by Piper Lennox
“After you pick it,” I tell him, halfway across the kitchen to avoid more questions, “write it everywhere. Tell the servers to push it hard.” I stop, snapping my fingers at him. “Make it big.”
“Wh— The promotion, or the drink itself?”
“Both. Fishbowl!” I point to a rack of the huge, bowl-like glasses we reserve for our fruitiest, most ridiculous drinks, usually meant to share between couples—but often enjoyed for social media worthiness and bragging rights by a single customer.
Outside, finally, I relax. It doesn’t last long.
“Luka, there you are.” Iona looks like she’s close to tears, which happens a lot. She’s a little sensitive, but very passionate, which made her the perfect choice for Head of Guest Experiences. In other words: one concierge to rule them all.
“The check-in computer is down.”
“The computer,” I clarify, as I start walking in the opposite direction I wanted to go, “or the system?”
“Uh....” She pulls out her phone and scrolls. “Ace said the computer.”
“Did you call IT?”
“They can’t get out here until two. All the suggestions they gave us didn’t work.”
“Here.” I dig out a key from my pocket and palm it to her. “Get Ace to help you grab one from the Business Center, then call IT back so they can start the system on that computer. I’m pretty sure they can do it remotely. And get Parker to order two new setups, for the love of God. It’s ridiculous we only have one.”
“Thank you,” she sighs gratefully, running ahead of me into the lobby. I notice Ace, our front desk frontman, already checking guests in with our emergency system: an old tablet, where the most rudimentary data is stored. Not nearly as fast as a computer, but at least the line is thinning. I pause to say hello to some guests, shake their hands, and welcome them to Paradise Port.
God, I hate that name.
It’s probably the one thing about the franchise I’ve lobbied to change completely, always shot down. I get it: Paradise Port is the franchise. They’ve been in business since the 1980s, constructing all-inclusive resorts on every tropical or slightly-warm beachfront they can. By now, people recognize the name as a mark of affordable and hassle-free luxury.
Technically, our resort is Paradise Port: Kona. I thought Port Kona had a nice ring to it, until I was chastised for shortening the name the first year we were under contract. “If you’re going to shorten it at all,” they warned me, “just drop ‘Kona.’”
The important thing here, after all, is Paradise. The rest is just gravy.
“Luka, one of the shuttles is broken. I think the engine overheated.” This small disaster hits me the very second I step out of the lobby.
I close my eyes, sigh, and remind Stefan to call the mechanic we keep on standby. “And we’ve got the other two shuttles, right? Make one run to the airport for pick-ups and drop-offs, then the other does tours. It’ll slow things down, but at least they’ll still be moving.”
He thanks me and vanishes back around the building. I take this rare moment of solitude to sprint down the main road, unbuttoning my jacket and draping it over my arm as I go, before someone else can spot me.
My schedule spins in my head. Home, lunch, enough coffee to not care I barely slept last night, then back into the office for a list of tasks so long, I can’t even remember it when I’m this hungry.
Halfway down the road to my parents’ house, I stop. Through the trees, as the wind blows and shifts the fronds, I see the water. Sunlight catches a wave way out near the horizon. A really good one.
I try not to, but I think about Noe as I walk.
“You can’t be afraid of it,” he told me, the day I got my ass kicked by a huge wave and came up puking seawater. “When you’re afraid, you hesitate and lean back. And when you lean back, you slow down. And—”
“And when I slow down,” I finished, spitting as I mounted my board, “the wave gets just enough time to change. I know.”
“Look, I’m just trying to help you. Getting out of a tube in time was hard for me too, when I was your age.”
“Me, too,” Kai added. “Well, actually, I was a little bit younger than you when I mastered it. But who’s counting?”
I flung a palm of water his way and we all laughed, the sunrise turning the tops of our heads orange: the one reminder that soon, Noe would get called to shore and start his shift at the lodge. Kai and I would straggle our way inside, eventually. He usually caught one more wave before he rushed to work. I would tempt fate with an hour, even two, gliding along the water. Waiting to see if anyone would notice or care I wasn’t there.
