MY FEELINGS LIKE A LOVE SONG

HOTEL

Letroy Washington raised his head towards the sky as he saw his close friend, Ralph Author approaching him from afar. His neat hair stood out firmly, pushing out the beauty of his outfit.

"The room was a perfect square," Ralph said as he shook hands with letroy. "It was also very cavernous. I could bet my life that the ceiling soared an astonishing five hundred feet overhead, supported by monolithic columns of granite."

"What are you talking about?" Letroy asked, rather confused.

"I am referring to my dream of your grand hotel with over five hundred rooms inside it."

"I see," Letroy eyes shrank as he invited Ralph to a plastic blue table rounded by three plastic white chairs almost touching each other.

"When are you going to start considering my ideas for the construction of your hotel?" Ralph asked.

"I don't know," Letroy replied dryly instead of plainly telling Ralph that he had considered his idea and had ended up concluding it was both a waste of time and resources.

"You should think about my idea over and over again before you jump into a mistake that could be avoided," Ralph laughed.

Letroy ignored him as he reminded himself that the secret to success was a long way away from him and he needed to be patient if he wanted to climb to the top.

"Tea or coffee?" a female voice whispered.

Letroy Washington let his gaze climb the slightly distinguished white-robed figure standing before him.

The waitress. The young woman, in her early twenties, was an American wannabe model who saw herself in an illusion where she was well-loved, treated with care, and incalculably wealthy. Her once-brown hair had been dyed to green, and her awkward look reflected a lifetime of hope and ambition.

"Tea or coffee, sirs?" the waitress repeated again, her voice soft like falling snow.

"Give us a minute to think about your offer," Ralph informed the waitress as his gaze returned back to Letroy whose thought was lingering towards the idea of a skyscraper with a wooden roof.

"I think the young lady who is waiting for us to give her a reply would be glad if you accepted my idea and reconsider the structure of your hotel. I would love you to give it a deep thought right now before we tell the kind lady who is waiting for us our choice when it comes to choosing between drinking coffee and tea in a Sunday afternoon."

Letroy smiled broadly as he imagined how peaceful the words flowed out from Ralph's lips without obstruction.

Their friendship journey, like all such journeys, had begun at the first sight of candy from a thoroughly crafted wooden basket. On that night, in a fair bargain similar to this one, Ralph had blindfolded his mind with a velvet of honesty when he told him to choose between two separate colors of candies while his mother waited for him to decide what he preferred to have for dinner. He could clearly remember Ralph bare chest, demanding: "Do you seriously prefer candy wrapped in red than in blue? Do you seriously want to be the kind of man uninfluenced by a potential friend of no unworthy motive apart from bringing peace into your soul in a manner no stranger would do?"

"I will choose candy wrapped in blue any day and any time," Letroy had lied just to please Ralph wit.

"Then, let this be a blessing to your conscience, and an opening of a grand friendship," Ralph had said in a rather obsessive manner, "as well as an assurance that I will try my best to be by your side and if you find yourself in a situation where you should ever betray the code of friendship that I shall impart to you soon, I will be watching you with my two eyes wide open."

At that time, Letroy had felt no deeper meaning for the statement apart from a weird kid trying to brag about his recent acquisition of knowledge that had to deal with code and honor.

"The nice beautiful lady is waiting for you to make a choice, Letroy," Ralph said, releasing Letroy from his thoughts that were already flooding his consciousness.

"I will have tea," Letroy replied immediately.

The waitress grabbed her pen and scribbled something down in a note before turning back to Ralph who appeared a bit displeased with Letroy's choice. "What about you, sir?" She asked.

"My choice cannot be provided to me here," Ralph said, trying to maintain his cool. He was a bit pissed that Letroy had gone ahead to make a choice presented by the waitress while neglecting the choice he offered to him about the building plans of his hotel.

"And what is your choice?" The waitress focused her eyes on Ralph, and then back to the note where she had written down Letroy's choice.

"He will have coffee," Letroy replied for Ralph.

"Thank you, sirs," the waitress bowed slowly, promising to be back as soon as possible before leaving them alone.

"You should not have done that," Ralph said, really pissed.

Letroy sighed. "So, you want to keep a working class woman waiting because I have not made a decision regarding your idea of how you want my hotel to be?"

Ralph did not answer. He was silent for a short moment. His silence did not affect Letroy in anyway.

"Well," Letroy continued. "To be completely honest with you, at this point in time, it is almost impossible for me to follow up with your ideas that has to do with the construction of my hotel. You just have to accept that the building is already done and no matter what you say, my mindset is not going to change especially when it has to do with expanding the height of the hotel. I also forgot to tell you that I have been contacted by a billionaire who is interested in my hotel."

"Is he on Forbes’ list? Ralph asked, accepting defeat.

"I don't know. You will have to ask him when you meet him."