FIVE
“ORIGAMI CRANES,” SOL said over the phone. “That was the original plan, but Darlene talked Rain into the swans. I can’t tell her the favors are broken or she’ll have a breakdown, but maybe if we can do the cranes, she’ll be placated? Hopefully?”
“How does one find an origami crane maker in New Orleans?” Alex asked, the phone glued to his ear while he navigated the French Quarter’s streets. Theresa was contorted in her seat, leaning into the back to count how many broken swans they had inside box one. Which was fine and all, but if he stopped short she’d go face-first into a pile of broken glass, and he was fairly certain that would unpretty her.
“I . . . hold on, Sol. Theresa, can you do that at the hotel?”
“Sixty-six, sixty-seven . . .”
“Can you put on your seat belt, please?” Alex demanded.
“She’s so unruly,” Sol chortled over the phone.
“Shut up, Sol. Theresa . . .”
“Seventy-two and three. Seventy-three broken swans out of three hundred. We’d want a few extra to cover any more accidents.” She flopped back in her seat and stretched out as far as the narrow confines of the Porsche allowed.
“Seat belt, please,” he repeated. Theresa gave him a look he’d come to know all too well over their short association, and yet she put on the belt all the same, her lips curling like she smelled something foul. “Thank you. So, origami swans. Where, Sol?”
“Cranes. I haven’t the faintest idea. Maybe that’s why Darlene steered her away, but it’s another possibility, maybe? There’s about a week still. Ish. Close enough.” Sol paused, the good-natured veneer slipping for a second when he said, “Maybe I’ll buy three hundred iPhones and give those away as favors. They’re black. It’ll fit the color scheme.”
He’s more upset than he’s letting on.
“Let me handle it,” Alex said. “You take care of the venue.”
“I’m trying. Three places today. All said no. If I have to accept the paparazzi with the original venue, I will, but I’m going to move heaven and earth to avoid it for her sake.”
Alex sighed. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you. I know I can be an irritating shit at times, but truly, thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Alex hung up, sliding the phone into the pocket of his white button-down shirt.
“Verdict?” Theresa asked.
“The best idea he has is origami cranes. I have no idea who to call for that.”
“I’ll look.” Theresa opened up Google on her phone and he tried to peek, but when she caught him looking, she flicked his nose. Not hard, but enough to get her point across. “Watch the road, Mr. Safety.”
“I’m curious.”
“I know. Don’t think I didn’t notice you snooping over my shoulder earlier.”
“I’m . . . yes. I’m nosy. It’s a character flaw.”
“A fairly benign one. Just don’t kill us over origami.” Theresa grinned and tapped at her phone. A video started, and a few seconds in, a male voiceover started explaining how to fold a perfectly square sheet of paper.
“What are you doing?”
“Origami in New Orleans brought up a sushi bar and nothing else, so I’m looking to see how hard it is. This tutorial says it’s low intermediate. Maybe we can do it.”
“Us. Like, you and me folding paper.”
“Yes.”
Alex grimaced. “Folding paper into birds.”
“Aye.”
“ ‘Aye’ indeed. This has all the makings of a terrible idea.”
“Don’t be negative,” she said. And he wasn’t trying to be negative, but the tutorial took upward of five minutes, and if they had to fold three hundred cranes, times five minutes, that was twenty-five hours of paper folding.
Divided by two! So only twelve and a half hours of paper folding!
“It doesn’t look too bad,” Theresa announced. “We’d just need paper. Is there a craft store around here somewhere?”
“Well, yes, but . . . are you sure?”
“Not even a little bit, but I’m willing to try.”
It was a fair point. The likelihood of finding someone who could replace almost a hundred glass swans on short notice—especially numbered, limited-edition swans with a distinctive color scheme—was slim to none. If folding paper was the best alternative, and it’d make Rain happy, it was worth the try and almost-undoubted failure.
Twenty minutes later, they were in a craft store looking at decorative paper in the scrapbook section. After a few minutes of poking around, Alex was pretty sure that hell would have a scrapbook section. The women in the aisle were pushy, and all too interested in the stickers, punch-out machines, stamp thingies, and doodads on the surrounding racks.
I don’t even know what most of this stuff does.
