Mari’s alarm for the golf tournament went off bright and early and she slapped her alarm clock with true malice when it went off at the appointed time. The poor thing. It was only doing what she’d asked it to do. Bisi had delivered her to her apartment door by eleven-thirty the previous evening with a final too-chaste kiss that had nevertheless left Mari all riled up. She’d done her nightly routine— shower, lotions, vitamins, reading—and then she’d tossed and turned for an hour before she finally fell into a restless sleep. Five meager hours later, she was awake again and grabbing her phone to check the weather. It was going to be sunny and clear all day. Damn it. Her last hope had been the kind of catastrophic weather event that brought out the excitable Weather Channel crew with their blue windbreakers and storm surge boners. No such luck this time. 

Grumbling and stumbling, Mari made her way to the bathroom and washed her face and brushed her teeth and started slathering sunscreen on all the places that would be getting assaulted by UV rays all day. Then, she went and pulled on her “Event Staff” polo, which was an aggressively assimilationist shade of pale blue and then the khaki shorts that completed the staff uniform. Khaki twill. God help me. She tucked the shirt down into the shorts and did the waist up and then went back to her closet to find a belt. Khaki shorts were for the narrow-assed. She didn’t make the rules, the khaki manufacturers did. Accordingly, Mari had needed to get the shorts that fit her ass and then cinch the orange-sized gap in the waistband closed using the power of accessories. Or she could have stored her keys and her lunch in there. Either way. She put on her socks and tennis shoes and then added the final insult— a golf visor embroidered with the event logo. She gave herself a sideways look in the mirror, not even wanting the full effect. Ugh. “If you can’t get out of it, Mari, get into it,” she told herself out loud as she grabbed her keys and headed out the door. 

She did her best to get into the golf tournament, and everything went more or less to plan. No politicians or celebrities clutched their chests and dropped to the manicured grass, which was where the bar was now set for an ‘easy’ event in her mind. She’d been bitched at by representatives from their corporate client over things that were not even remotely under her purview, although she had done her best to rectify them. She’d been talked down to by a couple of guests, hit on by a couple more, and there had been one very suspicious bit of contact with her ass that had coincided with the passing of one of the retired pro golfers participating in the event, but that had been the worst of it. She’d stayed busy enough to drown out the overarching boringness of the entire event. When she’d gotten home, she’d called up Bisi to chat, but prudently left out the details about the amorous guests and the handsy golfer. They talked for over an hour, but Mari missed her more afterwards and not less. Four more days to go.

The next day’s event was a retirement party. Mari had nothing to complain about, not really. It was held at a nice venue, the party had been well-planned by Allain, everyone was cooperative, the food turned out well, the decorations worked, the clients were happy, everything stayed on schedule… but it, too, was boring. She’d spent her downtime contemplating what it would really take to get the Breedymoon service up and running, and whether it would be possible to moonlight at it while keeping her job. Bisi had called her that night, and Mari had talked about her day and her musings and they’d tossed some ideas back and forth. Bisi had offered to introduce her to Victoria Anderson who knew everyone and everything, and who could probably point her towards some resources aimed at Omega-owned start-ups. Mari had been grateful for the offer, but had asked for a little more time to think about it. Then they had talked about other things until they were both yawning. Three more days to go. 

On Sunday, Mari checked in on clean-up and take-down for both events, and went into the office to help Allain deal with the fall-out of a late-in-the-game wedding cancellation. Apparently, the groom whose family was paying for the wedding had discovered that the other groom had been keeping his options very, very open— a fact he had kept very, very hidden from his fiancé. Until suddenly it wasn’t so hidden. This had come to light when a member of the wedding party had stumbled onto the other groom’s very active profile on Pure. All hell had then broken loose and the wedding, understandably, had been called off. Allain felt terrible for the family who’d been left holding the bag, and also terrible for all of the vendors who were inevitably going to get screwed by the cancellations, so he and Mari had put in several hours trying to minimize the damage for both sides of that equation. “Remind me never to get married. You can’t trust anyone,”Allain had said as they’d locked up the office on their way out that evening.

