Chapter Three
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Maple
It isn’t too hard to find somewhere to stay when you have literally billions of dollars to work with. The true challenge is in finding somewhere to stay that won’t alert Ivy the moment I’ve paid for it.
Luckily for me, I’m creative.
“I’d like to reserve a room on each floor, and I’d like them on separate charges,” I tell the front desk girl at the first three-and-a-half-star hotel I come across.
Not the best, not the worst, but it will be clean, safe, and willing to take my new husband’s money without too many questions. In other words, it’s perfect.
The girl in front of me blinks, taking in my wedding outfit, my wedding hair, and my wedding lack of husband. She opens her mouth. Closes it. Clears her throat.
She’s cute, in a flabbergasted, mildly horrified sort of way.
She’s petite and blonde, with bangs she seriously pulls off framing crystal blue eyes.
She wears a navy blue hotel uniform that further highlights her eyes, despite the outfit being dead ugly.
Her lips are a particularly bold shade of pink for not seeming to have any product on them, and I realize why as I watch her pull them between her teeth to worry them uncertainly. “That’s a lot of rooms,” she says.
I slap Ivy’s matte-black titanium credit card on the counter. “Separate charges,” I repeat. “All on this card.”
A middle-aged woman in a similar-but-different-in-that-it’s-slightly-less-ugly-than-what-the-other-girl-is-wearing outfit appears out of nowhere, bumps her subordinate out of the way, and introduces herself as “Etta, Director of Rooms.” In the interest of spending as much of Iverson’s money as quickly as possible, I ignore how very made up that title sounds.
If Etta says she’s the Director of Rooms, then the Director of Rooms she is.
“One on each floor,” I repeat. “Please.”
“Of course, miz…” She pauses to read the card, bending over the counter to hover above it rather than pick it up. Dark, thick curls fall across her shoulders as sharp brown eyes flick up at me. “Swallow.”
“That’s missus,” I correct sourly. I push the card closer to her side of the counter. “Separate charges.”
She nods, eyeing the small black rectangle with equal parts greed and apprehension.
Like this is a dream that could turn into a nightmare at any moment.
Highly intelligent, that fear, and I’m jealous she has the foresight to anticipate the possibility of it.
Some of us are out here being blindsided, but not Etta, Director of Rooms. I can’t decide if I hate her for it, or if I want her to teach me her ways.
Maybe a bit of both. “We don’t have free rooms on every floor,” the younger attendant—Mary, according to the name tag pinned to her chest—whispers to Etta, as quiet as a bullhorn.
“We’ll make it work,” Etta assures her through clenched teeth.
“Just give me what you can,” I tell them. “As many as you can.”
Etta nods, dollar signs, or possibly promotions, dinging beyond her pupils. Mary bites her lower lip, refreshing her pink.
I tap my fingers on the counter, convince myself the buzzing in my pocket is a figment of my imagination, and answer Etta’s required check-in questions one katrillion times as she works to get me my many rooms.
It takes an hour and a half, during which Mary is forced to anxiously refuse no less than five potential clients.
She all but whimpers as they turn tail through the revolving glass door of the truly quite nice lobby.
I hadn’t taken aesthetics into consideration when choosing a hotel, but if I had, this one would have still made the cut.
Not flashy, the modern form of the furniture and the calming neutral blues are nice.
What it lacks in natural light it sadly makes up for in fluorescents that shine down on a large lounge area, complete with comfortable couches and a couple of tables.
Small placards detail the Wi-Fi password tastefully.
No one would call the space perfect, but I could certainly have done much worse.
“Do you take tips via card?” I ask Etta, returning my focus to her after the final room is booked. Her eyes light cautiously as she answers in the affirmative, though the rest of her face stays a perfect mask of professionalism.
“I’d like a two-hundred dollar tip to go to you, our esteemed Director of Rooms, for your help today,” I declare. “And a five-hundred dollar tip to go to Mary here for the emotional distress I’ve caused.”
Mary stutters. “That’s not necessary!” the younger woman cries. “It’s too much!”
Etta blinks. “That’s very generous,” she says slowly, suspiciously.
“Take it,” I insist. It wouldn’t even make a dent in the limits of the credit card I’ve given them, and it would make an even smaller impact on Iverson’s overall finances, but it will make me feel better.
