am. I need to be spontaneous again.

  ‘Just do it?’ I reply. It was my intention to sound confidently decisive, but as my voice went up in pitch at the end, it just sounded like a nervous question.

  ‘You sure?’ she asks, giving me another chance to back out.

  ‘Yes,’ I reply confidently.

  ‘You in a rush?’ she asks, causing me to wonder what the hell she’s planning.

  ‘No…’

  ‘OK then, let’s get started.’

  Chapter Three

  I glance at the $1,000’s worth of chips, fascinated that such little, unremarkable pieces of plastic could be worth so much money. They’re so gold I can see my reflection in them, and every time I look at them and catch sight of myself, it reminds me how different my hair looks now.

  After what felt like a lifetime in the chair, I am now the proud wearer of very long, very blonde hair, or ‘Playboy Bunny hair’ as the lady from New York described it. With my light, bright, fresh peroxide colour, the long length curled at the ends, combined with my hastily bought midlife quarterlife thirdlife-crisis outfit (I am nearly thirty after all) – I can see what she means. From the new clothes, to the hair extensions, to all the new make-up I bought from the hotel shop, I look nothing like myself right now, and that’s fine by me.

  Casinos are bizarre places, really. The room is split into sections, one end littered with green felt tables and the other home to rows and rows of brightly flashing, very noisy slot machines. It’s such a nice, sparkly, glamorous place at a quick glance. I’ve noticed a few people on winning streaks and, as miserable as I am, it cheers me up to watch people winning. A bit of good luck and they come alive, jumping up and down, victory dancing, grabbing their nearest and dearest (or just the nearest random person sometimes) in celebration. But when you stop and look, you can see the darker side to these places, those with anguished looks on their faces and just a few chips on the table in front of them. As their luck runs thin, so does their money. Just one good hand will turn things around for them, but sometimes it simply doesn’t come. It’s kind of depressing to watch and makes you wonder how much they’ve lost and what it will mean for them in the real world, after they leave the flashing lights and the free booze of timeless Las Vegas.

  Without windows or clocks, it’s impossible to tell what time of day it is, or how long you’ve spent here without keeping an eye on your own watch. I can understand why people spend so much time here.

  I don’t know how long I’ve been here, but I’ve been hovering by this Blackjack table for a while now – the only card game here I actually know how to play. John was going to bring me here tonight, teach me how to gamble
, have me as his lucky charm, blowing on his dice like you see in the movies.

  I watch as a forty-something, dark-haired man runs a hand through his hair as he waits with bated breath for the dealer to reveal his hand.

  ‘Blackjack,’ the dealer announces casually as he turns over his other card to reveal an ace. With the king the dealer was already showing, this hand is lethal and, with no chips left, the dark-haired man skulks off.

  The dealer takes no joy from winning, effortlessly moving everything back into its place on the table, ready for the next player. The dealer looks over at me and raises his eyebrows, silently asking if I’m planning on playing. If I don’t do it now, I never will, so I climb onto the stool as gracefully as possible in my short dress and place my chips on the table.

  ‘Place your bets, please,’ the dealer says robotically.

  I glance down at my golden chips, and take one final, long, hard look at myself in them. When the porter handed them to me, there was a little note with them saying they were complimentary chips and therefore could only be played, and not simply cashed out, otherwise I’d be spending this $1,000 on room service right about now.

  From what I’ve observed, Blackjack is an amalgam of luck and skill. Luck comes from being dealt the right cards, but you need some skill to know what to do with them. But what if you left it entirely down to fate?

  Confidently, I bet my entire $1,000. It was only yesterday I caught John cheating on me, and I’ve no idea what I’m supposed to do. On the one hand, if he could hurt me, betray me and completely obliterate my trust like he has, then how can I be with him? On the other hand, we were engaged, we lived together and we loved each other… is that really something I should just throw away in an instant?

  The dealer places my cards down in front of me, giving me an ace and a four.

  I stare at my cards a moment too long.

  ‘That’s five or fifteen,’ he tells me, suspecting I can’t count. ‘Aces are one or eleven.’

  He loves me, he loves me not.

  ‘Thank you,’ I reply, although I knew that. ‘Hit me please.’

  If the next card is a winner, he loves me.

  ‘Queen – so that’s fifteen,’ the dealer tells me.

  ‘Hit.’ He loves me not.

  ‘A five – that’s twenty.’

  The dealer is showing a queen, so if he gets another ten or an ace then I’ll lose… or, I could see if luck is on my side, hit one more time, and if by some miracle I get my five-card trick, then John loves me, this was all a big mistake, and everything will go back to the way it was.

  ‘Hit,’ I tell him.

  The dealer goes to turn his card before stopping himself just in time.

  ‘I’m sorry, miss. Did you say hit?’

  I nod.

  ‘Miss, you have twenty.’

  ‘Hit,’ I repeat.

  He looks at me for a moment, puzzled. I think he’s trying to work out if I know what I’m doing or not.

  ‘Seriously,’ I add.

  He shrugs his shoulders and does as I wish.

  ‘King – thirty – bust,’ he says, sighing deeply in an I-told-you-so kind of way. Of course it turns out to be the king of hearts delivering this final blow to my love life. I don’t know what I thought I was going to achieve with this silly game.

  So that’s that then. I hop down from my stool and stroll off, conscious of the dealer’s eyes on me. I guess he’s never seen anything like that before.

  As I make my way towards the casino exit, I wonder what to do with myself now. Other than the brief mutterings of the dealer, I haven’t really spoken to anyone since I was in the salon. Now I think about it, I’m glad. I don’t really want to speak to anyone. A free dinner in a beautiful restaurant seems like a silly thing to waste, but I cannot think of anything sadder than sitting there on my own, ploughing my way through three courses of Vegas’s finest on the off-chance it makes me feel better.

