Authors: Xavier Neal
With a proud smile, he shakes his head, “This is walking around money. We need a better plan for a hotel. Let’s hit downtown and see where we wanna stay.”
“Wanna stay? Shouldn’t it be can stay?” My attempt at correction causes Belle to snub her nose.
“Please! You saw the place we stayed in when we were ...” her voice trails off.
“Conning you,” Peter slides his arm around her shoulder again with a devious smirk.
She elbows him in the side before she continues, “During the whole painting incident. Wherever we stay isn’t just a place.” Belle corrects, “It has to become a home away from home.”
“Even if it’s just for a night?” My eyebrows shoot up.
“How do you know it’s just for one night?” Justin’s tongue slides across his lips like he knows something that I don’t.
“Tally-ho,” Peter chuckles, holding his bag, while Belle carries hers.
I allow Justin to carry my bags, still feeling a little light-headed from passing out earlier. We haul our luggage to a shuttle service, where we use Justin’s stolen walking-around money to drop us in the middle of downtown Landlin, a busy, most breathtaking sight.
My eyes widen at the glistening, lit-up street signs displaying the beautiful names of busy restaurants and hotels, reminding me of the same signs I would stroll past in the middle of the night in Parktin, my last home. The skyscrapers and giggling couples dressed to impress coming in and out of restaurants remind me of the way my parents would come home after a date night, sprouting a small seed of guilt in my stomach that I’m sure will grow as we continue around the city.
Strolling off the bus, Justin nods, “Let’s split up, see what we can find. If we don’t run into each other within the next 45 minutes, we’ll meet back here in front of Marty’s Pub.”
They turn to look over their shoulders, where a man sitting on a barstool is strumming his guitar, black-box glasses falling down his nose, dark goatee in ragged shape, khakis stained with mud and grease, and a red plaid shirt, unbuttoned.
“You couldn’t have picked somewhere with better music playing?” Eiden scrunches his face.
“Or better food,” Aiden mumbles, scratching the back of his neck.
“I really hope that’s not Marty,” Belle sighs sadly.
“Think of it as incentive to catch up with each other then,” Justin chuckles, pulling us off to the right of the pub, which I don’t find grotesque, to be honest.
The group splits up, in pairs, all with the same hope to find somewhere to stay quickly, dreading the idea of having to meet back up at the pub to conspire a new game plan.
After stalking three or four streets, disapproving a variety of offers, Justin finds a place that has more hints of home and a level of comfort than I’m used to.
“I like that one,” I point to a five-star hotel that’s lit up all the way to the top, with balconies looking over the beach scenery, and bellhop service is always a plus.
“Beautiful taste,” he paces slowly in front of the building. “Marble statues, crystal chandeliers, silk carpets, artwork—the classics mingled with very now pieces, like Neisel VanDulk. Upscale. Classy. A genuinely beautiful hotel.”
“So, too hard?”
Justin strolls back toward me and presents a red rose, “Nothing’s too hard for you.”
Impressed by the flower, I give a small sniff and ask, “How’d you do that?”
He winks as Peter and Belle round the corner from one side and Aiden and Eiden from the other. That’s a piece of luck. Finally. Justin slides his hands in his pocket as his gaze trails to the top of the tower.
“Could you pick a place more discreet?” Aiden nervously fiddles with his pockets.
“This is very discreet,” Justin declares, beginning to smirk.
“For who? The Kardashians?” Belle tosses out the insinuation, and I add to the growing collection of smirks.
“Hear me out. It’s got Internet access. Free, might I add,” Justin mentions, tilting his head in Aiden’s direction. “Easy accounts flooded with money to hack into and transfer around.”
“Oh, I like that,” Aden mumbles back in return, his eyes lighting up like a child who just saw a Christmas commercial and must write Santa ASAP.
“That’s one down,” Peter sighs, chewing loudly on gum.
“Tons of counter space for your makeup, free hair dryer, organic shampoos, and let’s not forget a huge vanity mirror that’ll make the one in the apartment look like a joke,” Justin continues, spewing this information as if it’s a fact, not just an idea.
“God, I bet they have free facial cream as well,” Belle whimpers, wrapping her arm around Peter’s.
Peter continues to count, “Two.”
“Large living space for room to work. I bet it could display not only the knives, bows, arrows, and guns that Jimmy will supply but give us a little room to examine some of the test merchandise he’s probably dying for us to play with ...” His words make Eiden’s eyebrows pop up.
“You mean like that 427 Snake Eagle with the hidden clip? Man, I’m dying to take it apart and see just how Jimmy hides that.” His happy sigh is followed by Peter’s wretched counting.
“Three.”
“You know I hear in places like that, they don’t have mini bars.” Peter’s face turns into a scowl, which is when Justin hits him with the big guns, “Yeah. I’m pretty sure they just have flat-out bars.”
“Like a full bar?” Peter questions.
“Oh yeah, from the looks of it, I wouldn’t be surprised if they had mixers in there, too. Of course, we wouldn’t be charged for it. It comes from the tax of the room, but if you think this place isn’t worth it, then maybe we should—”
“Sold! To the gentlemen in the idiotic Mr. Monopoly hat,” Peter shoots a finger at Justin.
Immediately, Justin glances over at him and scrunches his eyebrows, “Mr. Monopoly wore a top hat, genius.”
“Close enough,” Peter shrugs it off.
Compelled to argue back, I chime in, “Not even a little.”
