gestured at the lush leather-clad interior, which looked and smelled expensive. “Pinch me.”
“I know, right?” Julie held her lei up, taking another quick sniff. “I’ve felt that way ever since they called my name at that meeting. I mean, I knew it was a luxury vacation, but I guess my experience to date was way too limited to let me imagine what this would really be like.”
She and Amanda both paused to snuffle at their leis again, happy-sighing in tandem.
“I’ll pinch you,” Alan offered. “Either of you.” He flopped closer to Julie, his shoulder brushing hers as he arranged himself. At the unexpected contact, both of them automatically shifted a few inches away, maintaining a buffering distance like magnets with the same polarity.
Amanda shot him a smirk. “I’ll pass on the pinch, thanks. Gosh, it was so great on the plane, Alan, while you were sleeping and quietly watching violent guy movies on your iPad and not giving anyone grief.”
He’d definitely picked the safer side to sit on.
“Don’t make me separate you two,” Julie warned.
“Julie was watching the movie, too,” Alan pointed out. “Don’t lie, Jules. I saw you do that fist-pump during the big shoot-out scene.”
She gave his shoulder a friendly shove, breaking the magical buffer zone again, and he laughed to cover up his startled reaction when she let her hand linger for a second, shaping itself around his upper arm. He thought of the days ahead, the beach and the likelihood of her touching his arm again when he was shirtless. Then he put that thought carefully away, in the same deep cupboard of his brain where he stored all the photos of Julie he hadn’t taken, the smiles she gave him first thing in the morning over the coffee machine in the break room, and the feeling of her lips under his the one and only time he’d let his impulses overcome his good sense.
The cupboard was locked and had to stay that way, because Julie liked him like a brother. She’d told him so, always said he was the dorky brother she’d never had, even though she had three perfectly good actual brothers. He knew two of them through work, and they seemed like nice enough guys. They seemed a whole lot like him, though, which might have been Julie’s deeper point. He reminded her too much of them for her to ever consider him in a romantic light. Even after that single tipsy kiss over a year ago—that kiss, God, all hot mulled wine and mistletoe and wild promise—she’d never seemed to go through the revelation Alan had felt. His whole world had shifted, things falling into place so hard he had to brace himself against the shock. No such bracing was needed on Julie’s part, because to her it had obviously been no big deal. He’d heard her laugh the incident off to a coworker who’d asked if they were together, describing it as a case of tripping and accidentally falling into each other’s faces. A one-time oopsie.
You have to get over any girl who calls you an oopsie, dude.
Instead of getting over it, he glanced at Julie from the corner of his eye and wondered what she’d look like in her bathing suit. Then he tried to correct himself, picturing Amanda in her bathing suit, as though he was simply picturing all the girls that way instead of one in particular. Hot as she was, though, Amanda did nothing for him. Julie crept back into his thoughts, like always.
If he’d had a girlfriend at the moment, it would have been easier not to dwell. He hadn’t wanted to come at all without a romantic plus-one. Unlike Julie, he didn’t have a single friend he especially wanted to spend four days and three nights with in a tropical paradise. Nobody other than Julie, at least, who was technically a platonic friend. But when his parents had refused his offer, he’d decided to suck it up and make the trip alone. He’d spent a few hours by phone and email convincing the resort to make up the difference in the prize amount with credits toward all the kayaking, helicopter tours and other adventurous stuff he hoped to do.
And hopefully, all that distraction would be enough to keep him from tripping and falling on Julie’s face again.
* * *
Julie felt like pressing her nose up against the glass, the better to take in the absurdly lush tropical foliage and iconic views. The drive from the airport to the resort took them most of the way across the island, and every random glance out the windows presented postcard-worthy scenery while the warm, spicy scent of the lei flowers filled the limo and charmed the very air she breathed. Hawaii. Oahu. Surely she would wake up at any moment.
She was accustomed to enjoying things after working for them, and the windfall nature of the trip had an illicit and slightly guilty charm. She’d overprepared, researching and packing for all possibilities, determined to plan it all out and wring every drop of perfection from this once-in-a-lifetime event. Now she worried that she’d set herself up for disappointment, because it was only a hotel, after all, no matter how many stars it ranked on the travel guides. Only Hawaii, and only four days and three nights. If she did pick somebody up to spend time with, he would most likely fall closer to Lothario than to Prince Charming on the spectrum. But the place felt magical, anyway. Like anything could happen.
The hotel grounds did nothing to debunk those fairy-tale delusions. More magic, more fresh tropical flowers, actual parrots on perches. The trips were her company’s big employee-appreciation door prizes for an unexpectedly fruitful year, and they hadn’t skimped. The hotel deserved all those stars it had earned and then some. The staff clearly knew how to do celebrity treatment, and they whisked the threesome in and out of the lobby in a twinkling, no lingering among the hoi polloi—not that there were any hoi polloi there, but if there had been, Julie and her two friends wouldn’t have had to wait with them for a bellhop.
The luggage was whisked away on a golf cart, while the trio opted to walk from the main hotel building to the beachfront “cottage” accommodations. Not really cottages, but isolated clusters of half a dozen luxury suites each, dotting the shoreline of the small bay on which the hotel sat. All had glass doors facing the beach and ocean, and were screened from the main hotel by trees and hibiscus bushes for an illusion of privacy. The short stroll to get there was a treat in itself, a mini-tour of some of the resort’s amazing amenities and breathtaking views. All the views were breathtaking. There were no mediocre angles to the place. Julie kept thinking of descriptors, then realized she was quoting the brochures to herself. Truth in advertising, to be sure.
Amanda kept saying, “Oh my God!” and whacking Julie on the arm as she pointed to one wonder after another: the lushly landscaped rock waterfall tumbling into the pool, the surreal turquoise water of the ocean lagoon, the clearly recognizable movie starlet lounging by the tiki hut bar.
She even heard Alan whisper, “Holy crap,” at one point, and he was usually pretty hard to impress. He wasn’t even looking at the starlet at the time. Possibly at the poolside tiki bar’s beer selection. She suspected he’d spend some time becoming more familiar with that very soon.
One of the bellhops peeled off with Alan to a room on the end of one cottage row. Julie and Amanda were at the opposite end of the row, and they said, “Ooooh,” in tandem when they saw where they’d be staying.
“We can be totally uncool about this now, yes?” Amanda pleaded.
“Yes!” Oh dear God, yes yes yes! If you couldn’t be uncool about something this awesome, there was no hope for you.
They jumped and squealed at each other, amusing the bellhop. “I hope you ladies continue to enjoy your stay this much.”
“I’m sure we will,” Julie assured him, bounding across the room to hand him a tip. “Thank you!”
“Mahalo!”