  I step into the lift and take a look at the map of the hotel. I don’t really want to be around too many people, but I definitely don’t want to go back to my room alone. I browse the list until the perfect place pops out at me: the rooftop garden. It’s not exactly the warmest evening, so hopefully there won’t be too many people there. I can get some air, clear my head and try and think about what the hell I’m going to do.

  Obviously breaking up with someone you live with causes a lot of upset, both emotionally and in your day-to-day life, but I have problems that are more immediate: going home to England for my cousin’s wedding without a fiancé. I know what you’re thinking – why can’t I just be honest with everyone? Well, the truth is, I made no secret of the fact I was moving to LA for a bigger and better life, but it hasn’t exactly worked out that way. My mum and my auntie have always measured me and my cousin against each other – they had us months apart, after all. They’ve always had this rivalry about whose daughter was doing the best. I never managed to bag the job I wanted, but I had John… and now, suddenly, I have nothing. No job, no home, no fiancé. My cousin, on the other hand, has it all. She’s marrying the man she loves in a wedding that is sure to be spectacular, her fiancé is a rich businessman who gives her everything she could possibly want – he’s even started her own business for her, selling candles. So you can see why I don’t want to go home with nothing, in the midst of all this wedding stuff. Not only would it be so embarrassing, having to admit it to everyone, but everyone would pity me. And it would certainly take the focus away from my cousin, which my auntie would no doubt think I’d done on purpose. No, I’ll have to lie. Tell them John is away for work or something.

  Looking at my reflection in the mirrored lift doors, I can’t get over how different I look. Hair, make-up and clothes can make such a huge difference. Whether I look better or not, I’m all dressed up with nowhere to go. Ever. Just up in this lift to a rooftop garden where no one in their right mind would be hanging out.

  Seeing the sadness in my own eyes only upsets me more. How could he do this to me? Even if you decide you don’t love someone anymore, you break up with them. You don’t do this to them.

  As fast as I wipe my tears, more fall from my eyes, streaking my foundation. It was probably a little too dark for me anyway, which only enhances the white pathway each tear has left on my cheeks.

  As the lift grinds to a halt, I hurriedly wipe my tears, but it doesn’t matter. The doors open to reveal nothing but plants and fairy lights.

  It’s beautiful up here. As I make my way towards the edge to look at the view, my new stupidly high heels keep getting stuck in the pebbles. I can’t help but feel mad at myself for buying them as I kick them off.

  Once I get to the glass fence and take in the sights properly, it’s worth it. The view from up here is even more stunning than the one from my room. God, every inch of this trip has been so romantic to far – well, it could have been. A beautiful room with a gorgeous view, champagne, dinner, this stunning garden… it would all be so nice with someone to share it with.

  Tears leap from my eyes again.

  The more I think about it, the more I’m sure it will be fine to tell people John is away for work. Well, he does work away a lot, touring with different orchestras. But we’ve had this trip planned for months, and I spoke to my mum about our flight times the night before I caught him… Maybe a work emergency? Are pianist emergencies even a thing?

  ‘Erm… hey,’ I hear a man’s voice call from behind me.

  I don’t want him to see my face, so I keep looking over the edge of the terrace.

  ‘Hi,’ I reply coolly, not exactly pulling it off.

  ‘Everything OK up here?’ he asks.

  ‘Fine, fine,’ I reply. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Erm…’

  Oh, for fuck’s sake. Why can’t people just leave me in peace?!

  ‘Want to come over here and have a chat about stuff?’

  I furrow my brow. What the hell is this guy’s deal? Is he hitting on me?

  �
�I’m fine where I am, thank you,’ I say politely, hoping he’ll take the hint and leave me alone.

  ‘Look, that money you lost… it might have meant a lot to you, but it’s not worth getting upset over.’

  For a moment I laugh, because that’s the least of my problems. But then it occurs to me this person has been watching me. Streaming eyes and messy make-up no longer matter to me as I turn around.

  ‘Are you following me?’ I ask accusingly.

  ‘I saw you, at the table. I saw you lose, I saw that you were upset and then I saw you come up here. And now you’re standing too close to the edge for my liking, so…’

  ‘You think I’m going to jump?’ I shriek.

  ‘When you took your shoes off…’

  ‘Oh, yeah, I took my shoes off. I’m definitely going to kill myself.’

  I can’t exactly see the person I’m talking to. He’s standing in the shadows under a particularly tall plant that blocks the light above it.

  I wouldn’t normally be so outspoken; this is not me at all. I feel like I’m spectating someone who isn’t me because she doesn’t look like me, sound like me, or act like me. Perhaps my new look is empowering me – then again, maybe it’s the champagne.

  ‘All right, there’s no need to be sarcastic,’ he replies. ‘Just… won’t you come over here, sit down and talk to me for a second?’

  If I want to shake this one, I’m going to have to convince him I’m not suicidal. Things might be bad, but they’re not that bad.

  I wipe my eyes and walk over to where he’s standing.

  ‘See, not jumping,’ I tell him, finally coming face to face with my stalker.

  He’s tall – 6’2” maybe – with broad shoulders and huge arms. I can’t see under his T-shirt, but I can tell from the way it clings he’s an absolute unit of a man. He has stylish brown hair and strong facial features, but his sharp jawline contrasts with his adorable dimples, which, in spite of his hulking muscles, give him this soft, approachable look. He must be a security guard of some kind, given his size and the fact he’s up here and on my case.