by Piper Lennox
Down on the beach, a kid is burying his father up to his chin in white-hot sand. From here, it looks like powdered sugar. “Then indulge me,” I tell her, half-sighing as I prop my feet on the other chair, “in the rest of your reasons.”
“Well...he’s gorgeous, for one.”
“Don’t let Kai hear you say that,” I tease. She laughs again and shushes me.
“You both love working. Like...really, actually love it, which I will never understand. But you’re both goal-oriented, so it makes sense for you guys.”
“True.”
“You share expensive tastes—”
“Top-shelf is just better.”
“—and you both love Kona. Why you haven’t packed up and moved there permanently is beyond me.”
I wonder if she can hear the breath I take, blasting through the phone and crossing the ocean.
“Neither of you likes staying still for too long,” she goes on. “You’re all about trying new things, going out places. It’s all, like, ‘What are we doing next? What’s the game plan?’ When you were here visiting last time, I swear, Kai almost collapsed from exhaustion.”
Reluctantly, I laugh in agreement. My last visit to California entailed more sight-seeing in a single week than either of them had accomplished, or even wanted to attempt, in the entire time they’d lived there.
“Yeah, we’ve got a lot in common. I’ll give you that. But....”
“But what?”
“It was just supposed to be a fling.”
“So were we,” she says simply. “Things change. And you need to take a chance on those, sometimes.”
“Yeah, well—no offense, but I’m kind of wary to take dating advice from a girl who once obsessed over a gay guy for four years straight.”
I mean it as a joke, but Mollie definitely doesn’t take it as one. Deep down, I knew she wouldn’t. Maybe that’s why I said it. Anything to get the focus away from myself.
“I’m just trying to help you out,” she says.
My throat is crawling with dryness, spreading like tendrils into my mouth. I wish I’d brought my water out here. “I don’t need help. Like, shit, you’re talking about me settling down and getting out of the dating game like I’m running out of time. We’re twenty-four. I’ve got plenty of time.” I flick a faded ladybug off my armrest. “If anything, you’re the one getting married too early.”
She’s quiet again. I imagine her stretched across her bed, fidgeting in the silence. Probably picking at some lint on the bedspread, or her own nail polish. Maybe turning her new engagement ring in the morning light.
“I didn’t mean.... You know I think you and Kai are awesome together,” I add, my voice soft now, rasping from the heat. “I meant, like, age-wise. Most people don’t get lucky in their early twenties, like you guys did. And that I personally wouldn’t think about marriage that early. That’s all.”
“You don’t think about marriage at all,” she challenges, “or even staying with a guy longer than...what, a month? That’s all I was saying. That maybe if you give a guy longer than that, he’d surprise you. And that Luka, in my opinion, is worth giving a try.”
“I have, though. We’ve spent two years doing this, and I’ve never had any interest in making things official with him.”
“With anyone.”
I’m now positive I’m dehydrated; sweat rolls from my neck to my bra. “That’s...not entirely true.”
She hesitates. “What do you mean?”
I have to close my eyes, the sunlight’s so strong. “Do you remember that guy I was seeing for a little bit, Oscar? The one who always bought me dresses and stuff?”
“Oscar,” she repeats, thinking. “Was he the one you called vanilla?”
I laugh a little. “Yeah, that was him.” My smile flatlines again. “Anyway, I...kind of dated him for a while. Six months, actually.”
“Wow. You?”
“I know. I can’t believe it, either.” I pull my knees to my chest, heels skidding on the edge of the chair. “But yeah, I figured, you know...it was time. To give a guy a fair shot for a while, like you said.”
“That’s good,” she says, almost too enthusiastically—a flimsy attempt to hide her disappointment that I didn’t conduct this little experiment with Luka, instead. “So are you still seeing him? Is that why you and Luka were fighting?”
The shame swarms my brain like wild vines, squeezing tighter with every word. “No. I broke up with Oscar yesterday.”
