by Piper Lennox
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, as he ran his hand over my skin, he didn’t push them open. 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. He 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.
The pattern ended there. I looked forward to the predictability of the beginning, every year—but craved the excitement of the rest, where routine dropped away and the people we’d become in the months since emerged.
Like last summer, when he confessed his budding interest in being blindfolded. I assumed he’d hooked up with a girl who liked it, while I was gone. Maybe it should have bothered me, but it didn’t. This was why we had rules.
So I simply smiled, pulled a sarong from my luggage, and tied the ends behind his head. As my hands fluttered down his back, I felt his pulse surge, the anticipation and mystery already getting to him.
Or this past winter, when I asked if he’d ever had sex in public, because I’d tried it with a new beau back home and thought it’d be fun to watch the waves while we did it.
“I don’t know…if someone spots me….” He played it off like he was thinking of his business, but I could tell he was embarrassed by the idea. We compromised with sex in the sauna of the gym downstairs, after hours, with the wooden ladle stuck in the door handle as a lock.
But that first time, that first trip, we didn’t try new things. It was all new. Even the things that I knew by heart—the stalking circle of a man’s tongue, a relentless push and pull of his fingers that made my core quake, the thrill of tasting myself on someone’s mouth when they surfaced to kiss me—felt new, with him.
“Luka,” I moaned, as he brought my orgasm so close I couldn’t control my legs, twitching on either side of his head when he lowered himself to the floor in front of me. Even his name was sexy. New, but familiar enough to keep on my tongue, easily sighed and cried throughout the night.
When I came, he trapped me against the couch with his free arm, like a safety bar across my abdomen. For some reason, not being allowed to lift my hips made the sensations that much stronger. I closed my eyes and pressed myself back into the couch cushions, stuttering his name over and over, just to hear how pretty it was inside a whisper.
He let me rest while he took off his clothes, a business-like process for him: I could just tell that the measured pace of his hands was exactly the same as it was when he undressed for the evening, after work. For some reason, it was even hotter than if he’d let me undress him.
“Damn,” I panted, still catching my breath, as he turned and presented himself to me. The muscles, which I suspected all along; a tiny cowlick over his ear, brushed up from my hands when I’d grabbed his head. And, of course, the main event.
“You like what you see?” he teased.
Still, I nodded. I tried sitting up, but was still shattered from whatever he’d just done to me. He laughed when I was finally able to kneel in front of him.
“You don’t want to sleep before your flight?”
“No.” I looked up at him as I started my teasing, smiling when his knees gave way a little, unprepared. “I can sleep on the plane.”
Two
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 seeing her 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.
“That lot I want should be going to auction pretty soon,” I tell him. “Off Cramer Street.” I get up and refill my coffee, but can feel his stare on my back.
“There’s a lot there?”
“Yeah. It’s up on the hill—you can see the whole resort from one side of it.” When I turn, he’s still studying me. I can’t figure out his expression. “What?”
“Are you talking about Rochelle’s place?” 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 there’s no reason to tell him that.
“So you and Mom will have the place to yourself,” 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 go see Rochelle with your mom today,” he says. “See how she’s holding up.”
My phone rin
gs, 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 mini-bike 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. “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, they’re out for blood.”
“I’m positive you’re exaggerating,” I say, even though the pain in my stomach is growing, “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 embarrassed kiss, then rushes to grab it.
I look at my phone again. Why is this twisting my stomach, making my palms slick? Just tell him.
I should’ve told Luka I wouldn’t be coming alone this year as soon as Oscar announced the trip, back in March. “I know you love Kona,” he said, grinning as I pulled the plane tickets from the envelope, “especially that Paradise Port thing. So this year, your trip is on me.”
The Paradise Port: Kona logo, swooping in tropical colors on the front of the package description, made my head hurt.
“Thank you.” I kissed him and pasted on a smile.
I do love Kona. And as much shit as people give me for loving Paradise Port—one of those all-inclusive, super commercial places that seem to be everywhere—I do love it there, too. Vacations are about relaxation, and places like that take care of every detail so I don’t have to. I get enough details at work. At least, I used to.
But the thought of going with Oscar? That, I didn’t love.
“Whoa.” He stops short when we get to the sidewalk. “Is that you?”
I turn. There’s a car by the curb, with a uniformed driver holding a sign that reads, “Tanya King.”
Shit.
“Wow, honey!” I let go of his hand and hurry towards the car. “You didn’t have to do this!”
“I didn’t,” he confesses, as the driver takes our luggage and loads it into the back. He slides into the seat after me. “Must be a perk from the resort.”
“You did get their highest package,” I remind him. He shrugs, accepting this possibility, not even questioning the fact he didn’t give them my name, nor my favorite brand of vodka, already chilled in an ice bucket. As always, Oscar trusts that what he sees is what he’s getting.
While the car rolls into the lush landscape, I get a weird flutter in the middle of my chest. Vacation excitement, mostly—but at least some of it is because, by now, my brain associates the palm trees and piercing blue sky with Luka. And this trip isn’t about that.
No romantic dinners. No surprise dates to volcanoes or cliffsides. No intense nights pressed up against him, as he touches me with the swooping placidity of a breeze, and then the force of a tropical storm....
My phone pings. I shield the screen again, expecting it to be Luka. Instead, it’s Mollie.
“Hey! How’s Kona?”
