Chapter Five
Five
Bhanu
I groaned underneath my breath, catching up on as much as I could with the real-time program we used for mind-mapping and assignment cards. Who was in charge of site-mapping in my absence? I couldn’t find a single digital notecard. Also, where had the drafts gone for the new site page? Gabrielle wouldn’t…would she? I’d never been blocked in my life.
Okay, whew! I was in, but why was everything moving so slowly?
In Asana (our project tracking program essential for agile methodologies), I checked for any assignment movement. The kanban board, where overall tasks were delegated in the form of digital cards organized by columns, hadn’t changed, aside from adding Gabrielle in lieu of my place. There were about three to six oval profiles of each researcher assigned to a card. Some cards, more detailed or smaller assignments, had one or two profiles responsible for the task. The scrum board was similar, tacked on with additional labels and deadlines, although two assignments had been recycled for the next project. The roadmap, however, showed actual progress in the way of graphs. There was movement there. No red labels showing urgent attention.
All was good. The only problem, since this was a real-time program, was that others could see if I was live (aka logged in). If I made a single change, my name/profile would be time-stamped in the card’s history. Here’s hoping Gabrielle wouldn’t actually lock me out during my vacation. Still, I had to be careful. Hmm, maybe with the time difference I should wait until later.
Slurping my ice-cold water after a tasty but overtly sweet coconut concoction, I pondered on what to do with the rest of my day.
It had been a wonderful, peaceful five days of vacation filled with different scenery across the massive lot of hotels, family fun and great eats with Kimo and his family, and the usual going here and there for my favorite foods. Since Diya worked most of her regular hours and I had no intention of driving, I caught up on reading poolside or on the beach, and worked up the nerve to swim in the lagoon. And by swim, I mean get deep enough that my feet didn’t touch the ocean floor without freaking out. I could swim, but the current paired with small waves and knowing there was plenty of marine life in the water kept me on edge. I was not here to die.
A nap sounded nice right about now. I rubbed my eyes, nearly knocking over my glass. I caught it just in time. I didn’t care if my clothes got wet, but not my device! Not today!
It was then, when I gingerly set my partially full glass of water away from my tablet, that I noticed a man watching me. My heart raced at the first flicker of recognition because no way. No mother-freaking way was my work nemesis sitting two seats away from me on my vacation.
That thick, disheveled hair, short-sleeved button-down shirt with the top button undone, shorts, sandals…looking all kinds of nerdy tourist. The only thing missing was a camera hanging around his neck and a dollop of sunscreen on his nose.
The intensity of his dark brown eyes beneath perpetually furrowed brows settled on me in a way that said he’d made a point to ensure I knew that he’d noticed me. My shoulders slumped forward, giving me that weird crane-neck look with my chin in the air. My eyes rolled into the back of my head. The devil was real, and he meant to torture me.
“Oh my god. What are you doing here?” I balked, hoping this very unlikely run-in was not actually with the man I thought I was seeing. There was a negligible chance.
He grunted, and in that Denzel voice, assuring me that he was real and that he was here, said, “What are you doing here?”
Damnit, Sunny. It was always him. Running into me at the office, bumping my chair during in-person meetings, glaring at me through virtual boxes, cap-yelling exchanges filling up my chat boxes.
“I’m on vacation,” I retorted, although I’d asked the question first.
“Same,” he said.
I dramatically looked around. “Of all the places to go on vacation, of all the places on this island alone, of all the places in this hotel itself, why are you here? Next to me? Now everyone’s going to think we went on vacation together.”
“Are you planning on blabbing on social media?”
I narrowed my eyes. “We work with smart people. They’ll figure it out.”
“No, they won’t. I don’t get into details. Maybe you shouldn’t, either.”
“Excuse me? How would you know? We’ve never had a personal conversation.”
“I know,” he said, turning back to his empty glass.
The stress of trying to get into work unnoticed had been replaced by Sunny’s presence. He was triggering. We always, instantly, fought. It was like a dog and cat sensing each other. Primal. Uncontrollable.
I released a pent-up breath and slurped my water. He was not going to ruin this vacation. He was a tourist and would go out and do touristy things. We would not, aside from chance encounters at the large pool or the even larger beach at the cove, see each other, and even that was unlikely.
“Why are you wearing sweatpants in this heat?” he asked after a beat.
“Should I be baring my legs for just anyone?”
