Page 52 of Fight

“Good morning!” She greeted them with a big, toothy smile as she walked over to the open computer station between them, looking back and forth at them both expectantly.

“Oh my god,” she suddenly gushed, her eyes catching on Kendra. “I love your hair, Kendra! Purple is my favorite color.”

Kendra reached up to touch the new purple color she’d had weaved into her braids. “Thanks, Lena,” she responded with a chuckle.

Maggie had a question poised on her face when a guest walked up to the desk and stood between Maggie and Lena. Before Maggie could jump in with a greeting, Lena plastered a big smile on her face and a series of excited, perky words rushed out of her mouth.

“Good morning! How can I assist you?” she cheerfully asked the guest, her smile widening as she spoke.

“Hi,” the guest responded—a woman with three small children in tow. “Is there a place to get coffee and bagels around here?”

“Oh, yes,” Lena said excitedly. “You should check out the Golden Carafe. It’s a local place and it’s just wonderful. They roast their own beans and have lots of yummy treats that the kids would love, too.”

“That sounds wonderful,” the woman sighed. “Is it close?”

“Super close,” Lena assured her as she dove into directions on how to get to the Golden Carafe from the front door of the resort.

The woman looked at her gratefully. “Thank you so much. You saved my sanity this morning.”

“No problem! Have a great day!” she said with a wave as the woman walked away.

Lena turned around to see Maggie and Kendra looking at her with matching flabbergasted expressions on their faces.

“So,good morning,” Maggie finally said with a laughing side eye. “You sure are chipper today. Who are you and what have you done with Lena?”

“I’m just…happy,” Lena said with a giggle. “I had a really good time on my days off.”

“Oh yeah,” Kendra noted wryly. “Didn’t you hike Dalak with that guy?”

“Daniel, yes…” Lena trailed off, not sure how much wanted to get into the specifics of what happened on the hike. “But, it didn’t really work out and I ended up doing most of it with…someone else.”

“Someone else? Who?” Kendra pressed, tilting her head suggestively.

“Yeah, just someone else,” Lena confirmed absently. “And I got a ton to work with for my mural submission—I started putting it down last night. It’s a Chagall-esque collage of different Conrad sights with Sapphire Falls as a focal point. Do you want to see what I’ve got so far?” She started to move away from her computer to get her sketchbook out of her bag.

“No, you can’t do that, Lena,” Maggie said sternly as Lena stopped in her tracks and looked at her questioningly.

“No, not the mural,” she said, waving Lena’s questioning face off. “You came in here sprinkling fairy princess vibes everywhere. Who were you with?”

Lena sighed as she slowly moved back to her computer and looked at the screen intently as she pretended to think very seriously about something before looking back and forth between the two of them.

“Um…Jake,” she finally admitted quietly.

Kendra gasped as Maggie started laughing knowingly.

“Upstairs-Jake?” Kendra asked at the same time as Maggie said confidently, “I knew it.”

Lena’s face shot up in alarm. “What do you mean you ‘knew it,’ Maggie?”

“Well, he saved you from Mr. McIntosh, of course,” Maggie responded, as if there was nothing else to it. Lena sighed in relief.Well, that’s not too bad.

However, a couple beats later Maggie looked up with a mischievous smile on her face. “And I saw you guys making out in the parking lot of the Blue Sky a couple weeks ago,” she added innocently.

Kendra gasped and held her head back with shock. “Lena! Who knew you had it in you?!”

“Er, you saw that?” Lena asked, looking disconcertingly between the two of them.How many other people had seen that?She’d forgotten how public that was, but it seemed pretty minimal after sex on a rock, out in the great wide open.

“Yep,” Maggie confirmed with a laugh.“Along with the six people I was with.”

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