5.
Becca
The bellboy takes me straight to the front desk. Though I’m inside the resort, my thoughts are still outside with Rich. I can’t seem to make up my mind how I feel about him. It’s plain enough that I find him attractive and think he has quite the nice personality (that last exchange aside, there is an obvious abiding gentleness in his eyes), but I’m resolved as ever not to get involved with anyone or anything. Too dangerous with all of these emotions swirling around inside of me. Emotions that I’m painfully reminded of when the receptionist, after giving my name to her so she can pull up my reservation on the computer, asks where Rob is and why he’s not with me.
“He, uhh…” I can feel the blush spreading up my cheeks.
“Well, it’s too bad he couldn’t make it,” the receptionist says quickly, recognizing my struggle. From underneath the desk she extracts two key cards and dips them into a scanner. “As for you, I know you’re going to have a wonderful time. Your villa is ready and waiting for you. Here you go, Ms. Warren.”
She hands me the key cards. I follow the bellboy holding my suitcase out the back door of the lobby and into the resort proper. It’s a massive, sprawling compound with several tiered swimming pools scattered around the grounds. Vacationers are everywhere, some laughing and splashing in the pools, others passed out on lounge chairs underneath umbrellas, drinks in their hands. As we pass by a bar with a grass roof, the porter stops and turns towards me.
“Would you like a drink?” he asks. He’s seen both my exchange outside with Rich and my short talk with the receptionist.
“God yes,” I say. “That’s just what I need.”
He waves the bartender over and I order the first drink that comes to mind, a piña colada. With drink in hand, we set off again, weaving our way around the pools to a stone path disappearing into a hedge. Down the path we go, following it as it wiggles along. It soon joins another path. We continue down until we reach the very end where my villa awaits. The last one, it’s set a little further away from the others, a row of hedges separating it from its nearest brethren. It’s exactly what I’m looking for: somewhere completely secluded.
The bellboy drops my bag at the door. I dig out a few dollars from my purse, but when I go to hand them to him, he waves my hand away.
“Don’t worry about it,” he says, taking the keycard from my other hand and inserting it into the slot in the door. He pushes the door open. I’m greeted by a cool blast of air and an aroma of hibiscus. “Just enjoy yourself. I’m Kai. Let me know if you need anything, okay?”
“Thank you, Kai. My name is Becca.”
“Nice to meet you, Becca. Be sure to come to dinner tonight, alright? We’ve got a nice fire show at seven I think you’ll like.”
He’s gone a moment later. Finally alone, I go inside the villa, shutting and locking the door behind me. Aside from the bathroom and a small closet, the only other room is the bedroom itself. Everything is of a comforting, white, creamy color—the bed, the curtains, the walls, the table, the desk, the chairs, the mini fridge. On the wall above the bed, a thousand seashells form a beautiful swirling mosaic. In the middle of the bed is a welcome note, an accompanying chocolate next to it. Setting my bag at the foot of the bed and my drink on the bedside table, I plop down onto the comforter. Falling onto my back, I sigh deeply. As many thoughts as there are seashells on the wall are racing through my head—thoughts of Rob and of Rich and of my mother and of home and of my job and of the unknown, future yawning before me. So nice it felt to have finally escaped it all, at least for the moment. Well, perhaps except for Rich. I had no doubt I was going to see him again. He didn’t exactly strike me as the type of guy who gave up easily.
Though he probably thought I was upset with him. To be fair, he had been acting like an ass right there at the end. But mostly I had just been itching to get away. I wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone right now. It didn’t have anything to do with him. If anything, it had been me who had been the ass. After all, I’d just been given me a free ride to the resort, even if Rich hadn’t told me that he just so happened to be staying at the same one. Still, it was sort of my fault for missing that one.
Who was this guy anyways? Obviously not just any old regular person. What kind of normal person had a limousine waiting for them? It seemed to me, based on the sunglasses and the hat, that he was trying hard not to be recognized. That would explain why he had been the last one off the plane, too, not to mention the limousine itself. But what would he be recognized for? That feeling of having seen him before was still lingering, though, as before, I couldn’t put my finger on where that would be.
No matter. All of this was neither here nor there. What mattered was that I was finally alone, finally away from it all. Now it was time to relax and forget about everything I’d left behind. It was me time.
Grabbing the welcome chocolate, I unwrap it and pop it into my mouth. After a moment, I push myself up from the bed and waltz over to the curtains. I pull them open, sunlight spilling into the room. The view makes me gasp. My villa is located on a small hill above the beach, a thin path leading down to the sand. With the hedges that separate my villa from the villa next door ending at the edge of the back veranda, I have a stunning, 180-degree view of the shore stretching miles to either side. Several palms provide ample shade over the back deck.
Perched on the railing of the veranda is a small, canary-sized bird with grey and black feathers and a red bill. It’s preening itself. Ever so slowly, I ease open the back door. It’s not slow enough. Hearing me, the bird takes off.
Watching it depart, my eyes begin to water again. Why was I so up and down? Before I know it, tears are running down my cheeks. I stumble out onto the veranda and collapse heavily into one of the wooden deck chairs. The more I try to control my sobbing, the more uncontrollable it becomes. What was wrong with me? One minute I was happy, the next I was sad. One minute incurably lonely, the next hopeful at the thought of a new life. This rollercoaster was the most unbearable part of all of this. If I could just get off the ride, especially now when everything felt so utterly and inexplicably hopeless.
