20
The next day, we were back.
Same hotel. Same bar. Same table.
Same scene… only way more rumpled around the edges.
The same waiter from yesterday—the gorgeous, traumatized twenty-something—saw us walk in, and for a split second his professional smile slipped. He made that microexpression people make when they’re thinking: Oh God. Not you two again.
He covered as best he could, but his body betrayed him: stiff shoulders, slower steps, the wary look of a man preparing to survive another shift in the trenches.
For him, working within Tess’s orbit must’ve felt like a high-risk safari.
A tigress in the grass, ready to pounce at the blink of an eye.
With elegance, of course.
But the truth was, Tess today was… different.
Not less beautiful. Not less theatrical. Just more drained.
She’d lost something.
Not her faith in The Manual —God forbid. But the spark, yes.
The seductress was still ready to play… too bad the opponent refused to step onto the field.
And that frustration had a very specific flavor: exotic cocktails consumed too fast.
Yesterday we’d played it with grace. Three cocktails in thirteen hours.
Olympic-level moderation.
Today?
By two p.m., we were already on round seven.
Se-ven.
To hell with costs, morality, and liver function.
The vibe around us felt less like an elegant brunch and more like a nosedive in progress. Tess sipped with regal detachment, but between straw pulls and glances at the elevator, she wore the look of a washed-up silent movie star waiting for a phone call that would never come.
The lounge music was the same. The carpet was still spotless. The glasses still gleaming. But the air had shifted. Maybe it was the faint whiff of defeat. Or hibiscus tequila.
“Goddammit!” Tess burst out, drunk as a skunk, her voice booming across the half-empty bar.
She lurched forward from the chair, face flushed, sunglasses crooked, lipstick smeared, cocktail clutched in her hand like a weapon.
“What the hell is he even doing in that damn suite? Meditating in lotus position?!”
“Maybe he’s got a helicopter on the roof and he’s sneaking out that way,” I offered, trying not to shoot peanuts out of my nose laughing.
“Goddammit!” Tess repeated with the exact same emphasis, then collapsed back into her chair. She snapped her fingers like an Egyptian queen.
The waiter—our waiter, the poor soul—appeared instantly. Maybe he’d seen her shift in his peripheral vision and already knew the summons was coming.
“Yes, miss?” he asked, full survival mode engaged.
Tess locked eyes with him. Then, without warning, she grabbed his bow tie the way a panther grabs its prey by the scruff. Yanked him an inch from her nose.
His eyes went cartoon-wide.
“Zane Ryder,” she growled. “Where the hell is he?!”
The waiter swallowed hard. Tilted his head like his brain was frantically searching for the least dangerous answer. “We… we can’t disclose private information about our guests, miss. Hotel policy.”
“Listen closely, Ken-with-a-tray,” Tess hissed.
“I’ve been dropping a fortune on mediocre cocktails just to get my moment with Ryder.
And he hasn’t even deigned to walk through here once.
Now you’re gonna tell me where he is… or I’ll grab something else with the same enthusiasm. And trust me—you’ll miss that bow tie.”
The poor guy went pale. His eyes darted left and right like he was trying to spot a secret escape route between the marble columns.
“He’s… he’s in his suite,” he stammered at last. “Apparently… he’s in some kind of creative trance.”
“Creative trance?” Tess repeated, tilting her head like a talk show host who’d just caught someone lying on live TV.
“Y-yes. He’s… writing songs, I think. He never comes out. Not even room service or housekeeping can get in…”
“Mm.”
Tess narrowed her eyes. “And this little gem of intel came from his Armani-clad gorillas, I assume?”
“No… they just guard the door.”
“Then who? Who told you? How do you know he’s writing songs? For all you know, he could be watching Rick & Morty with a bowl of popcorn or doing sudoku in his underwear! Who talked to you?!”
The waiter went pale again.
He hesitated. Looked left. Looked right.
And then… he said it.
“His parrot told us.”
Silence .
“What?!” I broke into hysterical laughter, drunk and doubled over in my chair. “Wait, wait… did you just say… his parrot?!”
But Tess didn’t laugh.
She sat frozen. Eyes locked. Pupils blown wide.
Like some hidden switch had just flipped inside her brain. Like every single piece of intel she’d gathered so far had suddenly clicked into place—forming one massive cosmic puzzle.
Tess had understood.
And somewhere in the shadowy corners of her mind… a brand-new plan was already taking shape.