“Wh— So he came with you?”
“Yeah. He kind of paid for my entire vacation.”
“Tanya,” she groans. “What were you thinking?”
“Oh, it gets worse.” I pick at a scab on my knee. I can’t remember how I got it. Maybe riding Segways with Luka, or drunkenly swimming in the infinity pool. Maybe it’s not even from here, something I did back home. It’s easy to forget that anything from normal life can still exist in a place like this.
“He proposed to me.”
“Oh, my God.” Mollie bursts into another wave of laughter, this one stuttering through the line like machine-gun fire. “You’re kidding.”
“Put the ring in the cake at dinner.”
This only fuels it. She’s gasping for air by the time I laugh, too, unable to fight it. In any other context, it would be hilarious. Just another terrible dating story, piled in my repertoire.
“Okay,” she wheezes, finally settling down, “ I can agree that a guy proposing after six months, and in the cheesiest way possible, is grounds for a breakup. But that doesn’t mean things with Luka would go that way. Or, you know—any guy. You just have to keep trying.”
One of my feet slips, plunking on the patio. I leave it.
Just rip off the Band-Aid.
“I, uh....” My heart feels strangled. “I told him yes.”
This time, her silence almost kills me. Adrenaline pushes me from the chair. Inside, I chug both glasses of water while I wait.
“You told him yes?” As I knew it would, her voice catches. “When?”
“It was the night I lost my job. Mollie, I swear, I was going to tell you, I just...I wasn’t in a good place, obviously. I never would have said yes if it hadn’t been just, like, the shittiest day already—”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” I knock over the ibuprofen and roll it back and forth on the tabletop with my palm. “I guess I knew I was going to call it off all along. It wasn’t real. And I knew Kai was about to propose to you, which is real. So it wasn’t like I was going to call you and announce—”
“No, no,” she interrupts. “Why did you tell the guy yes in the first place?”
Through the open door, I can still hear the beach. Not the people, now; just the wind as it whips around the building, and the churn of the tide on the shore. I think about South Point, for about the ninety-ninth time this morning alone, and wish I could go back to that afternoon like a checkpoint. Start my life over, from right there.
“Because I got fired, I guess.” My voice is so much quieter than I want it to be. “I just kept thinking about how hard it was going to be, if I didn’t find something else soon. And Oscar had just gotten a promotion, which made me feel like shit, but...but then he was saying how good it would be.” I lie on the couch with the phone pressed between the cushion and my ear. My knees draw back to my chest. “For both of us.”
“You were thinking about when you were a kid, weren’t you?”
I can’t bear to answer her. I know I’ll cry if I do, and I’m so tired of crying. Luckily for me, with Mollie, silences work just as well.
“You’re not your mom, Tan,” she whispers.
I push my hair back from my face, the way she would if she were here. “I know.”
“So.” Her volume increases. She’s likely sitting up now, ready with a game plan. It’s a strange reversal of roles between us, but one I’m grateful for right now. I need it. “This fight with Luka—tell me what happened.”
As c
oncisely as I can with a hangover, I tell her everything: the affiliate story, Luka finding my notes, him telling me he wants to be with me.
Or, at least, wanted to. Who knows, now.
“Can I ask, why don’t you want to be with Luka? Like, an actual, concrete reason. I know you’re all about enjoying being single, having freedom, blah, blah—but I also know you like him. So what’s the deal?”
“Come on, Mollie. I told you how my dad was. How all of them were. Guys leave.”
“Kai hasn’t.”
“I didn’t mean Kai.”
“And Ted and Carrie are still together,” she adds, “which, if you’ll remember, started as friends-with-benefits too.”
“Unfortunately, I do remember.” Carrie, a friend of ours from college, ditched us endlessly for booty calls with a guy from our friend-group. A year after graduation, they’d made it official on social media. “And, if you’ll remember, we stopped hearing from her almost altogether. She’s so far up his ass—”
“Tanya, focus. I’m being serious.”
