Her name tag read, Elaine Aucoin. Her dark bangs were swept neatly to one side; her makeup looked professionally applied, giving her skin an airbrushed quality. Her glossy red lips parted widely when she smiled at us, revealing ultra white teeth.
“Welcome to Ritz Carlton New Orleans. How may I assist you,” she asked.
“I would like to check availability, please,” I said. “Four rooms on the same floor if possible.”
“Size preference?”
“King.”
“Double okay?”
“I’d prefer single.” I’d always hated rooms with double beds in them, even if no one was using the other bed.
“Just for tonight?” she asked.
“Tonight and tomorrow.”
“May I see your ID please?”
“I handed her my driver’s license, along with my black AMEX, you know the credit card with no limit. I was on my father’s account, but still, the card had my name on it.”
Elaine Aucoin didn’t flinch at that either. After examining my driver’s license, she said, “I have club level suites available. Would you like to book those?”
“Yes, please.” I was playing it cool, but knew Bitty would probably pee her pants as soon as she laid eyes on the nine-hundred square foot suite that would be hers and Logan’s for the next two nights.
“Use this card for incidentals on all the rooms?” Elaine asked.
“Yes, please.”
“Keith will show you to your rooms,” she said, nodding to the concierge standing on the other side of the desk.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she smiled. “Oh, and happy birthday, Ms. Parker.”
“Thanks,” I nodded. Then I cringed.
“It’s your fucking birthday!” Shelby whisper yelled.
“Yep.”
“We have to do something.”
“We are doing something.”
“No, I mean you need cake and presents and party hats with glitter on them.”
“I don’t need those things.”
“Yes you do,” she argued. “Every girl needs those things on her birthday.”
“No, I really don’t,” I said firmly.
“You know she’s going to do it anyway, don’t you?” Bit said.
“I know,” I sighed.
We filed off the elevator, following Keith to the first suite, which Bit and Logan took. The rest of us waited outside as Keith showed them around.
I could still hear Bit squealing down the hall at the suite Shelby and Cody took.
“Mini bar! Shit yeah,” I heard Shelby and laughed. So did Mason. It was nice to hear and for a moment, things felt normal between us again, but things weren’t normal. Things were nonexistent.
When we reached the next suite, Keith opened the door and I motioned for Mason to go inside.
“You take it,” he said.
“Okay.” I wasn’t going to argue with him.
“Thanks for this,” he said as I walked inside. I gave him a tight smile and shut the door.
I went straight for the bathtub. It had been a long time since I’d been able to take a bath for the hell of it. Just for the sole purpose of soaking in rose petal scented hot water brimming with bubbles.
I turned on the water and stripped down as I looked through the selection of bath products on the counter. I chose what smelled the best and dumped it into the tub. I got in, sank down in the scalding water until it was up to my neck, and closed my eyes.
Chapter 26
My bath bliss didn’t last as long as I would have liked, because Shelby was ready to “tear up the town” as she’d put it. I’d forgotten to lock the door so she let herself into my room to tell me I had fifteen minutes to get myself together and meet everyone in the hallway.
I put the white lacy tank top and cut off shorts back on. I’d only worn them a couple hours. I shook my hair out, put it back up in a sloppy bun, and rushed out of my room, following the sounds of their voices to the elevators.
“Oh my god, Kat! Our room is so beautiful,” Bit cooed. “And so big! It’s like a house.”
“I’m glad you like it,” I smiled.
“The free alcohol is pretty neat, too,” Shelby winked, and then pulled a tiny bottle of Jack Daniels out of her front shorts pocket as we loaded onto the elevator.
I laughed. Cody shook his head. “You know she’s gonna take the towels and robes and stuff, too.”
“It’s fine,” I said.
“We can keep the robes?” Bit asked, wide eyed.
“You can keep the robes,” I nodded.
“You can keep your robe, but Kat’ll have to pay for it,” Mason said, propping himself against the back corner of the elevator.
