Page 7 of The Resort

“I feel like you’re holding out on me,” he continues. “A smart girl like you must have had tons of options after university. People like us—travelers, I mean—use travel either to find something or to hide from something. So spill. What’s your reason?”

I let my muscles unclench as I convince myself my fear was unfounded. Neil doesn’t know—he can’t know—why I’m really here.

“Oh, you know, just the usual twentysomething discovery phase. Traveling to find myself and all that. I heard a few other travelers raving about Koh Sang, so I knew I had to try it out.” Eagerto change the subject, I hold my glass up, indicate for him to do the same, and clink them softly.

Neil smiles back at me, and we sip from our drinks in unison. I savor the taste of the smoothie, letting the sticky sweetness drown out the bitterness of my lie.

3

CASS

I know who you are.

The words have played on repeat in my head the entire morning ever since I opened the envelope on my porch. I thought of them as I made love to Logan and as I clung desperately to him afterward, wondering how long it will be until he knows the truth and refuses to touch me ever again. And I think of them now as I navigate my motorbike down the winding road that leads away from our house.

I wonder for the millionth time who could have recognized me. I’m not that girl anymore. I replaced my mousy brown hair with blond highlights, accentuated by hours spent in the sun, my pale skin turned tan from the same. I swapped out the round glasses for contacts, and I started going by my middle name when I got to Koh Sang. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. No one expected to find that girl here on an island in the middle of nowhere, a place where news of the outside world barely infiltrates, so no one ever thought to look.

Until now.

I turn off my street and guide my motorbike onto the narrow lane of Kumvit, the closest thing our little island—home to only a few hundred locals and one resort—has to an urban center. I pass open-air restaurants modeled fully in teakwood and locals pulling open the metal gates of their souvenir shops, each hawking identical versions of Thai beer–logoed tank tops, fake Nikes, and knockoff Ray-Bans. The lane eventually opens up onto the beach road that leads around the entire perimeter of Koh Sang. The shops and restaurants become fewer and farther between until they disappear entirely, giving way to the untamed jungle on one side and the beauty of Pho Tau beach on the other. Wooden long-tail boats group together in front of dive shops in ad hoc marinas, and farther out, paddle boarders struggle to remain balanced on the water. Back on the shore, a massive palm tree shoots out at almost a ninety-degree angle, parallel to the beach, so long that its coconut-bunched palms nearly reach the water.

But this morning, I’m too distracted to even acknowledge the beauty. I need to get to the bottom of who sent me this envelope before they decide to make good on their threat.

After a few minutes, I pull into a small patch of pavement jutting out from the street, big enough to fit three motorbikes stacked next to one another, one for each full-time staff member of the resort’s dive shop.

My skin sticks to the seat as I pull myself away from my bike, a painful reminder of the day’s heat. Thankfully, it’s only a few steps from my bike to the door of the shop, a small octagonal hut that has come to serve as my second home on the island.

As I walk, I pause, struck by the sudden feeling of beingwatched. I spin around, prepared to expose anyone who may be watching, but the road is empty except for a truck hurtling past. I stand there for a few seconds, long enough for a pinprick of sweat to form on my hairline, but I still don’t see anyone. Trying to shake off the feeling, I head into the shop.

Doug’s bright Australian accent greets me as I walk through the door. “Well, if it isn’t the future Mrs. McMillan! Congrats!”

He steps out from behind the small desk, which bears a stack of clipboards and an outdated PC, and wraps me in a bear hug.

“Thanks,” I say, slapping him gingerly on the back, my fingers grazing his long, matted hair.

Doug got here a few years before I did. All I know from his past is that he’s from Melbourne. It’s somewhat of an unwritten rule that we keep talk about our lives before the island to a minimum. If someone wants to share, that’s fine, but it’s not expected. Which more than works for me. At the time I arrived, Doug was still a dive instructor, but Frederic, the resort’s owner, has since appointed him to dive shop manager. This essentially means that Doug’s my babysitter when Frederic is out of town on business, as he is now.

“Looking forward to tonight,” he says, handing me the clipboard on the top of the stack. “We’ll make it a ripper of an engagement party.”

I smile in return, forcing down the bile rising in my throat and silently hoping that whoever has found me doesn’t choose tonight to expose me. I flip through the clipboard, totaling the number of guests in my head.

“Only four?” I confirm.

“Yup, Full Moon Party over on Koh Phangan tonight. Four’s pretty good, considering.”

He’s right. Once a month, the neighboring island hosts an all-night rager on the beach, a party so raucous it’s become legend on the backpacking circuit. It’s popular enough that it draws guests away from the other islands, including Koh Sang. As sales began to decline in the last few months, Frederic started hosting our own Koh Sang version of the Full Moon Party, complete with neon body paint, fishbowl concoctions of juice and unidentifiable liquor, and fire dancers, but even so, it pales in comparison to the original.

I should be annoyed. Fewer guests mean fewer tips, but I can’t help but be grateful, particularly as the dull ache in my head has only grown since this morning.

With a nod to Doug, I head out of the shop, clipboard tucked under my arm. I walk down the beach, about fifty meters or so to the pathway that leads up to the rest of the resort. Once I reach it, I peer into the Tiki Palms, spotting Brooke seated at one of the corner tables, her honey-colored hair trailing down the side of her torso in a long, messy braid. She’s talking with someone—a man seated across from her—and when he shifts, the sunlight glints off the unmistakable red of his hair. Neil.

Despite everything, I feel a smile form on my lips. It’s no secret that Neil has developed a bit of a crush on Brooke—as have most men on the island—and given the way she’s smiling at him now, it seems there’s a chance it might be reciprocal.

I was a bit awestruck when I first met Brooke two weeks ago. She was extroverted and charming and beautiful—all the qualities you would expect in a travel influencer, I suppose, but everything I’m not. Her confidence was palpable when she struck up that first conversation with me at the Tiki Palms. She was so open, it felt likewe had known each other for years. And indeed, there was something familiar about her that I couldn’t quite peg down.

As soon as I got home that day, I looked up the Instagram handle she had mentioned—@BrookeaTrip—and once the first search result loaded, it flooded my screen with high-definition photos of beautiful mountains and cobblestoned city streets. Brooke was front and center in all of them, of course, her dark-lashed blue eyes fixed on the camera, her body curvy and compact and always dressed in some fashionable—and usually revealing—outfit, her long hair perfectly styled. It felt masochistic, scrolling through the photos and videos of her travels, glossed with the perfection that only social media can deliver, as I lay there on my couch draped in one of Logan’s old formless T-shirts. But I couldn’t stop. I gorged myself on her beauty and the powerful captions she wove beneath each post that confidently called out the corruption and autocracy in the countries she visited, speaking her mind in an easy way I could only dream of.

Since then, I’ve found reasons to seek her out, always drinking in her attention, reveling in the pride I feel when people see us together. It’s the same feeling I get when I stand next to Logan, his arm wrapped tightly around my hips. Like I’m worthy.

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