promise me we can go back, ok??
Ris huffed in annoyance at the text message. Dynah—despite her frequent inability to follow through on things, like this weekend—was a vibrant chatterbox, flirtatious and funny and fearless, and would have been good company on this trip. Ris loved Lurielle dearly, and Silva was sweet and sunny, but prim and proper seemed too modest a descriptor for their younger co-worker, and when it came to actually engaging with any of the burly nudists, Lurielle’s feet seemed to have caught a chill.
Alas, Dynah, like Silva, was feeling the daily pressure to get married and give her mother a grandchild.UnlikeSilva, Dynah was casting the widest net she possibly could. She’d persuaded Ris to join an interspecies dating app with her, touting it as an exciting way to meet guys without needing to go trolling the bar scene. Three months and nothing but a handful of marginally satisfying hookups later, Ris was convinced Dynah had trapped her in the age-old tradition of misery loving company.
Trapping herself in a relationship with a guy like the intolerably entitled dragon-born, for whom Dynah had missed the trip, seemed like settling for a slow, painful death; a punishment with which she was not willing to sentence herself. That didn’t mean she wasn’t open tomeetingsomeone. Dating was a numbers game, that’s what she’d always been told. If she waded through enough conceited elves and lecherous werewolves, she’d find someone who appreciated her; someone smart and sexy who was okay with a lack of serious commitment...the slog in the meantime, however, was becoming tedious.
The doorknob rattled and she froze. On the other side of the door, she heard a keycard beep and fail, beep and fail, before Lurielle came staggering through the door on the third attempt, wrapped in an oversized beach towel. “Water,” she croaked, making her way unsteadily towards the kitchen.
“What happened to you?!” Ris hurried to the small kitchen, pulling two overpriced bottles of water from the fridge. The fruity drinks served at the poolside bar were egregiously strong and gaggingly sweet, a far cry from the perfectly mixed cocktails they’d enjoyed at dinner, and it hadn’t taken long to realize just why the harpy was staggering around the dancefloor. As Lurielle unscrewed the bottle with unsteady hands, Ris made a mental note that tomorrow night’s activities ought to be undertaken sans libations. “I thought you’d headed back to the room! Are-are you okay? Do you think you need to throw up?”
Lurielle shook her head vigorously, reaching out to steady herself on the counter before gulping down a quarter of the bottle. “No, I-I’m not drunk. There are steam tubs, Roman baths, and I...I stayed in too long. I’m just dehydrated, I’m fine. Can breakfast please not be at the crack of dawn tomorrow?”
Ris huffed, unsurprised by the request. She was used to being the only morning person on trips, and Lurielle came hustling into work with only minutes to spare at least once a week. “Fine, but then I want to hear everything! Did you see Silva in the lobby? I can’t believe she’s not already tucked into bed.”
“She’s probably down there...where else would she have gone?”
It seemed unlike Silva to not be in the room, she thought as Lurille’s door closed with a click.You ought to go find her. She’s probably downstairs, just let her know everyone’s back.She wondered, as she crossed the room to the windows if Silva was going to spend the entire weekend sitting in the resort lobby.
Pushing back the sheers, her attention was immediately caught by a dark shape in the lawn. Bathed in moonlight, the long shadow grew in length as the lumbering figure drew closer. Ris could see it was an approaching orc and that he’d be crossing the lawn directly in front of their balcony.And you’ll be there to meet him.The magenta cover-up would do, she decided, nearly vaulting over the small sofa to reach her room.You can go looking for Silva after you talk to him. She was down the balcony steps and across the lawn like a shot, just in time for the huge orc to come lumbering into view at the top of one of the crests in the hilly lawn. Ris flashed her most dazzling smile, knowing the open-weave poncho left absolutely nothing to the imagination. Silva was probably sitting in the well-lit lobby reading a book, she told herself as the orc before her slowed.Time to recoup this night…
♥♥♥
Her room was bathed in moonlight as she turned to the bed, dropping the bundled pareo to the floor. She ought to take a hot shower, wash out the frizzy mess the thermae had left of her hair, and rinse out her swimsuit, but all she was able to manage was struggling out of the wet bottoms, cursing when it rolled around her thick thighs, eventually freeing herself and kicking them off. The wet top joined the bottoms on the floor, and Lurielle climbed beneath the cool hotel sheets, still clinging to his oversized towel.
His lips had been soft and warm as they pressed to hers, the chocolate pits of his hooded eyes almost seeming liquid in the resort’s bright lights. She wasn’t sure how she made it up to her room, wasn’t entirely sure what she’d said to Ris as she staggered into the apartment, mumbling about overheating at the empty thermae and passing out. She drank a bottle of water, as he’d instructed, and took another to her room where she dropped into bed.
It had been too long since she’d been with someone and she was too out of practice, her heart too easily caught. If she would have joined that stupid dating app with Ris and Dynah, maybe she’d be past this point, able to meet men and go about her business without a care...but she hadn’t, and she wasn’t. The reclamation of her life hadn’t included finding someone to love, not yet. Not until she lost more weight, became more interesting, more confident...I’m working on myself right nowhad been her excuse for far too long.