“It’s not a big deal. People take them all the time,” I said. I looked at Bit. “Keep the robe.”
Cody pressed the L button on the elevator, and the doors closed. On the way down, I caught Mason looking at me. Once I’d made eye contact with him, I couldn’t make myself look away. His hat was pulled down, but I could still see the hypnotic blue of his eyes, set off by the sun on his skin. He wore a sleeveless shirt that showed the definition in his arms, his thumbs hinged on the openings of the pockets in his shorts.
My heart beat so hard that I felt it in my ears and was starting to feel dizzy because of it. Then, the elevator came to a stop and I was forced to break my concentration on Mason.
As we walked through the lobby, I told myself that I would never make it through the weekend with Mason so close. It was too hard to be around him and not be with him. I instinctively wanted to grab his hand and hold it. On the elevator, I’d felt like snuggling against him, kissing his rose-colored mouth while running my hands along the naked skin of his arms.
Mason may have said he couldn’t get more involved with me, but he certainly wasn’t acting like he didn’t want to—which was completely unfair to me. And my broken heart.
We exited the Ritz on Canal Street and set out to explore the French Quarter.
“We have to go to Bourbon Street,” Shelby said.
“We have to take the carriage tour,” Bit added.
“We should probably follow Canal to Decatur and hit Jackson Square first. The French Market is over there, too. Then we can head to Bourbon Street, take the carriage ride and eat dinner,” Logan said.
Apparently his idea was a good one because no one said anything else, just started walking. I tried to stay as close to Bit and Shelby as I could, but it still kept working out that Bit and Logan were side-by-side and Shelby and Cody were side-by-side, which left Mason and me dangling awkwardly behind them.
When we hit Decatur Street, Shelby stopped near a trash can to finish her miniature bottle of booze while Bit and Logan studied handmade jewelry in the window of the business next door. I gazed at the buildings around us, making a conscious effort not to look at Mason when he stepped in front of me.
“I wanna apologize for what I said about you and Garrett. I didn’t mean it,” he said. I nodded. I wasn’t going to say it was okay or tell him not to worry about it like some people did when they received an apology. What he’d said hurt, just like he’d meant for it to. I would accept his apology, acknowledge it with a nod, but that would be it.
I started to walk away. “Kat,” Mason said. I turned to look at him. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.” That statement I wouldn’t acknowledge period. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t meant to, he’d still hurt me.
We strolled through the flea market area in the French Market District and went inside a few of the fixed shops. I found some great smelling bath potions and candles that were packaged in beautiful antique glass containers. I wanted to buy them, but they were too fragile and would have been too heavy for me to carry around the rest of the night. I left the shop hoping I would get to come back and buy them before we went back to Slidell.
“We have to get some!” Bit shrieked, pointing to a tiny lemonade stand across the street. “That lemonade is the
best you’ll ever have,” she said to me. It was five dollars for a sixteen-ounce glass, but worth every penny.
“Wow,” I said, after taking a sip.
“See,” Bit bragged.
It was the perfect combination of freshly squeezed lemon juice, water, and sugar.
The six of us quickly sucked down our lemonade as we entered Jackson Square. It was as hot as Shelby had promised it would be, so instead of being appalled, I copied her when she stuffed her plastic cup down the front of her shirt. The melting ice inside the cup helped give my body a break from the heat.
We found an empty carriage and took our tour. It was loud and too hard to hear most of what the guide was saying, but I wasn’t paying much attention anyway, I was too busy admiring the architecture of the surrounding buildings, and watching the artists on the streets paint and pedal their artwork.
It was beautiful during daylight hours, but I couldn’t help but imagine how much more beautiful it would have been to circle through the city late at night—in cooler air—with everything lit up.
