“Are you going to call your grandma?”
“Shut up,” she spits. “Of course, I’m going to call her. As soon as we get up to the room that I don’t want to stay in.”
“Maybe there’s a Jacuzzi tub. Would that change your mind?”
“Not if it’s out in the open, which they usually are. A bath wouldn’t fix any of my problems. You know what would? If you jumped out the window and disappeared forever.”
My lips wobble a little at her forced tone. She doesn’t really mean any of it, I can tell. She’s just sparring with me because she doesn’t know what else to do. I shouldn’t be happy about it either. I realize I’m treading on some extremely thin ice, about to plunge into some frigid water. Hypothermia and near-death are imminent.
What am I going to do after tonight? Even if I do sleep on the floor or the couch or whatever. Just go back to the endless tossing and turning? My regular insomnia? My regular life? Am I supposed to go back to being curt and bad-tempered at work? To the usual stress and strain and killing myself trying to live up to something that I’m never going to be?
The elevator dings thankfully, and I get to cut off my shitty introspection. We get in together. The door shuts, and the elevator is silent. For a fancy hotel, the elevator looks like shit. It’s got the token laminate flooring, back mirror, and a panel of buttons, but that’s it.
Sutton must have already looked at the floor and room number because she punches eighteen on the button pad, and the elevator starts moving. The silence gets more and more oppressive with each passing floor, which is fine with me. I’m good with the oppressive silence.
When the door opens, Sutton charges out like the elevator is crawling with venomous spiders—I know, I’m all about the dangerous, creepy comparisons tonight—and rushes down the hall. Her hips sway suggestively with her power walk, and I have to bite down hard on my bottom lip not to laugh. If only she knew how attractive she was, she wouldn’t be walking in front of me. Or like that. But I know if I laugh or say anything, she’ll turn and flip me off and tell me to close my eyes and navigate down the hall that way. Now I am smiling since it’s funny to think of her issuing orders like that.
She stops abruptly in front of a door on the right and inserts the key card. I have to run to keep the door from slamming on my face, but I manage to get my hand in the crack just in time. I push the door open to reveal, of course, a suite. My sister wouldn’t have booked anything less for her guests. She got a large chunk of money when our dad died, and she also has shares in the company. While she invested most of it into other ventures, she’s not tight with the funds she kept out for herself. She’s actually generous to a fault. And yes. She booked the best of the best for her wedding party.
“Holy shit.” Sutton stalks through the room ahead of me. “This is crazy.”
She’s right. It’s overkill. The thing is probably easily three times the size of her grandma’s house. The room drips with gold accents, marble floors, a huge king-sized bed with upholstered wood pillars. There’s a kitchen area with a full-sized fridge, which is probably stocked with all sorts of expensive treats and twenty-dollar mini bottles of alcohol.
“There is a Jacuzzi,” she groans. “Of course, there’s a freaking Jacuzzi.” She stops right in front of it. It’s round, and even though it’s above ground, it looks more like a swimming pool than an actual Jacuzzi. It’s already full. Of course, it would be.
There are floor to ceiling windows overlooking the city, which is all lit up and twinkling. It actually looks kind of pretty right now.
“The way I see it, there’s only one option now. You call your grandma, we drink all the wine and whatever’s in the fridge over there, make good use of the Jacuzzi, and break in the bed.”
“What?” Sutton walks over to the huge bed and drops the wine and her clutch unceremoniously on it. “Are you crazy? That was not part of the deal.”
“It worked for us before.”
“What worked? I thought we weren’t talking about that! Ever!”
“Right.” I roll my shoulders and walk over to the windows. “I just wanted to see what you’d say. I think the real game plan is we pile half those pillows into the middle of the bed like a giant, plush wall and go to sleep on separate sides.”
“I thought you said you were taking the floor?”
There’s a flashing red light in the distance at the top of some building. I wonder what it is. The rest of the city rises up below and around us. The hotel is right downtown, so we’re at the heart of all the urban glory.
“You’d make me sleep on marble flooring when there’s a bed that big? There is no way we could ever touch each other, especially with a pillow wall in place.”
“Oh yeah? What about your problem from earlier? Hmm? And the thing that didn’t happen before at your house. I think I should go and lock myself in the bathroom and make myself a bed in the tub.”
Now I am actually surprised. I turn to find Sutton standing at the same spot by the bed with her arms crossed stubbornly over her chest. “You think I’d do anything to make you feel unsafe? I swear to you, I might be