He stuttered as I gave him a “Well, what the hell?” look complete with jostling head bob that our people had mastered over the centuries. His lips twitched. “You look ridiculous.”
“No one asked for your opinion on my appearance. And you’re one to speak.”
“What?” He looked down at his clothes.
“Epitome of tourist combined with the awkwardness of developer. I just can’t with you. You stick out like a sore thumb. Well, not here in this hotel or in this area because it’s filled with your kind, but go anywhere else and you might as well be holding a sign that says: ‘tourist.’?”
“And you’re not one? At least I’m not baking in my own clothes.”
“My sister lives here, and I hang out here so often that the staff knows me by name. I know all the local spots, and no, I won’t be divulging such secrets to an outsider, and I know many of the customs and words and, ya know, culture.”
“So basically, you come here to work at the bar in your sweats?”
I scowled. But yes, he was right. “Why are you vacationing here?”
His rigid posture slackened when he replied, “Here for a friend’s wedding.”
You’d expect someone attending a destination wedding at such a beautiful location to be more excited, but Sunny seemed anything but. Well, whatever issue he had wasn’t my problem, despite wanting to know because, ya know, I was nosy.
I commented, “It’s a bad time for a wedding here. Didn’t the couple know about Ironman?”
His expression fell flat. “Apparently not.”
“Wow. You’re such a great conversationalist.”
“I know.”
I gritted my teeth. Sunny and his famous short, blunt replies. Why was I letting him get to me? I wasn’t here for him, and again, we wouldn’t run into each other often, if ever, while he was here.
His eyes flickered to something behind me, and the usually baiting deadpan of an expression he sported (yeah, try to imagine that one, but he’d somehow mastered it) morphed into tension with a sprinkle of irritation.
Something made his butt pucker more than me? This, I had to see for myself.
I didn’t have to turn because the woman who’d caused Sunny’s silence walked around the lounge chairs to stand several feet from him, enough that I could see her from the corner of my eye if I wasn’t trying to be nosy. But, as established, I was nosy, so I swiveled my seat to face them better.
The woman was gorgeous. She was tall and slim with long, thick, flowing hair; fake eyelashes for days; and pouty lips. Sunshine shimmered on bronze skin shown thoroughly in her two-piece swimsuit with lacy cover-up. Shades sat on top of her head and a tote hung from the crook of her bent elbow.
“Fancy meeting you here,” she said, her voice higher than mine and much sweeter.
“Not really,” Sunny replied with a tic in his jaw. Hmm…interesting.
“Just trying to be nice. Meet Pradeep, my boyfriend.” She hooked her free arm around the tall, built man beside her looking like a desi god. What gene pool were these people from?
“Nice to meet you,” Pradeep said with a jerk of his chin.
“Pradeep, this is my ex, Sunny. He’s also in the wedding party.”
Oh . I watched while sipping water. This had just gotten even more interesting.
Sunny shot me serious side-eye shade, as if silently yelling at me to mind my own business, but these guys were making it my business because I was here first, and they weren’t exactly quiet or subtle.
“Likewise,” Sunny said to Pradeep, all surly.
Now I understood why Sunny was in such an uptight mood in one of the world’s most leading vacation spots. If I saw my ex here, much less was in a wedding with him, I’d be pissy, too. No wonder he’d seemed less than excited to be off to vacation. Was this the reason he was the way he was?
Nah. Couldn’t be. I couldn’t see someone as hardworking, skilled, and assertive as Sunny being knocked down a few pegs by an ex. Or anyone for that matter. Seemed like any friction with another person only made him tougher, compelled not to let that friction take anything from him. It was actually one of the things I admired about the man. He was strong and hardly anything got to him. Well, except me. It was pretty much a superpower of mine at this point, one I wielded at every golden opportunity and with not great responsibility.
Unlike Sunny, Pradeep was the chillest about the entire ex thing. He was all smiles and just as happy as a clam being in Hawaii, noting the beautiful weather and cove at the beach where his girl had excitedly spotted a sea turtle in the distance. He even asked Sunny how he was and about his flight and what he did for work, et cetera, as if they were just two strangers meeting and on the road to friendship. The ex-girlfriend smirked, enjoying the entire exchange, her eyes never leaving Sunny. It was almost as if she were draining his energy, because his posture slowly wilted over the course of several minutes.
