Chapter 3
“Please tell me you’re a room,” I say to what looks more like a supply closet than the swanky digs I was hoping for as far as my personal accommodations go. “Blink once for yes.”
The gecko on the ceiling does a smug little push-up.
The window—more of a mail slot than a window—shows me the back tire of a rental Jeep and a generous view of asphalt.
Coconut Cove Paradise Resort has tucked my “accommodations” behind the laundry facility and directly in the parking lot, which is convenient if my hobbies include inhaling carbon monoxide.
“It’s early evening,” I announce to the gecko, who’s become my therapist by default. “The breeze is on strike, the air smells like sunscreen, sweet bread, and victory for the mosquitoes, and I am glistening in a way no woman hopes for.”
No AC. No fan. One bare bulb that hums at me. A towel with the texture of a loofah that got its heart broken. I guess it is paradise in a character-building way.
“Jinx!” Ruby bangs on my door like she’s serving a warrant. “Party time!”
“You brought a party to what is essentially a broom closet with delusions of grandeur?”
“It’s an underutilized suite,” she calls through the door, which I’m pretty sure is made of cardboard, hope, and whatever was left over from the luau decorations. “And yes, Lani and I found supplies.”
I open up and get a face full of Ruby with her long red hair braided with a pink paper lei, far too many rings that sparkle, and eyes bright with the look of a woman about to ask forgiveness instead of permission.
Lani stands beside her in a flour-dusted muumuu, wooden spoon tucked in her pocket like a sidearm, and expression steady as a heartbeat.
She takes one look past my shoulder—the mattress, the window, the view of automotive excellence—and her face softens in a way that makes me feel simultaneously pitied and cared for.
“You need ice,” she says.
“I need a priest and possibly an exorcism,” I say. “But ice is a solid plan B.”
“We have neither,” Ruby trills. “But we do have paper umbrellas and a blender that screams when it decides to work. Come on.”
“Where did you get a blender?” Lani asks.
Ruby holds up a finger. “Where do I get anything? Don’t ask.”
We march toward the beachfront veranda carrying our haul—a plastic tub of questionable cups, a tangle of string lights, a half-case of cream of coconut, pineapple juice, and a bottle of vodka whose label has faded into a memory.
The path runs under palms that click together and shed brown fronds at dramatic intervals.
The ocean sighs beyond the hedge—it was blue earlier, but now its melted into pewter under a dreamy peach sky. Tiki torches cough smoke and resin. And somewhere, a rooster argues with the moon.
Melanie materializes by the front desk as we pass with her posture perfect, her expression preloaded, and she’s wearing a new lipstick in a shade I can only describe as deeply unfriendly.
She eyes the tub in my hands as if I’m smuggling contraband. “What do the three of you think you’re doing?”
“We’re upping our hospitality game,” I say brightly.
She wastes no time in scowling at us. “More like your chaos game,” she growls back.
“It’s the same family of games,” Ruby says with a shrug that makes her earrings chime.
Melanie gives me the slow once-over—the kind that starts at your shoes and ends somewhere around your life choices—and lands on the paper umbrella bouquet tucked under my arm. “No comps,” she says flatly. “And smile. Remember what I said, first impressions are murder around here.”
She pivots and glides off, trailing perfume and disapproval like a particularly judgmental cloud.
Ruby leans in close enough that I can smell the plumeria in her hair. “She’s all sunshine.”
“On the inside,” Lani adds. “Under several rocks.”
We hit the veranda with its wide planks silvered by years of sun and salt and set up what we’re generously calling our welcome reception.
The brochure calls this area the Sunset Pavilion.
Reality calls it a deck with twinkle lights that flicker when you breathe wrong.
Though I’ll admit, the view is doing most of the heavy lifting as the ocean stretches out in front of us, looking pewter and gold in the fading light, glittering like it knows it’s the only reason any of this works. And it’s right.
Behind us, the three “sparkling pools” mirror the sky in a way that would be picturesque if you didn’t look too closely.
One is taped off with a traffic cone that says SORRY written with a Sharpie, which feels like a metaphor for my entire professional life.
The other two look alive, but in the same way a swamp is alive—technically functioning, questionably inviting.
I crouch down to check the extension cord that’s supposed to feed the twinkle lights and immediately spot the problem. The insulation has a fresh cut, clean and deliberate. “Well, that’s helpful.”
“Here.” Lani kneels beside me and wraps electrical tape around the damage with the focus of a surgeon and the speed of a woman who has taped many, many things in her life and refuses to be surprised anymore. “And for goodness’ sake, don’t lick it.”
“I wasn’t going to,” I say, only a little offended by the accusation.
“You would,” she counters.
Okay, so she’s right.
We fix the lights and restring them every which way, Ruby throws paper leis over chair backs like she’s decorating for the world’s most optimistic luau, and I start conjuring chi-chis.
Is it chi chi, chi-chi, or chichi? I decide it’s chi-chi, which matches my energy—a woman making a coconut drink with a blender that sounds like a small woodland creature in distress and possibly filing a complaint with OSHA.
“Are you sure we don’t have ice?” I ask. Apparently, I’m an optimist now.
Lani points with her spoon toward the kitchen. “The ice machine is broken.” She makes very precise air quotes that suggest she has opinions. “Yesterday it was not broken.”
“Let me guess. A note appeared that says Do Not Touch—Mel?”
“You are a prophet,” Lani says so deadpan I can’t tell if she’s impressed or disappointed in humanity.
I hunt it down anyway, because I’m nothing if not stubborn about frozen water. The machine hums smugly, plugged into nothing, and the cord is tucked behind crates as if someone is hiding evidence.
I plug it in and offer it the kind of compliments I used to reserve for temperamental printers.
“That’s right, sweetheart. Be generous with me here.
” And it coughs up a handful of cubes like it’s doing me a personal favor.
I bring back a bowl, triumphant and possibly developing a concerning relationship with appliances.
Ruby blows me a kiss, and her rings glint in the tiki torchlight. “Bless you,” she says.
“Save the smooching for your next husband,” Lani says, reaching for the vodka with an ease that lets us know she’s weathered many events like this.
“Oh, honey,” Ruby grins, completely unbothered, “we don’t need to plan that far ahead.”
Guests begin to drift in like moths to our slightly pathetic flame. Six in total. Coconut Cove’s elite, or at least the ones who haven’t fled to a property with towels that can double as dermabrasion tools.
And just like that, it’s showtime.