Dino stood at the entrance to the hotel lounge and studied the crowd. Bridgid had told him Jessie had slipped down here to celebrate her birthday in peace. The party upstairs was still in full swing and many of the revelers hadn't realized that the guest of honor had gone AWOL.
He spotted her at the bar where a sorry excuse of a businessman was trying to pick her up. Sensing that this would be good entertainment, he sauntered into the room and over to the bar. He found a seat near Jessie and watched her at work.
Jessie was tired. It was her birthday and her dear friends had thrown her a party, but all she wanted to do was crawl under a rock and forget about it.
She took a sip from her glass of wine and studied the room in the long mirror behind the bar. It was a slow night, which meant the land sharks were out and about.
Off to her right sat a sad looking businessman, so Jessie waited for the inevitable.
"Can I buy you a drink?" inquired the businessman.
"I have one already," Jessie replied in mild rebuke. She gave the man a quick once over not terribly impressed by what she was seeing.
"Can I buy you another one?" the businessman persisted.
"May you?" Jessie said, correcting the man's grammar.
"May I?"
"No," Jessie replied.
"Why not?"
"Because I refuse to lower my standards to raise your self-esteem," Jessie said with a hint of snark in her tone. She hated being hit on, especially by married men.
"Bitch!" the guy snapped.
"Thank you," Jessie said with a cool smile. "Now, be a good boy and piss off."
The businessman made a nasty face and then took himself off to harass another woman further down the bar.
"That wasn't very nice," Dino whispered in Jessie's ear.
"I'm not in the mood to be nice," Jessie retorted.
"Good neither am I," Dino countered.
"Your room?"
"Only if I you'll let me buy you another drink," Dino said as he slipped onto the stool next to Jessie.
"You're on," Jessie told him with a warm smile.
Jessie woke the next morning with a smile on her face. Her birthday may have started off mediocre, but it had ended with a bang. She stretched and her hand brushed the note Dino had left behind.
It read:
I would have loved to have woken you up with a kiss, but duty called.
Dino
Jessie folded the note with a wistful sigh. She would have loved being kissed awake by that man, but there was always next time.
The End