A tinge of annoyance hit me. I didn’t care for people who acted that way. What had transpired between the two for there to be such palpable tension in the air, to the point where even I could feel the loathing? It was reducing any sort of peace I’d had. My soul might, in fact, be circling some dark, hellish hole at this point. Talk about toxic.
Sunny entertained the new man in his ex’s life by answering his questions with as much friendliness as he usually toted, which wasn’t much, but that meant he didn’t loathe this guy.
Sunny even returned the questions out of sheer politeness, because no way was his indifferent posture relaying a single ounce of interest. Unless Sunny was actually this way with everyone?
I thought back to the times I’d seen him working in person. When he was focused, he was an animal with blinders on with zero spatial awareness outside of his many screens. But I’d recalled him blending in at my work party a year ago when he’d so rudely walked into my bedroom while I was in the middle of fighting a breakdown. We’d never been friendly, but Sunny spoke with kindness and understanding and interest with other coworkers.
All the devs under his supervision said he was tough, but easy to talk to. Sunny was inviting , if one could believe that. All the designers and researchers I worked with on shared projects said he was funny, a coding genius. I believed the latter but, the former? I had yet to see what the hell they were talking about.
“Excuse me, I have to take this call,” Pradeep said after a glance at his ringing phone. “Nice to meet you, man. I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other the next few days, right!”
He gave a hearty, good-natured laugh, kissed his girlfriend on the cheek, and took the call as he walked into the shade of the lounge. He paced the threshold between the indoor and the outdoor spaces, a large archway between pillars. Close enough to see but far enough to keep his conversation private.
“Nice boyfriend,” Sunny commented, droll as usual.
His ex smiled. “Very nice. We’ve been together for almost ten months.”
“So you got together only a month after we broke up?”
“Can’t wait around forever. And timing.”
“Yeah. Timing. He must be something if you bounced back that quickly after breaking things off with the love of your life .” He said “the love of your life” with mocking.
“I really did love you, Sunny. But we would’ve never worked out. And once I accepted that, I broke up with you and pushed myself to move on. I deserve a romantic, sweeping love story, and you weren’t it.”
I grimaced. Ouch. Then I took another sip of water and continued watching.
Sunny curtly shook his head, his lips pressed, and I prepared for an explosive rebuttal. Instead, he said, “Congratulations.”
Anticlimactic. But maybe that was Sunny. I’d never seen him get angry.
He swiveled away from her, but turned back when she scoffed, “That’s all you have to say?”
“I’m happy that you’re happy. Did you expect me to throw a fit? Be depressed? Challenge him to a duel?”
“Some type of emotion. But, oh, right, I remember who you are and precisely why we broke up.”
“Because I should be run by emotion all the time? That’s chaotic. I like calm.”
She crossed her arms, extended one leg out, and tapped her foot, daring him with every fiber of her challenging expression. She… wanted him to be jealous. Ew. In my experience, when people wanted their exes to be jealous of a new flame, it was because some part of them was still stuck on the ex or whatever they’d once had. Or they liked the drama. Obviously, I didn’t know this woman, and she seemed a bit scathing although alarmingly sweet…but she didn’t look like drama-incarnate walking around in a red bikini.
“You came alone, didn’t you? Have you even dated since we broke up?” she asked.
“That’s not really your business, is it?” Sunny retorted, a flicker of annoyance in his voice.
“I worked really hard on you, and you just let all of that shrivel away?”
Eh? What sort of work was she claiming here? Now her tone was cutting edge, and I didn’t believe I cared for it.
“I wasn’t broken,” he replied. You tell her!
She guffawed. “Sunny. You had so much to work on. I gave you so much and you did nothing. Your mother still messages me. If you’re like this forever, you’ll never find a woman, much less keep one.”
Sunny’s jaw stiffened and his posture returned to that hard, rigid line. He was suddenly twice as tall, took up twice as much space. The chair between us dwarfed in his shadow. The bartender had disappeared. The few other guests around us vanished. This felt like one of those Western showdowns…but in resort swimwear.
“You should probably stop,” he said in that dark, commanding tone. “Don’t mess with this wedding.”
“Says the only guy in the group without a date. You’re going to be the seventh wheel in all the activities and pictures. Couldn’t even scrounge up a date with promises of Hawaii to even out the numbers?”
