If You Like Piña Coladas: Part 1

“So I’m fired?” I asked, looking at my boss. 

Dan Clines was my boss. I hated him. He was fat, considering his diet consisted of pizza, overly-sugared coffee, and powdered break room donuts, rightfully so. He was also sweaty. I can only assume it was because the mere fact that his heart was able to keep pumping was a workout in itself.

“We prefer the term ‘let go,’ Brad,” he said, reaching for another damned donut.

I scoffed at the irony of him saying ‘let go’ and it not relating to his waistline.

“Any particular reason?” I asked.

“Not really, no,” Clines said, licking his thumb absently. “But my boss lowered the budget for us, so it was either I let someone go or I risk taking a pay cut.”

“Heaven forbid I cut into the pizza budget,” I murmured, under my breath.

“What?” he asked, not quite able to discern what I said.

“Nothing. Look, aren’t you supposed to give me some kind of notice or something, since it’s a downsizing?”

He looked at me thoughtfully for a second.

“Oh yeah,” he said, sad at the formality being brought up.

“Yeah, Dan,” I said, running my hands through my dark brown hair. I absently thought that I might need a haircut before I went job hunting; right now it was admittedly shaggy. “It’s kind of in the Cloud Marketing Company Handbook.”

“Don’t preach to me about the handbook. I proofread the damn thing,” Dan shouted.

“No, Dan, you didn’t,” I said, figuring I should put in my two cents. What could he do? Fire me? “You took credit for my proofreading it. I remember; I missed my dad’s funeral for it.”

“Well it’s not like you kept him waiting,” Dan said, laughing.

“Look, you owe me two weeks,” I said. “And I have two weeks of paid vacation saved up. So I’m taking that.” 

I looked at my watch.

“Starting now,” I said, throwing down the reports. Those were originally what I had come by to give him when he dropped the bomb on me. Reports, by the way, which were assigned to him from corporate.

“Fine! Walk out that door!” Dan shouted behind me. “Take the two weeks! Take them to realize how screwed you are!”

* * * * *

I sat at home later that night and looked at the computer screen. I had a glass of Crown and Coke in my hand and a mouse in the other. I was navigating around Craigslist when I saw the banners in the window that were special made for me. 

“Do I want a bigger dick?” I asked myself, reading aloud. “Well, I haven’t had any complaints, so no…” I kept reading the banners. Then I found a post that caught my eye; it was one for travel.

“Royal Caribbean partner needed,” I read aloud. “$499 special for a week long cruise. My ex and I broke up. Hence the ex. So now I need someone to fill the spot. The cruise is this Friday, and it needs a reservation. Help a brother out.” I looked at it and clicked the link, where it said it redirected to the cruise website. Part of me hoped it was a misdirect, and that I’d be loading a porn page. But that was the romantic in me.

* * * * *

Friday morning I arrived at the port. It was hot, I was sweaty, and I was pissed off. I had filled the room online, and I hadn’t even met the guy yet. I was not happy, it was Houston’s summer heat and humid weather, and I was wearing jeans and a long sleeve shirt, which granted was my mess up. 

“Fuck you, asshole!” A female voice shouted from about thirty people in line behind me. I turned and looked. A breathtaking blonde was upset. She had beautiful facial structure, was wonderfully slim, and was choking the life out of a man with matching luggage. 

“Hggurk,” he managed.

“How the hell was sleeping with your receptionist a mistake?! Did you play Marco Polo with your dick?!” She said, throttling him again, then she threw him off. 

After bickering I didn’t really hear because her volume had gone down, he left her in line alone and stomped off. She put sunglasses on and a hat, hoping that would make her invisible. After a boring and arduous process no one wants to hear about, I finally made it to my room.

I was incredibly happy, being in my room. There was air conditioning, and it didn’t smell like Houston. I fell face-forward onto the bed and smiled. I let out a contented groan, just happy to be off my feet. I sounded, objectively, like a wildebeest.

“Oh, god. You’re not some weird, pervy roommate, are you?” A voice asked from behind me. It was a man that had spiky, dyed red hair, and a lip piercing. God, it was 2015, who had a lip piercing? No wonder she left him.

“I’m Brad,” I said, my face still halfway in the pillow. “I take it you’re Simon?”

“Yes, that’s me,” Simon said with a punk-like accent. “I see you’ve claimed that bed. That’s fine, I prefer the right side of the room anyways. Closer to the mini-bar. Just stay out of my way, I’ll stay out of yours.” 

He seemed even less cordial than I.

