by Piper Lennox
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 neon colors on the front of the package description, made my head hurt.
“Thank you, sweetheart.” 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 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 out 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 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 from the resort.”
“You did get the Platinum package,” I remind him. His confusion fades as he shrugs, accepting this possibility.
In reality, I know exactly why this car is here for me. Luka sent it.
He always does.
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 gentleness 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! Any updates?”
My throat is filled with fiberglass as I type back, “Nope. I’ll keep you posted.” We haven’t talked since yesterday morning. When 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, hands filled with memos and other distractions, and paced in a circle around me.
“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 strode closer, 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 forced it to defend itself.
“Don’t threaten me.” He brought his eyes back to mine. “I know you think I’m some smalltime editor, but 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 plumes 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 no one 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 just 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 would get 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 too bad of a deal: getting to live with Mollie again, just like our college days, and lounge 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 wasn’t man enough to 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.
“Forget what?” I waited until he turned to set my drink behind the sound system. “Oh, God, the dinner. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, we still have time. Unless..
.you don’t want to go.” He bent down to kiss me, and I knew he tasted the alcohol. It wasn’t like Oscar disapproved of my drinking, but I didn’t want to explain why I was drinking an exceptionally strong screwdriver at the exact moment I should have been just getting in from work.
“No, no, we can go. Just let me shower.” I knew 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.
And me? This was the longest relationship I’d ever had. That kind of personal growth probably did deserve some celebration.
“When you get out of there,” he called through the bathroom door, “there’s a surprise for you, in the bedroom.”
“Really,” I mused. It was hard to sound curious or playful, because I knew it wouldn’t be a sexy surprise—he wouldn’t be naked on my bed, or holding a new toy to try out. Most likely, based on his short yet consistent track record, it would be....
“A new dress.” I smiled and lifted the fabric from my bed where he’d arranged it. Predictable or not, it was gorgeous: cut high in the front, long in the back, with a plunging neckline to my navel, all covered in sheer black mesh.
“It’s beautiful.” I slipped into it and admired myself in the mirror. He stepped behind me and zipped it, kissing my bare shoulder blade and smiling at my reflection.
Next to Oscar, and wearing a dress like this, I didn’t look like an unemployed journalist. I looked...well, rich as hell.
“You’re beautiful,” he corrected. His hands skated down to my hips. “Happy six months.”
“You, too.” I turned and kissed him. I pushed all thoughts of the newspaper from my head, at least for the next few minutes, and just focused on the image I’d seen and memorized in the mirror.
At dinner, he was fidgety. It wasn’t like him: he got shy, but rarely anxious.
“I, uh...I have something to...well.” He laughed, all his nervous energy transferring straight into me. “It’s pretty huge.”
My heart thundered. Oscar was reliable and predictable, pretty vanilla compared to most guys I dated—but he did like those big, movie-worthy surprises.
Still: no way would he propose, only six months in. Right?
His hand crept across the tablecloth to mine. The restaurant’s quiet chatter turned to a roar, like a turbine in my head.
“I got promoted, today.”
On some other plane of consciousness, I realized my mouth was open. I shut it, clearing my throat. “You did?”
“Remember I told you about Bob leaving? They’ve been trying to fill his spot for weeks, so I threw in my resume—I mean, everyone was applying, so why not—and they called me in, today. I got it.”
He stared at me. Waited for my smile to match his.
“That’s...that’s great, babe,” I sputtered. My smile felt weak and fake, because it was. He didn’t notice.
“Thank you. I’m really excited.” He freed my hand (my left one, I realized vaguely), and sipped his wine. “I mean, my position isn’t called ‘vice president,’ but that’s basically what I am. I’m in charge of the new accounts coming in and everyone in that department, now. And I get a new office, a big raise....”
I nodded along numbly as he spoke. I wanted so, so badly to be happy for him. For us.
But all I could think of was this morning, the way my stomach felt like it dropped out of my body when John told me I was fired.
And then, I thought of Luka.
“You don’t know what it’s like, having to claw up a ladder.” It was last summer, an entire year ago. He’d taken me to dinner at a burger place across the island; our table overlooked the ocean. I had chills, even though the air was warm.
“Why?” he retorted, giving that sideways smile of his. “Because I’m a man?”
“That certainly helps,” I nodded, “but I was talking about the whole family-business thing. You’re a legacy.”
“A legacy.”
“Yeah, you know, like when a guy gets into Harvard or Yale or whatever, because his dad and grandpa and great-grandpa attended. It’s the same thing: your dad built a business from the ground up, got all that ladder-climbing out of the way, and so you were born, like, halfway up, already.”
