Chapter 2 Paradise
PARADISE
From my sunlounger, I stared at the cover of the resort pamphlet.
Adonis Escapes. A world of secluded beauty awaits.
The glossy photo featured an outrageously slim, toned, and tanned woman (who you could just tell had got her shit together) taking a perfect forward stroke in the deserted and serene tranquility of the perfectly inviting pool.
To the side of her, a beautifully chiseled and equally tanned and toned man, in only shorts and sunglasses, reclined on a lounger, posing enticingly with a book in his hand.
I guess it was to be assumed he was the husband of this woman who was living her best, perfect life.
Or maybe they weren’t even married at all?
They didn’t believe in that kind of thing.
They were above all the ridiculousness of society and, instead, were just floating happily through a life of indulgent luxury.
I lowered the brochure and surveyed the same scene from the photograph in real time. Just in time to watch a plump kid with a floaty wedged around his belly, bombing into the very same pool that angelic creature had once found her Zen moment in.
To my left, there was no gorgeous man by the pool, reading with a self-satisfied smile on his face. Instead, there was only a gaggle of families squawking, fussing, and screeching at each other, like a collection of stressed birds vying for their position around a watering hole.
“Excuse me?”
Even with my sunglasses on, I had to lift my hand up to block out the sun and see who the owner of the voice was. Oh. Now he was cute. I sat up as elegantly as I could, and as his taut torso blocked out the glare of the sun, I lowered my glasses and gave him a coy look over the top of them.
“Oh. Well, hi there. I’m Lucy.”
He tilted his head at me, considering how to respond.
“I just wanted to ask… Um, if… You were with someone?”
I smiled broadly. Thank you God for sending me something in my hour of need.
“Oh, no. I’m available.” I told him, my eyes meeting his. It was an odd look he gave me back, though. Not the knowing and excited smile that would usually pass between two strangers who had just met and already knew they would be in bed together before the day was out.
“So. I can take this sunlounger then, yeah?”
I flashed a look at the empty lounger next to me. Each of them neatly set out together around the pool in little white plastic couples.
“That sounds quite nice, actually,” I told him.
Then I watched with dismay as, instead of sitting down and pulling out a well-read paperback (perhaps Keats or Yates or something), he bent over, clutched each side of the lounger, and began dragging it noisily across the floor.
The torso didn’t stop until he had reached a table with a young woman lying out next to it.
Then he sat down on it without taking another look back.
Great. Even the sun loungers don’t want to be with me.
I shouldn’t complain. I mean, people would love to be here, soaking in the sun. And maybe in different circumstances, it could be quite nice. It was the being single bit that stung. I was adrift and unusual here. And alone. Pathetically alone.
Just relax. That’s all you have to do. I took a deep, calming breath, lowered my sunglasses again, and opened my book—Page one. Chapter one—for about the tenth time on this trip. Okay, this time, get into it, Lucy.
A spray of cold water leapt from the pool, and I squealed at the shocking sensation as it splashed across my chest and legs.
“Nathan, stop it, right now! You’re upsetting people!” A red-faced and very un-Zen woman yelled at the boy in the pool, who only laughed back in glee. At least someone was enjoying themselves, I guess.
The owner of the boy gave me a pained look and then a shrug that said both “sorry” and “but what can I do?”.
My idea of some relaxing time, sunbathing and reading by the pool, really wasn’t working out as I’d hoped. I gathered up my things and headed inside to the Eclipse bar. Yeah, great idea, Luce. Drinking alone is definitely going to make things better.
The service at the resort bar was the same as in the restaurant, stuffy and stand-offish.
I suppose it was meant to make you feel like you were being served and waited on, as if you were somehow important and being looked after by highly trained professionals, but I’d rather have had a little light conversation and a different kind of attentiveness.
A flamboyantly dressed cocktail was swiftly delivered to my table, complete with a luridly colored cocktail umbrella and far too many unnecessary pieces of fruit pinned around the rim.
Glancing around at all the couples sitting happily together at the other tables, I grimaced, then pulled my phone out of my bag with a sigh. With Hannah off displaying new forms of bendiness for her new trainer, I decided to check in on work.
Hey John, just wondering how the Hartington account’s going?
