Like a Best Friend | ✓

chapter eight

The romantic couples' gondola ride is booked for two p.m. so after a lazy morning and an early lunch in the hotel, Kitty and I wander down the Strip to the Venetian. It's a blazing hot day and I'm glad the gondola ride is indoors because I'm on the cusp of heatstroke even though most of this morning's pool time was spent in the actual water. We would've gotten a judgmental look from the driver if we'd taken a cab to avoid the fifteen minute walk in the full sun, but I wish we had because I am sweating.

But we don't go inside straight away, because the hotel's exterior is stunning. And vast, too. A bright turquoise lake butts up to the sidewalk, several bridges crossing over it that the outdoor gondolas float under, their occupants fanning their faces with whatever they can get their hands on. I can't imagine being here in summer. Five minutes is enough before we're on the travelator up to the entrance, bypassing the Madame Tussauds museum to get to Grand Canal Shoppes. The foyer alone feels like Grand fucking Central, high ceilings and an ornate tiled floor and people everywhere. The ceiling belongs in a museum, an enormous recreation of what I can only assume is a famous Italian painting, edged in gold.

Kitty pulls me through the crowd towards an arch with a signpost for the shops, and that's where we find the canals. They've gone all out with their recreation of Venice indoors, with the vaguely gothic beige buildings and hundreds of arches and a half a mile of indoor canal, and the painted ceiling is disorienting. At first glance it looks real, and then like perhaps it's a projection or wallpaper, but it's all hand painted. Blue sky and fluffy white clouds hanging over fake Venice. The sound of singing gondoliers fills the space, rising above the hustle and bustle of thousands of tourists, and there is so much color from all the stores – candy and bath products and expensive clothes; jewelry and art and food. Food, everywhere.

I can't lie, it's pretty overstimulating.

Kitty, however, is in her element. She's a kid in a candy shop, turning in slow circles, taking it all in. I capture the moment on my phone (she doesn't allow her DSLR anywhere near water) and save it to an album called Kit Pics.

"Just remember, we're about to get on a boat, so you've got to save your impending shopping spree for later," I remind her, fully expecting us to be here a couple more hours after our gondola ride.

"Good thinking," she says, saluting me. "This place is like the fucking Tardis, it's massive. There must be, like, a hundred stores in here."

"A hundred and sixty," I say. I did a lot of research for this trip, and a surprising amount has lodged itself in my brain. "This is, like, the home of luxury shopping in Vegas."

"Which means it's the home of me," she says with a happy sigh.

Kitty and I may have been raised in the same city and gone to the same college and lived in the same shitty apartment after graduating, but by no means do we have the same relationship with money. She grew up with it, her parents hard-working high earners from a line of the same, and her day job alone comes with a great salary, never mind everything she gets on top of that from her Instagram. I don't know how much that is exactly – it fluctuates based on her sponsored posts and her brand partnerships – but I'm pretty sure it's in the hundreds of thousands. If she wants something, she can just go get it.

Even though I make great money now – my latest promotion, last year, tipped me into six figure territory – I struggle to shake the mindset that comes with growing up on a tight budget. I feel guilty that at twenty-eight, I make more than either of my parents ever have, that they work their assess off to be comfortable – Mom runs a bookstore and Dad has his own garage – and I sit at my little computer gossiping with my work wife and I never have to worry about money. Except I still do, squirreling it away into my savings the minute I'm paid each month.