Luka’s smile blinked out, fast. “I work really hard running Port Kona.”
“I didn’t say anything about how hard you do or don’t work.” I finished my drink; he immediately nodded to the waitress for another. “I’m just saying, you had a big advantage over people like me. Or your parents. We start from the bottom.”
“Okay.” He rested his forearm on the table and raised his eyebrow. We did this a lot when I visited: became embroiled in heated discussions, mild arguments, and a tense back-and-forth that, inevitably, led to some crazy makeup sex. It was easy to smooth over an argument when you knew, at the end of the week, the slate would be wiped clean again, anyway.
“Hypothetically,” he said, “let’s say you’re right. Guy gets into Harvard. But he’s an idiot. Lazy. Just the worst student possible. Even his legacy wouldn’t save him, then.”
“True,” I conceded.
“So he’s got to have the work ethic and smarts to back up his advantage.”
“Or the money.”
Luka took a long blink, ignoring me. “Point is, a guy’s got to offer something valuable once he gets to the top, or else he’s going to fall to the bottom.” He sat back in his seat and motioned to himself. “I might have gotten the chance I did because of luck and legacy—but I’ve stayed there and kept climbing because of myself. The work I put in, the ideas I come up with. A chance is just that: a chance. You’ve still got to prove yourself.”
“Fair enough. But,” I added, taking a deep gulp of the fresh cocktail the waitress handed me, “you did get that chance. Most of us don’t. That’s what I meant about clawing up the ladder, and how hard I’ve been busting ass at that paper, just to get Cecily or John to give me one shot. One. I can prove myself, too—but first I’ve got to get someone to give me that chance.” I set down my glass. “And that, you don’t understand.”
Luka studied me carefully. “You’re wrong,” he said, after a minute.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re wrong.” His voice was louder now, sharper. “Don’t pretend you know me like that, okay? I know exactly what it’s like when someone won’t give you a shot—when they think you’re a fuck-up before you’ve even tried.”
I shrank back a little. “Fine. Sorry.”
He was right: I didn’t know him like that. He didn’t know me like that. That was the entire point.
So while Oscar went on and on about his awesome new job, I remembered that night with Luka and admitted to myself that sure, I could’ve been wrong about him. But that didn’t mean I was wrong about everyone else.
Oscar didn’t work half as hard as I did. Much as I hated begrudging him for it, it was impossible to keep smiling when I knew for a fact he spent most of his workdays playing Solitaire on his computer, grabbing lunch or a quick game of golf with coworkers, and kissing his bosses’ asses.
And to top it off, he got paid five times as much as me for all of it. His father landed him his job and, just like that, he had it made. Now he’d climb that ladder even higher, while I plummeted down to the bottom.
“Tanya? Did you hear me?”
I blinked at him. “Hmm?”
Oscar motioned to my dessert. It was a slice of chocolate cake with ganache inside, a strawberry rose on top, and a sheet of crystallized sugar propped against it.
“This job’s going to be big for both of us,” he went on, as I picked up my fork and dug in. His fidgeting had resumed. God, I got it—he was excited. Did he have to talk about it all through dinner, rubbing my nose in it?
I scolded myself. He didn’t know I’d been fired. He deserved to be happy.
My fork hit something so
lid. I felt my brow furrow and tried to slice through the section again, but it clunked against the mystery object a second time. Definitely not a chocolate chip.
“There’s something in here,” I grumbled. I used my fork to pry the sections apart and figure it out, too bitter and wrapped up in myself to realize this was the most clichéd thing in the world, or to notice that Oscar was now getting up from his chair.
It wasn’t until he knelt in front of me and took my hand, just as I was about to curse this stupid cake into oblivion, that I pieced everything together.
“Tanya,” he said, as all around us, the restaurant grew even more hushed. I set down my fork while my mouth cramped from sugar and my heart threatened to explode out of me. In the candlelight and dainty chandelier glimmers, I saw the ring buried in the center of the cake, sticky with chocolate, as Oscar asked, “Will you marry me?”
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About the Author
Piper Lennox is the author of the Love In Kona series, All Mine, and more. She loves exploring how heroes become broken, where a heroine gets her sass, and all the incredible ways two people can learn to save themselves...and each other.
Piper lives in Virginia with her husband Freeman, their three children, and a Siberian Husky too smart for his own good. Before she spent her days writing about life and love, she wrote copy for insurance companies. She will never, ever go back.
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