The tic in his jaw returned. Sunny got annoyed with me all the time and acted like he was upset, but he was never unprofessional, never actually angry. But right now? He was teetering on the verge of losing his cool, that leveled baseline he was so well known for having. He was hardly ever loud, rowdy, or irate. He was usually mellow as could be. I stilled with bated breath for his reaction.
“Focus on yourself and your new boyfriend,” he said.
“I’m focused on us, don’t worry. You’re not that special.”
“Then why are you talking to me when your boyfriend is alone?”
Resentment flickered in her large brown eyes. Like she was both vexed and hung up on Sunny. “Don’t be such a downer all weekend, huh?” she said sweetly.
An actual vein appeared snaking down Sunny’s neck. All right, listen, I needed this guy. He was a brilliant dev and our biggest project of the decade was going to fail without his specific expertise and insight. The way this man drifted between lines of code, no glitch escaped him. He was the last line of flawless user experience. All the work before him in various stages of research and design would mean nothing without those nimble fingertips typing away at the speed of light, those hawk eyes zooming in on the subtlest out-of-place symbol that could crash an entire program.
Error 404 was not happening on his watch.
“Did you mess with my reservation?” Sunny said out of nowhere, dragging my thoughts back to their conversation.
Her right brow arched. “You think I think about you enough to do that?”
“The hotel said my reservation was for yesterday. I’d made that reservation with you almost a year ago. They said it was a glitch…but I know I had the correct date. You had access.”
She blew out a breath. “I needed a room. They were supposed to give us two separate rooms instead of the one.”
“Did you check to make sure the original reservation would end up with a room for me on the correct date?” He fumed, answering without waiting for her, “Because now I don’t have a room. This place is booked, every hotel is booked.”
“I’m sure there’s a room somewhere,” she replied indifferently.
“Don’t play this game with me.”
“How dare you!” She began passively pulling Sunny apart, fault by fault. And he began lacing his responses with ice jagged enough to pierce souls.
I found my annoyance dissolving into temperament and I wasn’t here to have my vacation ruined by drama or let someone tear down the most important dev on any of my teams. Sunny needed to return from this wedding intact and recharged to tackle the last phase of work projects, not end up a frazzled, incensed mess. He was, by far, the best dev ever. Despite our issues, even I acknowledged that our company had lucked out snagging him. Thanks to his speed, precision, and genius, we’d turned out more projects at staggering prices.
Crap. If Sunny had interviewed for PM, then he truly was serious competition.
This woman wasn’t even my ex, but I could see how triggering all of this was for him. A wedding—happy couples everywhere. His ex with her new man, shoving it in his face and reminding him of all the ways he’d failed at their relationship.
Mr. Grumpy was about to turn into Mr. Aggravated. I didn’t want to run into these vibes every time we happened to be in the same place this week, much less have him haul this crap back to work. More than that, I didn’t think Sunny deserved this.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I didn’t know a thing, I mean, I hardly knew Sunny in the first place. Maybe their rotting atmosphere was just getting to me, dismantling my chill. A headache teased at my temple, a sign of a sharper headache. But whatever the reason, it had me cutting through their increasingly heated exchanges.
“Do you mind?” I asked her.
She barely hinted at having heard me, spewing nonsense at Sunny while he paused to glance my way. His moment of ignoring her only made her angrier.
“Can you leave him alone?” I said, and not in a nice way. My tone came out surprisingly sharp.
She finally turned to me. “What?” The return of the sweet voice. Okay, so maybe she was just mean to Sunny. Exes tended to bring that out. Breakups were known to be ugly and even malicious.
But I wasn’t having it either way. I sighed, crossing my legs, and swirled my almost empty glass of water. “Can you leave him alone, and maybe take your drama down a notch? I’m trying to relax. At this very splendid resort in what tourists call paradise,” I added with a grand sweeping motion, as if maybe she’d forgotten where she was.
“Oh. Sorry. Didn’t mean to bother you,” she replied without any sign of leaving. In fact, she shifted so that she was turned from me.
“That’s not going to make your argument any more private. Can you please, for the love of all the sea turtles you just saw, leave him alone?”
She gave me a quiet look. I gave her one, too.
At that, she replied, “I mean, you can leave.”
Bitch, I was here first . Of course, I didn’t say that. At this point, Sunny had stood, taking a step in between us to defuse the situation, but there was no situation. I didn’t pick fights with strangers or get into woman pitted against woman escalations of cattiness.
