“It’s too damn cold to drive that thing right now,” he said.
Luke walked away from me and toward the bathroom. “Then let’s do something fun since we may be here for a bit. Think up something. I’ll be right out.” He closed the door behind himself.
I went over the piano and sat on the bench. Gabriel jumped up and joined me, sitting next to me, placing his phone on top of the piano.
We toyed with the piano, figuring out Marry Had a Little Lamb, and then testing every key.
“Should we be messing with it?” I asked him.
He tapped at the black keys, making his fingers look like little legs jumping from one to the other. “It’s a piano. You’re supposed to mess with it.”
His phone buzzed, and he scooped it up off the top of the piano, checking the message.
“Is it them?” I asked.
“Yeah, it’s Victor. But it looks like it is just us up here for a while.” He moved the piano key cover over until it closed. “So we...probably shouldn’t mess with this.”
“So we don’t make noise while Victor isn’t here? So no one hears us?”
“No,” he said sheepishly and then grinned. “He just knows I like playing with it when he isn’t here, and he just said to stop. He just had it retuned after the last time.”
“What did you do to it last time?”
“Nothing!” he said, a little too quickly. He looked around. “But there’s nothing else to play with. I’m not allowed on his computer, and that’s boring. It’s all dumb code stuff.”
“We could...watch TV?”
“Mmm...” He shrugged.
I glanced around the room, at the black and white décor, and then the closet. “Should we sort the closet?”
“That’s what I was doing before you got here,” he said. He tapped his fingers like he was playing the piano over the cover. He swung his legs around until he was sitting facing the other way on the bench, and then leaned back against the piano with his elbows propped up. He slid over a little, crossing in front of me, until his face was near mine. “You know what I’m thinking?”
He was close, and his breath was warm. Part of me was terrified at the crazy possibilities he was feasibly coming up with. “I don’t want to cut my hair right now.”
He chuckled.
“Gabriel!” Luke said from the bathroom, his tone light and playful. “Sang! Come see.”
We scrambled off the bench. Gabriel got to the door first and held a hand out to me. “Hang on,” he said. “Let me make sure he didn’t leave a weird shaped doodie and now he’s wanting to brag.”
I wrenched my mouth open to make an “o” shape.
“I was twelve when I did that!” Luke shouted from the bathroom. “And that’s not...I didn’t poop! Just come see.”
Gabriel opened the door. I braced myself to avoid looking toward the toilet, just in case. Luke was tricky.
Luke was on the floor, peering under the sink, and surrounding him were several gift baskets. Each one cellophane wrapped and full of bath oils, bath bombs, salts and a wide range of similar concoctions.
Gabriel picked up one and examined the contents. “Are these new? I didn’t notice these before.”
“Yeah, they’re new,” Luke said. He chuckled and his eyes caught my attention. “I’m pretty sure these are meant for you.”
“Shouldn’t we put them back?” I said. “I mean, what if those are for him? Or a gift for...like a cousin or something?”
“He wouldn’t buy his cousin bath bombs,” Luke said. He brought around his phone, poked at it with a forefinger to type in a message. He spoke as he typed. “Can...we...play...with...gift...baskets...under...sink?” He sent the message and waited. When the phone buzzed, he read, “Leave a few for Sang.”
“Well, she’s here,” Gabriel said. “That means we get to open all of them?”
“Man, Sang...you get all the good stuff,” Luke said. He placed three of the smaller baskets back into the cabinet. There were still a few in there he hadn’t pulled out. “We’ll save those for Victor. Or next time.”
There were four left out for us. We placed the biggest one in the middle and we each took one of the other baskets.
It felt a little weird to open it without Victor here, since he was nice enough to get them. “Maybe I should wait,” I said. “Did he mean these to be a gift for me?”
“I’m sure it was because of last week, when we said you liked the bath bomb,” Gabriel said. “And he just said we could play with them.” He stabbed a couple of fingers into the cellophane of his basket and widened the hole. He pulled out an item, a box of three various soaps. He put the box to his nose and sniffed. “The box says Korean Night, but I don’t know what Korea smells like. Is it really?” He sniffed again. “Wow, actually smells spicy.”
Luke opened his package completely, spilling the basket’s contents onto the floor. There was a pipe-shaped container that was the biggest and he took off the lid. He reached in, pulling out a big round bath bomb in a light blue shade. He sniffed it. “Cotton candy? I like this.”
I turned my basket around, checking out the inside without opening it. Everything was displayed so nicely, I didn’t want to break it open. “What’s a face masque?” I asked.
“Oh man, I want to try one,” Gabriel said, putting his basket aside and sliding over to look. He put his face to my shoulder to examined my basket and did some noise that was a cross between a grunt and a squeal. “Fuck it. We’re having a Victor spa day.”
“In honor of Victor?” Luke asked.
“Right,” Gabriel said. “For Victor.” He went back to his basket. “Okay, pull out everything you want to try. We’ll organize it a bit to put it in order. I’ve seen those spa night routines on YouTube. Been wanting to do that.”
Luke held up some bath bombs. “Do we want to smell like Korea or candy or ocean or...? I’d say candy but it makes me hungry.”
“First, we need to get ready.” Gabriel picked out a couple of items from his basket, putting the rest aside. He pointed to me. “Go get on a bathing suit.”
“Do I have a bathing suit here?” I asked. “I think I’ve only got one.”
Gabriel considered. “Like I said, go find a bra and underwear that won’t get ruined in a bath. Those are close enough to bathing suits...And then remind me later to get you more bathing suits.”
I considered the bikinis I’d seen in movies on occasion and was pretty sure he was right.
I raced to the closet, leaving the boys to sort out all the items from the baskets.
Victor’s closet was a small room in itself, larger than Kota’s bedroom. I passed a section of Victor’s white Armani shirts and dark pants. There were small sections around the whole room, each one had a display of various styles of men’s clothing. North’s was all black. Mr. Blackbourne’s mostly consisted of gray suits.
There was a section in the back that was spaced off for my clothes. It was mostly noticeable because of all the pink. A large number of them were completely new to me. Victor did a lot of shopping for me.
There were drawers below hanging clothes, and inside were various underwear and bras and other small items.
I reached in, pulling out a pair of underwear that was black with a pink heart on the butt. Then I found a bra that looked to me more like a bikini, with a band going around my neck instead of over the shoulders.
I got undressed, intending to go back after we were done and tidy the pile I left in the closet later. I put on the underwear and bra and then sought out a robe. I wore it but I left it open. Gabriel had pretty much seen me naked, and Luke had seen me in underwear before. I was just a little chilly.