Page 4 of A Quick Stop in Paradise

“I assure you I’m not. Rough morning, huh?”

“Everybody who thinks money is a substitute for decency checking in today…” She shook her head. She was the youngest member of the concierge team, a college sophomore getting her degree in fine art and working here for the summer to help cover it. She’d worked here last summer, too, where I’d taken her under my wing and babied her, but now that she was here for a second summer, she got no such treatment, a full-on member of the club now. Including the dead look in her eyes after a Monday morning shift, otherwise known as arrival time for all the people rich enough to book an entire week but simultaneously cheap enough to think they’re getting a better deal if they skip one weekend. Still, she smiled. “Had a better interaction with this one girl right before clocking off, though, and it made things better.”

“Oh yeah? Picking up girls?”

She rolled her eyes. “Not everyone is trying to bang every person they see, BB. God. No, just her grandmother was trying to redeem Hilton reward points for an upgrade at our very non-Hilton resort and was acting like I personally was on a quest to ruin her vacation. So the granddaughter came in to send her very politely away, and she ordered some flowers and chocolate sent up to the grandmother’s suite so she could pretend we upgraded her, had it put on her account without the grandmother knowing.”

“Ha. That’s cute. Not often you seerich enough to order something without checking the costalongsidedoing a random favor to help the schmucks at concierge.” I slid her drink her way, and she snorted as she picked it up.

“Helping the schmucks at the bar is just normal, though. It’s called tipping.”

“Tipping is a payment for a service. The drinks cost money. Attention and pretending I like someone costs tips.”

“Pointedly angling your cleavage towards someone costs extra tips.”

I laughed, wiping down the counter. Quiet right now—Monday afternoon, even in resort land, wasn’t the most happening time at a bar, mostly because everyone here now was too busy enjoying the fact that they got to sleep in on a Monday. The cozy little cabana-style design of the bar, worked in along the massive pool—it was a good spot to rack up tips and enjoy the best weather in the world all in one go. A lot of hot people coming through did not make the job any worse.

Most of my coworkers were either passing through or miserable, and I couldn’t totally blame them—high-budget resorts meant people expecting perfection or they’d act like you were stealing their money personally and intentionally giving them a bad day. Me, though, I couldn’t think of a better job.

Helped that I always delivered perfection, so people didn’t have a lot to complain about anyway. Also helped that I was shallow and had a huge ego, so I liked the attention I got working here. Even if it was supposed tojustbe attention—sleeping with a guest was an absolute no-no that all of us here had done anyway. As long as it wasn’tatthe bar, nobody really cared. Management knew the promise of potentially getting lucky with a hot bartender was part of the draw of the bar, so they pretended they didn’t see anything.

“You call itpointedly angling my cleavage,I call itstrategically leveraging my assets for maximum return on revenue.Tomato, tomato. So, who’s this girl you like?”

“I’m not crushing on her, weirdo, she’s probably, like, your age.”

I was twenty-six years old. Leave it to a college girl to make that into a weapon like I was ancient and decrepit. “So, who’s this girl you like as a good customer?”

She laughed. “Ryan Bell, staying with her boyfriend in suite 36. I’m absolutely giving her preferential treatment if anything comes up. You’d better do the same.”

“Boyfriend, huh?” I clicked my tongue disapprovingly. She rolled her eyes.

“Now I see what it is. You were just scoping out if you had to fight past me to hook up with her.”

I laughed, glancing up as someone slid into the bar further down. “Hey, I’m just saying, you’ve crushed on a guest before, and you felt sad that you didn’t at leasttryonce she left. So I’m hoping we’ve all learned our lessons. Now, I’m going to leave before you argue with me.”

“Jerk,” she laughed after me as I slid down the bar to greet the older couple sitting down at the end, and I smiled and laughed with them over little things as I prepared them a couple of drinks. Older couples went one of two ways: the kinds that grew together, or the kinds that grew apart and just never considered divorce an option. In a world of too many of the second kind—passive-aggressive comments about each other, cold gestures in front of each other—it was always the sweetest thing getting to see one of the couples that were blissfully in love into their seventies, giggling together like little kids. I stuck around for a little while listening to them talk about vacation stories, and I was a little more lighthearted once I was at the other end of the bar and my manager Greer caught me, a tall Black woman withseriousall over her features, which did not accurately represent her personality at all.

“Brooklyn,” she said lightly. “Going well?”

“Couple down at the end of the bar right now were just telling me about their goldendoodle called Nachos, so all in all it’s a perfect morning.”

She looked down at her tablet. “Okay, well, now I want nachos, so first of all I’m blaming you for that. I know you were supposed to finish at seven today, but apparently a group is coming around to pack in the place right before seven, so do you think I could convince you to stay an extra half an hour?”

“Depends. If you’ll agree to look the other way while I take a shot of cachaça, then absolutely. If you’ll look the other way while I drink an entire caipirinha, I’ll stay an extra hour, no complaints.”

She tapped her screen. “Take the caipirinha, then. Based on what I’ve heard about this group, you might need it… sorority party, and a rowdy one at that. I’ll put you down for an extra hour. You’re the best.” She paused. “If you’re going to run off with one of the sorority girls, I’ll pretend I don’t see that either as long as you do it after your shift ends.”

“You think I’m that simple?” I put a hand to my chest. “Honestly. It’s like you just dream of going around insulting your best employee.”

She put her hands on her hips. “I’m just calling it as I see it, Miss. Now, back to work with you.”

Honestly, unbelievable. Making an accusation like that of me? Just because it was true? Really, what gave her the right?

The bar picked up a little bit, and I moved between customers, between the middle-aged women who saw me as a cocktail machine and didn’t acknowledge my existence past that, the middle-aged men who saw a cocktail as an excuse to hit on me, and my personal bugbear, the people who snapped their fingers to get my attention—wasn’t the perfect crowd, but at least Allison hung out at the bar talking with the front desk supervisor Gavin, both of them clocked off from a morning shift, and I got to complain to both of them about customers in between making ten drinks at a time. It was once it quieted down a bit that Allison asked me for just a glass of sparkling water with lime this time, and I slid it across the bar top to her, where she nursed it slowly.

“I would do it again, you know,” she mumbled. “If I had a crush on a guest again, I wouldn’t go for it this time either.”

I studied her for a second before I arched an eyebrow. “Oh, you’ve premeditated backing out, huh?”

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