But this wasn’t a hullabaloo.
It was the real emergency deal.
My eyes wide, flames filled my vision.
Actualflames.
From an actual fire.
Inside our suite, coming right off Haruto’s grill.
Holy shit!
Not again!
Bright orange and red blazed off the grill to terrifying heights, and Haruto and his two assistants scrambled around our suite, trying to douse the fire with whatever they could find.
“Kane!” Haruto shouted to his other assistant. “The fire extinguisher! Where is it?”
Kane rummaged through their carts like a madman, trying to find it.
All the while, Yui filled up bowls with water from the small kitchen sink of our suite, but I’ll be honest, with the height of the flames and shallow depth of those bowls, I knew they wouldn’t do anything to help stop the fire I still wasn’t even sure how had started.
That is, until the remnants of pain from my toes registered in my mind.Oh my goodness, did I start the fire with my foot? Because I was trying to catch a piece of freaking seafood in my mouth?!
Talk about a disaster. Accidental, of course, but still, a fucking disaster.
The curse, it seemed, was determined to continue.
“We need to evacuate!” Kline shouted, pulling me from my not-the-right-time thoughts and grabbing the dinner crew’s attention. “Don’t worry about the fire. We need to get out of here!”
Taking charge of the situation, he picked up the phone on the desk and told the front desk to call 9-1-1.
All the while, the damn fire waited for no one, causing so much smoke that it triggered the suite’s alarms. Then, of course, that triggered thewholeresort’s alarms, because why not get the rest of the patrons involved, you know?
At Kline’s urging, Haruto and Yui and Kane stopped trying to put out the fire and began to head toward the door, with us right behind them.
But just before we could actually get out of our suite, the sprinklers deployed with a hiss and a fizz, spraying water from the ceiling into our faces and onto every surface, every piece of furniture, pretty mucheverythinginside the suite.
And because I hadn’t even managed to catch the one piece of shrimp in my mouth, I still hadn’t eaten even a freaking bite.
“Sir, your new suite is ready, and the hotel concierge has already moved all of your belongings into it,” Heather, the nice woman at the front desk, updated me. “It sounds like, besides the exterior of your suitcases and a few pairs of shoes getting wet from the sprinklers, nothing was ruined.”
What a fucking night.The whole point of this getaway was to break the streak of Valentine’s disasters for my wife—to prove that she didn’t need to be worried about celebrating our love in any official capacity—and the first fucking day had gone up in literal flames.
“Thank you so much,” I said, my voice a rush of tired, beleaguered appreciation. It had been a long couple of hours, we still hadn’t eaten, and to top it all off, we’d done thousands of dollars of damage to one of Antonio’s hotel rooms. “And again, I’m very sorry that happened in our hotel room.”
“It was an accident, sir,” she responded. “The fire chief even determined that, after examining the room once the fire was put out. We’re just glad everyone got out safely.”
“Yeah.” I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. Even though I knew it wasn’t my fault or Haruto’s fault or even Georgia’s foot’s fault for banging into the grill and causing some kind of freak flame explosion, I still felt pretty fucking terrible that any of us was having to deal with this at all. “Your help and kindness with this are extremely appreciated.”
Heather nodded and smiled. “It’s my pleasure, Mr. Brooks.”
I turned around and found Georgia standing in the middle of the lobby, her blond hair still wet from the sprinklers and a fire blanket wrapped around her shoulders.
“Did Haruto and Kane and Yui already leave?” I asked when I reached her.
“After apologizing to me a million times, yes. They just left a little while ago.”