Ignoring me, Peter questions, “How you gonna get us in?”
With a devious smirk, Justin says, “Well I—”
“Peyton?” A voice cuts his off, causing us all to turn around.
To my surprise, I see Nick with a smile on his face, in black and white plaid shorts, a black polo, and his matching black fedora.
“Hey,” I start slowly as he maneuvers his way around my group of friends to be beside me.
Belle mutters at Aiden, “God, it’s like the Twilight Zone.”
“Or something out of the Matrix,” Eiden mumbles in return.
“Or a bad horror film,” Aiden agrees as I do my best to speak over them, so they can’t be heard.
“What are you doing down here?”
“Headed home,” he points to a set of high-rise apartments about two blocks over from the hotel.
“Thought you lived at the beach house.”
“I don’t like to sleep at the office,” he shrugs, and I giggle slightly at his cockiness.
“Are you implying that partying is a job?”
“The hardest there is.”
His attitude receives acknowledgment from Peter.
“I second that notion.”
“Of course you do,” Justin mumbles.
“I live right there,” he points to the top of the building in what I assume could only be a penthouse dream apartment. “What are you doing down here?”
A small look of panic comes across my face as Belle feeds me a look like I have to give him something, “Looking for a hotel. See, they lost my reservation—”
“Who?”
Instinctively, I point behind me, “So my friends were seeing if they could pull together enough money to help me get a room there for the night—”
“That hotel?” he questions slowly.
“Yeah.”
“That hotel, right there,” he asks again as if something I’m saying doesn’t make sense to him.
“Hearing’s not one of your better qualities, is it?” Justin snaps.
“No, but listening is,” his look bounces off of Justin’s and onto me, causing me to blush. The small reference from earlier today is something I can appreciate—someone who pays attention to the details. “It’s cool, bro. I know it probably sounded a little stupid to hear me repeat myself that many times.”
“Just a little stupid?” Justin’s snippy remark is received well by my friends but not by me.
“What if I told you I could get you a nice room at that hotel right now, no questions asked?” Nick’s query brings out the tension in Justin once more.
“I’d say you’re full of it,” my quick shutdown of his confidence changes Justin’s demeanor as he praises himself for teaching me well.
“If I can get you a room at that hotel right now, will you go out with me tonight?” The offer sounds tempting and not very threatening. While, yes, he is a celebrity of sorts, it doesn’t mean that the hotel’s not full or that his name has as much pull as he says it has. For all I know, he could be a delusional playboy who’s all talk and no bite. Though the fact he has a beach house and a penthouse in the same city does hint than he might have some leverage.
I glance at Justin, who has the best poker face I’ve ever seen. I have no idea whether he’s opposed or for it. Aiden looks confused, Eiden looks nervous, Peter looks giddy, and Belle looks intrigued.
Taking a risk, something I’ll eventually need to learn to fear less, I toss my hands up, “Yes.”
“At 9?”
“At 9.”
Nick smiles brightly, tips his hat at me, and heads toward the door, “Follow me.”
Peter leans over toward Justin, “You know he’s full of it, right? You recognize your own moves, don’t you?”
Justin cocks a small grin and whispers back, “At least I pull through when I try to impress a female.”
“Bet he gets us kicked out in the first 30 seconds.”
“If that,” Justin fist bumps Peter.
Following Nick, bags in everyone’s hands, I hear Peter mumble, “That hat looks awfully familiar, Justin.”
“Shut it,” is his response.
“Shop at the same Hipsters ’R Us store, do ya?” Peter jokes once more before Belle hushes him with a quick tug of his shirt.
As we cross the beautiful black-and-yellow checker-patterned floor, I admire the items Justin listed for its five-star quality, knowing that the last time I saw a hotel this fancy was between moving from New York to California.
Nick approaches the desk, cockily leans on it with one elbow, and waits for the girl at the computer to stop typing before deciding to speak to her. The minute her hands leave the keyboard, he says, “Cheyenne, you’re wearing that sweater I got you last year for Christmas.”
“I am,” she gushes, pushing her long, blond hair out of her face and behind her ear.
“And I see yoga lessons three times a week are indeed working well for you.” He winks at her figure, which makes her giggle flirtatiously at him.
Justin grunts, and Peter responds in a whisper, “What? Jealous because you’re not the only guy in the world who can woo women without trying?”
Quickly, Justin mumbles back, “Would you like to be the only guy in the world who has successfully been punched in the face by me twice?”
“Stop it, Nick,” Cheyenne flips her hand toward him, oblivious to the bets going on away from the counter. “What can I do for you today?”
“Well, I have a problem,” he lets out a sigh.
Cheyenne pouts her lips in response, “Oh no.”
“She seems smart,” Belle’s whisper gives way to a snicker.
“See, this is my father’s hotel.” That small fact causes my shoulders to sink. He’s actually going to pull this off.
“This is true.”
“And there is a rule around here we do not break. We do not lose reservations.”
“Correct.”
“Well, you see, doll, that lovely lady over there came in this morning for her reservation, and something strange happened. It was lost.” The look on Cheyenne’s face turns to slight panic. “And since we do not lose reservations here—we have a reputation for not losing reservations here—I told her that there’s no way that could be true.” Suddenly, Cheyenne looks like she’s about to lose her job. “So, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m not going to tell my father that this happened because, let’s be honest here, I don’t want him to fire you any more than you do. I like you.”