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“You do know it’s barely ten a.m., right? Hardly happy hour,” I say, gesturing to the drinks Neil’s delivered and stifling a laugh.
He feigns a look of mock surprise. “It’s always happy hour on Koh Sang. Has no one ever told you?”
I pull the smoothie close to me, deciding on the most innocent of the three options. I try to ignore the quick thrumming in my chest as I feel Neil’s sun-warmed skin next to mine. Those kinds of thoughts are a distraction I can’t risk now.
Undeterred, he slides into the seat across the table, gathering the cocktail and beer bottle in front of him. “More for me,” he says with a wink.
He takes a large gulp from the pink cocktail, the paper umbrella rubbing against his freshly shaved cheek. I can’t help but smile at how small the girly drink looks in his massive, freckled hand.
“Hey,” he says, noticing. “Nothing shows that you’re secure in your manliness quite like a pink drink.”
I laugh, meeting his kind eyes, the freckled skin around them crinkled in a smile. I force my gaze back downward.
“Mm.” Neil smacks his lips together. “Solid cocktail as always, Sengphet,” he shouts back toward the bartender.
Sengphet, who always seems to be manning the bar while simultaneously serving as the primary host, waiter, and washer-upper of the Tiki Palms, nods back, his hands pressed in front of him in gratitude. I’ve only had a few short conversations withSengphet since arriving here, during quiet moments between the breakfast and lunch rushes. He tells me in broken English about how he came to Koh Sang so that he could send money to his family back in Laos in efforts to give them a better life. We talk about his son, barely three, and how Sengphet is reminded of him every time he makes a drink with bananas and coconuts—his son’s favorite foods. Or about how much he misses playingsepak takraw—apparentlysome kind of mix between volleyball and soccer—with his friends and cousins back home. He fumbles through the new language he’s been struggling to learn since he arrived on the island a few months ago with a toothy smile and a hopelessly endearing chuckle.
An up-tempo Mumford & Sons song plays from the bar speaker now, a prelude to the raucous club beats that will take over as soon as the sun sets. I take a long sip from the smoothie. It tastes like a mix of papaya and dragon fruit and is absolutely delicious.
“So what were you doing here before I so rudely interrupted?” Neil asks.
My mind returns to the girl, and I scan the restaurant once more, but I don’t spot her anywhere.
“Oh, nothing. Just editing some photos I took from the hike Cass and I did on the Khrum Yai trail the other day so that I can turn them into a TikTok.”
“Ah,” he says. “Cass is a good tour guide if she’s taking you up there.”
I nod, not telling him the real reason I asked her to show me the trail, my true intention in seeing the summit.
“It’s nice that you’ve become so close,” he continues. “You and Cass.”
I smile, silently remembering the day I met her two weeks ago, my first morning on the island. She was sitting next to me a few tables down from where Neil and I sit now, her back straight in that typical East Coast, upper-middle-class way I always envied growing up. I watched Sengphet smile at her as he took her order, the gentle way she touched his arm as she thanked him.
“You’re American, right?” I asked after Sengphet walked away. Her eyes grew wide as if I was accusing her of something. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I heard you order. I’ve been in Thailand for a few days now, and strangely enough, I haven’t run into another American yet.” I was surprised at how eager I was for her response. Even after traveling for years throughout Eastern Europe on my own without issue, there was something utterly foreign about Southeast Asia. Something I’d found oddly isolating.
She nodded politely but didn’t respond.
“I’m Brooke.” I tried again.
“Cass,” she answered. Her voice was quiet, and there was a shyness to her that was refreshing given that most of my interactions lately came in the form of excited messages over social media with other extroverted influencers and eager followers.
“Where in the States are you from?” I asked.
“New York,” she said. And after a moment, “You?”
“The West Coast.”
If Cass was curious about my unintentionally vague answer, she didn’t say. And it’s not like she would have had any reason to suspect I was lying. I’d spent years molding my harsh Kentucky accent, sharpening my consonants and shortening my vowels, so that I could leave my drawl behind with the rest of my upbringing.
I spotted the black polo she was wearing, her chest emblazonedwith the label for the Koh Sang Dive Resort, the only hotel on the island. “You work here?”
“Yeah, I’m a dive instructor,” she said, the hint of a proud smile on her lips.
“Wow,” I said, impressed. “That’s incredible. I can’t imagine doing all that, spending all that time under the water. What’s that like? Doesn’t it make you nervous that things could go wrong down there?”
And with that, it was like a switch had flipped. She began to tell me all about what it was like to lose herself below the water’s surface, how it felt like an escape. Her quiet shyness melted as she opened up, her passion for diving evident. Eventually, I moved over to her table, and we talked for well over an hour, barely touching the meals in front of us. She told me about how she’d lived on Koh Sang for two years and how she was in a long-term relationship with Logan, another expat who owned one of the island’s bars.
She asked me questions as well, wanting to know all about the campaigns I’d established with hotels throughout Eastern Europe, how I’d created @BrookeaTrip, listening to it all attentively, without a shred of judgment. She leaned forward, eyes wide as I told her about the destruction I’d seen in Sarajevo, still unrepaired from war decades ago, and she nearly choked on her smoothie as I regaled her with the story of how I had reluctantly agreed to go on a first date with a guy in Croatia, expecting a casual meal, only to realize he had brought me as his plus-one to his sister’s wedding—an event I was severely underdressed and horribly unprepared for.
