Chapter Twenty Two: Packing
679 Words
The apartment was warm and loud and smelled like Betty had been cooking again.
Rosalina pushed open the door and had approximately three seconds before Betty looked up from the stove, read her face with the complete accuracy of someone who had known her for a very long time, and put down her wooden spoon.
“Well?” Betty said.
“I’m going to Spain tomorrow,” Rosalina said.
The wooden spoon hit the counter.
“SPAIN.”
“Work trip. Two days. Conference meeting.”
“ON HIS JET?”
“It’s how he travels Betty.”
Brian appeared in the kitchen doorway with his controller in his hand and his eyebrows somewhere near his hairline. “You’re going to Spain?”
“For work.”
“On a private jet?”
“Brian—”
“That’s actually so cool Rosie.”
“It is work,” she said firmly, to both of them at once.
Betty pointed at her. “You are going to Spain. On a private jet. With the most handsome man in Milan who has the green eyes and the tattoos and the—”
“He runs legitimate companies—”
“ROSALINA.”
“It. Is. Work.”
Betty looked at Brian.
Brian looked at Betty.
“She’s going there to work,” Brian said, very seriously.
“Completely just work,” Betty agreed, with equal seriousness.
“Stop it both of you,” Rosalina said.
They both smiled at exactly the same time.
She gave up.
Betty helped her pack.
She was efficient about it — practical and focused, pulling things from the wardrobe with the energy of someone who had a clear vision and intended to execute it properly. Two good work outfits. One dinner outfit, because there was a dinner and Betty had feelings about this that she expressed entirely through careful folding. Comfortable shoes. Her good coat.
And sweaters.
Betty picked up the first one and folded it with deliberate slowness.
“He told you to pack sweaters,” she said. Conversationally. As though this was just something she was mentioning.
“He told me about the weather conditions of a work trip destination.”
“He thought about whether you would be cold.”
“Betty—”
“I’m just noting it,” she said serenely. “Not saying anything. Just noting.”
Rosalina said nothing.
Betty folded the second sweater.
“Noted,” she added quietly, and smiled at the bag.
Brian appeared in the doorway in his pyjamas with his book tucked under his arm and his easy face entirely unbothered by the world.
“Have fun,” he said.
“I’m going there to work,” Rosalina said.
“Sure.” He crossed over and kissed her cheek with the casual warmth of a twelve year old who had decided to be the mature one about this. “Have fun Rosie.”
She watched him pad back towards the other room — unhurried, easy, the colour in his face good tonight. Really good.
She was going to fix it. She was going to give him everything he needed.
This job. This strange, demanding, impossible job with its private jets and its specific silences and the man who told her to pack sweaters because he had thought about whether she would be cold in Spain.
She was going to make every single day of it count.
“Okay,” Betty said, zipping the bag with quiet satisfaction. “You’re ready.”
Rosalina looked at her packed bag. At the sweaters folded neatly on top.
She thought about the villa and the worn leather chair and the photographs on the wall and the dog who had chosen her without being asked.
She thought about green eyes at close range and a voice that said excuse me like it cost something.
“Ready,” she said quietly.
And somewhere underneath all the professionalism and the composure and the two months of carefully filing things under irrelevant —
She was almost certain she meant it.
*******
- Writer
