It’s hard to hate Gemma—she’s fun and bubbly. What’s not to like? After she was fired from a string of jobs, Paul got rid of seventy-four-year-old Dennis, a veteran, to make room for her at Around the Mountain. She latched on to me on day one. Gemma brings me banana nut bread samples from our resort’s breakfast bar, Sunrise in the Smokies, and is enthusiastic about everything I say even if it’s just chatting about needing to get groceries. Whenever I wear new jewelry, she zeroes right in on it with an ego-inflating compliment. The only bad thing about Gemma is tangled up in the only bad thing about Jack McBride.
For a period of two wonderful months, I thought he was real. I look at Gemma now, radiant with friendliness, and I want to adore her to bits. But I can’t.
“Did I tell you that Eric and I are moving in together?” she asks, steering me away from the direction in which I was heading. We turn left at the end of a corridor, fading out the constant loop of “Welcome to Around the Mountain Resort and Spa!” that blares from a big screen in the lobby, cartoon bear cub in a straw hat pointing at a map of entertainment options.
“I don’t have time for the arcade right now.” I strain to present myself as nice, harmless, nonthreatening, even though I wish I could be direct and assertive. Slipping up for even a moment and forgetting that Gemma has Paul’s ear is dangerous. “I’ve gotta talk to Christine.”
Gemma makes a face. “Christine’s the worst. You don’t want to talk to her.”
“I don’t want to, no, but I have some new ideas about—”
“Honey.” She laughs. “I love you, but you know it’s never happening. Christine’s too obsessed with weddings. I heard her discussing your Halloween dinner theater idea with Dad and basically she thinks that sort of stuff degrades the resort and makes it less appealing as a venue. We get so much money for weddings, you know, so that’s got star priority.”
“When did she say that? She told me she was considering—”
“Anyway,” she interrupts, “Eric and I are moving in together next week! Can you believe it? We’re gonna throw a huge housewarming party. You’re at the top of the list, so you’d better come, no excuses. And bring those amazing cinnamon twist donuts of yours! Everybody’s gonna love them.”
I’m still pissed about Christine’s disregarding my contributions yet again, but a new irritation sidetracks me. My donuts are amazing, but when Gemma compliments them, I second-guess what the truth is because she lies all the time for no reason. Maybe she’s lying about how much she loves the cinnamon twists, too.
“We need to get you a man, Maybell,” she’s saying now, dragging me over to Whack-a-Mole. She bangs her mallet with a scary degree of violence for someone so petite. “Then we can double-date! It’ll be so fun, having both of my favorite people together with me.” She beats the crap out of the plastic rodents as she talks, silky brown hair tumbling from her ponytail.
Gemma has such an abundance of nerve that it makes me question my own sanity. I know I didn’t imagine the last few months because Gemma apologizes for them incessantly, bringing it up at least once a week. Her apologies are reality-warping mysteries that somehow end with me comforting her, and reassuring her, about everything that happened. “Everything That Happened” is how Gemma, Paul, and my other coworkers phrase what she did: a thick coat of sugar slathered over one of the most depressing experiences of my adult life.
“Your turn.” She hands me the mallet, which means I’m the one who looks bad when Christine happens to walk by. Fantastic.
“Are you on break?” Christine barks at me. No attitude for Gemma, naturally. Gemma could be holding a chain saw dangling human innards and Christine would find a way to praise her for it.
“I stole her away for a second,” Gemma replies, fixing on an angel’s smile. “Blame me, not Maybell.”
Christine holds my stare. “If you have time to waste, you have time to work. There’s vomit on the ice machine and all over the walls on floor two.”
It’s on the walls, too? Good lord. “But—”
As she turns away, I gather up the courage to call out, “Have you finished reading my proposal for the scavenger hunt?”
“We tried a scavenger hunt in 2018,” she says without turning. “Nobody was into it.”
“I think the pirate theme would be fun for kids.”
She claps her hands three times. “Get! To! Work!”
Gemma waits until she’s out of earshot and pats my shoulder. “Ugh, I hate her, too. I think she’s having an affair with my dad.”
“I don’t hate her,” I’m quick to say, simultaneously imagining pushing Christine into the lazy river. Gemma probably waits until I’m out of earshot to whisper, Ugh, I hate her, too, about me to other people. At least now I have an excuse to leave. “Gotta go clean up, I guess.” Two hours. Two more hours and then I can go home.
She slides away to a game called Ticket Jackpot. “Wish me luck!”
Padding down the dark green hall, I replay Christine’s words and am strongly tempted to rip off my “Event Coordinator” badge. After changing trash bags, making beds, and bleaching Jacuzzis from the time I turned eighteen, I’d moved out of housekeeping just before hitting thirty and into an arena where I could finally flex my creative skills. Now I’m told the events I want to produce are too big, too niche, or too much. No matter what I do, I’m perpetually ending up alone in a room with a roll of paper towels under my arm and cleaning supplies to take care of somebody else’s mess.
“I’m going to quit,” I grumble. It’s my personal anthem, which I sing every day. “Job is in title only. This is stupid. It’s stupid!”
Caleb Ramirez nods in greeting as he walks by, likely on his way to Sunrise in the Smokies, where he works. Seeing him is like being stabbed with a very small pin, because he was the unwitting catalyst for Everything That Happened. Unfortunate, because Caleb’s such a great guy. The only bad thing about him is that once, several months ago, we shared a bag of popcorn together in the break room and he mentioned he liked my sneakers. I’m bad at receiving compliments, habitually reciprocating with a compliment of my own to erase the one given to me, and I said I liked his car. He grinned. I’ll take you for a ride sometime.
Gemma, who falls in love about a dozen times a year and falls hard, had a huge crush on Caleb. As I came to find out, on a deceptively ordinary Wednesday evening two months afterward, with Gemma snotting all over my shirt as she wrapped her arms around me and wouldn’t let me squirm away, she’d simply done what she thought she had to do. She was sorry. She was insecure and desperately in love. People who are in love can’t think straight, don’t act normally. Please don’t hate me. I couldn’t keep it going any longer, my hair’s starting to fall out and I’m losing sleep.