Five-Star Mistake – Chapter 3 – Room Service Hangover

Marco wakes up exactly the way I suspected he would: instantly, disgustingly alert, like a man who has never once in his life needed a slow re-entry into consciousness.

“Morning,” he says, like it’s a completely normal thing to say to someone waking up in his bed.

“Some of us need a transition period.”

“Noted. I’ll whisper.”

He doesn’t whisper. 

He gets up and pads across his own room with the casual efficiency of a man who is, in fact, entirely at home in it, while I lie there being the geographically displaced party in this scenario. 

My dress is draped with zero dignity over his lampshade. My shoes are somewhere near his minibar. I have no idea how either of those things happened, exactly, though I have some working theories.

“We have a breakfast inspection in fifty minutes,” I say, mostly to myself, mostly as a warning, gathering my things off his furniture like I’m doing a very undignified scavenger hunt.

“I’m aware.”

“Together. As colleagues. Evaluating a buffet.”

“I’m very aware.”

“This is going to be a problem.”

“Only if you make it weird.”

“I don’t make things weird. Things become weird around me organically.”

He laughs, already fully dressed, watching me locate one earring on his balcony with the patience of a man enjoying a show he didn’t expect to get. 

I make a mental note to bring this up with him later, possibly as a formal complaint about hospitality standards, room service, or whatever category covers your room ate my other earring.

“I need to go back to mine and change,” I say, checking the time. “Actual clothes. Not last night’s.”

“Efficient walk of shame. Impressive.”

“It’s not a walk of shame if I’m not ashamed.”

“Fair.”

The buffet inspection is, technically, a professional obligation. Practically, it is forty-five minutes of me standing three feet from a man I have seen entirely too much of, both of us holding little branded notepads, both of us pretending to critique the omelet station with the gravity of UN weapons inspectors.

“The eggs are underwhelming,” Marco says, writing something down.

“Agreed. Structurally weak.”

“I’d note that in your report.”

“I am noting that in my report.”

I am not noting anything in my report.

 I am watching him hold a fork like he’s defusing a bomb and thinking about several things that have nothing to do with eggs.

Across the buffet, a woman from his agency – mid-forties, sharp bob, the kind of professional smile that could cut glass – watches us for a beat too long before turning back to her croissant. 

I catch it. I don’t think Marco does. Or he does, and simply doesn’t care, which honestly tracks.

“You’re being watched,” I murmur.

“I’m always being watched. I’m very compelling.”

“Modest, too.”

“It’s a full package.”

We move through the buffet like we’re actually doing our jobs – pastry table, juice station, the mildly tragic waffle situation – and somewhere between the fruit display and the coffee urn I realize the two of us have developed, in less than twenty-four hours, a fully functional shorthand. 

A raised eyebrow means this is going in my notes as a warning. 

A specific twitch at the corner of his mouth means say something and I will lose it in front of the general manager.

It should not be this easy. It is deeply, inconveniently easy.

“How’s the head?” he asks, low, while the guide’s mid-sentence about egg sourcing philosophy.

“Manageable. Yours?”

“I don’t get hangovers. It’s a personal policy.”

“That’s not how biology works.”

“Biology hasn’t met my policy.”

I bite down on a laugh hard enough that the guide actually pauses, glancing at me like I might be having a medical event over the topic of free-range eggs.

 I recover. Marco does not – I watch him fight it, jaw tight, and lose almost as badly as I did.

The guide moves on, visibly relieved.

“You’re going to get us thrown out of a breakfast inspection,” I whisper.

“Worth it.”

By the time we finish, my notepad has exactly two real notes on it – waffle station: structurally tragic and eggs: see above – and roughly nine hours of schedule still ahead of us, all of which, according to the printed itinerary someone slid under my door at some ungodly hour, includes an afternoon walkthrough of the spa and pool facilities.

Together. Same group. Same tour.

“You have the itinerary?” Marco asks, like he’s already thinking the exact same thing I am.

“I have the itinerary.”

“Spa’s at two.”

“Spa’s at two,” I agree.

Neither of us says anything else about it. 

We don’t have to.

 There’s a specific kind of silence that happens between two people who’ve both just quietly clocked that a professional facilities tour is, structurally, a room with a door that locks.

“Well,” Marco says, setting down his coffee, entirely too casual for a man whose eyes are doing something else completely, “I suppose we’ll see how thoroughly they’ve done the changing rooms.”

“I’m sure it’ll be very thorough.”

“I certainly hope so.”

I have had worse work trips. I am beginning to suspect, with real professional concern, that I am never going to have a normal one again.