I spoke calmly. “No. I was here first, and we were talking before you came over, blocking off the sunshine with all this shade.” I gestured at her. Because she was the shade.
“Um. I’m sorry. Who are you?” she asked around Sunny’s protective frame. I leaned around him, myself. He probably just wanted both of us to go away, yet here we were.
“Why are you getting defensive?” she asked, seemingly both hurt and jealous at Sunny’s oddly protective barrier of me. “Wait, is she…no. No way. Not for you.”
My head was going to splinter the way this headache was sprouting tentacles, and now I just wanted quiet, but I would be damned if I left. I was here first, in the perfect spot for the bartender, drinks, snacks, breezeway, shade, and minimal passersby with an even smaller chance of runaway kids zooming by. I just wanted peace, and for her to leave so that my lead dev didn’t pop that giant vein now vehemently bulging in his neck. An incapacitated lead wasn’t much use and I sort of absolutely needed him to help finish this gigantic project for the biggest client our company had ever had.
I blurted, “Yes I am.”
“Yes you are what?” she said.
“His girlfriend. And don’t worry, babe, you can stay with me. You think I wanted that big villa on the beach all to myself?”
Sunny swerved toward me, his eyes wide and his shocked expression all sorts of what the hell are you doing? Saving a man’s ass, as a woman often does. He should be thanking me. Not only was I getting his snide ex off his back, but I’d essentially offered him a place to crash. Okay, so I hadn’t thought that part through, but I, at the least, had bought him time.
They were both staring so hard, I was sure they’d frozen into place. I blinked at Sunny. He should really say something. Another second of silence and his ex was sure to figure out that I was a liar wrapped in loungewear.
Sunny pulled himself out of his stupor long enough to say, “Thanks. Babe .” His words were sort of soft, but his teeth were clenched. Wondered if his butt was, too. He needed a vacation more than anyone, and…well, crap, I felt bad for him.
I kept my eyes trained on him, calling forth all my hype-babe energy, and dragged my eyes back to the stupefied woman. “You must be the ex.”
She harrumphed, her glare flitting to the edge of possessive. Yep. She definitely still had a thing for Sunny, but who was going to tell her that her approach wasn’t going to win him back?
Before she crawled out of her sheer surprise to utter a response, I put up a hand and said, “Listen. I am on vacation and not here for the drama. I don’t care if you guys are exes, were engaged or married or madly in love, or whatever else. I don’t do the whole ‘hate the ex slash hate other women’ thing. You had your good and bad times but right now, in this immediate time, this is for us . And I’m not one for getting curt, because I’m typically a very laid-back, chill type of a person…but I’m not going to sit here and watch you berate my man, or anyone else. And I’m also not going to sit here while you demean and cut through my vacation vibes. As I mentioned, I was here first. So please take your anger or jealousy or irritation elsewhere, and find your peace. Hopefully we can be friendlier than this whenever we pass by each other, because we should be sunshine and rainbows and smiles, right? Look at where we’re at. But most importantly, adopt the aloha spirit and chill the eff out. Don’t be that tourist. No one likes them.”
Her mouth had dropped to her feet somewhere during my monologue, but she didn’t say anything. She looked like she wanted to unleash hell on me, at which point, I would just leave, dragging Sunny behind me. I didn’t even have this much drama with the girlfriends of my own exes, much less a coworker’s.
Maybe I’d lodged a ginormous foot into my mouth, because who knew what was going on in her head or what I’d gotten myself into by declaring Sunny as my man. But it got quiet. I liked quiet. Mission accomplished.
She straightened up and forced a smile, her voice chipper again. “Well, I apologize for the interruption. You’re right, we should be enjoying this place. How long have you been together?”
“What is time, really?” I circumvented with a laugh.
She looked at Sunny. “I’m glad you’ve moved on.”
I watched Sunny’s entire body tense from the corner of my eye when she added, “Just don’t make the same mistakes. See you at the get-togethers. This’ll be fun.”
If by fun she meant cringey , then yeah, probably.
She walked away. Lord, finally.
I hadn’t initially taken her words to be cold or vindictive, but maybe they were? Maybe they weren’t facetious or sarcastic, but her response kept Sunny on edge. Every muscle beneath his touristy outfit tightened.
I turned back to the bar and pushed my paper straw through the melting ice, softly asking, “Are you okay?”