Room Service
Chapter 10
There's an engagement party being hosted in the Banquet Hall on the ground floor, a little ways down the lobby and reception area. It's a relatively quiet affair, nothing as noisy or harrowing as she knows events such as these can get. The to-be bride and groom also seem like wonderful people—a Mr Frank Longbottom and Ms Alice Fortescue (soon to be Mrs Longbottom)—and Lily is happy for them; she really, truly is. What she isn't happy about, rather, is having to manage the billion phone calls that the hotel receives from guests every other second, asking for directions to the venue or claiming they're lost, like the concept of GPS and Smartphones has suddenly ceased to exist in this physical plane.
Handling these concerns with the most patient voice she can muster, while simultaneously dealing with the usual bookings, check-ins, and check-outs, turns out to be pressure she performs well under, but not without cost. The cost, of course, being her sanity, which takes a healthy plummet down the drain when she feels her cell phone vibrate incessantly inside the pocket of her skirt.
A heavy sigh of breath. A quick look down at the screen.
James Potter.
Calling her on her cell phone.
While she's at work.
At the hotel he's currently inhabiting.
Seriously, his timing.
When a small party of guests arrives at that precise moment, and Lily is tasked with heralding them in the right direction, she slips the phone back inside; momentarily forgets about the calls and the person behind them. But on her way back to the reception, job done, her mobile buzzes again, and she figures there will be no ignoring him for the night.
"Potter, I'm at work," she huffs, phone pressed against ear, walking briskly to the counter.
"Hi, Lily. So good to hear from you, too." The dryness in his voice almost makes her smirk. "You haven't been picking my calls."
"I've been busy."
"Okay, but aren't you forgetting something?" James pauses dramatically, and when she doesn't immediately supply him with an answer, prompts further, "We had a deal? You said you'd drop by once a day—?"
"Okay, first, I never actually said anything," she deflects, heartbeat already increasing in pace—and what the fuck is that even about anyway? Does her body not understand the concept of time and place?—as she takes a beat to pull in a calming breath. "And second, no, I haven't forgotten. You just haven't called for anything yet. And speaking of calls, why have you been ringing me on my mobile?"
"Because the front desk line has been busy for like, an hour!" he gripes. "And I thought you were deliberately ignoring me."
"Dramatic much? You really thought I'd make everyone in the hotel suffer by keeping the line busy just because I don't want to talk to you?" She waits for a moment, another, and then laughs at the persisting silence. "My God, James, that head of yours must be incredibly heavy to hold up."
"Don't worry, I've got good, strong shoulders."
Lily shakes her head in exasperation. Really, the nerve of him—always being fucking unbearably right, and hoarding all the smugness in the world because of it. She opens her mouth to tell him as much—the part about the smugness, not… the other thing—when the now grating sound of the telephone ringing stops her short. A groan of annoyance escapes her mouth before she can restrain it.
"I've got to go. I'm getting a call."
"Wait!" James cries, "Get me some extra pillows, please."
"James, I—"
"A deal's a deal, Evans."
The phone rings. And rings. And rings.
"Ugh, fine! Jesus." She restlessly shifts on her feet, feels her calves straining with the ache of standing on formal pumps for a good few hours straight. "Fine, I'll bring them up in a while. But I have to go now, the phone—"
"I know. See you in a bit, Evans."
She disconnects the call immediately, rushing to pick up the handset before it stops ringing. The conversation that follows is identical to several she's already had that night, and Lily goes through the motions of proffering directions, reassuring them that yes, this is the right place, and keeping up a cheerful countenance through it all. When the number of phone calls blaring through the lobby sees a decline a few minutes later, she sighs a breath of relief, hoping against hope that all the guests have either already arrived, or have figured out how to reach the location by themselves.
But it is still with no small amount of exhaustion that she rings the Housekeeping department after that, dryly making a request for extra pillows for 209.
"Sorry, did you say you want to take them up?" asks Hestia from the other end, sounding understandably confused.
"Yeah, I know. It's this whole… thing."
She hums. "Well, alright. I'll keep a stack ready here so you can come collect it."
"Thanks, love. Let me just get Amelia to cover for me, and I'll be right there."
"Oh, it's no problem, I can man the reception for some time, if you want. Bit of a lull around here anyway," Hestia offers, and before Lily can cry her gratitude into the phone, she adds in a gentler tone, "Are you alright? You sound, well, a little… dead."
"Yeah, yeah, I'm—" she chuckles half-heartedly, "—just really exhausted. With the engagement and everything."
"Ah. But not exhausted enough for 209, hm?"
She positively chokes on her own tongue during her sharp inhale. "What?"
But Hestia just laughs. "Oh, don't worry. I've seen him, Lily, so I can understand. And if a fit bloke wanted me to personally deliver something to his suite, I wouldn't say no either."
"Um, Hes," Lily tries, face flaming, heart pounding, "there's—there's nothing going on like that. Between me and Potter, I mean."
"Mhm."
"No, I swear. I'm not kidding."
A short pause follows her assertion, and when Hestia speaks again, some amusement seems to have drained from her tone, like she finally hears the panic in Lily's voice. "Okay, Lil. I believe you."
When she makes her way down the hall on the second floor a few minutes later, two fluffed pillows clutched between arms, Lily still struggles to let go of the niggling discomfort at the back of her mind that's been roused after her conversation with Hestia. There's something truly disconcerting in the knowledge that her colleagues seem to have noticed the back-and-forth dance she's been engaging in with James over the past week or so, though it really shouldn't be, especially considering the fact that she'd had dinner with the bloke in clear view of anyone who could've cared to watch.
And yet, it feels hard to shed the thought that she's being judged and spoken about, that she's the biggest idiot for starting to fancy a guest within three weeks of her joining, and most importantly, that she's been transparent enough that everyone in the hotel seems to know it.
