5

My shoulders felt like someone had coated them in scolding hot oil and proceeded to scrape at the skin with a stainless steel scouring pad, but that wasn't about to dampen my mood.

I swapped out my black bikini for my pink strapless one, so I could avoid the pain every time I moved my upper body. The diamond encrusted silver band on my right-hand ring finger was a present from my mum for my twenty-first birthday. I pulled it forwards above my knuckle to reveal the indented white band.

How? It looked like I'd been on holiday for three weeks.

I cleared away the dried-up coconut from the balcony. Billie had somehow managed to convince the kitchen staff to give her two last night. I'd seen nobody else in the hotel with a full coconut; I wasn't sure how she did it, but she had a persuasive power unlike anyone I'd ever met. The sweet translucent fluid was strange at first but refreshing. I'd never, in all my twenty-eight years on earth, had the opportunity to drink from a coconut, so it was an experience.

I removed my purse from the safe and tipped the Mexican pesos onto the bed. I divided the fifty and twenty notes by the remainder of days; in doing so I worked out I could tip the staff at least eight times per day without having to draw out any more cash. I thought that was adequate .

The door slammed shut. Sarah entered in gym gear, sweat dripping from her forehead, and a large plastic cup of liquid the colour of urine in her hand.

"Couldn't you hold your bladder?" I joked.

"Very funny." Sarah rolled her eyes. She looked down at the spread of money on the bed. "What are you doing?"

"Arranging my tip money."

"Only you would work out how much money you could tip before you'd even had the service worth tipping."

Billie popped her head through the design-driven hole in the wall that separated the bathroom and the bedroom. "I said the exact same thing."

"What if nobody deserves a tip?" Sarah asked.

"I'll give them one anyway." I'd specifically brought tipping money. It was tucked away neatly in a separate travel wallet clearly labelled in my scroll like handwriting. The same research that told me about the exceptional waiter service also told me how very little they earned, and their reliance on tips made me want to break down and cry. The service I'd seen so far was impeccable, and I had no doubt my tips would be effortlessly offered out.

"I'll give you a tip," Billie piped up, "don't eat the octopus at the seafood restaurant." She rubbed at her stomach.

"Bad?" Sarah asked.

"Really bad," I clarified. I was the one sharing a room with Billie. I was very aware.

"Why couldn't you have had the salmon or the chicken like us? You always try the strangest thing on the menu." Sarah plonked her sweaty body on the corner sofa next to the sliding balcony doors .

"You two are boring," Billie scoffed. She exited the bathroom and made a beeline for the minibar.

"Are we? Or are we just cautious?" I challenged. There was no way I could eat octopus; some things are meant to be left in the sea. Poor things.

"Exactly. Boring." Billie laughed.

She proceeded to chuck the complimentary M it bounced off the concrete table and rolled across the floor.

"Shit—" She scarpered after it, but the delicious red chocolate nut ended up buried underneath the bed.

"Great, now we'll get ants."

"I'd be more concerned about the black widow if I was you."

"The what? Where is it?" I jumped up, knocked the money off the bed, narrowly missed the standing lamp, and toppled over the edge of the tub on the balcony. I hurt my knee, my arm, and my face in the process of swatting away anything on my body, close to my body, or potentially dangling above my body.

"I said you should be concerned about them not that there was one." Billie laughed. "Do you have to react like that?"

"I'm glad you find my crippling fear of spiders funny." My panting reduced, but I was on high alert.

"Do you think you're spider-phobic?" Sarah asked.

"What did you just call it?" Billie interjected, mid-M so are you spider-phobic or not?" Sarah stuck her tongue out at Billie, and I couldn't help but chuckle. Billie was smart, really smart, in a textbook type of way. She absorbed information like a sponge, whereas my brain liked to work on more of a need-to-know basis. Over the years I discovered there wasn't a lot it needed to know.

"Come and feel my heartbeat. I am petrified ."