I was a kid, though. Of course I didn’t want to work.
Now, as I catch pieces of the beach through the trees, I spot two surfers in the center of a wave. It’s closing off fast at both ends. There’s no way they’ll make it.
I’m half-right: one doesn’t, but whether he falls in or just dives before the wave can knock him, I can’t tell. The other guy heads straight for the end. The curl closes like a ribbon in front of him; behind him, it’s all foam.
Then, at the last second, he angles his board and shoots out down the face. I watch him crouch and glide to a stop, then high-five his friend.
The road shifts under my feet and trips me, the asphalt uneven. I right myself before I can hit the ground and cross the street, away from the trees. Farther from the beach. There’s no time to surf today.
Actually, I can’t remember the last time I went. My rash guards are all at the back of my closet; the board hasn’t been waxed since...God, Christmas.
I promise myself I’ll go tomorrow. It’ll be my reward for the affiliate contract. I’ll shut my phone off. Better yet, I’ll leave it at home.
Now that I’ve thought about it, I have to check. Still no messages from her.
I pull up the text app and find her name. The wind blows again as I type. Even though I’m deliberately not looking, I can see the water to my left, shimmering and tumbling over itself.
“Hey, it’s me. U swimming here?”
Good: it’s a way of asking her ETA, and pointing out the fact she’s late, without being clingy or demanding. That’s not my style.
By the time I get to the house, she still hasn’t answered. I silence my phone while I eat, and don’t let myself check it until I’ve finished.
Tanya
My arrangement with Luka used to be perfect.
First, the location. Hawaii’s my favorite place on this earth, ever since I went after college graduation with my friends. It’s a personal tradition for me, now.
Second: Luka is unbelievably sexy. Cut and tan, sports custom suits, with the kind of face you just know used to be baby-cute, but completely transformed when manhood hit. When he smiles, it’s sideways and sly, always. He runs his hand through his hair a lot.
Third: in bed, he’s incredible. The boy can draw out a single orgasm for minutes on end with nothing but his fingertips. He can get you dangerously close just by stating, in the lowest, most mellow voice, exactly what he’s going to do to you as soon as dinner ends.
And fourth, by far the most important aspect of the ideal side interest: he always wanted no more and no less than I did.
The first year we got together, we laid down ground rules. Don’t get attached. Don’t get jealous. Don’t ask; don’t tell.
Whatever happens, accept it.
We even shook on it.
Our first night together, he texted me to get a drink with him at the bar. It was my last night in Kona.
“Your friend left, huh?”
I nodded, a little sad as I stirred the drink he’d ordered for me. It was late: the bar was closing, and almost no guests remained on the deck. They were all either up in their rooms, drunk and happy, or walking it off along the beach. “I’m going to visit her and vice-versa, so it’s not that big a deal. But I do miss her. I mean, we were roommates for two years, and best friends all through college.”
�
��Oh, you’d be a terrible roommate.”
I laughed and kicked his leg, almost falling off my barstool. When he caught my elbow, that sideways grin emerging, I knew my last night in Hawaii was about to get very interesting.
“How would you know?”
Luka watched me sip my drink before finishing his gin. He drank it like I’d never seen: neat, with a single cherry speared into it.
“I bet,” he answered slowly, eyeing me, “you listen to really loud music whenever you’re upset. And when you’re happy. I bet you get random notions to repaint rooms without asking anyone, or cook huge, elaborate meals that just totally destroy the kitchen.”
“Very funny. Did Mollie tell Kai that, and he told you?”
“I’m good at reading people. My brother didn’t do anything expect give me your number.”
He took the toothpick with the cherry from his drink and held it out to me. I leaned closer, opened my mouth, and let him slide the fruit past my lips.