When the tour was over, Shelby gave her phone to the guide and asked her to take a picture of us. As we clumped together next to the carriage, Shelby threw her arm around Bit and stuck her leg out like she was trying to hitch a ride somewhere. She opened her mouth wide and stuck her tongue out while Bit smiled like a pageant contestant, and Logan and Cody laughed because they swore the horse pulling our carriage had farted. “It smells like bacon,” Cody snickered. Mason and I stood uncomfortably next to each other, trying to pretend we weren’t standing next to each other, but still managed to look the most normal out of everyone.
We walked the grounds of the St. Louis Cathedral, but couldn’t go inside because there was a wedding going on. As we wandered down Royal Street, it was starting to get dark and I was hungry and felt like I’d been walking for years instead of hours.
“Is anybody else hungry?” I asked.
“Yes,” I heard almost simultaneously.
“We’re almost to Bourbon Street. We’ll find a place there,” Shelby said.
Bourbon Street was the most crowded place we’d been all day. There was a lot to see, but because of the crowd, I was mostly concentrating on staying with my group.
“Marie Laveau’s!” Bit pointed to a sign hanging from the ceiling of the covered sidewalk. It read, Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo.
“Voodoo! Hell no! I’m not goin’ in there,” Logan protested.
“I think I’ll take a pass, too,” I said. Then something hit me. “Isn’t Dixie’s last name Laveau?”
“Yeah. Ha!” Bit laughed. “That must be why she’s so evil. The Voodoo Priestess of Louisiana is, like, her great, great grandma or somethin’.”
That struck me as funny. I’d always thought of grandma’s as being sweet and baking things. Not casting spells and putting fear into people’s hearts, or whatever Voodoo Priestess’s did. But I’d also never had a grandma. I knew nothing about my mother’s parents at all and my father’s parents were both dead. They were killed in a car crash when he was thirteen. He told me he’d missed having them in his life all these years, but that maybe losing them was what had made him strive to be so successful.
We went in the first seafood place we stumbled across, and were quickly seated. Shelby tried to order a beer, but our waiter didn’t fall for it. Instead, he brought her sweet tea, along with the rest of us—including me. I’d started to become fond of it.
I was so hungry and everything on the menu looked so good that I suggested we order a bunch of entrees and share them family style. Everyone agreed and the waiter didn’t mind, so we had a little bit of everything. Steak, salmon, blue crab, oysters, frog legs, shrimp—several ways, Cajun seasoned pasta, jambalaya, blackened redfish, and a variety of sides including the best garlic mashed potatoes I’d ever put in my mouth and alligator gumbo, which I didn’t care for.
In the middle of eating, passing plates, and talking about how good everything was, Mason stuck his fork across the table toward me. “Try this,” he said. I stared at the piece of fish dangling from his fork unsure what I should do. Take the bite while he held the fork? Take the fork from him, or pass altogether?
“Come on, Cali girl. Do we have to have the spit conversation again?” he asked. I knew he was trying to do away with some of the tension between us, but still, he shouldn’t have brought that up.
Even though it was only Bit, Shelby, Logan, and Cody, it felt like the entire restaurant was watching to see what I would do. So, I took the bite while Mason held the fork.
“Thank you,” he said. I rolled my eyes.
“Aw, how sweet,” Shelby sang.
“What broke y’all up anyway?” Logan asked.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” I said, and left the table. That was not a conversation I wanted to have. I didn’t want to rehash the night Mason dumped me.
I went in the bathroom and washed my hands. I dabbed my face with the now moist paper towel I’d dried my hands on and stared at myself in the rectangular mirror above the sink.
“I can make myself stay away from him,” I mumbled before tossing the paper towel in the trash and swinging the bathroom door open.
When I got back to the table, the waiter had packed up our leftovers and left a check. I paid the bill, and the others threw cash on the table for a tip. “I’m going to take a cab back to the hotel,” I said to no one in particular and got out of there as fast as I could.
“What the hell just happened?” I heard Shelby ask. “What’d I miss?”
I didn’t stop.
