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…and so it begins.
Quasimodo had better posture than me when I was focused on my work, and after spending umpteen hours pounding away on my laptop’s keyboard, I was feeling it.
My mind had lost track of how many hours I’d been slaving away on this strategic marketing report, but my body hadn’t. Every vertebra in my upper back cracked when I reached over to grab my coffee mug off the nightstand.
My bottom lip pouted when I saw that the mug was empty… again. If I was as dramatic as people accused me of being, I might have been tempted to mutter to myself about how this cup was a metaphor for my life without Kai—empty, unsatisfying, and sad.
They say the night is darkest just before the sun comes up, but they never had to pull an all-nighter in a Hawaiian hotel room with nothing but a single serve coffee maker to keep them alive. The sun wouldn’t be up for another two hours, but I was pretty sure the moment I had to haul my backside out of my chair to make another cup of coffee was the darkest moment the earth had ever witnessed.
I rubbed my burning eyes as I dragged my feet across the floor, on the way to sweet, caffeinated salvation. I was burning through pre-measured coffee pods like a fat man through pork rinds, but I had no shame.
I looked through the flavors left in the complimentary basket on the counter: vanilla bean delight, hazelnut cream pie, spiced cinnamon dream, and my favorite, decadent chocolate fudge escape. There was only one problem.
All of these coffees were for sissies.
I needed strong coffee. Black coffee. Coffee that that had enough of a kick to wake a hibernating grizzly bear. I sighed. There wasn’t a single pod of black coffee to be seen.
I plugged a pod in and rummaged around in the gift bag I’d found sitting on my bed the first day I arrived on the island. It was full of Blue Pacific swag and had just what I needed inside—a giant cup with a handle.
Normally I’d call a cup with a handle a mug, but this was no ordinary mug. It was a ten-inch-tall tank, designed to hold fifty ounces of liquid.
There were only a few more hours left before I’d have to check out of this hotel and make my own way in the world, but before that happened, I had to finish the task at hand.
And that meant I had to stay awake!
I pulled the lid off that big-daddy of a cup and dumped the steaming-hot mug of coffee inside. Then I plugged in the next pod. I dumped it in when it was finished, too. I stood there, making mug after mug, until the basket of coffee pods was empty.
I pressed my giant lid into place, dropped the straw in, and gave it a twirl.
No doubt the bottom of that stainless steel straw would have been shriveled and half-melted just like in one of those old mad scientist cartoons, if I’d have been brave enough to look. But I’d faced enough reality for a lifetime in the past twenty-four hours, and I preferred to pretend the coffee bomb I’d just made was a perfectly harmless concoction.
I took a sip and shivered at the taste. My left eye twitched and I’m convinced my hair curled just as much as my toes. Forget about the caffeine. The cacophony of flavors competing for attention in my mouth would be enough to keep me going for a while.
I headed back to my chair, but not before I stopped to take a gander at my vision board. Yes, I’d brought the stupid thing with me.
For a little while there, I’d thought it might have actually been working, but now? Well, now it only mocked me with all of its sunshine, dolphins, and that man with the coconut drink… the one who reminded me so much of Kai it hurt.
“I hope you can understand one day,” I said, touching the picture like a love-sick dodo bird. “I’m doing all of this for you, you know.”
Yes. I knew I was talking to a picture I’d clipped from a travel brochure, but cut me some slack. I’d been working ever since Kai had left yesterday morning, and I was bordering on delirium from sleep deprivation.
I took one last look at the hot Hawaiian man holding the drink in a coconut before lugging my coffee back to my workstation, a.k.a the uncomfortable chair beside my bed.
I’ll admit, I grumbled a tad when it hit me about how unlikely it was that I’d ever live out that scene with a coconut-cup man of my own.
It was a hard pill to swallow after the week I’d just enjoyed with Kai.
The hands of the clock went round and round as a tropical downpour fell across my hotel windows in thick sheets of water that blurred the daylight outside. When had the sun come up?
I typed the final words in my report and saved my work, blinking my bleary eyes and wishing I had time to take a little nap before packing my things. But checkout time was in an hour and a half, and I didn’t dare shut my eyes.
Knowing myself like I did, I knew I’d never wake up in time to check out. And knowing my current employment situation like I did, I also knew I couldn’t afford to pay for another night in this fancy-pants hotel.
So, I pulled myself out of the chair, packed up, took a long-overdue coffee-induced potty break, and made my way to the business suite downstairs.
I practically yawned my jaw off its hinges as I watched the printer spew the pages of work that were responsible for the bags beneath my eyes.
I clipped all thirty-five pages of solid-gold marketing strategy together and shoved them into my bag as I walked out into the sunshine, dragging all of my worldly possessions behind me.