“Did you ask him for my number?” I raised my eyebrow while I chewed. The cherry was absurdly sweet, an orb of pure sugar, but followed with the tingling bitterness of gin.
Luka nodded and loosened his tie. “I did. When I saw you in that little red bikini...” His stare grew heavy-lidded, but focused. “...I just couldn’t get you out of my head.”
Whether things moved fast with us because that was just who we were or because they had to, it being my last night and all, I couldn’t tell. My personality was on the fast side, I knew that: I didn’t like mind games and three-day rules after dates, stupid timelines that made no sense. if I had a connection with someone, whether it was purely physical or something deeper, I wanted to seize that as soon as possible.
Of course, I didn’t know Luka’s personality yet. I didn’t know anything about him, other than what I’d heard from Mollie, who only knew Luka through his older brother’s filter. But as that night stretched on and the countdown to my flight grew smaller, I learned.
“Is it true you used to be a slacker?” I asked, on the way to my hotel room.
“Okay, now I know you talked to Kai.” He laughed and ran his hand down my back, cupping my ass gently while the elevator rose. “Yeah, I guess it’s sort of true. I didn’t care about the family business as much I could have. Not until it got signed to Port.”
“I heard Kai still lives at home.” I gave him a lingering once-over, pretending to reconsider. “Should I assume you do, too, since you’re following me to my room, instead of inviting me to your place?”
“Oh, come on,” he said, laughing again. “It’s not like that. I live at home to help out my folks with the business. I’m not mooching.”
“Sure, sure.”
“And where do you live?”
“An apartment.” My sadness crept in as I remembered the fact that, when I got back, half the place would be empty, Mollie’s stuff boxed up and shipped to her parents’ house in Hillford.
“Seriously,” he said, and seemed to actually get more serious, like it was important that I believe him, “I’m not a scrub. Well...anymore.”
I stepped back and took in the view, head to toe and back. His suit was ironed to perfection, and I could just see him in his bedroom, running over every crease to make sure he got this thing as crisp as possible.
“I believe you,” I assured him. He relaxed.
In the room, he shrugged off his jacket and poured each of us a generous glass of the wine he’d snuck from the bar. I guessed, actually, he couldn’t sneak or steal: this was all his, wasn’t it?
“Your flight leaves in seven hours.” He took a long sip and set the glass down before turning to me. We were on the sofa in the living room of the suite. I had my legs crossed pretty daintily for how drunk I was, and how little I was going to make him work for things tonight, but he didn’t push them open as he ran his hand over my skin. He barely skirted underneath the dress, in fact, even when his mouth found its way to my neck.
“Don’t remind me,” I sighed, and finished my wine over his head.
That night, we would set the pattern for every hookup that would ever follow between us: I finished my drink while he abandoned his and started to work his way through my clothes, so deftly I didn’t even notice until I was halfway naked. And I usually wasn’t clothed much to begin with: it was vacation, after all.
There was no “slow” with Luka, once he got things going. No buildup; no trickle. Just a full, huge wave, all at once.
Luka
I check my phone again. Still nothing.
Don’t get clingy, I remind myself. That’s not what Tanya’s about. It’s not what I’m about.
Work has just been stressing me out more than usual. Looking forward to our semi-annual hookup isn’t the same as getting clingy. And it’s not like I have to play it cool when she’s here—just the days in between.
When she’s in town, I pull out all the stops: fancy dinners, fun dates. Wild nights. So wondering when she’ll arrive isn’t that bad. Right?
“You all right? You look distracted.”
I turn. Dad’s in the doorway of the kitchen, jeans caked in mulch I can smell from here. He grabs a dishtowel off the stove and wipes his hands.
“Little bit. How’s the stand?”
He holds up his finger while he chugs a full glass of tap water, and half of a second. “Sold out of cucumbers already,” he breathes, when he’s finished. “Your mom sent me here to get more.”