“Sure. Alright, I’m going to go look around,” I said, standing up and walking to the door. I grabbed my Royal Caribbean issued ID and headed for one of the few things that really interested me at this particular moment: the nearest bar. I found it about mid-ship. I flashed my ID, which as a man in my forties seemed like an unnecessary formality. Then I got my Crown and Coke and sat down. Part of me questioned whether or not it was too early to be drinking. Then I looked down the length of the bar and noticed the bleach blonde again, this time calmer. She was nursing a piña colada. It was almost empty, and it didn’t seem to be the only one next to her. There were a few of them, empty, all piña coladas. I could tell from the white remnants along the sides of the glasses. My life was far from perfect, and my finances were certainly not in the best of shape, but part of me felt she needed a drink more than I did at that particular moment.

“Bartender?” I asked, getting the attention of the nearest one, “Can you do me a favor? Can you go ahead and send her another piña colada from me? Actually, I think she’s had her fill of men for this trip, just send it to her. Say it’s from you.” I took my card back from the bartender, turned, and walked to the deck. We had already left port and I could only see Houston as a line slowly disappearing behind the horizon. I breathed sea air and could feel my troubles fading out of view as well. The thought that I just left all of the crap behind for a week certainly had its appeal. 

After the sunset, I turned around and went back to my room. I opened the door; a woman was asleep on my bed. I poked my head back out the door to make sure I had stateroom 409. Yes, yes I did. Someone’s sleeping in my bed. And she’s still there. I couldn’t bear the thought. I crossed and gave the woman a gentle nudge, then flipped on the light. It was the blonde.

“The fuck?” I asked, as she yawned and looked at me.

“How long was I out?” she asked, stretching.

How the hell was I supposed to know? Shouldn’t I be the one to ask that?

She looked at the clock on the nightstand. 

“Huh. Four hours since your roommate let me in,” she said. I did the math in my head. That was only thirty minutes after I had bought her that drink. “So you’re the guy that bought me that drink? The bartender saw your room number on the ship card.”

“Okay, look here lady, I don’t know how you found out it was me, but I didn’t buy it for you to get your attention. I just figured you could use it.”

She stood up and walked over to me. She was only three inches from my face. I could smell the piña colada. 

“You bought it really only looking to help a sister out?” she said, narrowing her eyes.

“Yeah, pretty much,” I said, thinking this is what I get for an altruistic nature.

She looked at me quizzically for another three long seconds. Then she kissed me. It was a hard, impassionate kiss. It felt more like hammering my lips with hers than it did a kiss.

“That’s an obligatory thank you,” she said, smiling. Then she reared her hand back and slapped me as hard as she could. 

“Damn it!” I shouted, grabbing my cheek. “What the hell was that for?”

“That,” she said, smiling, “was because you kissed a married woman. How rude.”

“Lady,” I said trying to massage the tenderness from my cheek, “if we never see each other again, I will be quite happy.”

She looked at me with a smile. Then she grabbed her purse and left my room. It was at that point that my roommate came into the room again. He was tipsy and leaned back out of the door to see the woman leave. Then he looked at me.

“First night out of the port? You sly dog,” he said, giving me a smile.

* * * * *

It was the next day, our first day on land in another country. It was also one of the only two days that I had a planned activity. It was Honduras, and I had planned to go run an obstacle course. I looked at the line and considered going to the back. Looking at it, I wasn’t quite sure which line was which. The entire group seemed like one mass of disorganization, so I went to the front. I didn’t even bother to look behind me at the giant mass of people. The cruise employee loaded us up on a van and we drove to the obstacle course. The entire time, I admit I can’t recall because I fell asleep. When I woke up, I was the last off the bus. The cruise employee had her eyebrow raised at me and tapped her pencil against her clipboard. She pointed me to a man that had, objectively, an incredibly built ebony body without a shirt on.

“Which you want? There’s easy, medium, and awesome,” he said pointing to each line.

“Awesome?” I asked. “You used awesome as a level of difficulty?” 

“If I said nightmarishly horrible, no one would go,” he shrugged.

“Well, I do admit, it did change my mind,” I said. Then I looked at the other two. Today, for some reason I didn’t feel like settling. “No, screw it. I want the awesome difficulty.”

The man smiled at me and escorted me down the path. I got myself up to a medium paced jog and looked at him.

“You know, white boy, you aren’t really all that far behind the others. If you hurry you can get first. And first place gets a free jar of our homemade jam. It’s pretty damn good, I guarantee a white boy like you hasn’t had anything like it,” he said.

“You know, I find the white boy term to be a bit condescending, but fuck it, why not?” I said, increasing my pace. 

“Oh!” the ebony version of Hercules said. “White boy’s showing some spirit!” 

