Page 7 of Vitamin Sea

“The freelance articles were good,” her boss continued, “but they weren’t Chloe Ryder good. For our October issue, I want something exciting. You’re one of my best writers and I’m happy to have you back.”

Chloe’s body relaxed.

She wasn’t being fired—thank her lucky stars.

It was a good reminder to her that, from here on out, she needed to bring her A-game.

“I understand,” Chloe nodded. “There’s a hotel in Nairobi that reached out last month. They have giraffes,” she suggested.

Dasha’s expression remained impenetrable.

“I also received invitations from Mardan Palace in Turkey and Aman Kyoto in Japan,” she suggested.

Dasha continued staring and then finally spoke.

“I received an invitation to a resort in Costa Rica,” she said. “They opened a few months ago and I think it would make for a good feature.”

Chloe was game. She had been to Costa Rica before and found it to be a beautiful country with rich culture and warm people.

“I’m more than happy to check it out,” Chloe said enthusiastically.

Dasha nodded in approval.

“What’s the resort?” Chloe inquired.

“It’s called Costa Morpho. I’ll forward you the invitation.”

And with that, her meeting with Dasha was over. Chloe headed back to her office, unpacked her things, and opened her laptop.

She had heard the email notification sound from her cell phone and the promised invitation from Costa Morpho that Dasha had forwarded appeared on her computer screen. The email offered her and a guest a week-long stay at their resort and requested a response along with available dates.

She hit the reply button and began to type. A few minutes later, after consulting her calendar, she hit send before looking at the invitation email again.

Costa Morpho—it was a bit of an odd-sounding name, but no stranger really than Sandals, Moon Palace, or Breathless.

She wondered what the resort’s schtick was.

With the existence of Google, she could find out within seconds, but in her role, Chloe made it a rule not to look up the resorts and hotels she was staying at in advance.

That way, she was seeing and experiencing the site with fresh eyes and no preconceived notions.

She felt it made for a more authentic experience.

She was looking forward to going on assignment and seeing what Costa Morpho had to offer.

And it wasn’t just because she had spent several months veritably locked inside her condo.

She genuinely loved her job, and when it came to new resorts, they were always looking to try and get one up on their competition.

Often, that meant the companies worked to up the ante when it came to their offerings.

One hotel she had stayed at had offered goldfish companions for their guests’ rooms. On request, a butler would bring up a fishbowl with an aquatic friend that sat on the dresser for the duration of the guest’s stay.

It was odd, but what made it even odder was that the hotel was situated in the Caribbean, literal steps away from the ocean where fish were a dime a dozen.

Chloe guessed the fish companions were for those guests who wanted round-the-clock reminders that they were in an oceanic paradise.

Still, given the size of the bowl that the poor fish was housed in, she saw it as cruel.

She had made mention of it in the travel feature she had written about the resort and the unhappy postings on X and barrage of emails they had received caused them to put their ‘goldfish for guests’ program on hold.

A hotel in Texas had a quirky amenity that Chloe had found fun—a podcast recording studio in their lobby.

While she wasn’t interested in being a podcaster herself, she had taken advantage of the studio and filmed some clips for her Instagram.

After all, as a travel editor, it was her job to test out all aspects of the hotel and its offerings to be able to inform potential guests about the good, the bad, the odd, and the ugly.

On assignment in Switzerland one spring, she had found herself staying at a hotel with an amenity labeled Meet the Sheep.

It was, exactly as the name stated—an opportunity for guests to meet and pet some sheep.

She had been delighted to be able to mingle with and pet the fluffy creatures, although she had been a little put out when she came to the realization that one of the hotel’s restaurants offered a couple of entrées consisting of their wooly next-door neighbours.

At the Fairmont Hotel MacDonald in Canada, she had fallen in love with a chubby yellow lab by the name of Smudge.

The dog was part of the Fairmont chain’s Canine Ambassador program, which donated a portion of their pet fees to a non-profit that gave guide dogs to the vision impaired.

Smudge had her own spacious doghouse and would greet guests when they walked into the lobby.

Chloe wasn’t surprised to see that she wasn’t the only one who enjoyed the sweet and friendly labrador.

She had watched one morning as a serious-looking man in an expensive suit had gotten down on the floor to give the dog a belly rub in the middle of the hotel.

A smile had spread across her face as he talked to Smudge in a sugary-sweet voice while the dog wagged her tail ferociously and lifted her paw in hopes of more belly rubs.

Chloe had also experienced a robot butler, a cake buffet, and—perhaps the strangest amenity of all—a Snoopy tuck-in service.

