Riley bounced on the balls of her feet. “We did it!”
Aside from a few minor issues, which would only cost me a couple of hours next shift.
“I can finally work on the chandeliers! At least these two.” She twirled around with her arms wide. “Layla found a replacement for the broken one, too. It’s larger than the other two, but it matches well enough to work.”
She’d already mentioned that multiple times tonight.
“I was sure she would tell me to just put the broken one up and turn on the recessed lighting if the other two weren’t enough.” She shuddered. “Can you imagine?”
She didn’t give me a chance to agree, though I doubted any of the guests would have noticed.
“I can’t wait to tell Fred and Ted. They’re not even charging for their extra hours helping me hang them. Well, they are, but they said they’d donate it to the Vocational Center. Isn’t that cool?”
Riley’s enthusiasm made me smile. Four days wasn’t enough to finish my phone project, but working on the Bakelite phones wasn’t a priority for the Masquerade Ball. An extra week or two after the ball might give me enough time, if Min allowed it. If not, I’d send Riley the schematics. She’d love to work on them.
“I ran into Jim earlier.” Riley sighed. “He was very apologetic… It made me want to hit him.”
“He’s apologized to me five times in the past few days.” Each additional attempt made me feel worse, so I now avoided the hub altogether. The tension in the hub frazzled my system.
Riley turned to me. “You don’t want to hit him?”
I shook my head. “He had a point.”
“No, he didn’t. You heard Layla. Hearing about you just fed his anger. It wasn’t really about you.”
Deep down, I knew that. Or thought I did. “If I wasn’t a prince taking a break from my duties, this might not have happened.”
“Bullshit!” Riley balled her fists. “If you hadn’t taken a break, if you hadn’t come here, there might have been no ballroom to fix.”
I shook my head. “He might have?—”
“Stop doing that, or I’m going to slap you. You’re not the only royalty here.” Her voice was raw, but her hands stayed by her side. “I’m glad you came. So is Rick, but I think you know that.”
Rick had been very vocal in thanking me. I nodded.
“Good. Remember that. Because despite this whole mess, it’s been really fun working with you.”
My system stuttered, and I forced out the “Thank you.”
She smiled. “Good boy. Now go. Leave me to my chandeliers.”
I shook my head. “Rick told me he’d fix the issues on the third floor and leave the rest for the next shift. So, I’m all yoursif you want help.”
“Always. But wouldn’t you rather work on the phones?”
“There’s no rush on the phones.” My prototype worked. That was the most important part. It didn’t matter who ended up converting the rest.
“True.” She smiled. “Then yes. I’d love some help.”
As Riley talked about her ideas and family, we stripped and cleaned the chandeliers. We painstakingly replaced every dead LED. It was fiddly work, even with calipers, and Riley muttered, growled, and cursed her way through it. She didn’t expect me to contribute much to the conversation, which made working with her enjoyable. Yes, she could be loud, but I had to admit, I’d grown used to it.
When Rick joined us at the end of the night to show us the latest scan, we were almost halfway done.
Riley stretched and blew across her fingers. “Are yours this numb and irritated, too?”
I copied her. It was surprisingly soothing. “A bit. Especially where I pinched my skin with the calipers.”
“Yeah. That really hurts.” She gathered the dead LEDs. “Not as many as I expected. And you’ve saved me so much time.”
