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Both times the sex was pretty good, there had been a spark, a chemistry, and a feeling of satisfaction but nothing that had rocked my world. If anything, I had taken more of a kick with the hotel toiletries I had rehomed the next morning before I had ducked out of the staff exit and made my way back to my humble abode.
I slip into the staff area and push my few bits into my locker before giving myself a final look over in the mirror. Same as always, perfectly pressed but a little imperfect around the edges.
The first few hours of my shift are always generally quiet. I’m supposed to use this time doing a list of menial tasks like polishing the glasses or chopping fruit but I rarely do. I keep everything neat, clean, organized and stocked so I usually eyeball the TV that plays in the corner minus the sound. I’ve become a pro at lip-reading over the years.
The bar in the hotel is clever, it’s not like the dining area or lobby, which brings the outside inside. In the bar, there are no windows, it is constantly evening, made with the illusion that no matter what the actual time is, it is perfectly acceptable to be drinking. It makes time distorted. Some days I can glance at my watch with incredulity that only an hour had passed and other days be pleasantly surprised that I’m nearing the end.
Today is to be one of the better days. It seems like I haven’t been here long at all before Robbie comes through to give me thirty minutes to take my break. I sneak through to the kitchen and bat my eyelashes at Jorge who pretends to shoo me out before piling my plate high with pasta Bolognese and hot melted cheese.
“Oh, Jorge, this is the best thing I have ever tasted.”
He looks over the shiny steel countertop with a raised eyebrow as though that was ever in doubt. It is one of the things that I love about living in London. It is a cultural clash of ethnicities. Jorge is Sicilian and even though he has lived here most of his adult life, he still curses in Italian and rolls his Rs in a way that makes my heart flutter.
A lot of the hotel staff are from other countries. There is no main place. Eastern Europe, the Med, the hospitality manager is German, and I like that; I like living and working in a place where cultural differences are not only accepted but encouraged too.
I amble back to the bar with thirty seconds to spare on my break, but Robbie is already waiting to dash off, and I know why the moment I enter because I can hear the bustle of the room filling and the sighs of impatience as people have to wait for their order. He isn’t as efficient on the bar as me and we both know it.
“What can I get you, Sir?” I greet the first person who catches my eye and begin to prepare his order within about seventeen seconds flat, but that elicits a soft tut from a woman perched at the end of the bar. After I serve him his drinks and charge them to his room, I make my way over to her.
“What can I get you, Ma’am?” I ask her softly waiting for her to turn and make eye contact with me.
I am definitely fluid in my sexuality, tending towards women. I can appreciate a beautiful woman as much as I can an attractive guy. I’ve been with women and men over the years, never anything serious, never anyone who sparked anything more than a passing desire in me.
As the woman at the bar turns to face me, I have to hold my gasp. Not because I recognize her, because of course I do, but because I have never seen a woman so beautiful in the flesh.
Her thick, dark red hair is piled up high on her head and tumbled in an effortless grace that frames her face. I know she is over forty, but her skin has a beautiful translucence to it. The light kiss of a tan seems to emit a radiating glow from her high cheekbones, and her eyes are so green they look like an instagram post with a filter. But, this is no filter, this is real life. Her makeup looks minimal, but I can tell it has taken time to perfect the look of nearly nude, and she wears it beautifully. It makes her look younger, fresh faced and carefree, which if her recent exploits in the newspapers are anything to go by, she most certainly is not.
“I’ll take a cosmopolitan. Virgin. But make it look like it is loaded with the good stuff.” She grins at me, a beautiful smile with neat white teeth and glossy pink lips, as she swivels in her stool to face me and greets me with a long rolling southern drawl.
I embellish, making a show as I shake the cranberry juice and soda, pouring it into a frozen glass so the condensation runs in a smooth line down the stem. Next is a twist of orange juice and a squeeze of fresh lime. I pour it to perfection. I serve around the same amount of mocktails as I do cocktails as a lot of extremely wealthy people seem to avoid touching alcohol. I imagine it has something to do with no limits. If you could afford to drink yourself into oblivion with no consequences, what was to stop you from doing it once, twice, three times a week until it developed into a problem.
However, sober people are also more likely to notice if it tastes like shit, which is why I usually put a little more effort into the non-alcoholic versions. But that is not the reason I’m giving the Dahlia Dante my best show here.
I slide a black coaster embedded with gold flakes across to her and place the glass dead center so the glistening golden flecks will shimmer in the prism of the glass bottom. It looks fancy, it costs about a buck to make. In fact, the coaster probably costs more than the drink, but that isn’t the point. The point is the show.
I watch as Ms. Dante reaches with elegant fingers and red manicured fingernails. Her soft palm curls around the stem and she looks up at me under long thick lashes as she takes the lightest of sips. Barely a drop passes her lips but it is enough for a taste.
“Perfection. Almost worth the wait.” Her voice is gravelly. She winks before standing. “Charge it to my room—850.”
Her heels sink into the carpet, but she doesn’t need them for height anyway. She is tall and I find my eyes running hungrily over her body. The exquisite curves of her waist and hips are just as good as they look on screen, maybe better. Her breasts are barely held in by a deep emerald halter-neck dress that bunched at her hips as she sat but now falls to her ankles, covering her diamond-encrusted stilettos. The dress is slit up to the upper thigh on one side. It flashes enough to show her thighs are perfectly toned, but as she turns to walk away there is no denying the sensational curve of her peachy ass. I am staring. I know it, but I can’t help it.
“She is really something in the flesh,” murmurs a guy at the other end of the bar, and I nearly agree with him until I realize he is actually talking to his companion and not, in fact, me.
The rest of my shift drags and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t check the door to see if each new guest was, in fact, a returning Ms. Dahlia Dante. I was already googling her as I clocked out and left through the back entrance making the few blocks home.
Photos online just do not do her justice at all.
Her absolute radiance in real life outdoes any photograph I could find.
She’s a household name, sure, but I realise I don’t know much about her history.
She had been thrust into the limelight from a young age as part of the child star crew of some hit American teen trash show. After that, her personal life had become a public soap drama in itself. She had been emancipated from her parents at fifteen and since then her entire life had been run and managed by her manager.
In her mid-twenties, she had married some older country singer, who I personally had always thought was gay, but there had been no denying the chemistry between them when they arrived at events. He had shone and she had sparkled and could do no wrong… Until they had very privately separated a few years ago.
The problem when you have built your life and fortune around a very public life, the media doesn’t love it if you decide to keep the juiciest gossip private. The power couple, the Southern Sweethearts, the ultimate American Dream, separated and no word on why.
Of course, the rumors started. Even now, years later, one of the top hits on Google is speculation that Jayden had left her because Dahlia cheated on him with his drummer. I could find zero substance to the article other than pure conjecture and speculation, but it was a clickbait title that earned the trash papers some more ad revenue.