The overwhelming need to escape whenever I so much as sensed a spiders presence painted a clear picture. "You're shaking." Sarah gripped my arm. "And sweating."

"I told you. I don't do it for dramatic effect."

"Are you sure all these symptoms are not simply down to the wet dream you had last night?" Billie teased.

Sarah gasped. "You had a wet dream?" She pulled me down by my arm into a seated position. "Tell me everything."

"It wasn't a wet dream." I scowled.

"It definitely was; I practically heard you moan." Billie goaded.

I picked up the thick triangular cushion from the balcony seating and launched it through the sliding glass door. "You're such a liar."

"You were moaning?" Sarah smirked.

"Please, stop it, you're making me uncomfortable."

I covered my eyes with my hands and pushed my lips into a pout. I hated talking about anything to do with sex. I Googled sexual anxiety once after a conversation about masturbating. I found an article by a couple's therapist that told me to perform a variety of different exercises to reduce the anxiety. When the article told me to focus on exploring erogenous zones without the pressure of it leading to sex, I realised the article was aimed more at sex with a partner and was less useful for conversing with your friends. I would've been slightly concerned had they wanted me to explore Billie's erogenous zones .

"Okay, I'll stop teasing. She didn't moan. I added that part, but there was some sexual intensity in your dream; was there not?" Billie carefully made her way onto the balcony, hands up to protect her face from cushion number two.

"Yes, there was some—" I didn't want to say the words. "We all had a conversation last night before we went to sleep about her , and well, obviously when you talk about someone or something right before bed you dream about them. That's a fact; is it not?" I looked at my two best friends, and they nodded in agreement.

"What exactly happened in this dream?" Sarah asked.

Billie pretended to zip her mouth and throw away the key.

"I walked down to the cenote. When I arrived she was in the middle of the water laid floating on her back with her hair spread all around her. I didn't ask why she was there or what she was doing; I just climbed into the pool and started pushing her in a circle and laughing."

"Interesting." Sarah narrowed her eyes.

"Then she climbed out of the pool and gestured for me to join her on the sun lounger. There was a dog-sized lizard walking around and futuristic robotic waiters with Mexican accents and metal plyers as hands."

"Okay—" Sarah bit the corner of her lip. I knew her well enough to know she was desperately trying not to laugh, and I couldn't blame her.

"Don't laugh."

"Sorry, sorry, I'm not. Go on."

"The Mexican robots told us it was a safe place to... y'know." I looked at Billie for some support.

"Do bits," she clarified.

Sarah could barely keep a straight face .

"Yeah, that. And then she made a move, and I woke up." Thank God .

"You didn't get to taste the forbidden fruit in your dream?" Sarah asked.

"No. Nor would I want to," I verified. Why on earth would I have wanted to initiate sexual contact with her ?

"Your dream suggests you want her," Billie rebutted.

"I do not want to have sex on a sun lounger down by the cenote with the girl whose name I don't even know."

100 per cent I do not.

Wouldn't even cross my mind in the real world.

It was a dream, a weird scenario created by my unconscious mind. It didn't mean anything. Yes, I might have woken up with a throb between my legs. I may have been the slightest bit curious as to how the dream would've progressed, but that was totally normal.

"I wonder what it means?" Sarah asked. "I think if you go to sleep and dream about someone it means they're dreaming about you too."

We craned our heads to look at Sarah.

"You know that's crap, right?" Billie challenged. "I'm sorry, but there is no way in scientifical hell when you dream about someone it's because their brain has somehow sent a signal to your brain to tell you they're dreaming about you as well. It's the most cliché thing I've ever heard."

Totally cliché.

"Totally crap." Billie added.

I agreed wholeheartedly; I did.

She was the devil. The elevator was Hell, and the cenote was the first circle of Hell. It was the hotel's very own Limbo, where the devil herself waited patiently for the souls who never sinned .

"I don't believe it, but it's a cute thought," Sarah explained.

Cute indeed.