A bit of a take that to a man who would’ve tipped half the amount, maybe, depending on how badly the women annoyed him. Hello, petty, and greetings, revenge.
Yeah, I’m really showing him.
“Really, we couldn’t possi–”
“Thank you, Mrs. Swallow,” Etta interrupts, unwilling to be a part of her underling’s “we.” More experienced, she knows better than to turn away a good tip. Where one comes, many usually follow, and with the sort of business I’m giving them, opportunity for that many should be abundant.
Mary, clearly uncomfortable—something I believe might be a constant state for the poor thing—winces, bending in what could be deference or a reaction to Etta stomping on her foot. I don’t have a good enough vantage point to investigate. “We appreciate your generosity.”
I nod, then give a pointed look to the stack of keycards lying just out of my reach. Mary makes an amusing pip as she jumps to get the cards for me, using both hands to pass them over the counter.
I thank her with a smile, grab my plethora of keycards, double check that Ivy’s credit card is at the top of the stack—it is—and head for the elevator, leaving Etta and Mary to whisper behind my back as I go.
I have to hold the cards against my body with one hand so that I can pull one of my suitcases after me.
The other suitcase has the honor of a more illustrious mode of travel—one swift kick after another until it gets where I want it to go.
With intention, I stop myself from being thankful to Iverson for being the type of man not to skimp out on suitcases.
He got me the fanciest, best kind he could find, and the wheels roll seamlessly over the tile with every hit of my foot.
I am not thankful to him, though. Not today. Not for this, and not for anything.
Once I make it inside the elevator, I grab a keycard at random, then hit the button for the corresponding floor.
Room 308. Perfect. Ivy would expect me to take a room higher up, maybe one of the suites.
If–no, when he comes looking for me, my mid-tier room will make it that much harder for him to find me, letting me keep our interactions on my terms. Then he’ll get to experience some control loss for a change.
A little more kicking of suitcases and juggling of cards, and I make it to my room pretty much unscathed. Immediately, my shoulders slump. Then, they jerk when I try to walk further into the room and am pulled back by my cape, which got its stupid self closed in the door.
“Oh, for the love of all that is good,” I gripe, opening the door to free myself. Unstuck, I decide it would be prudent to get this gown off.
It’s actually a shame that Ivy knows me so freaking well.
I wasn’t lying when I told him that the wedding would have been perfect.
Every detail was designed with us in mind, all the way down to the date.
Flag Day, the most romantic day of the year, even if only in fiction.
We celebrate it the same regardless, because if our favorite author says Flag Day is romance incarnate, then that’s that.
We act accordingly. And, boy, did Iverson act accordingly.
When I walked into the ballroom, I thought I was in a fairytale.
The space had been transformed into another world, where mere mortals walked on clouds lit by stars and candlelight.
A moon hung from a rafter next to floating wax and twinkling lights, and a hazy layer of foggy smoke covered the floor.
When we stepped inside, the clouds swirled around our feet and a cello took flight in a song made of stardust. Our guests parted for us as the music reached a crescendo, and Ivy’s father, Henry, stood on an old, stained, ripped, precious tablecloth waiting for us.
Everywhere I looked, blue and gold celestial beauty stared back at me, tailored especially to the many memories Ivy and I have together.
The tables shimmered. The ceiling glowed.
The music haunted, a single cello I’ll hear in my dreams for the rest of my life.
My nightmares, too, if I had to guess. I was walking through a time capsule of our biggest joys and our every conversation held in the dead of night.
He’d done it beautifully. If I had known beforehand—if he had bothered to ask me—I wouldn’t have changed a single thing, because the only thing I’d ever thought I would care about when it came to my wedding was my dress.
I know now that I also care about knowing the wedding is happening, but a girl doesn’t normally assume that there’s another option on that front, shockingly enough.
I don’t think too hard about Ivy knowing I’d want to surprise my husband with my dress and then making it happen.
He’s not magnanimous because he lets me have one thing while completely disrespecting me in so many other ways, even if my heart wants to believe otherwise.
Hearts are fickle and often wrong. Case in point: Ivy’s heart told him to marry me sans a confession of love, dating, or engagement period.
Fickle. Wrong. Wildly red of the flag persuasion.