Page 53 of Burn

One should focus more on her job.

Like the fact that it’s New Year’s Eve and one of the biggest nights of the year for our hotel and Shade Sawyer is here, somewhere, causing quite the uproar in the city. I had no idea a FMX freestyle racer could have everyone acting like a boy band was staying out our hotel, let alone know who he was.

I hate parties. Even worse, I hate them at the hotel on New Year’s Eve.

Why? Well, whatever goes wrong throughout the night, it’s automatically my fault.

And worse, Judah’s here. You remember him, right? The drummer. Their band is playing downstairs in The Courtyard. Not only do we have Shade here but we have a concert downstairs. We do it big here at Wellington Suites. Hopefully big enough someone gets hurt and we can finally call 911.

I’m tempted to pull the fire alarms just for the fun of it. Maybe the fire department will come.

DESPITE ME AVOIDING the Courtyard and the concert for most of the evening, Judah finds me in the restaurant at around ten while I’m making sure the reservations that were doubled booked this evening had been corrected by the restaurant staff.

I’m walking back to the lobby when I see him leaned against a wall, black jeans and a ripped white T-shirt clinging to his scrawny inked body. It’s hard to believe I used to find him sexy in a brooding drummer way.

Judah gives me a nod when I’m within a foot of him. You know the ones, the cocky nod where he’s trying to play it cool. He’s good at them.

I attempt to walk by him, but he grabs my elbow, swinging me into him. “Who was that guy the other night?” he whispers in my ear and then pulls back, holding me by my upper arms. “You fuck him?”

I shrug his arms off. “That’s none of your business.”

His eyes drop to my dress, a clingy black number I decided to wear. I wasn’t going to wear a dress, but my dad insisted we dress the part for the night. You’d think my father was running a Las Vegas casino with the way he likes to wear formal attire around the hotel.

Judah breathes in carefully, his chest expanding in his shirt with the breath and then he lets it go. “Says who?”

I glare at him, annoyed he’s still holding onto me. Once you break up with me, you’ve lost the ability to manhandle me. “Says you since you broke up with me.”

He narrows his eyes and studies me for a moment. The silent scrutiny has me shifting away from him. “I want you back.”

Shrugging out of his grasp, I shove him back against the wall. “You don’t know what you want, Judah. You want pussy, and if it’s not readily available to you the second you want it, you search elsewhere for it. I can’t be in a relationship with someone like that.”

He laughs into his hand. For being nearly thirty, Judah is a child in many ways. His reaction of laughing proves my point.

IT’S NEVER ONE thing that goes wrong in the hotel industry. It’s usually everything all at once, and this is where I earn my pay.

Heather calls my phone around eleven, and I’m sure it has to do with Shade, but surprisingly it doesn’t. “Hey, Heather, everything okay?”

“No,” she whispers. “There’s a couple at the front desk, and they’re upset there are no rooms available and we won’t rent one to them for an hour.”

“I’ll be right there.” I slip my phone inside my bra. Where else am I going to put it in a dress like this?

The biggest misconception people have is that hotels keep rooms available in case the president comes to town or someone equally famous.

It’s not true. Most hotels never do this because they want every room rented every night. It’s more expensive to have a room vacant than to have someone renting it.

The exception to this are the rooms out of order. Sometimes it’s something major like a leak in the ceiling or busted water pipe or no heat. Sometimes it’s minor like a TV not working or fixing a broken tile in the bathroom which guests do complain about.

If need be, I rent those rooms at a discounted rate but under no circumstances is Heather allowed to.

When I make it to the lobby, there’s a couple in their mid-twenties at the counter, drunk off their asses yelling at Heather that she’s messed up their reservations.

Once I’m up there, the woman with her dress half on, mostly off, is leaning on the counter, her tits pushing up into her chin as she attempts to use the counter as a tit-shelf.

“Ms. Rae here insists we give her a room.”

I don’t like the way Heather says this, mostly because there are things you should never say in front of a guest. Using the word “insisting” is one of them. Guaranteed way to piss someone off.

The woman points in Heather’s face. “She can’t do anything right!”

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