“If it’s black, white, or red, and it’s pretty, grab it,” Theresa said from the paper display, picking up twenty or so sheets and emptying a bin in the process.
“How many sheets do we need?” He picked up a black-and-white-check pattern. Theresa took it from him, eyeballed it, and promptly put it back in favor of something with a decorative paisley.
Don’t say to pick up those colors if you don’t mean pick up all of those colors, woman.
He glowered at her. She smirked at him and reached for a pattern with roses.
“Four hundred? In case of failure? I figure we’ll fuck up the first few, but maybe we’ll get into the swing of it. Or maybe we can enlist help. Cylan or . . . I don’t know.”
“I bet Nash could do it,” Alex announced, selecting a thin pinstripe. Theresa glanced at it and tilted her head thoughtfully. He fully expected her to reject it, too, but she added it to her stack.
“And Nash is who again?”
“My brother. Sol’s twin. He isn’t coming in until Thursday, though.”
“What, is he an origami expert?”
Alex wasn’t sure how to answer that. Nash was Nash. A physical mirror of Sol, but with forty more pounds and an IQ through the roof. He was an academic and a student of many things—art, science, history. He had an annual membership to Chicago’s Civic Opera House and could, if the mood struck him, translate said operas, because he was fluent in five languages. If you were unlucky enough to sit in his box, he would do just that. Until you begged for mercy.
“Nash has many interests. I believe he went to Kyoto to study Ikenobo ikebana a few summers ago. Origami wouldn’t be so far-fetched.”
Theresa added another ream of paper to her decorative dead-tree collection before making her way to the cash registers. “What’s that?”
“Japanese flower arranging.” Alex paused. “He said it was a spiritual experience.”
Theresa’s lip twitched. “Well, that sounds . . . that’s. Nice.”
Alex smirked and pulled out his credit card. “That’s Nash. Very nice.”
One hundred dollars’ worth of paper later, they left the craft store, Theresa stopping in the parking lot to eyeball the Popeyes across the street. “I’m starving. Do you think we can not fight for another half hour so I can get some food?”
The question shouldn’t have bothered Alex as much as it did. She wasn’t wrong to ask it; their introduction had been fraught with conflict, from the broken camera to his inability to function in the face of an annoying GPS, but ever since Darlene’s office, it’d been an amicable pairing. Pleasant, even. He liked how she sounded when she was happy. He liked how she tended to lift the left side of her lips but not the right when she smiled, so it was more of a smirk than not.
He liked how she looked. Because he’d never met a woman so physically appealing in all his life.
He didn’t like how the stock boy collecting shopping carts from the plaza eyeballed her like a pork chop. He glared at him hard enough the kid practically ran away in terror. Alex’s size had its benefits.
“Food first. Then origami swans,” he announced.
“Cranes. Swans look way harder,” Theresa corrected. “At least forty more folds.”
Forty more folds.
Right.
This is an awful idea.
“This is an awful idea.”
Theresa’s declaration came on the heels of sixteen failed attempts at paper fowl. She sat on the floor of her hotel room, discarded birds lying forlornly at her feet. Her hair was tied back, she’d shucked the T-shirt in favor of a tank top, and her long legs were folded beneath her body. She’d started on the bed, then gone to the desk, and finally, lain out on her belly on the floor like the new perspective would help her grasp the art of folding paper. The YouTube tutorial played on repeat on her phone.
Alex didn’t have her perseverance. He’d given up after three lopsided birds and a paper cut.
“They look like poodles,” he announced, holding up her most recent attempt. “The long neck and the tail back here.”
She frowned at both bird and man holding the bird. “Too bad there’s no market for origami poodles. I think I need a drink. Maybe I’ll fold better shit-faced.”
A drink sounded marvelous, even if he wasn’t the one heroically attempting to save Rain’s wedding favors. He stood up and offered her a hand. She accepted, swaying on her feet before donning her flip-flops and shouldering into a button-down shirt she didn’t bother to fasten.
“I don’t think I’m bar-ready, but I could go for a bottle and a glass and just . . . I’m not giving up yet. Almost, but not quite,” she said.
“I admire your resolve. And the benefit to owning the hotel is that we can hit the back room instead of the bar. I can go for you if you’d like. Room service.”
