by Piper Lennox
“I’m still pissed.” I throw a pillow at him; he blocks it.
“Stop. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
“Come on, Luk.” I mute the television. “Tell me the truth—why are you so upset Dad left everything to me?”
“Because you don’t even want it.”
“What, and you do?” I laugh.
Luka doesn’t laugh with me, though. Instead, he spreads his hands.
“Yeah, actually. I do.”
I stare at him. “You hate the business like this, though,” I say slowly, almost a question. “You said so. I— We both did.”
Luka picks at a stitch on his khakis. “I did hate it, at first,” he says, “but...I don’t, now.”
“So, what, you like the idea of owning this thing?” I sweep my hand towards the front windows, like the resort is visible through the trees and neighborhoods in the way. “It’s not anything like it used to be.”
“Yeah. But...nothing’s like it used to be, you know?”
I study his face, the soft furrow in his brow. It reminds me of when we were kids: he had to concentrate twice as hard as us to get his words strung together and pushed out into the open. Probably because Noe and I were always talking over him. He didn’t get the practice we did.
“The thing is,” he continues, “when it was the family business, it was nice and all, but I never wanted to run it. Maybe that was just because I knew I never would. It was going to Noe. Then when he died...I was like, ‘Okay, now it’s going to Kai.’ Then Dad signed it over, and it started expanding, and…I don’t know. It just makes sense to me. I like it like this.”
He glances at me, expecting me to interrupt. When I don’t, he goes on. “I get excited about going into work, now. I guess it’s the way you and Noe always felt about the old business. And you stopped caring about it, so I figured, okay, here’s my shot. There wasn’t any point in wanting it before, but now I had a chance.” He shakes his head. “Then I find out Dad’s leaving it all to you, anyway.”
I lean forward, forearms resting on my knees, and duck my head to make eye contact with him. “Why didn’t you tell anyone? Why didn’t you tell Dad, at least?”
“I didn’t think he’d take me seriously. I mean, I was always goofing off and shit when we were younger, so why would he?”
“Is that why you’ve been pitching all those new ideas? The ticket printers, the expansion project—was that so Dad would take you seriously?”
Luka nods. He reaches up to scratch behind his ear, another old habit from when he was a kid; he has a scar there, the result of a bike crash we’ve both forgotten the details of, that he can never leave alone. I notice the ring in his ear is gone, and wonder how long ago he took it out—or why I didn’t catch it sooner.
“I’m sorry, man,” I say, and this time, it’s sincere. “I didn’t know you wanted the business that bad. I didn’t know you wanted it at all.”
He shrugs like it doesn’t matter, even though his face says it does. His jaw is reddish purple where I hit him, and I feel a pang of guilt over it. Especially knowing what I know now.
“I’ll tell him.”
His head snaps up. “You can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Shit, Kai, you want him to have another stroke?”
I flinch, and both of us peer through the patio door. Mom is still bent over her plants as the sun sets, oblivious.
“Look,” he adds, hushed now, “Dad left it to you. So that’s that.”
“Only because he has no idea you really want it. If we tell him, he might change it.” I get to my feet, a weird urgency in my muscles, making me pace. “Luk, I don’t want this. I don’t want shuttles and island tours and a lazy river. But if you do want all of that, you should have it.”
“You don’t want to be in charge of it, you mean,” he corrects.
I almost nod, but something stops me. Mollie’s words from this morning echo back.
“Sometimes you have to do what feels right for you. Not what everyone else tells you is right.”
“No,” I say, more to myself than him. I sit down. “I don’t want any of it.”
“You don’t?”
“I quit, didn’t I?”
“Well, yeah, but I figured that was just because you and Dad were fighting. I didn’t think you hated the place so much you wouldn’t want to work there at all.”
“It’s not the same,” I whisper. “That place….it doesn’t feel like ours anymore.”
Luka considers this. “It does to me.”
“That’s why it should be yours. Not mine.”
