Rachael’s show was in a few days. Needless to say, she was a bundle of nerves. I couldn’t imagine a beautiful, confident woman like her who carried herself with grace and elegance be this nervous for her first show. I knew that she was brilliant in her art and I knew everyone would love it but no matter how much I tried to convince her of it, she still considered herself a terrible designer.
We were all scheduled to fly to Paris the next day. The Jenson family invited Olivia too and if they wouldn’t have, I would’ve definitely requested them to bring her along. No way was I going to go to Paris with them for an entire week without my best friend.
Everyone I knew here was going to be present for the show. Olivia, Mr. and Mrs. Jenson, Antonio and I were going to take Mr. Jenson’s private plane to Paris. Rachael insisted she and Rebecca would come with us because she was too nervous for the show to fly alone. Another reason for that she claimed was that I made her feel confident of herself, which I found really surprising and disbelieving. It might be because I was the only one she had shown her designs to.
Her husband, Robert would not be able to make it a few days before the show due to work commitments but he was going to take a flight a day before the show and fly right back after it ends. Audrey had a few photoshoots and modelling contracts to sign so she was going to tag along with Robert.
Heather, Amelia and much to my dismay, Ashley too were to going to be in the private plane with us.
Ethan was going to fly there with his family. We were going there a few days in advance for a little fun. The girls had all decided to go shopping for a bit as none of them had shopped in Paris for over an year now. I think there were also plans to go sightseeing, which I knew these girls have done plenty of times there and still wanted to do it now.
I was in the kitchen with Keith. He was cooking along with the other cooks and I was just talking to him, not really in the mood to cook myself.
At one point we had a little food fight. He was the one who started it by grabbing my cheeks with his flour covered hands. I shrieked and jumped off the kitchen island where I was previously sitting comfortably on. In return, I dumped a little juice on his shirt. He started chasing me around the island with flour n his hands.
I lunged forward to escape when I saw he was ready to attack and that was when I bumped hard into someone. Looking up, I saw it was Ethan.
I burst out laughing at his face when I saw it was covered with flour, even his precious hair. I looked back at Keith and he looked like he was about to wet himself in fear.
“I-I’m so sorry,” Keith said and ran back into the kitchen.
Ethan stood silent with a furious look on his face. If he didn’t look like a cute snowman right now, I would’ve been scared of his burning glare.
“Stop laughing,” he gritted out, grabbing my shoulders and pushing me a little away from him. That was when I realized I was practically glued to his chest before he decided to put some distance between us.
“I can’t. You look too funny.”
He was dressed in a nice blue business suit so maybe he was going to go to work.
He didn’t say anything and walked away. Suddenly remembering that I had to talk to him, I ran after him.
“Wait, Ethan.” But he didn’t stop. Just like last night, he ignored me.
“Wait, I have to tell you something,” I grabbed his arm and turned him to face me.
“What is it? Make it quick. I don’t have time,” he said coldly, taking me aback by his response.
“I-I just wanted to thank you for those gifts. I loved the dress and the necklace, and I loved Plowy even more. It was one of the best gifts I’ve ever received. Thank you.”
A small smile formed on his lips, mirroring mine. “Plowy?”
I shrugged. “That’s what I named him.”
Taking me by surprise, his hand reached for my cheek and cupped it. His thumb lightly brushed across my cheek. “Get this flour cleaned off of you.” His other hand started to rub off the flour on my other cheek. I caught his hands and lowered it from my face.
“Okay. I can do that myself. Besides you’re the one who needs more cleaning than I do at the moment.”
“Right,” he said, dusting his hair off right on my face.
“Hey!” I said as I felt little flecks of flour hit my face.
“Now you need cleaning as much as I do.”
“Shut up. Are you going somewhere?”
“Other than going to go clean myself up, I have to be at a meeting in fifteen minutes.”
“Oh.”
He sighed. “I think I’m going to be late thanks to your Ratatouille boyfriend.”
“Hey! His name is Keith, he’s not a rat and not my boyfriend either!”
“Whatever. Just tell that stupid cook that if this happens ever again then he’ll have to start looking for a new job.”
“Keith is not stupid! He’s a really talented chef. And you don’t own this place so you can’t have a say in who works here and who is fired. ” I crossed my arms over my chest and regarded him appraisingly.
“Trust me, I can.”
“But you will not fire him!” I said, pointing a threatening finger at his nose.
“I said? if? he does anything like this again, then I will fire him.”
“No, even then you cannot fire him.”
He suddenly stepped too close to me for my liking. “Why do you care?”
“Of course I care. He’s a very good friend.”
“Right,” He said sarcastically.
***
“Oh my God. Are these for me?” I asked, dumbstruck.
Charlotte had just showed me into a room half filled with wrapped gifts in colourful wrapping papers.
“Yes. I know it’s less than what you used to get on your birthdays and that’s mainly because not many people know that you have returned.”
“Oh, still this is quite a lot.”
“Yeah, you want to open your presents now?”
I shrugged. “Sure. I don’t have anything to do anyways.”
The whole afternoon and a bit of the evening was spent in unwrapping my presents. I was so tired at the end of it. I didn’t know unwrapping presents, though exciting would be so tiresome.
I got a lot of gifts. Mostly they were designer gowns or branded handbags. I got a lot of stilettoes as well and about four bikes and six cars. I couldn’t believe it. Who gifts bikes or cars on someone’s birthday? These people must be filthy rich if they are spending so much on such expensive gifts. I didn’t even interact much with most of them!
It was very hard to conceal my surprise, or rather shock while uncovering all those gifts along with Olivia. In my life back home, I didn’t even get one-hundredth of the gifts I had gotten here even if these aren’t technically for me.
After we were done with that, it was almost dinner time. Heather and Amelia were invited to dinner and to stay over for tonight so that we all would be able to fly off to Paris next morning. Rachael along with Rebecca and Antonio had drove straight here from the party last night and they were to fly with us too.
We and the rest of the girls had a lot of fun after dinner. We talked about a lot of things, did girly stuff like applied nail paint, had a movie marathon, had a little ramp walk in our pajamas in the walk-in closet and then broke out dancing like crazy in the middle of it, then had a wild pillow fight with each other where I made sure my aim was nowhere near Heather because sometimes she could be too scary.
Eventually the fun ended right after Charlotte told us to stop because we needed to get some rest.
Everyone left my room to their respective guest rooms, except Rachael and Rebecca who occupied Rachael’s old bedroom in the mansion. Antonio had grumpily walked to a guest room because his old bedroom was now occupied by Ethan.
Before leaving, Amelia stopped and winked at me. “You’re a lot of fun. Olivia is so lucky to have you as her best friend.”
I beamed at her. “Thank you. And Juliet and Heather are very lucky to have you.”
“Of course they are. I’m awesome!” She said, flipping her hair and doing a superhero pose and taking off out of my room.
I chuckled at her adorable silliness before closing the door and getting into bed for some shut-eye.