Hello Adventure

Chapter 7

I had moved myself to the hotel's indoor lobby bar now that it was dark outside. Replaying my chat with Brooke made me audibly groan into my Negroni.

I had to stay up at least another hour to fight the jetlag. To ensure this, I wouldn't even go upstairs to my room yet; my bed would be too tempting.

"You better keep me awake," I instructed the Negroni holding it eye-level, narrating aloud. The cut-crystal glass was decorated by a slice of blood orange thick as a thumb. The sunset-colored fruit was so fleshy and juicy there was almost something sexual about it in its lusciousness. Sexier still? Because the hotel was our client, we got reimbursed for food and drink (as long as we stayed in the budgetary parameters). So because I skipped dinner, I didn't even have to bat an eyelash at the Negroni's double-digit price tag that would normally have me slinking away.

It was my first time drinking Negronis. I only knew what they were from my thorough research into Brooke. In one of Basic Brooke B.'s blog posts entitled "Italian Apéritifs That Will Have You Dancing In Fountains Like The Hot Bitch You Are," she wrote that "hot bitches simple must [emphasis hers] indulge in Negronis while on Lake Como."

And now, apparently, I was that exact "hot bitch" who she was referring too in that sentence. Drinking the bitter cocktail made me feel darkly sexy and terribly cosmopolitan, and also like, way drunk. It was stronger than its rowdy ruby hue would ever lead me to guess.

I looked across the Art Nouveau hotel lobby: A swaying blur of shimmery low candlelight and the glow of chandeliers draped over the slabs of Italian marble, high ceilings, and blood-red velvety roses. From the bar, an old-world barman clattered ice in a silver cocktail shaker, the merry, violent rattling keep me awake, aware, alert.

If Amina were here she'd tell me this would be the perfect time to have a one-night stand. The problem was, there were no likely candidates for the job. The hotel lobby bar was largely empty, as it was prime dinnertime for Italians. Also, since it was October, tourist season was just about over. (Though we were expected to luck out with warm weather this week.)

As I admired the timeless details of the palazzo's lobby, I did my best to keep both eyes open. But the world was easier to focus on when I closed one eye. And so I was sporting this ridiculous winky face when I first noticed a guy standing at the reception. His back was turned to me, but he was well built, one might even say "strapping" (if one were a character in a period romance novel). This was about all I could tell about him from my table in the lobby and this side of drunk.

If Amina were here she would call him "a prime target."

"Just go for it. Don't let your brain cock-block you!" I heard Amina insisting in my head. If she knew I was drunk enough to even consider a one-night-stand, she'd be encouraging me to go full steam ahead.

The guy turned away from the reception desk and sat down at a table near me in the bar area. He took out a laptop and began pecking at it halfheartedly. I must have been staring (or looking like a special kind of idiot) because suddenly he lifted his eyes and made contact. He smiled and ran his hand through his hair.

I couldn't help but think: Oh! Cute.

My pulse drummed in my neck, and my belly swooped with intoxicated butterflies, crashing into one another, but getting me excited nonetheless.

Stop staring at him all googly-eyed like he could be your soul mate, I instructed myself in Amina's no-nonsense voice. Look at him like a piece of meat—Ew! That's gross, what am I thinking? Why don't you stop looking at him altogether?!

I forced my internal dialogue to shut the hell up because apparently, my brain was useless after a Negroni and metric ton of champagne, (which, I mean, fair enough, right?). But somehow knowing I was drunk fortified me.