“We still shouldn’t tell him yet.”
I have to admit, he’s right. Even though it’s good news that I, the newly lackluster son, don’t want his company—and Luka, suddenly Mr. Responsibility, does—Dad might not see it that way. At least, not at first. No sense in stressing him out.
“Okay, I’ll talk to him when he’s recovered more. In the meantime, you make that place run like a machine, so he can’t possibly say no. Deal?”
Luka stares at my outstretched hand a moment, then takes it. “Deal.”
“Oh, good,” Mom smiles, wiping her hands on her pants and stomping her shoes off against the doorframe. “You two made up for real, hmm?”
We glance at each other, like when we were kids caught in the middle of a prank. She always knew, even when we were so sure we’d fooled her.
“Shit.” Luka pats his pockets, then stands and digs in between the seat cushions. “I think I left my phone at the pool bar.”
“I’ll go get it for you.” I get up and grab my house keys, but pause halfway to the door when I realize Luka and Mom are staring. “What?”
“Awfully helpful of you,” he jokes. “You just want to meet up with Mollie.”
“Maybe.” Truthfully, I feel guilty about the bruise on his jaw. The least I can do is get his phone for him.
While I drive, I wonder if I should go look for Mollie. The fact she left without so much as a goodbye tells me she might have had enough of me for the day, or didn’t want to spend her vacation in paradise inside a hospital. Can’t say I blame her.
I decide I can at least run up to her room after I find Luka’s phone, which provides a handy excuse to be nearby. I’ll tell her I just wanted to make sure she got back safely. It’s honest, without sounding clingy.
And if she wants to invite me in for a drink or something...well, so much the better.
I want to talk to her about the conversation with my dad, and Luka. Tell her she was right, after all: Luka’s getting the business, and surprise of surprises, he actually wants it.
For some reason, I’m excited about it. Sharing the good news with her. Seeing her smile over it and celebrating with me. Talking late into the night.
You’re falling into the trap. I catch my own eyes in the rearview. She’s not a girlfriend. She’s not even a girl you’re dating.
She’s just a summer girl.
I pull into the resort’s employee lot and cut the engine, listening to it tick as it cools. Mollie likes me and I like her, but we had an agreement: when she leaves, it’s over. We’ll be an ocean apart and then some.
Five days. We didn’t agree things wouldn’t get serious, per se—just that they wouldn’t stay serious, because they can’t. So what if I want to stay up all night, talking to her? Why can’t she be the person I want to share good news with and fall asleep beside, even if it’s just for a few days?
I drag my hand across my face and look at myself in the mirror again.
You are in so much deeper than you realize.
The pool bar has a loosely knit crowd around it. I slip my way through and wave to P.J., who looks all too relieved for an excuse to end his conversation with the group of teenagers at the other end of the bar.
“Hey,” he says. “How’s your dad doing?”
“Better, I think.” I nod down towards the group of kids, if only to change the subject; nobody but family and
management knows about Dad’s forced retirement yet. No need to get the rumor mill going prematurely. “They underage?”
“They ‘left their IDs on the beach’ and can’t find them.” We shake our heads, laughing. “You want a beer?”
“No, thanks. I just came by for Luka’s phone.” I lift the hinged section of the bar top, step in (forgetting, briefly, that I’m technically a non-employee), and start searching. I find it under a dishcloth, flashing with notifications and almost dead.
“Got it,” I call to P.J. I grab the bar top above me and lift myself up, ready to turn and leave. But a glimpse of something—two people, on the stairs that lead to the beach—stops me.
Even in the dim light, I recognize Mollie. The guy she’s talking to looks familiar, but I can’t place him.
I say goodnight to P.J. and work my way through the crowd again, this time going towards the steps, and stop short.
They’re kissing.
It takes me longer than it should to look away, like I can’t believe it until I’ve committed it to memory.
When I turn back to the bar, my brain links the guy to a photo I saw online: Damian. The long-time crush.
