Avery Shaw barely noticed the salty breeze whipping pale blonde hair across her face and fluttering the diaphanous layers of her dress against her legs. She was blissfully deep in a whirlpool of warm, hazy, happy memories as she stood on the sandy footpath and beamed up at the facade of the Tropicana Nights Resort.
She lifted a hand to shield her eyes from the shimmering Australian summer sun, and breathed the place in. It was bigger than she remembered, and more striking. Like some great white colonial palace, uprooted out of another era and transplanted to the pretty beach strip that was Crescent Cove. The garden now teetered on the wild side, and its facade was more than a little shabby around the edges. But ten years did that to a place.
Things changed. She was hardly the naive sixteen-year-old with the knobbly knees she’d been the summer she was last there. Back when all that mattered was friends, and fun, and—
A loud whoosh and rattle behind her tugged Avery back to the present. She glanced down the curving sidewalk to see a group of skinny brown-skinned boys in board shorts hurtling across the road on their skateboards before running down the beach and straight into the sparkling blue water of the Pacific.
And sometimes, she thought with a pleasant tightening in her lungs, things don’t change much at all.
Lungs full to bursting with the taste of salt and sea and expectation, Avery and her Vuitton luggage set bumped merrily up the wide front steps and into the lobby. Huge faux marble columns held up the two-storey ceiling. Below sat cushy lounge chairs, colossal rugs, and potted palms dotted a floor made of the most beautiful swirling mosaic tiles in a million sandy tones. And by the archway leading to the restaurant beyond sat an old-fashioned noticeboard shouting out: Two-For-One Main Courses at the Capricorn Café For Any Guests Sporting an Eye Patch!
She laughed, the sound bouncing about in the empty space. For the lobby was empty, which for a beach resort at the height of summer seemed odd. But everyone was probably at the pool. Or having siestas in their rooms. And considering the hustle and bustle Avery had left behind in Manhattan, it was a relief.
Deeper inside the colossal entrance, reception loomed by way of a long sandstone desk with waves carved into the side. Behind said desk stood a young woman with deep red hair pulled back into a long sleek ponytail, her name tag sporting the Tropicana Nights logo slightly askew on the jacket of the faded yellow and blue Hawaiian print dress, which might well have been worn in the seventies.
“Ahoy, there!” sing-songed the woman—whose name tag read Isis—front teeth overlapping endearingly. Then, seeing Avery’s gaze light upon the stuffed parrot wiggling on her shoulder, Isis gave the thing a scratch under the chin. “It’s Pirates and Parrots theme at the resort this week.”
“Of course it is,” Avery said, the eye patch now making more sense. “I’m Avery Shaw. Claudia Davis is expecting me.”
“Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum... The American!”
“That I am!” The girl’s pep was infectious, jet lag or no.
“Claude has been beside herself all morning, making me check the Qantas website hourly to make sure you arrived safe and sound.”
“That’s my girl,” Avery said, feeling better and better about her last-minute decision to fly across the world, to the only person in her world who’d understand why.
Tap-tap-tap went Isis’s long aqua fingernails on the keyboard. “Now, Claude could be...anywhere. Things have been slightly crazy around here since her parents choofed off.”
Choofed off? Maybe that was Aussie for retired. Crazy or not, when Avery had first called Claude to say she was coming, Claude had sounded giddy that the management of the resort her family had owned for the past twenty years was finally up to her. She had ideas! Brilliant ones! People were going to flock as they hadn’t flocked in years!
Glancing back at the still-empty lobby, Avery figured the flocking was still in the planning. “Shall I wait?”
“No ho ho,” said Isis, back to tapping at the keyboard, “you’ll be waiting till next millennium. Get thee to thy room. Goodies await. I’ll get one of the crew to show you the way.”
Avery glanced over her shoulder, her mind going instantly to the stream of messages her friends had sent when they’d heard she was heading to Australia, most of which were vividly imagined snippets of advice on how best to lure a hot, musclebound young porter “down under.”
The kid ambling her way was young—couldn’t have been a day over seventeen. But with his bright red hair and galaxy of freckles, hunching over his lurid yellow and blue shirt and wearing a floppy black pirate hat that had seen better days, he probably wasn’t what they’d had in mind.
“Cyrus,” Isis said, an impressive warning note creeping into her voice.
Cyrus looked up, his flapping sandshoes coming to a slow halt. Then he grinned, the overlapping teeth putting it beyond doubt that he and Isis were related.
“This is Miss Shaw,” warned Isis. “Claudia’s friend.”
“Thanks, Cyrus,” Avery said, heaving her luggage onto the golden trolley by the desk since Cyrus was too busy staring to seem to remember how.
“Impshi,” Isis growled. “Kindly escort Miss Shaw to the Tiki Suite.”
Avery’s bags wobbled precariously as Cyrus finally grabbed the high bar of the trolley and began loping off towards the rear of the lobby.
“You’re the New Yorker,” he said.
Jogging to catch up, Avery said, “I’m the New Yorker.”
“So how do you know Claude anyway? She never goes anywhere,” said Cyrus, stopping short and throwing out an arm that nearly got her around the neck. She realised belatedly he was letting a couple of women with matching silver hair and eye-popping orange sarongs squeeze past.
Avery ducked under Cyrus’s arm. “Claude has been all over the place, and I know because I went with her. The best trips were Italy...Morocco... One particular night in the Maldives was particularly memorable. We first met when my family holidayed here about ten years back.”
Not about ten years. Exactly. Nearly to the day. There’d be no forgetting that these next few weeks. No matter how far from home she was.
“Now, come on Cyrus,” Avery said, shaking off the sudden weight upon her chest. She looped a hand through the crook of Cyrus’s bony elbow and dragged him in the direction of her suite. “Take me to my room.”
Kid nearly tripped over his size thirteens.
One wrong turn and a generous tip later the Tiki Suite was all hers, and Avery was alone in the blissful cool of the soft, worn, white-on-white decor where indeed goodies did await: a basket of warm-skinned peaches,