I shut up.
“Some guys leave,” she says. “Some are dicks. Some are going to hurt you. But to assume every single one will, so why bother trying?” She pauses. “It’s just way more jaded than the whole ‘enjoying your freedom’ approach you act like it is.”
My eyes open. I think of my mother at the kitchen table, smoke still trickling from my birthday candles as she and Alastair stared at me. “That’s awfully jaded.”
At the time, I found it pathetic—who was she to judge my worldview? To judge me? At least I didn’t spend every minute either deliriously, blindly hopeful that the next guy would stick around, even when he already had one foot out the door, or weeping in the wake of another walkout.
Now, though, I see a string of contacts in my phone I never use. Business cards from men in bars, now shoved into an empty fishbowl on my kitchen shelf. There’s probably something much better between my view and my mom’s, a happy medium that people like Mollie and Kai, and apparently Luka, know.
And maybe it’s time that I listen.
Twenty
Luka
“Good, you’re here.” Trixie waves me into the conference room as soon as I get back to the resort. “Let’s get to work.”
“Sounds good,” I breathe, sitting. Between Dad’s bombshell and my night with Tanya—and about fifty pounds of gin pressure on my skull that comes and goes—I’m all too ready to dive into a project. Even with my stomach burning, two more antacids crushed to powder and sticking to my molars, I feel myself relaxing. Not physically; I lean my arms against the table like I expect to jump up at any moment, because I might have to. But mentally, here in the high-rise with nothing but suits and numbers around me, things make sense.
Balance. I should have never listened to him. When you’ve fed this much time and energy into something, you have to finish it. Juggling too many things is just asking to drop one of them. And I almost dropped them all.
“So,” I tell her, “the affiliate branding. I’ve got a guy lined up who can embroider ten mock-ups by tonight, and the print shop already—”
“We’re not doing branding.” Trixie holds up her hand. Not like she’s putting me on pause to get her word out, but like she’s dismissing me altogether.
“What do you mean, no branding?” I look at Parker, who’s in the chair on the other side of me, glued to his Blackberry. Or pretending to be.
“It’s not cost-effective.” She flips open a portfolio and pages through spreadsheets. “Paradise Port is closing the entire affiliate program soon, anyway. No point.”
I blink at her. The antacids aren’t doing shit.
“The affiliate program is the only thing keeping locals even somewhat happy about the Port locations,” I remind her. “If you shut it down—”
“I know it’s your pet project, but look at the numbers, Luka.” She slides me the portfolio, which I ignore. “It isn’t working. And, frankly, it hasn’t made a damn bit of difference in how locals perceive the locations, anyway.”
“That’s not true. Instead of looking for huge improvements where the program is in place, look at the backslides where it isn’t. Aruba, for example.” I sweep my hand at the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, as though it’s just next door. “They’re struggling bad right now, and I honestly think it’s because they haven’t even tried to—”
“Aruba’s shutting down.” Garner delivers this gem so casually as he enters and sits, I’d swear he was actually happy about it. Knowing him and how petty he can be, he probably is.
I tear my eyes from him to Trixie. Her nod is weary, but cold.
“Got the email this morning.”
Garner sits, bumping the entire table and sloshing the open cans of Perrier someone, probably Parker, set out before this impromptu meeting began. I glance between them.
“Why didn’t I get the email?”
Parker lifts his head. Garner sips his drink. Trixie, meanwhile, shrugs.
“Come on, Luka. You’re an owner.”
“Exactly,” I snap. “I’ve invested a lot of money in this place, and if one Port closes down, it affects all of them. I had a right to know about that as soon as it happened.”
“Your dad invested his money in this place.” Garner drains the rest of his water, crushes the can, and pitches it to the wastebasket. He misses.
“Garner,” I seethe, staring at the tabletop, “you’re real fucking lucky I’m hungover right now, or else I’d be over this table and kicking your ass all over this building.”
