Her Best Men

And all because of hiring Katie.

“Dylan?”

“Yes, Katie?”

“There’s a customer out here that has a reservation they made online, but it’s not in the system.”

“Okay, I’ll be there in a second to show you how to deal with that. It’s an involved process,” I said. “In the meantime, tell them to forward their reservation confirmation to my email

and usher them to the dining room. Lunch and drinks are on us.”

“Got it,” she said.

Her customer interactions were always kind, but this was the first time she was dealing with a hot-tempered guest. I could hear the man raising his voice at her even as I sat in my office. She was dealing with him politely enough, with a soft voice, but her words were firm. She navigated it like a pro while I sat at my desk trying to sort everything out, but I wanted to go out there and knock the man’s front teeth out.

No one should talk to anyone like that.

Especially Katie.

“Got them into the dining hall. What should I do now?” she asked.

“Come here and look. I went ahead and resolved it for you, but I’ll walk you through what I did. When someone comes in with a reservation, but it’s not in the system, that doesn’t mean we don’t have it. It means we haven’t assigned them a room yet. You take their confirmation number and type it in here, and it usually comes up.”

“Just like that?” she asked.

“In this case, no. His reservation was booked, but it didn’t make it to our system. That requires something I haven’t taught you yet. If you type the confirmation number in and it doesn’t pop up, the first thing you do is look at what they booked. Here, the family’s booked one of our more upscale suites. You check if there’s one free and if the type of room they booked is free, put them in it.”

“What do I do about the payment? If it’s not in the system, then it hasn’t been paid for,” she said.

“Correct. But first, you get them into a room. Go make them room keys for suite 6219. And take them a complimentary meal ticket for room service.”

“Got it. Be right back.”

I pushed everything to the side while she did that and focused on the party that night. The family wanted to throw a hoedown, and of course, Andrew said it was okay before consulting me on it. So now I was stuck trying to pull shit together last minute in our ballroom so everyone could have a good time. I found a DJ who would come in last minute and called in a bartender for the late night. I’d have to pay the woman overtime, but it wasn’t like she didn’t deserve it. I sent an email off to the kitchen outlining what I wanted to serve for snacks during the dance so they wouldn’t have to cook an entire meal, then I turned my sights back to Katie.

“A dance?” she asked. “There’s a dance tonight?”

“There is. The family’s wanting to have one. Do you have any plans for the evenin’?”

“I don’t. Is that an invitation?” she asked.

“Well, since you’re doing so well on your job thus far, I was thinkin’ I could take you out to dinner to celebrate. But that look in your eye tells me you wanna dance.”

“I always want to dance,” she said with a smile.

“Then dancin’ it is. Now come here, lemme show ya what to do next with this ticket.”

I walked her through how to send a disputed reservation to the website before she got back out to the front desk. I looked out at her occasionally to see how she was doing, and if she wasn’t dealing with a guest, she was cleaning up her station or organizing the computer in front of her. She really was a massive help, and I was excited about her coming to the party that night.

Maybe that meant I’d be able to steal a dance or two from her.

Her shift ended around six, and she went home to prepare for the dance. I was running around, trying to usher the DJ in and show him where to set up. The kitchen had all sorts of delicious aromas wafting from it, and the bartender was busy cleaning glasses. I made sure to thank everyone for staying late when they didn’t have it on their calendar and told them all there would be a bump on their next paycheck for it.

Everyone had been dancing for fifteen minutes before Katie showed up, and she looked better than ever. She was wearing her boots and her curls bounced around her face. Her dangling earrings matched her blue and yellow dress and her red lips stood out from her creamy complexion. I waved her over and held out a beer for her, and she came walking toward me, a huge smile on her face.

“That for me?” she asked.

“Always. Have a seat,” I said. “You look breathtaking, doll.”