Adaku gave her a look. “Aren’t all the rooms at the Rio ‘suites’？” She finger-quoted the last word.
Sewanee reached for her hand, smiling. “I can’t leave Mark with a bill for a hotel I didn’t use.”
“How much is it?”
Sewanee squeezed Adaku’s hand, shook it for good measure. “No, no, no. You know I hate that.” Off Adaku’s pursed lips, she added, “Don’t do the face.”
“What face?”
“You know exactly what face.”
“I don’t know what–”
“A!” Sewanee dropped Adaku’s hand and walked to the window. Dammit. It was a spectacular view.
Adaku was starring in a film based on last year’s number one New York Times’s bestselling book. She was doing a main-stage interview with the author, a VIP meet-and-greet, an autograph hour, and some international press junket thing. No sideshow Romance pavilion for her. At BiblioCon, she herself was the main event.
In the window’s reflection, Sewanee watched Adaku come up behind her and spread her arms out, a queen addressing her people far below. “We’re living the dream, Swan! I’ve got bottle service at the club, a limo on standby, a freaking butler at my twenty-four-hour beck and call!”
Sewanee paused. Adaku, born and bred in the white Chicago suburbs, third daughter of two lovely but demanding Nigerian doctors, was finally allowing herself to enjoy her hard-won accomplishments. It had been a long time coming. People thought success happened faster than it did. A best-supporting-actress nomination did not come with a swag bag of private jets, penthouses, and Porsches. Adaku had just bought her first house, a two-bedroom bungalow in Echo Park, thanks to the L’Oréal money. This was the first time the red carpet had been rolled out to this extent. Adaku Obi was starring in a film and the studio wanted to make her happy.
So it was earned. And, yes, it was fun. But Sewanee wanted to urge caution. To slow her down a bit. Tell her that life was subject to change without notice. But she squashed the impulse and used a move out of Adaku’s own playbook: when she couldn’t say what she wanted to, she changed the subject. “I’m sorry, why aren’t we drinking champagne right now?”
Adaku barked her signature laugh and squeezed Sewanee’s shoulders. “Because it’s chillin’ in the fancy Sub-Zero fridge!” As she scampered off, she yelled over her shoulder, “They gave me Cristal!”
Sewanee turned back to the window and gave herself a good, firm, mental shake. She was happy, genuinely, for her friend. This had nothing to do with Adaku. Adaku wasn’t the problem.
She heard the pop of the cork, the glug of the pour, and the posh little patter of Adaku’s bare ballerina feet on the marble behind her.
She turned away from the window and Adaku handed her the glass of bubbly, looking Sewanee directly in the eye. “To our dream coming true.”
Sewanee toasted her and took a large swig of the best champagne she’d ever had.
“Okay! What do we want to do? I have that dinner I told you about but I’m free until then. Let’s get this party started!” Sewanee knew, because she knew everything about her best friend, that while anyone who found themselves in Adaku’s whirling dervish of a presence would swear otherwise, she had never done cocaine.
“Whatever you want! I can’t check in until three o’clock so . . .”
Adaku rolled her eyes and Sewanee could see another argument for ditching the Rio forming, so she quickly said, “I have to do some work tonight, so let’s have fun but not too much. Tomorrow night, I’m all in. Speaking of, I brought five hundred dollars and I’m putting it on red or black. Haven’t decided which yet. Who knows, maybe I’ll get lucky.”
“Oh, you’re getting lucky if I have anything to say about it! It’s been way too long.” Adaku held up her glass again. Sewanee clinked it, chuckling, and they both said, simultaneously, effortlessly, freely, “I love you.” They sipped and the bubbles felt like Pop Rocks on Swan’s tongue and, suddenly, she was content. That’s what A did for her.
Adaku set her glass down on a side table Sewanee thought might have been a sculpture and clapped her hands together. “So! I have to do a phone interview in ten minutes, shouldn’t be more than half an hour–at least my publicist promised it wouldn’t be–and then we hit it!” She refilled Sewanee’s glass while saying, “You take this, go luxuriate in the spa”–she pointed down yet another long hallway–“fix yourself”–she looked Swan up and down–“and get ready to partaaay!” She twirled out of the room on the last word like Stevie Nicks, champagne sloshing out of her glass and splatting on the marble.