Page 10 of The Other Side of Paradise (Story of Paradise #2)
Allison
I’d kind of expected things to be going differently when I showed up at the climbing gym.
It had seemed like a hell of a day on Ryan’s side—I’d had two separate members of Ryan’s extended family ask me during my shift on the front desk if I knew anything about her, and I’d lied and said I had no idea.
Company policy prevents me from sharing guests’ personal information, including their location would have been the correct answer, but I knew these kinds of people well enough to know their heads would explode if I said something like that, so I just gave them my best sympathetic look and said oh, I don’t know, but I’ll let you know if I hear from her.
They went on insisting that it was serious and that she could be in a lot of trouble, and I doubted they’d have liked it if I’d said oh, she doesn’t seem to be in trouble, she seems to be really enjoying her situation.
Except that apparently they were harassing Ryan, too—BB sent me a text early on in my shift telling me that the creepy ex-boyfriend and Ryan’s aunt had both gone around the bar trying to harass Brooklyn and that she wasn’t sure where Ryan was either, and to keep her alerted, and I passed it along to the relevant people in management to make sure Ryan would be kept safe.
Gavin was still on the clock when I showed up, finishing up an early shift, and he told me there had apparently been a big blowup at the beach side of the resort, by the volleyball court, where Ryan had fought with a family member who, from the descriptions, sounded like the angry aunt who went asking after Brooklyn at the bar.
Gavin also took special pleasure in grinning at me, leaning on the desk during a quiet moment, and said, “Your girlfriend was there, too, from what I heard.”
My brain fizzled out, and I glowered at him. “Shut—shut up. I don’t have a girlfriend. Who do you mean?”
“Miss Stella Valerie Bell, of course. Heard she was shouting down this aunt telling her she was out of her damn mind for trying to make Ryan get back with this cheating slimeball. Very exciting times.”
Oh… she was sticking up for her sister and telling her asshole family members to mind their own business. That was so hot…
I yanked myself back to reality. Judging by the stupid look in his eyes, Gavin knew full well where I’d gone for a second there. I scowled at him.
“Great, well, I’ll pass that relevant information along to BB,” I said, my voice pointed, “and that will be the end of that.”
He laughed, pushing off the desk and walking towards the back. “You get so embarrassed so easily. I can’t be held responsible for making fun of you.”
“This is entirely inappropriate for my supervisor.”
“Uh-huh. We’ve already hazed you, you’re stuck with us now.”
He made a good point. Oh well.
Between the blowup at the beach and the search party, Brooklyn’s worried text, and Ryan’s seeming disappearance, I’d thought the situation was serious, but joke was on me, because when I showed up at the climbing gym that night, Ryan was having the time of her life climbing one of the lower-grade walls and overtly flirting with Brooklyn, who was openly staring at Ryan’s ass.
And Ryan didn’t even seem to mind. I’d give the two of them four hours before they were fucking, by my estimate.
Also, Ryan was better than me at climbing. On her first day.
I stormed across the gym floor towards them, huffing while I carried my bag, and I said, “Jesus Christ, she just started and she’s already so good that I hate her.”
Ryan looked back down at me from where she was up close to the top of one of the smaller walls, her face flushed with exertion—or maybe from overt flirting with Brooklyn, I didn’t know—and she beamed and said, “Hi, Allison. Love you too.”
I laughed, standing under the wall and looking up at her. “I hate you, asshole,” I said. “Fall off.”
“I think I won’t,” she said breezily.
“Nice to see you,” Brooklyn said, stepping up casually next to me, practically glowing. She must have really been having fun here so far with Ryan… “Good day at work?” she said, and I ignored her, gesturing to Ryan.
“Holy hell, though, how long have you been here? It takes me like an hour to get anywhere.”
Brooklyn spoke up for her. Like a damn couple. “Just a bit,” she said. “She clapped her hands with chalk and leapt up onto the wall and started jumping around like she was born to do it.”
“I literally hate you both,” I laughed, and I slung my bag onto the floor close to the benches by the wall. Still, I was happy for them—Ryan clearly needed every nice thing she could get right now, and Brooklyn, well, at least she didn’t have to feel guilty about the whole Shane thing anymore.
I dropped onto the floor and fell into my warmup stretches, or at least as well as I could manage—physical activity was not my thing, and even just the stretches tired me out. When Brooklyn sat with me, I lowered my voice and spoke just for the two of us.
“So everything’s okay now with her?” I said, voice carefully measured, and she shrugged.
“Her family are all douchebags, but aside from that, she’s doing well, actually.” She beamed, and she raised her voice, pulling Ryan into the conversation. “Not only that, but she’s agreed to help me with your mission.”
I was going to throw up. “What?” I blurted, and I hugged myself tightly, shooting her a look. “Oh my god, are you going around talking to people about that?”
Ryan let out a curse from the top of the wall, and she fumbled, falling off the wall and landing on the ground.
She landed elegantly, feet-first with knees bent and softening her landing.
Usually when I went down I just hit ass-first and called it a day.
