17. Betty
17
BETTY
M y jaw dropped as I opened the door. We were in a fancy assed suite with a view of the ocean in all its glory. A single king sized bed sat in the middle of the room, which had a panoramic view thanks to the bank of windows. Upon closer inspection, two of the windows turned out to be a set of French doors leading out onto a balcony where two comfortable looking lounge chairs, each with their own side table, were placed for our relaxation and enjoyment.
“And I thought my room was schmancy pants,” Mrs. Titchmarsh said, eyes widening.
“What’s yours like?” I asked, curious.
“Two twin beds and I can see some of the beach from the windows. No balcony but that’s fine,” she replied. “I plan to spend my time after the wedding either at that pool or at the beach anyway.”
“That sounds fun.”
I turned to explore the mini fridge. It was well stocked but I knew not to eat or drink anything from there as the charges for doing so would be horrendous.
Pumpkin chose that moment to mew plaintively and I immediately felt bad for forgetting to let him out first. I was such a bad cat mom!
“I’m sorry, baby,” I crooned at him softly, setting his carrier down on the bed before unzipping it so he could make an escape. He stepped out, nose sniffing the air cautiously before hopping down to explore.
“Best keep a Do Not Disturb sign on the door so he doesn’t accidentally get let out,” Mrs. Titchmarsh said.
“That’s a good idea,” I heard Proslo’s deep voice rumble as he opened the door. He pulled the sign off of the inner door handle and after quickly making certain Pumpkin wasn’t about to escape, opened the door once more in order to place the sign on the outside handle.
“Thank you,” I told him. Yep, I was definitely not the best cat mom in the world today.
He smiled. “We wouldn’t want our fur young to become lost on our first family outing,” he said.
“Fur young?” Mrs. Titchmarsh looked amused.
“I called Pumpkin my fur baby and he ran with it,” I explained.
“Ah,” was all she said.
“I asked the clerk to make us dinner reservations. He will text me the details shortly,” Proslo announced. He turned to look at my former landlady. “I hope I did not overstep, but I asked him to include you in those arrangements.”
“You didn’t have to do that!” she said, swatting his forearm playfully but I could tell she was touched that he’d thought to.
“You are Betty’s good friend and our guest, so of course I did.”
“I’m just her old landlady,” she protested.
“Just nothing,” I told her. “We became good friends and you know it.”
She nodded. “I guess we really did. I got to feeling almost like you were sort of my daughter.”
I blinked back sudden tears. She had? Now I was really glad that this woman who’d become dear to my heart during the few months I’d lived there was here with us, sharing this time with us. It felt right. She was practically family and had been there during that whole Daryll disaster, and now she was here while I married my alien soulmate.
“I wonder if your bathroom is fancier than mine too,” she said, her eyes suspiciously bright. “Mine is really something. I wish I could pack it up and take it home with me.”
I laughed, thinking that no matter how fancy the hotel bathroom was, it probably had nothing on what we had aboard ship. I didn’t tell her that, though. She’d just have to see for herself when I’d gotten her to come up for a visit. Maybe once we had our placement and the child or children had a few days to settle in. She could visit and be like a sort of grandmother to them. Unlike my own mother, who was goodness knows where. She’d remarried for the fourth time and moved away without a word.
I’d only found out about her marriage because of the scribbled note inside the crockpot she’d inexplicably mailed me, along with an old mug with Rainbow Brite on it and a resin statuette of a frog holding a four leaf clover that had the words ‘Good luck from Cloverdale’ inscribed on the base. That had been two years ago and I wondered if she was still married to that guy and if so, if she was happy and what she would think about my getting matched. It was pointless wondering about that though, so I shrugged it off.
“Let’s go see, shall we?” I asked my friend instead, and together, we went to have a look.
“See, what did I tell you? Fancy, right?”
She wasn’t kidding. This was nearly as nice as our en suite. It had a separate tub and shower and the toilet was in its own little room. There was a small dressing area with a cushioned bench just outside the bathroom door, which had space beneath it where we could put our shoes when undressing. Two small closets bracketed the bench, and a peek inside showed there were wooden hangers already there, ready to be used, all of them with the logo of the resort burned into the wood. A paper sign inside of each said we were welcome to take the hangars home with us, for a charge of ten dollars a hangar.
“Well, that’s expensive,” I said, closing the closet door.
“What is?” Proslo asked.
“Note inside the closet says we can keep the hangers but they’ll charge us ten bucks a hanger.”
“Perhaps that is part of how they make their money, in order to keep the prices fairly reasonable. We shall take them up on it.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but then closed it. It wasn’t worth arguing about and he was right. I’d looked the place up on my phone last night as soon as Xero had told us where we were going and the prices were actually reasonable for how luxurious it looked from the pictures on TripAdvisor, which, for the record, actually failed to do this place justice. Them charging stupid money for people taking stuff like hangars and towels was probably how they managed it.
Proslo’s kunnarskyn beeped and he glanced at the message that had come in. He beamed, looking at me and my friend. “He’s managed to get us reservations to the place he recommended. We need to be there at five-thirty in order to eat at six.”
“Did he say what we need to wear?”
“Smart casual,” he said.
It was time to go shopping.