The rooftop infinity pool provided prime views of the whole resort and the clear blue Caribbean Sea. The choice of seating area was vast. Too many options made my brain malfunction. My decision-making skills were reliant on a certain level of information and confidence. I had neither in new surroundings.

I faced various choices daily: my choice to wear a certain outfit or to sit in a certain position at a restaurant required the same thought process as deciding what car to buy or what to study at university. There was no in-between. The decision paralysis frustrated me at times. Thankfully, Billie was the complete opposite, which helped the group dynamic.

"Shall we sit over there?" she asked.

"Sure." I nodded.

My body relaxed.

We opted for the daybed. It was covered by grey cloth strapped over a white concrete canopy. There were smaller wooden sun beds laid out neatly on the row in front with additional thick grey padded cushions and smaller scatter cushions. It must've taken the pool concierge a long time to set them up just for people to sweat all over them. Eww!

There were two types of people, the ones who lay flat out all oiled up and sweating on a towel-less sun lounger forgetting that the person the day before did the exact same thing, and me—making sure my towels were perfectly covering every inch of the sun bed, so even the heels of my feet weren't contaminated with other people's bodily fluids.

Four separate sunken seating areas filled the space between us and the edge of the rooftop. They were completely unoccupied, and it wasn't until I watched a family of pale orange flies swarm the greenery nearby that I understood the reason. I stayed well clear.

The pool concierge arrived almost instantly, racing past us to set our towels down on our chosen beds. The service was next level. We ordered three pi?a coladas to start the day. My taste in drinks didn't vary significantly from the average English girl. I wasn't quirky with my choices. I stuck to the basics, but it guaranteed a predictable hangover, and I liked that. Never again would I be peer-pressured into drinking my body weight in tequila. It happened once, and it would never happen again. The following morning I'd considered going to the emergency room to have them check the pain in my body wasn't related to something more serious.

"Man, I love this place." Sarah sprawled, arms stretched above her head, the small ripples of her toned stomach flexing back at me. Sarah had a gym body, the type that takes years and years of hard work and dedication to acquire. I preferred to dedicate my life to watching reality TV and hoping my metabolism would somehow remain the same; here's to hoping.

"It's incredible, isn't it?" I chimed.

"It just lacks eye candy; don't you think?" Billie countered. "Like, where are all the men? There was one relatively attractive man yesterday at the pool, but then his wife turned up, and my dreams of a holiday romance were shattered. "

"My eye candy and your eye candy are significantly different," I pointed out.

"Well, duh. You two like pussy; I like penis."

"Pussy sounds so vulgar." I didn't like the word. It didn't roll off the tongue without sounding so culturally inappropriate.

"It's better than Panty Hamster," Billie said. I almost projectile spat my pi?a colada on the unsuspecting couple in front of us.

"What did you just call it?"

"Panty Hamster. Please tell me you've heard of that," Billie asked.

"Erm, no."

"What about Furry Taco?" Billie added.

"You're making these up." I doubted. She knew how naive I was, and she teased me constantly.

"I swear to you; it's a real thing, so is Bearded Clam." Billie said all this with a straight face.

"I've heard that one," Sarah chuckled.

"How is it the ‘straight girl'," I used air quotes because I would never fully be convinced, "knows more bizarre vagina names than I do?"

"Private school, I guess. Thinking of new vagina related names to call my friends was the highlight of my day." I could picture Billie attending a private school, studying pretentious subjects, putting on a fabricated accent, and trying to immerse herself in the rich Tory culture.

The vagina talk halted out of respect when an older couple set down their towels on the bed next to us. I made eye contact with the gentleman; he smiled back, but I didn't expect him to spark up a conversation.

"Are you girls Australian?" He asked in his American accent as he adjusted his umbrella for optimum shade .

"No, we're English." I smiled.

His wife whacked him on the arm and laughed. "I told you, Bob." His smile was endearing. I got the impression his wife was often right, and he'd accepted it.

