I WAS IN THE BANQUET HALL, me and a Roman legion of wait staff. They scurried along the back walls, in and out of the kitchen, getting ready for the epic night.

I was making my way around the tables, setting out small Pez-like dispensers with miniature coffee cup ‘heads’ atop each one. I put one beside every place setting, right next to the personalized wine stoppers engraved with Ben and Amber’s name and the date of the wedding, a more upscale wedding favor.

But these were my own little creation, a blast from our past and a little surprise for Ben. His favorite treat as a kid had been Pez, and Amber, for all her bridezilla tendencies, truly did love him, and gave her stamp of approval at once to these. Because these little babies didn’t dispense crappy candy, they spit out a perfectly measured two-shot serving of coffee beans.

Owning a now-defunct coffee shop ought to have some perks, right?

I’d designed and ordered five thousand of them, thinking they might be a little angle to help save my business, a faltering, funky coffee shop, but they came too late to save anything.

It might have been too tall a task for a hollow plastic tube.

But hey, it was okay, because I had an offer to work as the newly minted personal assistant to Amber’s dad, Ben’s soon-to-be father-in-law. I’d be one of three, but it was a big, well-paying job, better than struggling coffee shop owner. Ben said I couldn’t spend my whole life making other people happy with drugs, even if they were legal.

“Just take the job. Ben had said. “Stop gap, you know?”

I definitely had some gaps to stop.

Seriously, who doesn’t give up running their own tiny coffee shop, barely making ends meet, talking with people and enjoying yourself, when you could be making sixty K a year, plus benefits, in a glassy high rise, mingling with the rich and very rich?

Right?

I said I’d think about it.

Still, I was proud of my little coffee bean dispensers, even if my dreams were in shambles, and I stood one upright beside each plate, knowing Ben at least would love them.

I slid around a table and stopped short.

From under the table beside mine, I saw a pair of brown puppy eyes staring up at me.

“Hey little guy,” I whispered, and bent down. “Hi there.”

The puppy, possibly a German Shepherd, black as night and furry as hell, backed up a few steps then tumbled down on his haunches, half sitting, watching me. His fat little back legs stuck out.

I sat down too and smiled at him. I figured smiling couldn’t hurt. Behind me, wait staff bustled. “Hey buddy,” I said softly. “You hungry?”

He blinked, then yawned, showing me sharp little white teeth.

“Hey listen, things are going to get crazy in here in a little bit,” I told him, and rested my hand on the ground. “There’s going to be people in expensive clothes and loud music and peacocks, and I don’t think you’re going to be a popular guy.”

He tilted his head to the side. His furry ears flopped over. Then he tilted his head the other way, and his ears flopped with him.

Oh my God, I’d never seen anything so cute.

I wiggled my fingers in what I hoped was an inviting manner. “So maybe you could come with me…”

He got to his fat little legs and yipped.

“Shhh,” I said, looking around frantically, waving my hand.

He looked at my hand, then started trotting toward me.

“Hey, is that a dog?” shouted a wait staff member behind me.

The puppy made a u-turn and bolted, disappearing under the tablecloths, deep into the room set with fifty tables.

I got to my feet. “Well, it was a dog.”

“It still is.” He gave me a stern look. “Dogs aren’t allowed in the Hotel de Grace.”

“The Humane Society was here with fifteen cages of them earlier.”

“That’s different. They can’t be loose. Hotel rules.”

“I don’t think he cares about hotel rules.”

He scowled at me. “You better get him out of here.”

I scowled back. “Where is he supposed to go? It’s going to storm soon.”

His reply was unforgiving. “Get him out,” he repeated, and turned to the kitchen.

I looked under a few tables, but the furball was gone. Then my phone buzzed, rattling from inside the almost-empty box of Pez-ish dispensers.

I jumped, then reached inside and looked at the number, and smiled.

Lexie. My best friend. My little troublemaker.

We’d spent the last five Christmas’s together, me and Lexie. But this year, I was here, and she’d been traveling for the whole month prior, so we agreed to do our gift exchange remotely. I’d set my gift under her tree before I left, and carried hers here.

“Unboxing time gf,” her message said. “Put me on video.”

I pulled out a chair and set the phone on the top of someone’s wine glass and put us on video.

“I can’t open yours now, Lex,” I said as soon as her pixie-like face appeared on the screen, leaning forward on her elbows, smiling and ready for anything.

Her face fell. She sat up. For a second all I could see was her breasts in a tank top. She shifted the screen. “What?”

“The wedding’s in about an hour, and I don’t have your gift here. Remember I said we should unwrap tomorrow? On Christmas?”

“Oh yeah.” She considered me a second, then said suspiciously, “If the wedding’s in an hour, what are you doing there?” Her eyes scanned the wedge of darkened room the screen allowed her to see. “Alone.”

“Distributing my dispensers to the masses.”

“I love those things,” she said fondly, then added sternly, “You’re always alone, Cass.”

“I’m not alone. There are five thousand pounds of garland here and a lot of wait staff.”

“Why aren’t you with the other girls?” she demanded in a motherly, angry tone.

I didn’t want to have the ‘unbelonging’ conversation again, so I just waved my hand. “Lex, I don’t know them and they don’t know me and…I just….”

Her mouth went into a straight line.

“I’m happier here with the dispensers.”

She slumped with a theatrical sigh and slid my gift across the table, onto the screen. She leaned in close and gave a mischievous grin, then put her mouth right up against the screen.

“What is it?” she shouted.

I laughed and sat back. “Okay, fine, open it. Fast.”

She ripped at the wrappings, flinging silvery-grey paper into the air, the same paper I’d used on Ben and Amber’s crystal wedding gift, but in this case, the decorous covering was a ruse. Better to hide the decadence within.

Lexie was my most open-minded and wild child friend, flinging strips of torn paper and ribbons into the air, like an impish Tasmanian devil. I needed more Lexie in my life.

I was not a troublemaker. I was not a wild child. I was careful and thought a lot about things that probably didn’t need thinking about. Which is why I was so excited about the gift I’d bought her. Broke my own mold, thinking of what Lexie would want: a gorgeous, work of art, glass dildo.

“Hurry up,” I said, leaning forward.

“Jeez, I am hurrying. This is like a Russian doll.” She tugged at paper and tissue. “It’s really heavy.”

I grinned. “I know.”

She spread the paper open and peered inside, then reached in and drew out…a pair of crystal toasting flutes.

“Wow,” she said sitting back, clearly stunned. “Seriously, Cass, these look…really expensive. I think you went over our limit.”

I stared at the champagne glasses. My heart started a slow, cold slide to my belly. If these were the champagne flutes…that meant I’d given the work of art dildo to…Amber.

There was a dildo in the gift room.

“Oh shit,” I whispered.

“Cass?” Lexie said. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

I shot to my feet. “I gotta go.” I turned and skidded on my heels out of the banquet hall.

Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit.

This is what happened when you played with sex toys.