Guess he’s not gay, after all.
I force a casual nod at P.J. again as I pass by. He nods back, so distracted by a complicated tab split he doesn’t notice my hand slip over the bar top and grab the first thing I feel: a bottle of vodka, half-empty.
So what if she kissed him? I take a swig when I’m in the shadows around the side of the resort. The burn barely hits me, so I take another.
We agreed: no strings. I don’t have a right to be jealous.
The vodka feels like a coal in the pit of my stomach. I take another gulp and sit with my back against the building.
Above me, the sky’s a mix of colors: pink and pale purple close to the landscape, deep blue and black the higher I tilt my head. I can see some stars, but the longer I look, the more the alcohol puts my eyes out of focus. Somewhere behind me, fireworks crackle. A crowd cheers. Welcome to paradise.
I’ve heard that word my entire life: tourists say it without irony the second they step foot into our hotel, right up until the minute they leave. My mom used to sigh it during our outdoor family dinners, twice a month, and smile at the scene in front of her: unbound nature and the people she loved most, all in one place.
Dad says it like a business tactic: our job is to make paradise real for our guests. With views this gorgeous, they don’t want to be reminded that wherever you go, mistakes get made and stress still exists. Hurt still happens. People are still people.
Noe never said “paradise” unless he was quoting Dad, but I knew, if he’d had to pick a definition, it would have been those first pieces of daylight inside a barrel, the water glowing neon around him and glittering as it sprayed down.
I’m not sure anymore what paradise means to Luka. Before, I would have thought a lazy day in the surf was his idea of perfection, too. After today, maybe his definition aligns more with Dad’s, after all.
Another sip of vodka helps me admit it: I have no definition. Even surfing isn’t perfect, because every time a wave knocks me under, I can’t help but think of Noe. All I’ve got now is everyone else’s idea, available to me like a special pair of glasses. I can slip one on and, for a few minutes, see this place the way they do. But it doesn’t last.
For me, there is no paradise. All I see is the same place I’ve been my entire life, the same opportunities, the same smallness.
Sitting on that scrap of cardboard behind Mollie, holding her to me as we flew down the slope of the ditch, I finally felt something I hadn’t felt since I was a kid: that this place, my home, could be big enough.
But it wasn’t the island making me feel that way. It was her.
I falter to my feet and follow the path back towards the beach. I forget about Luka’s phone, buzzing in my pocket every now and then, or even the fact Dad’s truck is now parked at the resort and I’m too drunk to get it back home.
The beach is full of tourists, walking with their shoes in-hand, their laughter screeching at me through the darkness. I sit on a dune and watch. More than a few are drunk, which is the only reason I even notice I left the vodka behind.
“Kai?” One of the beachgoers starts up the sand towards me. It’s Mollie.
“Hey.”
“Hi.” She rubs her arm, shifting her weight between her feet and stumbling. Is she drunk, too?
I lean back on my elbows and look past her, at the water I can hear but only kind of see in the moonlight through the clouds.
“So,” she says, sitting beside me, “how’s your dad?”
“Same as when you left.” I cut my eyes at her. “Guess you had to get back to Damian?”
I mean it to sound less sarcastic than it does, but judging from her recoil, I didn’t accomplish that. Oh, well.
“First of all, Damian’s not in the picture. He never was. And second—”
“Then why were you kissing him a few minutes ago?” I gesture across the sand, towards the glow of the lower bar and deck. I’m so tired, though, that I just kind of throw my arm out in that direction. It lands on the sand between us.
She stares at it, then slowly drags her eyes up to my face. “Well, let’s say I was kissing him, or that he and I were together. Why would that matter to you?”
“It doesn’t.” I rake my fingers through the sand, back and forth, like a Zen garden. “I mean, you’re leaving soon. We aren’t together, or serious, or…anything.”
“Exactly.” Mollie looks out at the water, but I feel her glance at me again as I struggle to stand. “We aren’t anything.”