“You got married less than a year ago, Allain. You trust Eric. You trust people. I trust people. Some people are just shitty, that’s all.”

“And how is it going with the beautiful doctor?”

“Beautifully, so far.” 

“Don’t trust her,” Alain warned her in a grandma voice, playfully shaking a finger in Mari’s face.

“Tch. Too late. I already trust her.”

“I don’t blame you. I’m shallow, too. I’d probably rather get fucked over by her than treated like a prince by ninety percent of people. Enjoy the ride.”

“Shameless. I’m telling Eric you said that.”

“You better not. I like it when he treats me like a prince.”

“She’s not going to fuck me over, by the way. Man. How did we get so jaded?” Mari wondered.

“By working weddings.”

“That’d do it,” Mari said, thinking about getting home so she could take a hot bath and— wait for it— talk to Bisi. Two more days to go.

Monday was a regular office day, and Mari moved papers around and confirmed things and made calls and got contracts signed for most of the morning. She had a business lunch with the owner of a new event space who wanted to give her a tour of the facility—probably a little too edgy for most of the clients who came to them, but she’d liked it and she’d keep it in mind in the future— and then she gone back to the office to pack up for the day. She wanted to go home and call Bisi and figure out what to wear and what to bring. She wanted to get in her car and just drive there and ask her in person. Just… see her for a minute. Scent her. She was so ready to see Bisi again. She was massively curious about her home, too— what kind of space she’d chosen for herself, what things smelled like, looked like, felt like… seeing someone’s space was a big deal. Bisi had been called in for an emergency surgery so there was no phone call that night. Mari spent it making up her mind about what to wear the next day. And what to wear over that. One night and part of a day to go. 

Currently returning to the space that Marisol was so curious about, Bisi Egbe backed into her kitchen with grocery bags strung along both arms, which were also awkwardly clutching a large package. The groceries were for the big dinner she would be cooking the next night in honor of her mate’s first-ever visit to her home. 

“Should…have…made…two… trips…” she upbraided herself. She  bent her knees to lower the package to the countertop and then, when it was semi-safely settled, she deposited the rest of the bags on the floor with relief. She took a minute to load all the cold items into the fridge and washed her hands, and then went over to look at the package. She hadn’t ordered anything that week, and she didn’t recognize the return address, which was in California, but it was clearly addressed to her. She grabbed a pair of scissors and carefully slit the tape open and opened the box and lifted out several handfuls of packing peanuts.

To her surprise, tucked inside the box was the exact print that she had bid on at the BIPOCOmmunity fundraiser, in the auction she had lost. For a moment, she thought that somehow Mari had gotten it for her. But no, she hadn’t even told Mari which print she had bid on. It wouldn’t have been hard for Mari to figure out, she supposed, but Mari had been with her while Bisi was losing the auction, so… she hadn’t won it, either. There was an envelope tucked into one corner of the frame. Bisi lifted the print out of the box and laid it flat on the counter and then picked up the envelope and tore it open. 

She slid out a heavy card with a monogrammed H in the corner and turned it over to read the back. 

In unfamiliar handwriting it said, “Saw this in the auction and wanted it for my collection--but judging by the initials on the bid form, I think that you might have been bidding against me. You lost the auction while you were helping me, so it seems only right to send it to you along with my thanks and an apology for being a pill without my pills. I appreciated your help. Please let me know if there is ever anything I can do for you. Would love to talk with you again under better circumstances— Halston Hollis.” Below that was a phone number. 

“Huh,” said Bisi. She held the painting up and studied it regretfully, admiring the bold lines and colors and symbols all over again. Speaking to the subject of the print, she said, “Darling, you and I both know that this is problematic from several different angles. I will have to send you back. But you’re here now, and you’ve had a long trip. I very much regretted that you slipped through my fingers. Now, I am hoping to be too busy to go to the post office tomorrow, and maybe even the day after that if I am a very lucky girl, so we’ll have to spend a day or two together before I do. It will give you a chance to catch your breath. Make yourself at home in the meantime.” She was going to need her counter space for cooking, so she stuck the card back into the frame and carried the print into her living room. She propped it up in a chair, and went back into the kitchen to unpack the rest of her groceries.