She was supposed to be having a fun weekend with her friends; she was supposed to be enjoying the sight of naked men and having cheap, meaningless sex.You weren’t supposed to meet someone real.
Lurielle pulled the sheet up to her chin, closing her eyes stubbornly, willing sleep to claim her to keep the tears that burned her eyes at bay. She rolled to her side, pressing her face to the pillow, a syrupy-thick, drawling voice playing at her ear, unaware of the crumpled slip of paper within the tangle of her blue pareo on the floor.
Part 02
♥ The Big Night ♥
The sky above the hills was a perfect, unblemished blue, without a cloud in sight. The only sound was birdsong, only occasionally broken by the hum of an engine coming from the parking lot.
She wondered, as she stretched into a cobra pose, if the nudists ever vacated the premises, leaving the resort to be just a pretty hotel tucked in the scenic landscape. It would be a nice weekend away, to do yoga in the sunshine and make a dent in her to-be-read pile. Ris closed her eyes, breathing into the pose, imagining herself on her mat in one of the open fields, instead of the small balcony.
She’d started yoga after going to a drop-in beginner class with Dynah several years earlier. Dynah, in typical Dynah fashion, had lost interest once the handsome yogi had been replaced by a female counterpart, but Ris had stayed on, finding the practice beneficial to her running and more enjoyable than Elvish liltenu. She’d attended a liltenu class as well, shortly after her move to Cambric Creek, thinking she ought to make a place for herself in the Elvish community. The aerobic stretching class had been filled with the sort of elves she’d grown up with, both Summerland and Silmë: coolly reserved and identically pretty, in uniforms of expensive leggings and glossy, high-end hair extensions. They’d whispered together with bent heads for the duration of the class, and she’d quickly determined that carving a place in their ranks would be easier said than done.
It wasn’t that she didn’t have the practice. She’d grown up going to Elvish schools, with Elvish friends, and none of her friends across the many years would have been able to guess she was from a different social stratum as them. Private school had taught her to be friendly and confident and covert in her maneuvering. When the girls at school would come back from summer recess with stories of exotic travels and expensive-sounding lessons, Ris would glibly describe her family’s time away at theirsummer home, and all it entailed: the equestrian dancing lessons she was forced to endure and the endless lobster dinners prepared by the help, stories that were light on specifics and heavy on ornamentation, before deftly turning the conversation back to boys in their class, which was what everyone wanted to talk about anyways.
None of them needed to know her family spent two weeks every summer in a cozy rented cottage in a tiny coastal town, or that herequestrian lessonscame by the way of a toothless old centaur who wrangled equally toothless old ponies, taking the handful of budget tourists to ride on the slowly plodding horse’s backs through the ankle-deep surf; nor that the banquet dinners she was forced to attend were actually lobster rolls wrapped in foil and dripping in butter, takeaway purchased from a grizzled crabmer’s stand on the pier. Her shoes and purses were purchased from second-hand consignment shops far from home, afternoons spent scouring racks with her mother, and because she was popular, her unique style was coveted: elves on the edges of her social circle begging their grandmothers for their own trendy, vintage shoulder bags. University was easier, to a degree, but she always found a way to fit in, to blur the edges of who she was and who they thought she was until pretty, popular Ris was all that remained.
The Elvish community in Cambric Creek was particularly insular, old families and older money, and she realized, after attending a welcome event at the Elvish social club, that she no longer had the desire to twist herself into something she wasn’t. The town community center offered a full slate of classes and clubs; she joined the multi-species gym and had no regrets.
This resort would be perfect for a retreat...if only they had a spa.
The suite was silent when she tiptoed through it, with no sound coming from either Lurielle or Silva’s rooms. By the time she’d come back from her brief dalliance with the orc outside their balcony, the light had been on under Silva’s door, clicking off shortly thereafter.She probably nodded off by the fireplace, Ris thought as she passed through the lobby a few minutes later. The morning was cool, and the wide lawn in front of the resort glittered with dewdrops in the early-morning light. It would be a hot afternoon, but it was perfect weather for a run.
The town was similarly quiet and empty: the shops and restaurants dark, all of the tourists and orcs still sleeping off the previous night’s activities. It wasn’t until she’d turned up one of the small, shop-lined streets, passing an apiarist and a soap maker's boutique, that she saw another sign of life in the form of a tall, leggy orc. She was half a block away, but Ris could clearly hear his words, as he bellowed dramatically in the middle of the sidewalk.
“You would disband the hallowed bonds of fellowship between us? ‘He that is thy friend indeed, He will help thee in thy need.’ Words which shall yield a bitter fruit for you to choke on, sir!”
She snorted at his monologue, which she realized was being shouted at someone above as laughter cascaded down the side of the black-bricked building.