Even though I said it first, hearing her say it cuts me deeper than I expected. I brush the sand off and turn away, starting up the dunes. “I should go.”
When I look back at her from the road above, she’s still sitting there, staring at the water. She doesn’t turn. Doesn’t try and stop me.
So I point my feet towards home, push my hair off my forehead, and walk.
Mollie
“We aren’t anything.” I wait for him to challenge this, or take my face in his hands and kiss me. Anything to disprove what I overheard at the hospital: that I’m just another tourist. Here one day, gone the next. Nothing special.
Just another formerly fat, shy girl who got tricked by some smooth words and hard muscles.
He doesn’t, though. Instead, he brushes away the sand from his bathing suit, sending a spray of it across my arm, and leaves.
I don’t turn to check if he’s watching me from the road or not. I might not have gotten a grand exit or dramatic walkaway this time, but at least he won’t see me cry.
Seventeen
Mollie
“So you’re just going to stay in and pout, the rest of the trip?”
I grumble as Tanya throws open the curtains, flooding the room with sunlight. It’s past noon, but still seems way too bright. My head’s already pounding when I curse at her and pull a pillow over my head.
“Come on, Moll,” she whines, yanking it back. “We’ve got four days left. You’ve spent all morning in here, moping about Kai. Either call him or get over it.”
“I’m not,” I say firmly, “moping about Kai.” I sit up just as she tears the comforter off me. Then, proving myself, I grab the spray from her and start fixing my hair.
“Something happened. I can tell.”
“Nothing happened. That’s the whole point: it was a fun vacation hookup, it’s over, life goes on.”
“If it’s not Kai,” she says, ignoring me, “it’s got to be Damian. Tell the truth: are you staying here so you don’t have to see him? Because that, I would totally understand. After that whole kissing bullshit he pulled on you, I don’t even want to see him.”
That’s not why at all; after I finally got to say my piece, seeing Damian stopped being the much-dreaded fiasco I kept worrying it would be. If anything, he should be avoiding me—especially now that he and James a
re on again, according to Carrie. Her news source (Ted, via pillow talk) is pretty reliable.
Still, it’s the easiest, fuss-free explanation that Tanya will accept, so I shrug and let her believe what she wants.
We stake out some chairs by the infinity pool and order drinks. We’re about two sips in when a shadow falls across us. I find myself squinting up into Luka’s face.
“Just checking in. How are the drinks?”
I look at Tanya, who’s giving him a thorough twice-over. Of course. “Um...good. Did you make these, or something?”
He scratches his head, glancing around the deck. “Today’s my first day. I’ve been checking in with all the guests and running around all morning.” Nervously, he laughs. “Guess it’s coming off as creepy, though, huh?”
“Not at all.” Tanya takes off her sunglasses so she can flash him her bright green eyes and lash extensions. He definitely notices.
“First day?” I ask, interrupting their moment. “Aren’t you the bartender?”
He gestures to his suit, which I somehow missed. “Not anymore. You’re looking at the new owner.” He slouches a little. “Well, almost. Right now I’m, like, the substitute owner.”
“What?” I take off my sunglasses too, but in a far less sexy way than Tanya. “Kai said your dad gave him the job.”
“No, I’m taking it. He didn’t tell you?”
I look around, like Kai will emerge from the hot tub or step out from behind a palm tree. “No. But I haven’t seen him today, so….” They wait, but I just punctuate it with a shrug.
Luka’s cell phone trills. He nods goodbye, his gaze lingering a little longer on Tanya, and vanishes into an employees-only door.
“Damn,” Tanya whistles, lying back and putting her sunglasses on again. “Boy cuts a nice figure in that suit. Definitely management material.”
“Kai said he used to be the slacker type, until recently.” I think of yesterday in the clearing, how clearly Kai didn’t want this place—but how obligated he felt to carry on the family business. Even if the “family” part of that equation was waning.
