Before opening the envelope, I paused to smell the flowers. They were fresh because of course they were.
I opened the envelope. Inside were tickets.
ToHamilton.
“Guys?”
Rachel was off exploring the nooks and crannies of the suite, and Abi had hidden—no doubt to check in at home—so I yelled a little louder. “Hey, y’all?”
“What?” each woman answered from a different area of the suite.
“Um, we have tickets to a show tomorrow night.”
“Ooo, really? Which one?” asked Rachel as she appeared from the primary bedroom.
“Hamilton.”
“Excuse me, I thought you just said that we had tickets toHamilton,” Abi said from the kitchen area.
“That’s because we have tickets toHamilton. The note says they thought we might like to have some place to go after we got all dressed up.”
Rachel and Abi simply looked at me for a few more seconds before dancing in a circle. “We’re gonna seeHamilton... we’re gonna seeHamilton...” which turned into a raucous chorus about how we had no intention of ever throwing away our shot.
At least, until a dignified hotel employee knocked on the door and asked us to please keep it down.
The alarm went off a little early for my taste, but then I remembered our schedule for the day. I nudged Rachel, who was sharing a bed with me. Then I hopped to my feet and yanked the covers off Abi, who muttered, “Don’t youeverdo that again.”
“We gotta be downstairs in thirty minutes!”
Both Abi and Rachel reacted to this information with a groan.
“Hamilton, bitches!”
That got their attention.
“Don’t ever dothatagain, either,” Abi said without looking up from her phone.
Rachel trudged to the bathroom, scratching the back of her head while yawning. I headed to the tiny powder room in the foyer of our suite. No need for makeup this morning. Deborah’s instructions said the Busy Mom professionals would prefer “a blank canvas.”
I couldn’t find any coffee in the kitchen—maybe rich people are supposed to think ahead to order room service? Probably.
Either way, we went downstairs with grumbling stomachs and the hope that this makeover would include something to eat other than cucumbers that had been intended for our eyes. Indeed, there was a table with some pastries, some kind of mini quiche, and fruit.
“Feeling better?” I asked Abi when she made a moan of something between relief and pleasure.
“Marginally. Coffee would be better.”
“Deborah said that coffee would dry out our skin,” Rachel said. She was a secret morning person. Once she got started, she was good. Abi and me? Not so much.
“I’ll moisturize,” Abi said, “because coffee also keeps me from getting a headache.”
I looked around the hotel event room until I spied Deborah in today’s pencil skirt, a checked number that somehow made her look even thinner. I waved her over. “Hey, Deborah? Could we possibly get some coffee?”
She raised one of her immaculately penciled-in eyebrows. “Well, we’ll have caffeine in some of the undereye gel we’re about to provide you. So maybe an herbal tea? Coffee just isn’t good for you or for your skin.”
If looks could kill, Deborah would’ve been dead, and Abi’s glare would’ve been the culprit.
“You know what? Coffee shouldn’t be a problem,” Deborah said with a fake smile. “I’ll get right on that.”