Ryan turned back to me with a big smile, clearly a little out of breath and flushed from the exercise, and she said, “Yeah, Brooklyn told me all about how you want to go around having tons of hookups with total strangers—”
“Fuck off,” I laughed, standing up. “I said I’d be curious to try it literally one time.” Still, it wasn’t as mortifying as I thought it’d be—like maybe there was part of me that felt now like oh, I’m cool and have casual sex too, like a cool adult.
Ryan gave me a casual, breezy smile, and she said, “Me too.” I paused.
“What, you want to hook up with a girl, too?” I said, and she shrugged.
“While we’re laying it all out in the open, sure. Just while I’m here. I asked Brooklyn if she could help me pull off the same thing. So we’re in the same boat.”
She wasn’t looking right at me when she said it. I guess she was just as awkward about this as I was. That was kinda refreshing, actually.
Still, I wasn’t letting her off the hook. I narrowed my eyes. “So you finally admit to being gay.”
She gave me a deadpan look. “No, fully heterosexual. Just like every woman who wants to hook up with another woman.”
Oh, she wanted to give me attitude, huh? I gestured to Brooklyn. “There’s one right there,” I said. “Brooklyn would happily—”
Brooklyn cut in, her voice raised a fraction. “Allison, are you planning on climbing today, or just standing there talking about how desirable I am?”
I snorted. I guess she still didn’t want the dark secret of her wanting to fuck Ryan coming out yet. “Ew,” I said. “I don’t know which sounds worse. Okay, I’ll climb literally once so you can get off my back.”
But I guess it wasn’t too bad. Even though Ryan was better than me, which was desperately annoying on her first time doing it, she was still closer to my level than she was to Brooklyn’s, and I felt a little less like the one loser off in the corner doing loser climbs.
We stuck to the same grade, Ryan obviously trying to show off a little bit, and I made small talk with her in between complaining about the wall.
Or complaining to the wall. I just hated the wall.
All things considered, it was almost kinda fun. Mostly just because the two of them were easy to get along with. I’d still have rather done literally anything else with the two of them if I wanted to hang out, but it was cool.
And Brooklyn also casually dropped at one point that she was taking Ryan to her usual club Casablanca after this. To help Ryan find a girl. I… was sure Ryan would find one. Seriously, a million dollars said they were fucking tonight.
When we got outside, I was sweaty and gross and every part of my body was achy, but I felt better for the exercise—I hated that people were right and that a little exercise did feel good in the end, no matter how desperately I wanted them to be wrong—but all of that went out of my mind with a snort and a derisive eyeroll at Ryan and Brooklyn when they both stopped at Brooklyn’s car together.
“Oh, you got Brooklyn chauffeuring you and everything,” I said, my voice as loaded as I could make it.
Brooklyn smiled politely at me. “I’d drive you too if you didn’t spill lemonade in my car.”
I put my hands on my hips. “You still drive Laura around even though she literally threw up in your car twice. You just wanna pick on me.”
She grinned, lighting up in the way she always did when we had our back-and-forth. “Okay, yeah, I do,” she said. “For real, though, Ryan was just at my place before this, so it made sense. Do you want me to drive you home so you can feel special?”
“Nah,” I laughed, waving as I headed towards my car. “You two get your special time together. Enjoy your clubbing, weirdos. Text me the updates on how it goes.”
I hated to admit it, but the two of them were cute together. And I really hated to admit how jealous I was.
I kept thinking about it all through the rest of the evening, back to my bungalow and lying there under the moonlight that spilled in through the big window over my bed, the palm trees framing a picture-perfect view of the ocean, my canvases filled with half-finished paintings scattered through the cluttered room, sketchbooks in messy piles, and my head the messiest collection of scattered nonsense of all.
Thinking about it—Ellie had fucked me up.
I’d been so… romantic, before all of that.
Dreamed of finding the perfect girl and having a magical whirlwind romance.
And then I thought it was happening, and the very next morning, the universe laughed in my face, pulled the rug out and kicked me while I was down.
Mocking me for believing in something so stupid.
I hadn’t even entertained the barest thought of attraction to a girl for the longest time since then.
But… ugh. I missed it. Seriously. I missed the happy daydreams and the nervous excitement when there was a girl I liked. Missed the way I would get my hopes up imagining scenarios where I’d run into her. Missed the way a crush’s name felt on my lips.
Guess it wasn’t really that I wanted a hookup so much as that I wanted to believe in something nice again. But a hookup wasn’t the worst way to get there.
So that night, I let myself think about the things I’d told myself not to—let myself dabble in stupid daydreams, picture myself out on that moonlit beach with another girl next to me, digging our feet into the cool sand, our laughter melting into the sound of the rolling waves.
And I tried really hard not to picture Stella’s face there in those daydreams, but judging by the fact that I came to from my daydreaming and realized I had one of my sketchbooks in front of me with a quick doodle of a girl’s face that looked an awful lot like Stella’s, I didn’t do too great.
“Fuck me,” I laughed, groaned, all at once, as I threw the sketchbook back onto the desk, my pen with it, and I flopped back onto the bed.
Maybe tomorrow, I could try to be a bit more like Brooklyn. I’d never admit to her face that I was thinking something like that, though.