Eddy greeted the taxi driver and followed his friends up a few steps to the entrance to the hotel. Whoa, this place was massive! The facade was beautiful and very Asian, and the grandeur hit him the second he stepped through the revolving doors. A lounge with rows of red booths and carved wooden tables was to the right, with a large reading table with newspapers and magazines in the middle. The whole thing was clean and opulent.
"Wow." Todd hissed beside him. "I like it."
Eddy nodded and forced his legs forward to the marble desk on the left where a girl in a blue uniform sat and smiled at him. Yeah. It was up to him, right? It was his name on the booking, here, it was him who spoke the language. He took a deep breath and put his hands on the marble.
"Hi, I'm Eddy Chen." he said softly, politely, in Mandarin. "I think there are two rooms booked under my name?"
He kept his voice quiet, but Brett was coming to stand beside him and he felt it straight away. He may have been able to park the excitement some, on the plane, in the taxi, but it was all flooding back into him now that they were so close. So close to being able to finally lock a door behind them and jumping each other. He took a deep breath and focused on the girl in front of him.
"Yes, you're in room 222 and 223." she said politely. She flashed him a soft smile and her eyelashes fluttered slightly. "I will give you the key cards in a moment, could I just photocopy your ID?"
"Of course."
He took his passport out of his pocket and handed it over.
"She likes you." Brett commented under his breath as the girl took the passport to the scanner at the end of the desk, so softly that even he could barely hear him. He turned to him in surprise.
"No she doesn't." he whispered back, maybe not quite as quietly as he was planning, but Brett just grinned.
"Just watch her eyes." he breathed as she came back and handed the ID over to Eddy. Her fingers happened to graze his as she pulled her hand back and there it was again. Fluttering. She looked up at him through her eyelashes as she swiped two key cards and gave them to him. One more flutter and another soft smile.
"Have a nice stay, mr. Chen." she said demurely.
"Well, she was subtle about it." Todd remarked with a dead-pan face as they stepped into a lift as opulent as the lounge. Ian pressed the button for the second floor with a huge grin on his face. Eddy shook his head and rolled his eyes. His image in the large mirror on the side of the lift did the same.
"Fuck off, Todd. She didn't like me, she was just being friendly."
"Yep, sure, and my name is Frank."
"Okay, Frank, here's your fucking key card."
Todd grinned and took it. The lift doors opened and Todd was the first one out into the second floor hall.
"So, are we going to get some food first? I'm starving." He was legging it down the hall with his key card, checking the numbers on the doors, with the others on his heel.
Oh yes. Food. Good point, it was way past dinner time in Australia, but for some reason there wasn't an hair on Eddy's head that was thinking about that, right now. He stopped in front of the door labled 222 with the key card clutched between his fingers and was just looking helplessly at Brett when Todd grinned again, the light chuckle seeming to reverberate off the hallway walls. Yeah, he could clearly read their faces just fine, but none of the hairs on Eddy's head seemed to care about that either.
"Or, on second thought, maybe we should freshen up first?" Todd said then, as innocently as if a halo could have appeared around his head at any time.
"Yeah." Brett answered, but his eyes were on Eddy. And they were on fire. "We can go to dinner in half an hour or so?"
"Okay, sure, see you then."
Todd opened his mouth and Eddy could just see in his eyes what he was thinking of saying. Have fun. That's what he was wanting to say. But after half a second he shut it again, and with a cheeky smile and without another word he stuck the key card in room 223 and walked in.
So. Half an hour. They had half an hour. A surge pulled through him hard as he opened the door, and he almost stumbled into the room.