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As my sigh adds to the mugginess of the room, Knox says, “We have four years max, Nik. Two if you don’t start taking my advice.” My heart slips to my feet when he murmurs to himself, “I don’t know if that will be enough time to see through my plans.”
“I’m sorry, Knox. I don’t know what I was thinking. It won’t happen again.”
He lets me off quicker than expected. “I only want what’s best for you, poppet.” He strays his eyes to my closed bedroom door. “And him. It hasalwaysbeen about him.”
* * *
With the week draining on all of us, Knox leaves me to my own devices only twenty minutes after marching me into the bathroom. He’d usually hang out in my suite with me until I crashed, but his focus seemed elsewhere today.
I want to say I use my freedom well, but that would be a lie. After flicking through the reruns of the late-night shows Knox Records is endeavoring to get me featured on, I wash my hair while analyzing my exchange with Laken in the elevator.
It was a fun and flirty encounter that has had my head filling with lyrics the prior twenty minutes, but I can barely hear them over the questions that won’t quit circling through my head.
Has Laken made it back to his room yet?
And did he arrive there alone?
Doing my best to ignore the jealousy my final question hits me with, I snatch up my beloved notebook from the bedside table, plop my backside onto my bed, then open it to an untouched page.
Like multiple times over the past several months, the nib of my pen butts against the notepad designed for both songwriting and musical composition, but unlike the times I was left brokenhearted, a handful of lyrics soon grace the page.
Feel your scruff on my neck.
Be your biggest regret.
We don’t even need to go slow.
Not when we already know how this will go…
After a handful more lines, I try to make sense of the jumbled mess in front of me.
If there’s a song amongst the chaos, it isn’t close to production ready, but it is far better than the blank song sheets I’ve stared at over the past three months.
It could become something.Eventually.
“Just a little more. Please,” I plead when the string of words tumbling in my head are drowned out by the faint purr of the mini refrigerator in my room.
The refrigerator keeping my cans of Pepsi cold isn’t loud. It’s just hard to utilize a muse for an entire song when he only stood across from me for a minute.
When my frustration reaches the breaking point, I dump my pen onto my notebook, then stretch leisurely, hopeful unkinking my muscles will also unknot my writer’s block.
As I stretch my neck muscles, my eyes lock with the secondary entrance of my room. The concierge said the hotel owner included a second entrance so future presidential mistresses could “entertain” the president and bypass the first lady and his secret service staff.
When I learned the hotel owner’s identity, I realized his decision had nothing to do with future presidential visits and everything to do with the quickest and most accessible way to reach his wife no matter where she sleeps.
Isaac hasn’t designed a single structure in the past six years without Isabelle influencing its accessibility scale. Whether here or in Tahiti, every room she could stay in has an easy-access point for Isaac.
The remembrance has me curious if there’s a helipad on the hotel’s rooftop like the many other hotels Isaac owns across the globe. Rooftops with uninterrupted views are prime spots to soothe unwanted throat spasms, and they’re also wondrous for creativity.
While praying I’ve found a solution for my wailing inspiration, I regather my songbook and pen, drag the bedding off the hotel mattress like its thread count isn’t in the millions, then head for the secret corridor hidden halfway in the massive walk-in closet.
As suspected, at the end of a weaving corridor, I stumble onto a second hallway with stairs at the end. The presidential suite is on the top floor, which can only mean one thing.
This hotel has an accessible rooftop.
Yes!
Careful not to trip on the bedding tracing my every step, I climb the concrete stairs with reflective tape coating each edge before pushing open the heavily weighted door.