I nod, mildly impressed by this. Mom’s garden, once just a six-by-six hobby in our yard, has since become yet another family business. Now the garden spreads down the hill and into our neighbor’s property—in exchange for free veggies, every week—and produces so much, my parents were able to set up a pretty lucrative farmer’s stand in Holualoa. I’m not sure Mom planned on taking her gardening to that level, but I do know it’s tamed Dad’s cabin fever since he retired.
It’s done more than that, actually: exchanging the Paradise Port rat race for a simpler business, successful in its own right, has given both of them the energy they had before we turned our family-owned hotel into a mega-resort. They even have date nights now, enjoying their empty nest the way they deserve.
Well—almost empty.
“Think I’m going to put an offer on that lot this week,” I tell him. “Off Cramer Street.” I get up and refill my coffee, but can feel him staring at my back.
“There’s a lot there?”
“Yeah. It’s up on the hill—you can see the whole resort from it.”
When I turn, he’s still studying me. I can’t figure out his expression.
“What?”
“Are you talking about where the Copper family lives?” He gets a travel mug out of the cabinet and fills it to the top, emptying the pot.
“Yeah. The house is in pre-foreclosure.”
Dad screws on the lid and nods, but I can tell I’ve got a roadblock coming my way. There’s something about the way his mouth is set, a thin line, that shows he isn’t as excited about this plan as I am.
“Didn’t realize Rochelle was in such a tight spot.”
His tone grates me. I get up and push in my chair a little too hard.
“Somebody’s going to get that property, one way or another. Might as well be me.”
“There are other lots, son.”
“Not like that one, there aren’t.” I set my mug in the sink, also too hard, and steady my resolve with a breath before turning to him. “Think I’m gonna stay at the resort tonight. Get some work done.” In reality, I’ll be sleeping in the suite I block off for Tanya whenever she’s in town, instead of working until dawn and catching a power nap on my office sofa.
Okay, we won’t exactly be sleeping. But no reason to tell him.
“So you and Mom will have the place to yourselves,” I add. I tap his shoulder with the back of my hand. “See, there’s one perk of me getting that lot—I’ll be out of here for good. You two will finally get some privacy, yeah?”
He’s studying the curtains over the sink with a vacant look, not listening. “I think I’ll stop by Rochelle’s place with your mom today,” he says. “See how she’s holding up.”
My phone rings, a bit of mercy in this avalanche of guilt he’s piling on me. I excuse myself, grab my keys, and step outside.
“Luka Williams,” I answer.
“Luk, they are pissed.”
A moped tears by on the street in front of our house. I cover my ear to hear Parker better. “Wait, what? Who?”
“Everybody. Corporate. You told Kona Seg they could think it over for twenty-four hours after they signed the deal? What the fuck?”
“Hey, hey, chill,” I tell him, even though my voice is rising too. I get an ache in my stomach, sharp, and have to sit on the porch step. “I know what I’m doing, here. Where’s Trixie? Or Garner, put one of them on. I’ll explain.”
“No, you’ve got to get back down here. I’m telling you, man, they’re out for blood.”
“I’m positive you’re exaggerating,” I sigh, even though the pain in my stomach is growing, just in case he isn’t, “but sure. If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll come in and explain in-person. See you in five.”
Tanya
“Hey, it’s me. U swimming here?”
I check the text in a flash inside my palm, shielding the screen from Oscar. He’s got his eyes trained like a laser on the luggage carousel.
“I know I put a green tag on it,” he mutters, for the twentieth time since we landed.
“Blue,” I remind him.
“No, no, it was...” His mouth shuts as his aluminum suitcase, from a brand I’ve never heard of—but definitely pricey—emerges from the rubber flaps. Its bright blue tag is glaringly visible, not to mention unnecessary: I’ve yet to see a single metal suitcase since we’ve been standing here.
“...blue,” he finishes. His blush reaches his ears as he gives me an apologetic kiss, then rushes to grab it.