My throat’s lined with fiberglass as I type back, “Just landed. I’ll send pics.” We haven’t talked since yesterday morning. Right after I got fired.
“I’ve been here two years, John.” My heels caught on the carpet of the editor’s office as he got up from his desk and paced in a circle around me, searching for something.
“I know, I know. But I told you months ago, the paper’s downsizing. By Christmas, I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re merged with the Trib and thirty more of us are out of a job.”
“You told me—months ago—that my job was safe.” I took a big step closer to him, hemming him into the corner against his filing cabinet. “You promised.”
Finally, he dared to make eye contact, but only for a second. “I’m sorry, Tanya.”
“For what,” I hissed, “firing me, or lying that you’d safeguard my job if I fucked you?”
Now I’d done it. John was kind of a scrawny guy, but scrappy. Like a lap dog that bared its teeth when you had it backed into a corner.
“I’ve got more connections than you in this game. So maybe you should think twice before you burn a bridge, huh?”
It killed me that I was crying. I wasn’t sad. I wasn’t weak. I was enraged.
“John,” I whispered, stepping aside so he could move around me, “I need this job. Please, don’t do this to me.”
“You’ll find something else, Tanya. You’re young, you’re beautiful—go try the local news again.” He plunked down in his desk chair with a long exhale. “Print is getting tight, that’s all. You know it’s not just us. Every publication is getting leaner, all the time. We’ve got to cut what we can, and...your numbers just aren’t where they need to be.”
“I’ve only been a journalist eight months,” I reminded him, getting desperate as I noticed coworkers peering through the blinds of his office. Discreetly, I flipped off two interns. They scattered.
“Look.” I righted the chair across from him, which I’d knocked over in my slight hysteria, and sat. “I was Cecily’s assistant for over a year before you gave me a shot with something serious. Do you remember what you said to me that day?”
John pulled an electronic cigarette from his desk and inhaled. It was one of the big ones, creating obnoxious spirals of vapor that smelled like mango and filled a room in seconds. I wasn’t sure it was legal to vape in our building, but nobody ever stopped him. No one ever stopped him from doing a lot of shit.
“Yes. I said you were talented, which was why I gave you the assignment.”
“You said I took initiative, which is why I asked for the assignment.” I wiped a tear that had slipped down to my chin, pretending it was an itch I had to scratch. “And now I’m taking initiative again by asking you to give me a chance. Let me prove I’m not expendable.”
“It’s not up to me.” John’s sympathy dropped; I was officially on his last nerve. “Come on, Tanya. Have some dignity. This is small shit—not worth fighting for. You’ll find something better.”
“Thanks a lot.” I bolted to my feet, this time knocking over the fake tree he kept by the fish tank. “Let me know when they fire you for playing grab-ass with every girl in this place.”
John laughed as I opened his door. “See you around.”
I tried to fight my tears while I packed up my desk, but couldn’t. And since everyone was already staring at me, I figured I might as well make it worth their while. So I let the tears and cursing fly, while coworkers watched and comforted me with a mix of sadness for my loss, and relief that it wasn’t theirs.
Immediately, I called Mollie. We might have been on entirely different coasts, days’ worth of mileage between us, but she always knew how to make me look on the bright side. Even if I didn’t want to.
“You hated it there,” she reminded me, as soon as I sobbed my way through the story. “Now you can find a job you really love.”
“There’s no ‘job I really love,’ Moll. I love whatever job
will pay me. I love not being broke. I love paying rent and putting gas in my tank, that’s what I love.”
“It’ll be okay,” she assured me. “If you need anything—”
“I know, I know.” I paused. “Thanks.”
When we hung up, I checked my bank balance. Not much, since I’d just bought a condo two months earlier—but enough to get me through a couple months before things got serious. Talk about getting leaner.
I dried my tears again and thought about Mollie’s long-standing offer of moving to California with her and Kai. It didn’t sound like too bad a deal: getting to live with Mollie again, just like our college days. Lounging on the beach whenever I wanted, instead of once or twice a year.
But it was still charity. Despite what John thought while I begged for my job—or seven months ago, when I got drunk and spent the night with him in exchange for that promise he couldn’t possibly keep—I did have dignity. Plenty.
The office park was crowded with people taking early lunches and punching in late. I didn’t see anyone else with a box in their hands and the sour smell of failure clinging to them, like me, but I stayed a little longer to make sure.
When Oscar arrived that night to pick me up, I was in sweats and a messy bun. Not cute-messy—actually messy, tangled into a hair tie and falling out in snarls around my face. I hid the drink in my hand behind my back as he stepped inside.
“Did you forget?” he asked sweetly. Oscar was always sweet. Too sweet.
“Oh, God, the dinner. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, we still have time. Unless you don’t want to.” He bent down to kiss me, and I knew he tasted the alcohol. It wasn’t like he disapproved, or that I’d give a shit if he did, but I didn’t want to explain why I was drinking an exceptionally strong screwdriver at the exact moment I should have been getting in from work.
“No, no, we can go. Just let me shower.” He’d had this reservation for weeks, a big, fancy dinner to celebrate our six-month anniversary. Not worth celebrating, for most people, but it was to us: Oscar, because that’s just the kind of guy he was. Caring, sentimental, and all about grand gestures. Cheesy and clichéd gestures, but grand nonetheless.