For some reason, this made me smile, and I increased even faster. Within twenty minutes I had passed all but one of the other people, according to Ebony Hercules. 

“So who’s the person in first place?” I asked.

“What do I look like, white boy? Mind reader?” he asked laughing. “I was at the back with you. Come on, though, let’s go so I can get some of that jam from you. Oh, but here’s a hint white boy, there’s a couple of obstacles ahead.”

I looked ahead. There were some tires. I tried to step into each of them, but my foot caught and I tripped, falling facedown onto another tire and bouncing off into another. Ahead of me I heard an asinine laugh. I looked. It was the blonde. She was smiling at me.

“Come on, Colada Man,” she said, flipping me off. “You’re going to take a nap while I finish by myself? Just like a man.”

I felt my cheeks get hot. The falling on my face wasn’t what hurt. It was the thought of losing to that bitch. I stood back up and, rather than try to run along them, I got down on my hands and knees and crawled on them. The blonde looked back. She saw that I was catching up. She took one of the tires and threw it at me. I saw it coming and rolled to the left. 

“Bitch!” I shouted, finally catching up. I passed her, and then we got to the second obstacle. It was a mud pit and then a tunnel through the mud. I ran past her, until I got slowed by the mud. She got to the edge of the mud pit and jumped on me, driving me into the mud facedown. She used me as a pivot to start trucking through the mud. 

“Ass!” I said, standing up and scraping mud from my eyes. I caught up to her as she was about to crawl into the tunnel. “Come here!” 

I grabbed her legs right as she dove into the tunnel. Then I yanked her backwards, dragging her down into the mud and driving the mud up onto her face and up her nose. All I heard was a gurgling sound while I dove into the tunnel, smiling for the first time in a while. I made it to the finish line and crossed first. She came up behind me, making wet sloshing sounds with each step. I smiled at her, mud on my face. She smiled back. Ebony Hercules showed us the spray showers, where we were to take off the mud. I went, with the blonde sloshing after me.

“I didn’t think you were that much of an ass,” she said, looking at me and smiling and trying to scrape the mud off of the front of her shirt. “I didn’t think you’d mess with some sweet innocent girl like me.”

“Innocent?” I asked, laughing. “You’re the one watching me shower.”

“A fair point,” she said. “So, I tell you what, how about we share that jam?” 

“Just because you’re my shower buddy that entitles you to my victory jam?” I laughed.

“Not quite,” she smiled. “How about this? If you share that jam with me then I buy you dinner. There’s a dish here that I have been wanting to try, Honduras national dish: iguana.” I turned off my water and looked at her. 

“Iguana?” I asked. She nodded. “Well, what the hell. It’s a vacation, right?”

We got back to the port and I grabbed my victory jam. I followed her to a restaurant just off the water. They had a pier that extended out into the ocean a ways. We sat down and the waiter looked at us. 

“What can I get you guys?” he asked.

“Iguana,” the blonde said, raising a two on her hand. “Two plates please.”

“Oh?” the waiter said, smiling. “Adventurous white people.”

He took the menus and then left. Twenty minutes of awkward silence later he brought the plates. They looked like barbecue. The iguana itself tasted alright. Like gamey chicken. There was a crap ton of bones, though: spine and vertebrae and ribs. I was the first to find this out with a cracking sound against my molar. That dentistry would be expensive. The blonde laughed at me of course. Finally the meals were finished, and some childish selfies later I walked out toward the pier in the restaurant. I looked out into the ocean and then could see the blonde walk into my peripheral. 

“What are you thinking about?” she asked, another piña colada in her hand.

“How royally fucked my life is,” I said, looking out into the ocean. “I am on vacation but I’m technically using my last two weeks. I just got fired from my job at Cloud Marketing.”

“I’m about to get a divorce,” she said flatly, before she took another drink of her piña colada. “But I take it you knew that. What’s your name?”

“Brad,” I said. “Yours?”

“Silver,” she said, looking at me with a softer expression.

She rushed me, catching me completely off guard. I dropped my glass of Crown and Coke. My hands didn’t know what to do for a second, and then I embraced her. She tasted like piña colada and rum. I enjoyed the kiss. When I finally let go, she looked at me and playfully gave me a slap to the cheek. 

“I know.” I chuckled. “I kissed a married woman again.”

“That’s not why,” she said, smiling. “It was for waiting that long to do it again.”

I looked out at the sun setting on the horizon. It wasn’t quite a sunset yet, but the sun cast rays of light out onto the ocean, the stars, and the richly painted sky. It shone different metallic hues that likened themselves to precious metals. Even the clouds had a silver lining.