I put the window down in the cab and heard a mixture of jazz sounds coming from nightclubs and the sidewalks outside of restaurants. The air was full of scents so flavorful you could practically taste them. I heard laughter and saw couples holding hands, and it made me sad. I hated to play the what if game regarding Mason and me, but if we were still together, today would have been much more fun for me. Wanting to be with someone you can’t have hurts. Having to spend almost every waking moment with that person, even if it was only for a weekend, was excruciating.
Chapter 27
There was an obnoxious, repetitive knock on my door. I knew it was Shelby. I swung it wide open. Shelby’s fist was still wadded up, knocking on air.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said.
“I don’t care about your personal drama with Mason. I need you to come to my room right now.” She grabbed my arm and yanked me into the hallway. I clumsily followed her.
“You wait,” she ordered when we reached her suite. She barely cracked the door and slipped inside, leaving me alone. A few seconds later, the door flew open and I was greeted with an uneven screeching of the words, “Happy Birthday!”
The room was dark, except for a flaming three-tiered cake on a room service cart. Eighteen candles flickered; casting a small bit of light that forced the glitter on the cone shaped party hats Bit and Shelby were wearing to sparkle.
I smiled. I couldn’t help it. Shelby was right. I did need sparkly hats, and cake. The presents, I could do without.
“Okay, okay,” Bit said, waving her arms around. “Put on your hat,” she said, holding one out for me. I slipped it on and gave her a big grin.
“Good,” she nodded. “Now, make a wish and blow out your candles.”
There were so many things I could have wished for; so many things that I wanted, but I knew that simply wishing for something wouldn’t make it happen. Bit was so excited that I didn’t want to squash her feelings, so I played along and acted like I’d thought of something really good to wish for, closed my eyes and blew out the candles.
Someone turned on the lights; I laughed after getting a better look at the cake. It had hearts on the top tier, Mike & Melissa on the center tier, and Forever on the bottom tier. It was somebody’s wedding cake. Then I had a thought that made me stop laughing.
“Hey, Shelby,” I asked warily. “Where’d you get the cake?”
“Room serv
ice,” she said, matter-of-fact. Bit giggled. I looked around the room, and no one would make eye contact with me. Room Service, huh? I wasn’t buying it.
“Please tell me you didn’t steal it,” I said.
“What kind of asshole steals a person’s wedding cake?” Shelby barked. Bit covered her mouth, laugher sputtering out. Shelby and Logan laughed, too.
“What’s so funny?” I asked, yanking the glittery hat off of my head.
“Me,” Bit grinned, her eyes watery from laughing. “I’m the asshole. I took the cake,” she admitted, beaming with pride.
Everyone laughed. “Oh my god, Bit,” I gasped.
“They didn’t get married,” she defended. “We overheard one of the catering guys talking on a two-way radio in front of the elevator downstairs. He said the bride found out the groom had screwed four of her six bridesmaids and called off the wedding. She said she didn’t want to keep anything, especially not the cake. It was just sitting there…this big, beautiful cake that no longer had a purpose and we needed a cake for you—” “So, we distracted the guy,” Shelby interrupted, pointing to herself and Logan, “while Bit rolled the cart onto the elevator and made a clean getaway.”
I laughed, shaking my head. That story sounded crazy and if the catering company made a complaint, the hotel could review the security footage and easily find out who had taken it, but since the cake was going to be trashed anyway, I hoped they didn’t pursue it. Either way, I couldn’t help but appreciate their effort.
“Thank you,” I said.
“You’re welcome. Put your hat back on,” Shelby announced. “We’re just gettin’ started.” She pulled a half-empty bottle of bourbon from the nightstand and poured shots into six glasses lined up on a nearby table.
“I stole this from G, but it doesn’t count. He probably didn’t remember havin’ it in the first place.”
“So, where were you two during The Great Wedding Cake Heist?” I asked, looking at Cody and Mason.
I thought about how I’d rushed out of the restaurant and imagined everyone knew it was because of Mason—including Mason. My plan was to pretend it never happened and hope that everyone would follow suit.
Two Thousand Miles Page 13