"We overheard you at breakfast, and my wife thought you guys were English. I could've sworn you were Australian. The accents are so similar."

They were vastly different accents, but in the three times I'd visited America, a good portion of the American people I'd met thought I was Australian.

"You're not the first person to say that. Where are you guys from?"

"We're from New Jersey," Bob replied.

"I love the American accent so much." I sat upright.

"You do?" His wife asked.

"Yes, we could sit and listen to you speak all day." I gestured towards Sarah. Billie not so much, she'd already complained five times about the American accent being too whiney.

"I could say the same for you," Bob said.

We took a moment to introduce ourselves properly. I learnt Bob's wife was Jill. She watched me intently.

"We just love the English accent. It's so romantic."

"Really? I think that's the first time anyone has ever said our accent is romantic," I joked.

"Oh really? I think it's because you guys sound so well-educated. We just sound like a bunch of hillbillies," Jill said the last part in a whisper, not wanting to offend any listening ears.

Well-educated? I had to disagree, but the Mancunian accent was in fact voted the sexiest accent in England. Maybe Jill had a point after all.

Bob had a kind face. His hair was mostly grey, he had nice teeth, and freshly trimmed stubble. He was handsome for an older gentleman. Jill had cropped blonde hair, an abundance of freckles, and such a sweet aura. The more I got talking to her the more I noticed she had this unabashed humility. She would have no problem gaining entry into the inner sanctum of old age cooldom.

Over the next two hours I learnt everything there was to know about the American couple. Bob was an orthopaedic surgeon. Jill was a retired nurse. They lived in a suburban town in New Jersey called Mountain Lakes, which sounded simply stunning.

Question, why did everything in America sound so picturesque? In New Jersey the boroughs are called exotic names like Mountain Lakes, Harrington Park, Berkeley Heights, and River Edge. In Manchester, you had Stockport, Oldham, or Rochdale. They didn't have the same appeal. The key was to put the name of a large body of liquid before or after the town.

Bob and Jill had three children, two girls and a boy. All were well educated and seemingly thriving in life. I listened intently as Bob talked me through all the features of the hotel; they'd been three times before, and twenty times to Mexico, so they were well informed. He showed me pictures of other hotels they'd visited in Jamaica and Barbados. He pointed out the pros and cons for each in case we decided to visit. I loved every second of the conversation.

Billie indulged for a short period before going off to swim. Sarah had her headphones in; the occasional humming and foot tapping let me know she hadn't fallen asleep.

We discussed controversial topics like gun laws and LGBTQ+ rights. Bob took the time to inform me of the political system in the US, and I in turn tried to explain the English equivalent. Try was the operative word. I'd never been emersed in the world of politics. Truth be told, I had a hard time remembering who the Prime Minister was, but I gave it my best shot.

We spoke about taxes, holiday allowance, maternity pay, pensions, and health care. I was intrigued by every aspect. The more they spoke, the more I listened, asking one leading question after another.

Jill turned to Bob every so often during one of his digressing answers and laughed.

"You're losing her, Bob."

He liked to elaborate on a story, and he spoke non-stop until the purpose of the story was forgotten. It was adorable. He always came back to his original point eventually.

"I think you should let Harper relax now." Jill rolled her eyes, had a shot of tequila, and turned to face the sun. They had such a playful relationship, and after thirty-four years of marriage it was something to behold. It was a bond I could only hope to have one day.

"Don't worry. I'm enjoying the conversation." I beamed.

"See!" Bob grinned. He stuck his tongue out, and Jill opened her book shaking her head whilst laughing.

There was a break in conversation, and I ordered my third margarita of the day. The waiter returned with my drink and three shots of a clear liquid.

"When did you order these?" Jill asked.

He put his finger to his lip. "I didn't. I think they're complimentary."

Jill reached for the shot. "I'm not mad at it this time. Usually, he orders shots when I'm already drunk and on the verge of throwing up, and he thinks it's appropriate."

I chuckled. Bob handed me the third shot glass.