She smirked. “Nah, I need to stretch my legs.”
“Same. So what’s your poison? Beer? Wine?”
“Scotch,” she said.
Alex’s brows lifted appreciatively. “Nice. I’m a Glenlivet man when left to my devices.”
“The distillery is in Moray. My mother’s from Aberdeenshire, about an hour away.”
The chatter was nice—simple—like the task. An elevator ride and a walk through the foyer later, they headed to Gustav’s and then into Gustav’s kitchen, navigating around the busy staff and toward the back, where a circular staircase led to the dry-goods pantry in the basement.
Alex went first, Theresa followed him. He flipped on the switch and turned the corner.
In time to hear the soft moan.
It took him a minute to register what was going on before him, but then it’d been more than ten years since the last time he walked in on Sol fucking someone. That time had been Jenni in the pool house after one of Dad’s barbecues, which wouldn’t have been so awful except Jenni had been their housekeeper since Alex was a child and he’d never imagined seeing her breasts, never mind her breasts bouncing while Sol fucked a woman twenty years his senior.
Now Rain was bent over a long wooden table, the previous food tenants of the tabletop strewn across the floor like they’d been thrown there in haste. Her sundress was tossed up over her back, exposing pale, wobbly flanks with a distinctive red handprint on one asscheek. Her panties dangled from a bare foot, which wasn’t quite touching the floor, because Sol had her pinned with his body, one of his hands holding both of hers to the small of her back.
He thrust, and thrust, and thrust, his body slapping at Rain’s. Not once did he notice that Alex was there beholding their ungodliest deed.
“Holy shit,” Theresa said.
Rain squealed, and Sol jerked his face toward the stairs. Instead of looking ashamed of being caught, he just looked annoyed, which only served to irritate Alex more. Every health inspector in the world would have shut Sol down for getting cum on or near the very same flour they used to make their famous honey wheat bread.
Why is he so disgusting?
“What are you doing?” Alex spat, his temper rising mostly out of embarrassment. It was bad enough he had to see it, but Theresa, too? Unacceptable. “This is unsanitary.”
“That’s what I said,” Rain rasped.
Sol looked from Alex to Rain. He released her wrists and reached for the dress, adjusting it so it covered her ass and prevented any accidental dick sightings thanks to their precarious position.
“I was overcome,” Sol said simply. “You should try it sometime.”
“You can’t do that here! What if the staff came down?”
“That’s part of the fun, honestly. And I’d ask them to shut the door behind them. If you would, by the by. Shut the door.”
“I can’t . . .” Alex tried to maneuver around the anger, but it was like chewing through tar. The words got lodged in his throat like a chicken bone, his blood pressure skyrocketing, but then Theresa was there. She put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. It wasn’t magical, but it might as well have been, because instead of imploding in an inferno of rage, he stilled. Everything went quiet like she’d pulled the plug preexplosion. Was he still irritated? Oh yes, because this was bad business, but he could suddenly see the ridiculousness of the situation, too.
Rain’s flustered expression. Sol standing there with his pants around his ankles. The discarded oranges littering the floor.
Why is he like this?
Alex struggled with what to do next. Turning around and pretending he’d seen nothing was likely the best option, but his feet were glued to the floor. A blur of red swept past his peripheral vision. Theresa ducked around him and into the aisle to their right to crouch before one of the lower shelves.
“What are you doing?” he managed.
“I thought we wanted scotch.”
“You still want scotch? After this?”
“Don’t you? If nothing else we can use it to burn out our eyes.”
He laughed. He didn’t expect to laugh. Worse, Sol laughed, and Rain, too, both of them sniggering as the intruders poached some of The Seaside’s booze.
Both of them waiting patiently for Alex and Theresa to go so they could finish their rut.
Theresa swiped a bottle of eighteen-year-old Glenlivet off the shelf and headed for the stairs.
“Talk to you lot tomorrow,” she said without turning around.
“Of course! Good to see you,” Sol called after her, still inside of his fiancée.
“Bye!” Rain echoed.
Alex shook his head in horrified disbelief and scampered up after the seemingly unflappable redhead. At the top of the stairs, he called for her, and without looking, she reached behind her to take his hand, her fingers twining in his to guide him from the kitchen.