He opens his mouth, but Trixie stabs her finger towards him. “Shut up.” She turns to me, chair squealing. “Look, there’s nothing in your contract that says corporate has to divulge information on other locations until it’s made public. Sorry.” She shrugs again, showing she’s anything but.
“However,” she adds, and I reluctantly perk up, “there’s also nothing that says you can’t continue the affiliate program here, at your own location, if you want to.”
“You said they’re shutting it down, though.”
“They are. It isn’t cost-effective.”
“So I can’t continue it,” I clarify. “Corporate won’t fund it anymore.”
“Corporate won’t,” she agrees, “but if you feel that strongly about it, there’s nothing stopping you from funding it yourself.”
I sit back in my chair. “Myself?”
“Not so attached to it when it’s your own cash on the line, huh?” Garner mumbles, and wisely gets up from his chair, pretending he needs another drink, before Trixie or I can react.
“So what happens to the other affiliates?” I ask. “At the other locations?”
Trixie spreads her hands. “No idea. I imagine most will be bought out.”
“Bought out? Do you really think that’s the best thing for the company image, after this whole Aruba thing?”
“The company’s image isn’t your department,” she reminds me, gathering up her notes and shoving them in the portfolio as she stands.
“What about our affiliates? I can’t afford to keep the program going all by myself more than a few months.” I stand, too, and brace my hands on the table. “What happens to Gallery West, or Island Ice?”
Trixie doesn’t even grant me the courtesy of eye contact, this time. “Up to them. If they want to terminate their contracts, they can.”
“For a fee,” Parker adds. He furrows his brow at her. “Right? That’s how the contracts were written up.”
She sighs, like we’re wasting her time. “Yes.”
“Rhett and Alana can’t afford that, Trixie. And we can’t just cut them off like that. They’ve grown reliant on the business we send them.”
“In the event they don’t want to buy themselves out of the contract,” she says sharply, like she’s explaining the rules of a simple game to two idiot kids, “Paradise Port is prepared to make them very fair offers to absorb their equipment and inventory.”
“A
bsorb.” My pulse stabs at every point: my chest, wrist, and temples ache. “So either I shit a bunch of money to keep them in the program, which I can’t do, or they shit a bunch of money to get out of the program, which they can’t do...or you guys buy them out. That’s it.”
“It’s in the contracts. They knew what they were getting into.”
“No, they didn’t. How could they, when I didn’t even know?”
She arches her brow at me. “Maybe you should’ve read the contracts yourself, then.” Her heels leave marks in the carpet as she pivots, headed for the door. I follow, so close behind I can smell her shampoo. Parker rushes to catch up, trailing me.
“You’re backing them into a corner, here. These people have no other options, and you know that.”
“If they choose the buyouts, they’ll get plenty of money.” She punches the elevator button and gives the LED board above an impatient scowl. “We’re not peddling magic beans for a cow, here.”
“Okay,” I challenge, as the doors open, “the owners get a check. Cool.” Before she can step in, I dart in her way and brace myself against the door. “What about their employees, at their home stores? What about the employees we hired for their on-resort ones? What happens to them?”
She clicks her nails on the portfolio in her arm. “What do you want me to tell you, Luka? It’s business. You know how these things go.” She shoves by me. I brace harder, but the door engages, knocking me off balance. I stumble into the elevator after her. Parker, thankfully, takes the space in front of her as the doors close. She’s stuck, at least for a few floors.
“There’s got to be something I can do,” I tell her. My heartbeat’s thundering. Bile thrashes in my stomach. I feel heat and nausea fighting for priority under my skin.
Finally, I see something like sympathy cross her face. Some emotion other than stone-cold acceptance.
“You can tell the affiliates what’s going to happen,” she says, softly, but without an ounce of warmth. I wonder if she ever had some, or if I just imagined it. “The announcement won’t go out for a couple weeks, so…I guess, if you tell them now, they might have time to figure out their plans.”