Lost as she's become in her whirling mind, Lily doesn't realize when her feet carry her to 209, nor when her fingers ring the bell, but James is suddenly pulling open the door with a grin on his face, and her stomach—pretty characteristically—is tumbling to the floor.
"Evans!" He sweeps a hand into his room to welcome her in. "Thought you were going to leave me hanging."
"As if you'd let me." She rolls her eyes, walking past the couch and table to place the pillows near the foot of his bed. An open laptop and some files sit on the mattress today, but the sheets look otherwise neat and unrumpled, and she has to bite back a smile at the consideration that he might've tried to make the room look more presentable for her visit. A turn of her head reveals that James seems to be watching her with the smallest of smiles on his lips. "Hope two extra pillows will suffice?"
"Will you return back with more if I say no?"
She levels him with a flat stare. "Absolutely not."
His smile tilts insufferably. "Then two will suffice." Before she can formulate a response to that, however, a strange crease appears between his brows. "Are you alright?"
"What?" Lily blinks, "Yeah, of course, I am. Why do you ask?"
"I don't know, you just—" he raises a finger, gestures around his own mouth, "—you've got a grimace pulling, right there. What's on?"
"Oh, I… I didn't realize," she says, a little thrown by his observation. When James just keeps staring at her expectantly, eyes silently probing, she expends a deep sigh. "I suppose I'm just exhausted. There's this engagement party going on downstairs and I'm… um, not to go off about it right now, but my fucking legs are killing me."
Drawn instinctively by her words, she watches as his gaze travels down to the high-heeled pumps maiming her feet, before he frowns unhappily. "Sit down on the bed, Evans."
"What?"
"Sit here," he repeats, as if he's said nothing out of the ordinary at all, as if her pulse isn't suddenly thundering against her wrist. "Take off those shoes, and just breathe for a bit, okay? Do you want some water? Food?"
"Um, no. No!" Lily breaks out of her trance, taking an actual step back in her vehemence, eyes wide. "I can't stay. And I definitely won't sit on your bed, James."
He half-laughs. "Relax. I don't mean it like—"
"I know," she says, all the while recalling Hestia's teasing tone in the back of her mind. But not exhausted enough for 209, hm? "I just really have to get back now. Once the engagement is done, it'll get busy again, and Hestia—she's in Housekeeping—she can't handle it all by herself. So, um, thank you for the offer, but I have to go now."
And before he can protest or try to convince her—and somehow actually fucking succeed—she makes to move past him with a deep breath. But she's hardly surprised when James steps in front of her at the last moment, an inscrutable expression on his face. A dry swallow burns down her throat as she stares back, watches with a breath caught in her lungs as he slowly leans forward, hazel eyes jumping between hers, close enough for her to make out all the colours interspersed between the gold and brown. The heat emanating from him, the scent of him—it addles her brain.
He's about to kiss me, she thinks.
I want him to, she realizes.
But then, right before his nose can brush against hers, right before she thinks she might just close the distance between them herself, fuck it all, James pulls back, a lazy smirk on his lips as he takes her hand and wraps her fingers around a small plastic bottle. The cool feel of it, pressed into her palm, practically jolts her back into herself.
"At least drink some water," he whispers, stepping back. There's no need to turn to confirm that he'd just been reaching for the bottle from the table behind her. "And try not to kill yourself, will you? It's okay to sit down once in a while, Evans."
God.
What's he even saying? Doesn't he realize she's lost the basic skills of comprehension?
"Right." Lily nods her head, feels some absurd mix of mortification and disbelief and attraction painting her face red. "Thanks. I'll see you later."
And then she bolts from the room.
She sinks into her chair behind the reception after what feels like ten years but is probably only an hour or so later. The groan that leaves her lips when she kicks off her pumps then would feel more embarrassing if relief and euphoria weren't taking up all the space in her veins right then. The engagement had concluded rather successfully, with thankfully only a handful of guests hanging back long enough for her to have to make small talk and smile robotically at them. With Frank, Alice, and their respective families having retired to their rooms upstairs a few moments ago, she finally gets the chance to draw in a breath, hand reaching down to massage her aching heels.
"Hi, Lily." She looks up, finds Benjy smiling down at her sympathetically from the other side of the counter. "Finally done?"
"God, yes." A humourless chuckle. "I'll be lucky if I can walk again."
"Well, I'll leave you to rest, then," he says, palm sliding across the counter slowly. Lily looks on curiously when he moves away his hand to reveal a folded piece of paper underneath. "Just wanted to deliver this note to you from a certain someone in 209."
"Oh," she breathes. Fuck, she thinks. "Um, thanks, Benjy. And, uh… sorry."
"What on earth for?"
"I—I don't know, exactly. But this is probably not the kind of work that was detailed in your job description, is it?"
"You're not wrong," he laughs. "But it's just a note, Lil. Really no big deal."
Her voice feels weak. "Right."
Benjy leaves with a genial smile after that, and she waits a few seconds before reaching up and pulling the piece of paper from the counter. Teeth sinking over lip, heart in mouth, she unfolds the note and quickly skims over the words he's penned down.
Evans,
Sorry for bothering you when you were already exhausted. Hope you can find it in your heart of gold to forgive me.
P.S. Had to get more bottles up here since you stole mine. So you better drink some water and make all of our efforts worthwhile.
J
Lily laughs softly, pulling out the bottle she'd stashed under the desk and taking a deep swig from it.
Bloody charmer.
A/N - Loving all the reviews, they spoil me! There's really such mixed reactions to what Lily is feeling and doing, and it's incredibly fun to see readers as torn as she is about what she should do hahahah