Page 17 of Vitamin Sea
"Oh, holy Jesus.”
Chloe was lying on the sun lounger and, turning to grab her phone from her bag, found herself face-to-crotch with the heavy-set man to her right. Her eyes bugged out of her head, and she quickly turned away, trying to erase the image from her mind.
“Take this!” Lala’s voice came from beside her and she felt a shot glass being pushed into her hand.
“What is this?” she looked at her friend.
“Shhh,” Lala shushed her. “Don’t ask, just drink.”
She took the proffered shot and threw it back, feeling a warmth grow in the pit of her stomach. Her phone forgotten in the shock of the assault on her eyes, she lay back down on the sun lounger and closed her eyes.
It was better that way.
Without the benefit of sight, she didn’t have to worry about any unsolicited full frontals. It had brought up the memory of one of her first experiences on Tinder, which had involved a seemingly normal-looking man who had proceeded to send her an unwelcome dick pic mere moments after they had matched.
The heat made her limbs heavy as her mind wandered and daydreams crept in.
???
“Phwa!!!”
A spray of cold water shocked her out of a deep slumber. It was a sleep that she hadn’t consciously fallen into, and when she came to, she wasn’t quite sure where she was. It took a second for her to orient herself and, as her eyes came into focus, she realized that she was not in Toronto.
A warm breeze sealed it.
Ah, yes. Now she remembered. She was on a work assignment. At a nudist resort. Naturist resort,she corrected herself as she sat up and half-heartedly stifled a yawn.
A glance at the empty lounger next to her indicated that Lala was missing. She wasn’t sure how long she had been asleep for, but the sun appeared to have moved quite a distance across the sky. Salsa music pumped through the air and Chloe wondered how exactly she had managed to sleep through all the noise.
The pool, which had been almost empty when she and Lala first arrived, now resembled a red-light district due to the number of naked patrons occupying it. That, Chloe surmised, was the obvious source of the sleep-ruining splash. Two very busty women were presently engaged in a mostly male game of pool volleyball—their breasts flapped like rocks in a sock every time they jumped to hit the ball.
Thatcan’tbe comfortable,Chloe winced before her mind went back to rule number one at Costa Morpho—no gawking.
She tore her eyes away from the scene and leaned back on the lounger. With naked people everywhere, it was odd to be the odd one out. Sort of like how one would feel if they were the only naked person surrounded by a resort full of people whowere fully clothed. Chloe was doing something perfectly normal—she was wearing a bathing suit and lounging by a pool while on vacation at a luxury resort. But in this particular environment, wearing clothes meant that she was the weird one. Status quo, she reflected, is a funny thing.
So was what was considered ‘normal’. It really did depend upon a person’s frame of reference. And really, she thought, it was no different than traveling to another country and being unfamiliar with their customs.
The staff, Chloe had noticed, were nonplussed. She assumed they probably just got used to the nudity over time. The resort had only been open for a few months, but maybe that was all the time they needed to grow accustomed to it.
Did they talk about the guests, she wondered?
Likely.
She didn’t see how it would be different from other resorts or customer-service jobs. Several years ago, when she had a part-time waitressing job while interning atStrut, the staff oftentalked about the customers. If someone was particularly rude or, in contrast, incredibly pleasant; if a customer was difficult or strange. Sometimes the men were lecherous, and she had to let the manager know so other servers were on the alert if that customer came in again. They also had customers who placed weird orders, people on awkward dates, and people who thought the restaurant was a good place to tell their partner they no longer wanted to be together. That was always the worst. Trying to be a good server while one half of the table was in distress was the definition of awkward. Doing your best not to interrupt while staying attentive and personable in that sort of atmosphere was harder to balance than two trays of drinks.
She wondered what the staff at Costa Morpho were saying about her and Lala. After all—what kind of people signed up to go to a naturist resort only to stay covered up the entire time?
It was nonsensical. Like going on a booze cruise when you’re sober.
There had been a second, maybe even less than a second, when Chloe had considered stripping down. ‘When in Rome’, after all. But she reasoned, they weren’t in Rome, and really she just wasn’t personally comfortable with the concept.
The wind picked up and a warm breeze ruffled her hair when a sudden thought went through her head.
A heaviness descended on her.
She was supposed to be on vacation with her long-term boyfriend right now. With Liam.
It had come seemingly out of nowhere and was quickly followed by an overwhelming feeling of despair. It wasn’t that she was unhappy to be spending a week in the tropics with her bestie, she reflected. But there was something about it that was bittersweet.