"What is it? "

"Nothing too harsh, I promise," Bob said.

"Cheers," all three of us said in unison. We clinked shot glasses before the spicy liquid made its way sharply down my oesophagus. I should've thrown it over my shoulder, but the woman sunbathing directly behind me wouldn't have taken too kindly to the sticky harsh liquid melting into her body.

My small glass hit the circular wooden table in front of me. My eyes were firmly clenched shut. My mouth pursed like I'd just sucked on a cut of lime.

"Urghh." I shook my head. "I don't know how you do that so calmly."

"We're a lot older than you honey. We've had the practice. Plus, when you're married to this guy for thirty-four years, alcohol is sometimes the only thing that gets you through." Jill smirked.

I was still shaking my head and trying not to let the contents of my breakfast reappear, so I didn't notice the figure approaching from the left. The sun made it hard to focus. I watched the female figure bend down to kiss Bob and Jill on the cheek.

"Are you guys doing shots again? Jesus. I leave you alone for two hours." She drops her towel on the bed next to them followed by the complimentary canvas beach bag that the hotel provided. Her straw hat was tipped on one side making it difficult to see her face, and her other hand held a mobile phone to her ear; she said her goodbyes to whoever was on the line.

"This is our daughter, Julia. She's on vacation with us," Bob introduced her.

Julia.

Before she fully turned to reveal her face away from the glare of the sun, I knew exactly who she was.

Oh —

My face was unmoving, but a smirk crept across her lips.

What in the rom-com hell was happening?

"Julia, this is Harper," Bob added.

"Harper." She looked amused. "It's nice to meet you."

Julia spent the next ten minutes pretending we hadn't crossed paths three times, and it was believable. She sat behind her parents, scowling on occasion. She definitely eye rolled our conversation around the hotel's poor variance in complimentary sun cream. She sipped her cocktail elegantly via two straws, adding the odd um and ah whenever Bob so boastfully referred to her in conversation.

"Am I in some sort of disturbing rom-com here? How does this keep happening?" I whispered to Sarah whilst Bob ordered more drinks.

"That would make this." She looked up to the sky as though it had the answers. "Your fourth meet cute, right?"

"I wouldn't call it a meet cute, more like a meet disaster, or a meet—"

"Ugly," Billie interrupted. "It's called a meet ugly."

"That's a thing?" I asked.

"You really don't read much, do you?" Billie said.

"Aside from the book about Adam and Eve and the guy with the technicoloured dream coat, no."

"Are you referring to the Bible?" Sarah laughed.

"Yes, that one."

"So, you haven't read a book since you were forced to read the Bible in high school?" Billie clarified.

"Correct, unless fashion magazines count, then I've read hundreds." I grinned.

The look of horror on Sarah's face was amusing. We lived in a modern world with so many new options for entertainment, and reading wasn't one of mine.

"It's a good job you're pretty," Sarah said.

"I'm not sure that's meant as a compliment, but I will accept it as one."

Sarah nudged me gently, turning my attention back to Bob and Jill, who looked to be in a heated debate with Julia. All three turned towards us, well mainly me. I'd been the one holding down the conversation for the past two hours. At my first workplace the general manager liked to give out random awards every Christmas. I won the award for, Most likely to get into an unfavourable situation because they're too polite.

It made sense.

"Tomorrow night we plan to eat at the Mexican restaurant. Would you like to join us?" Bob asked.

Julia was tight-lipped.

"Oh, erm, sure, that would be great. We haven't been to the Mexican yet, so—" I looked at Sarah and Billie. I telepathically screamed, help ! If the invitation was purely to go for dinner with Bob and Jill the decision would've been painless, but the glaring hostility radiating from Julia had me probing my brain for a valid excuse.

"Mexican sounds good to me," Billie perked up. Mexican cuisine was her favourite.

"We'd love to," Sarah added.

Oh, so now you start talking.

"It's settled. Does seven thirty work for you ladies?" Bob asked.

Perfect.