Hi Lucy. All good. I’m not meant to talk to you about it, though
Who says? Bill?
You got it!
Ugh, Bill. My boss. If you’re wondering why I’m reluctantly lingering in self-imposed singledom at a resort, there’s your answer right there.
It was a month ago, and I was having one of those days.
The kind where you wake up in someone else’s bed and you wonder why you did—and exactly what you did—the night before.
Heading into work in the same clothes as the previous day, now tainted with the sharp and sour aroma of tequila, stale beer, and what might have been sweet and sour chicken, I’d picked up a coffee to go.
It was as I approached the glass-fronted doorway to my office that a man leaving in a rush pushed the door outward, and my carelessly attached coffee cup lid removed itself against my chest, along with a large splash of blazingly hot coffee.
“Sorry!” The man shouted insincerely over his shoulder as he quickly disappeared into a waiting cab, leaving me dripping with java juice on the office steps, and one arm of my sunglasses now hanging halfway down my face.
“Lucy, good morn…”
Bill’s sentence got stuck in his throat before he could finish as he took in the mess in front of him.
“Unbelievable!” I’d screeched, half at Bill and half at the empty space where the taxi and my perpetrator of coffee-based crimes had once been.
“Um, let’s get in and try to get you cleaned up, Lucy,” Bill said, clearly having other things on his mind than dealing with this.
“Lucy,” Bill had said, once we were upstairs and I was rubbing pointlessly at the dark coffee stains on my blouse, “You haven’t taken a day off in what, three years?” he asked.
“Four, Bill.”
“Yeahhh. So, look. Seeing as you will not do it unless you’re told to, I’m ordering you to take a vacation. It’s not healthy, Lucy. Take some time, book somewhere nice for two weeks. We can handle things without you, I promise.”
A break was not what I wanted. Work had filled up my life, papered over some of the gaping holes I would rather ignore than try to deal with. It gave me purpose and a good enough reason to roll out of bed each morning.
But, as I looked at Bill’s concerned expression, I had supposed that maybe, just maybe, there might be more to it than all this.
So, a few short weeks later, I’d boarded a flight to Mexico, arrived at Adonis Escapes, and quickly decided that I was wrong about that, very wrong.
And even if I wasn’t, this absolutely was not where I was going to find it.
I should’ve guessed on the flight over. All the clues were there. First, there were the gooey-eyed, freshly married or engaged couples, smiling at each other in a way you only can when you have a fulfilling and thrilling sex life.
Something I would have to drown out the sounds of later in my room with a blaring television.
Another not-so-subtle reminder that you were alone and loveless.
That no one was going to help you put your bags up, hold your hand during the take-off, or whisper exciting suggestions of mile-high meetings in the bathroom.
Then there were the family vacationers, tired and frayed at the edges, with smudged fingerprints on their once fresh holiday clothes, handling toys and herding children that had grown to the point where they now had opinions they would beat their sleep-deprived parents with relentlessly, or else kick up a public wailing fuss to enforce their demands.
After the first day, I’d even started eating in my room.
The breakfast buffet and themed dinner nights had only served to highlight how completely and utterly single I was.
Sat on my own in the restaurant, surrounded by those same gooey-eyed couples and noisy families, I was seated at the only sad little single table available.
Buried in a corner by the doors to the kitchen, each wild swing of the porter doors made me jump every minute or two, accompanied by a rush of steam and a busy waiter bustling past.
While everyone else talked, I sat in silence.
Just me, a plate of something suspicious, and a mini-anxiety attack every few moments as another order came out.
How I’d made it through the first week was more down to endurance than my willingness.
And now, I was at the bar again, alone and unsure quite what to do.
Sipping on my disturbingly sugary drink, I looked up at the TV screen. Harry, the British soccer player with messy hair and a tattoo on his chest that said Nowt mate, was chatting away in the Love Villa interview booth.
“Jemma is well fit. Right up my alley, that one. I was going to go for it, but Randall is hanging about like a bad smell, man! It’s like he’s trying to bag every girl in here. Leave something for the rest of us, yeah?”
The footage then cut away from Harry to a long shot of the villa and a short promo video for the show, made just to remind you how ridiculously attractive everyone was.