The first wave of tears pass. I sniffle and wipe my nose with the back of my hand. Crying in a place like this made one feel foolish. I was in paradise for goodness’ sake! This thought, strangely enough, restarts the waterworks. If this was what I could expect, I was in for one hell of a strange vacation.
Eventually, just as in the airport bathroom, my sadness wears itself out, at least for a moment. There was just no way I could be sitting here, looking out at this pristine beach, the call of birds around me, a gentle breeze stirring the palm trees overhead, the day warm and bright and oh so comfortable, and still be mired in this pity party of mine.
Who cares?!, my mind cries. What does any of this matter? It was dumb to be wasting tears on life’s twists and turns. I was old enough by now to know that this was how life happened, that one minute it took you as high as you could go and the next dropped you down to the very bottom. And what was more, it was only in hindsight that we were able to see that what we thought of as bottom had actually only been the beginning of the top, and what we thought of as top had merely been a hill in a valley. So why bother letting oneself get down about it?
Even armed with this knowledge, it’s not long before the tears start anew. I’m thinking of my mother now and our last few months together. I missed her dearly. At least she was out of her misery now. And I didn’t have any regrets concerning her either, which was another comforting thought. She had been ready to go. Naturally, I hadn’t been ready to let her go, but I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that she was in a better place now. I smile through my tears, my mind imagining what she could possibly be up to up above. Probably she was looking down at me right this moment, yelling to herself about how dumb I was being, shaking her head and telling me to get my shit together. I could hear her now: There will always be bigger mountains, Becca. The key is to just keep climbing!
I go back inside after a while, when my tears are no longer blurring my vision, and retrieve my piña colada. It’s long been melted. Returning to the veranda, I drop back down into my chair.
Whew. I felt much better. Though I didn’t doubt there were more twists and dips and turns to come, it sort of felt like I had just passed the first hurdle. A calmness inside of me that wasn’t there before, a calmness I haven’t felt since before Rob broke up with me and my mother died and my job unceremoniously let me go.
I sip my drink and listen to the waves crash onto the beach, my heart serene like it hasn’t been in months. It’s like the ocean after an intense storm. Now that it has raged, the waters have returned to their level.
Damn was this place beautiful. Truly. Though I’ve been to my fair share of tropical resorts, I’ve never been anywhere like this. Everything felt so new, so alive, so…something. Hard to describe beyond saying that it was making my soul leap.
I don’t think of anything in particular as I sit there, merely watch the various vacationers stroll up and down the beach. A few surfers are sitting on their boards out beyond the break of the waves. Just like the ones I had spotted from the plane on our final descent into the airport, these seem to be in no particular hurry to catch a wave. Way out, almost to the horizon, a black cloud of birds is swirling, a few breaking off every so often to swoop and dive into the water.
Just then, my eye catches a man in incredible shape walking down the beach. At first, I’m just admiring one of the nicest bodies I’ve ever seen and don’t recognize who it is I’m looking at, but then, when he draws closer, I realize with a start that it’s Rich.
“Wow…” I murmur, unable to help myself.
He’s strolling down the beach, his shirt off, a pair of swim trunks hugging his hips. His hands are in his pockets, his head turned towards the surf. He’s very obviously lost in thought, completely oblivious to the world around him. Every girl that he passes turns to stare at him as he walks by. I’m not surprised. It’s not every day one ran across a body like his. Every inch of him is bulging with muscles, his chest and six-pack so perfect it’s like looking at a marble statue in a museum. He’s like a model in a men’s fitness magazine. And now that he’s without his hat, I can see he has quite a nice hairline, too.
Within seconds of seeing him, dirty thoughts begin to race through my mind. He’s on his knees in front of me, his fingers digging into my hips. I have my hands in his hair, pulling him forward, gasping as he—
I shudder and force myself to breath, though I let the thoughts linger a few seconds more before I push them away. Come on, girl. Have you already forgotten your promise? Get a grip on yourself.
It must be the piña colada that was making me think these things. A stronger drink than I’d thought. Add that to the scotch I’d had on the ride from the airport and the fact that it’s been quite some time since I’d last been intimate with a man (another clear sign that my relationship had been failing) and it was no wonder my mind had gone straight there.
He’s about to my villa now. As he draws even, as if he can feel someone watching him, he looks away from the surf, his eyes searching up and down the beach.
His glance turns towards my villa. I don’t have a chance to look away before his eyes lock onto mine. Surprise washes over his face. Taking a hand out of his pocket, he raises it in greeting, a faint, sheepish smile on his lips. I can tell instantly he’s thinking of our last interaction. The way he’s blushing is adorable though, and, without thinking, I wave back. He looks pointedly at the empty piña colada glass in my hand. I shrug.
He’s undecided, it seems, as to whether or not he should venture up to my villa. I glance down at his perfect body, the same image of him on his knees flashing once more through my mind. My cheeks grow hot as I look back up at him. Even from this far away, I can feel the intensity of his gaze. I can’t hold it; I have to look away.
I dig a fingernail into a soft spot in the wooden arm of the deck chair. I can feel him still looking at me. Feelings, feelings I can’t make sense of, are churning inside of me. I glance back up. As I had already known, he’s still staring. My face grows hotter. No, Becca. You know better. Life goes on, but you’re not ready for that. Not yet.
I sigh, knowing that I am right. Best to just swear off men altogether for a while. Even men as beautiful and as perfect as Rich.
Leaving my glass on the armrest of my chair, I get up and, without so much as a backwards glance, walk into my villa, pulling the door and curtain shut behind me.
Time to finally relax.