1.

What made Gemma smile was, it was February and the street outside her apartment was doubtless iced over. Her neighbours’ cars were being towed to make way for the snowplows, but she was a thousand miles away. At the resort the air was sultry at ten in the morning. The sun glared down out of a perfect blue sky, warming her hair and the back of her shoulders as she waited in line for her first ice cream of the day.

This vacation was exactly what she needed after the last year and, with the deal Rachelle had gotten her, ten days at Sun Dreams Resort had been an easy decision. The guy ahead of her in line flirted with the pretty girl manning the ice cream stand. She wore a white bikini with the resort’s logo on the left breast, her hair pulled back in a ponytail that made her look even younger than she was, and she seemed perfectly happy to humour her customer. Gemma didn’t even care about the delay. For what seemed like the first time in forever, there was nowhere she had to be. Aside from the “Meet you at the ice cream stand at 10 and show you around!” text from Rachelle, no one expected anything from her, and that alone was relaxing.

Well, ok. It was relaxing for a minute or two, but then the holdup started getting to her, intruding on the bliss of trading snow for sunshine. Come on, Gemma thought at Flirting Dude, Take your shot and let the rest of us get our ice cream.

At the thought of “the rest of us”, Gemma looked over her shoulder to see if a line was forming with whom she could commiserate, but no one else was after ice cream this early in the day. Yeah, yeah, Gemma rebuked her internal scold about unnecessary calories, But I just got off a plane, so fuck you.

And then Ice Cream Girl lowered the wooden canopy of her little stand, and Flirting Guy wandered off, leaving Gemma staring at the words BE BACK SOON stenciled on the sun-faded green wood.

“What the hell?? Um, hello?”

Flirting Guy paid no attention to her and Ice Cream Girl was nowhere to be seen. With an exasperated snort, Gemma wondered if his shot had been so successful the girl had run off with him then and there. But a voice calling her name drew her from thoughts of investigating.

“Gemma! Ohmigod, HE-EYYYYY!”

Rachelle, dark-skinned and shining in the same white bikini Ice Cream Girl had worn, her gleaming smile perfect as always, ran up the steps from the beach, her flip-flops smacking the hot pavement as she pounced on her friend.

“You made it! How was your flight? Was the weather horrible coming out here? I was so worried you’d get delayed or cancelled or something! Isn’t this great? Come on, I can’t wait to show you the whole resort! I can totally get us in places the guests aren’t allowed. Come on!”

Not waiting for a reply, Rachelle had Gemma by the hand and was leading her to the beach before Gemma could even mention the weird thing with the ice cream stand. The tanned, dark-haired woman hardly let her friend get a word in edgewise as she talked all about Sun Dreams, how cool it was to work here, how much fun Gemma was going to have, how great the rooms and amenities were, how there was free wifi on the beach and there were even curated playlists you could stream while you tanned, which she knew Gemma would just love, because… and on and on.

Gemma rolled her eyes but couldn’t help smiling at Rachelle’s enthusiasm; the girl hadn’t changed at all since college. She’d always been fun to party with, and when she’d told Gemma she’d landed a job in promotions for this far-flung resort, Gemma hadn’t been surprised. Rachelle was even more of a sun bunny than she was, and had never seemed to belong in a city that had four different seasons.

After an hour of catching up over complimentary daiquiris, Rachelle left her to tan. Gemma found a free lounge chair away from most of the others and settled herself on the blue canvas. The chairs were as well designed as the rest of the resort’s amenities seemed to be: they were very wide, and even someone much larger than Gemma would have no trouble hitting every spot they wanted to tan. Gemma started on her back. Rachelle having helped her apply her tanning oil, she pulled her phone out, made sure it was on the resort wifi, and opened the link Rachelle had sent her. She rolled her eyes when it wanted to download some third-party app instead of just linking to a Spotify playlist, but whatever. She wasn’t in a hurry!

The sound of the mellow surf washing the beach and the gleeful shouts of people playing in it were nice enough background noise until she could turn on some music and tune the rest of the world out, as she loved to do while tanning. There was nothing more relaxing than lying there in the sun, letting the warmth slow your thoughts into a drowsy haze, with nowhere to be and no one to bother you. But the right playlist made it perfect. Gemma hoped Rachelle knew what she was talking about with this “special music” the resort had devised. Gemma had plenty of her own playlists, including ones for tanning, but her friend had been so excited, and it couldn’t hurt to indulge her.

At last, the downloaded finished—at least the app was simple to use. There was just one playlist. According to Rachelle they updated it on the regular, and all Gemma had to do was tap the button and let it go. She shut her eyes behind her sunglasses. Her earbuds weren’t noise-cancelling, so she could still hear the surf behind the chill electronic beat that faded in, but that only made it more relaxing.

The music mixed really well with the sound of the ocean, which made sense if the resort was going to the trouble of getting their own music made; they knew their audience. Gemma drifted away much more quickly than she usually did when she tanned and wondered if she’d fall asleep—maybe she should have set a timer to make sure she rolled over onto her front; it would suck getting burned on her very first day.

But then a chime sounded in her ears and a gentle female voice said, “It’s time to turn over.”

Gemma smirked. They had thought of everything, hadn’t they? But she checked her phone. Had it really been… yes, it had been fifteen minutes already! That was crazy. She could swear she just turned the music on moments earlier… she must have zoned out almost immediately. It made sense, though: she was tired from the long flight, and, now that the excitement of arriving and seeing Rachelle was over and she could just stretch out on the beach, all that tiredness was catching up with her.

She rolled over onto her chest and felt the sun warm the skin of her shoulders. It felt so good, almost like a massage, and the notion of her oiled skin being massaged by sunlight fluttered around in her head. It was a strange fancy but very enjoyable. Gemma drifted deeper into profound relaxation, unaware she’d slipped from daydreaming into a different sort of dreaming—not asleep, but not quite awake, either.

Soon, another chime sounded and the gentle female voice returned: “Time to take a break.”

Gemma raised herself up on her hands and blinked heavily. She’d fallen asleep! That never happened… or almost never. She looked at her phone and was once again surprised to confirm another quarter of an hour had flown by; once again, it had felt like only a couple minutes. She appreciated the friendly voice—and it was funny to think of a disembodied voice recorded on a playlist as a friend, but felt warm feelings towards it all the same—and had a strange sense the woman had been speaking to her the whole time, underneath the music that had played while she’d slept.

Maybe there were lyrics in the ambient sound, though Gemma couldn’t recall any. What else would the voice have been saying to her?

To Be Continued…