Which was exactly what it sounded like.

A person, dressed up as Snoopy in a set of striped pajamas, showed up to her room to tuck her in for the evening. She supposed it was all part of the experience, given it was a hotel that catered to kids, but as an adult, she found it quite unnerving.

Snoopy, like his cartoon counterpart, didn’t speak.

He had instead wordlessly indicated that Chloe needed to get into bed.

She had lain there awkwardly as Snoopy had then gone around the room and turned out all the lights except for the lamp beside her bed and then thrown a fuzzy blanket over top of the duvet.

After the life-sized Snoopy had left, she had immediately jumped out of bed, locked her hotel room door, and looked out of the peephole to make sure the costumed human wasn’t lurking outside of her door.

While she could definitely see the appeal of having Snoopy come to your room as a kid, for Chloe, it was the stuff that nightmares were made of.

That particular assignment had been part of a feature that focused on the ‘best’ places to stay for families, singles, couples, and sightseeing.

And despite being creeped out, she didn’t report on it negatively.

She knew how popular it would be with families, but in the article she had alluded to it being a strange experience for an adult.

She loved dogs. She just didn’t love the two-legged, costumed, human kind.

There were conventions for that kind of thing; it had occurred to her that the Snoopy tuck-in experience might actually attract people who frequented them.

She had snorted with laugher as she pictured it in her mind—an unsuspecting Snoopy coming to tuck in a guest only to be reverse Uno’d at the door by a furry.

She wasn’t sure what Costa Morpho would have to offer in the way of innovative or odd amenities, but she was hoping that a change of scenery would buoy her spirits and help to heal her heart.

And even if the resort didn’t have a host of spectacular amenities, she was just glad for the opportunity to get away.

She was hoping she would be able to bring Lala with her and wasn’t sure if her best friend could swing it.

She sent an inquiring text Lala’s way.

How’s your schedule looking next month? She wrote. Fancy a trip to Costa Rica?

Minutes later her phone pinged, and an enthusiastic reply popped up on screen.

Yessss!!! Girls trip!!! Give me the dates and I’ll make it happen!!!!!

Chloe smiled at the message.

She really loved her best friend. And after the intervention Lala had staged, thankful didn’t even begin to describe how Chloe felt towards her.

“Chloe!”

Her head snapped up and she saw Zhang, her colleague who worked in the beauty department, standing in her doorway.

“Hi!” Chloe smiled back.

“Welcome back to the office! We’ve missed you.”

“Thanks, I’ve missed you all too.”

Chloe’s morning was filled with a lot of that—people stopping by to say hello and tell her how happy they were to see her back. A few of them had taken a seat across from her desk and settled in for a lengthier chat.

“People have been commenting on your Instagram,” Jude, the very dramatic head of accessories, said seriously. “Some of them think you’ve died.”

A laugh escaped Chloe’s mouth and, seeing the serious expression still on Jude’s face, she quickly turned it into a cough.

Her Instagram, the only social media that she used, was kept strictly for work-related endeavors.

When she went to events, which, before her breakup, was at least once per week, she took photos and videos and posted pictures and stories.

When she went away on assignment, she did the same, but waited to post most of them until the magazine article came out to entice people to read about it.

She also reposted content from Strut and from her colleagues.

What she didn’t post was anything personal.

Liam, her friends, her family—none of them had ever graced her Instagram account.

And a good thing too, she thought. She couldn’t imagine how awkward it would be for her to have to go through her Instagram and delete all the happy couple photos of her and her ex.

Having been on the receiving end of text messages telling her that various people’s accounts had suddenly been wiped of all traces of their significant other, Chloe was glad to know that no one would be pulling apart her relationship and wondering what had happened.

Still, it was unsurprising that people had been speculating about her circumstances, given she had deleted the photo-sharing app on her phone a few days after the breakup.

For someone who posted at least once per week, a sudden months-long disappearance was concerning.

Most people with large followings who posted with regularity tended to give their followers a heads-up if they were taking a social media break.

Chloe had done no such thing, and she was now a bit apprehensive about reinstalling the app on her phone. It was something she would have to do, given her upcoming work assignment, and that wasn’t the only thing she was worried about.

In the past six months she hadn’t done any writing.

Her features had been written in the months before, and all her work, aside from editing, had been outsourced.

She was itching to get back to the keyboard—to pick up a pen and start outlining an article.

But there was no small part of her that felt a little scared that her writing might not be as sharp as it used to be.