Sweet Romance15 min read
My Resort, My Revenge, My Coconut: A Campus Love Mess
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I told everyone at school I was a rich kid.
"No need to show off all the time," I whispered to myself when people gawked. "Let them think what they want."
"I saw you with that Chanel bag on the first day," Jessie said one evening, flipping through photos on her phone.
"That was the smallest thing in my closet," I answered, feeling both proud and a little tired. "Really. My family runs a few properties, but I am—"
"Low-key?" Cassandra finished for me, teasing my posture.
"Exactly. Low-key," I said, but the truth was messy. My dad liked to show up in the strangest ways: a dusty van, flip-flops, cheerfully embarrassing me in front of the wrong people. That van, that image—that's what sealed my school reputation as some kind of odd, show-off rich girl. It was funny when it happened, and then it became a label I could not shake.
"We get you," Jessie said, nudging my shoulder. "But you're still the one with the best pranks."
I smiled because I liked being mischievous. I liked control. I liked the small thrill of setting the scene.
"Remember how you said you were going to introduce me to a job on campus?" Jazmin asked once, soft as cotton. She wore a face that could make anyone believe in gentleness.
"You have a boyfriend?" I asked, remembering the polite favor I had done—helping introduce her to some small part-time work through an acquaintance. Her boyfriend, whoever he was, seemed to be around town.
"Yes. It's complicated."
"Alright," I had said, because I trusted people too easily. I forgave the mistakes I made with warmth, and I never suspected she would come to bite me back.
*
The resort where my family had a stake was quiet in off-season. The sea scatter of lights at night made the place look like a pocket of stars. I flew back on a whim because my friends were away and I missed the sound of waves. I hated the idea that a petty rumor could turn into something bigger.
I was sitting by the pool, drinking coconut water from a hollowed shell. The breeze smelled like salt and sunscreen. I watched two figures splash in the shallow water, laughing the kind of laugh that shows two people are comfortably terrible at hiding chemistry.
"Who's with him?" I murmured.
"Hold on," Jessie said, squinting. "Isn't that—"
"It can't be," Cassandra said.
"Too tall. Too—" Jessie stopped. "No. It is him."
"Go home!" I told myself, palms sweating. "Go home and ignore it. Don't make a scene."
But I didn't. My feet felt like they were made of lead and water at the same time. I remembered every small lie Davis had told me for months: out-of-town trips, board meetings, photos of business breakfasts that always showed him sharp and busy. He was a founder—he had his own tech startup—so his life always sounded plausible. He was smooth. He was clever in excuses.
"Should I call you later?" I had texted him once that afternoon.
"At a meeting. Talk later, babe," his reply said, but his hand was on another girl's waist then, playful and unashamed.
"What do you want to do?" Jessie asked, her voice very quiet.
"I want to watch," I said, and perhaps I wanted more than that. Part of me wanted to catch them, to feel the sting and then shape it into something beautiful.
I got up, borrowed a waiter apron from the lobby manager—"I'm learning from the ground," I lied with a smile—and walked the restaurant floor.
"Sir, your steak." I placed the plate down across from them, close enough to see the quick slide of Davis's eyes.
"Davis?" I said, loud enough. "What are you doing here?"
He blinked. "Alexandra? I thought—"
"Oh, didn't you say you were in D city for a meeting?" I asked, keeping my voice steady.
"We're partners here, and the partner couldn't make it." He gestured, forcing a smile.
"And she's the partner?" I said, pointing to Jazmin.
"Yes. Temporary. Some people have to work closely." He tried to be casual. "Alex, are you okay? You look—"
"Like someone who doesn't enjoy being lied to?" I replied.
He hid behind an easy laugh and reached to pat my head in that fake, conspiratorial way some men do when blaming women for emotions. People noticed. Heads turned.
"Keep it cool," Davis said, sotto voce. "Let's talk later."
I left with the glowing coconut husk in my hands. Inside, my plan was forming. If he wanted to be clever, I would be cleverer.
Later, when I watched them together on the second night—I had sat two rooms across, drunk on coconut and curiosity—Jazmin changed into white and sweet and all innocence. She always looked untroubled. She always had that "poor-me" glance ready. The resort staff could not help but treat her gently the way people treat flowers.
"I helped her," I told Jessie the next morning. "I did a favor. I introduced her to that job."
"Bad idea?" Cassandra asked.
"She bit the hand. She bit the hand and used it to climb."
"Maybe she didn't know who you were," Jessie said, but the truth was worse. She did know. She knew and she used us both.
"You do realize this can be turned into something..." Jessie began.
"Yes," I said. "Into the stage."
I liked an audience.
*
"You asked for my help," Jazmin had told me once, eyes wide as a child's. "Thank you."
She smiled when she thought I wasn't watching. That smile lost all softness when no one looked. I felt the first burn of betrayal, and it tasted like iron.
"I could make it hurt," I told myself.
Years of privilege taught me a few useful things besides access: timing, spectacle, and an impeccable sense of embarrassment. If the world loved gossip, I could serve it up in a neat bowl.
I started small. I took photos. I left doors slightly open. I made sure the staff at the resort's front desk would see certain cars parked at certain times. I sent suspicious messages to friends in other circles and let them leak as "oh, rumor" material. I watched their games unfold, then nudged them to a bigger stage.
Once, while wearing a borrowed waiter uniform, I let a tray slip to the floor near their table. "I am so sorry!" I cried, overacting with such delightful precision that every head in the restaurant looked our way.
"What is she doing?" a guest whispered.
"Isn't she the socialite from the city?" another said.
"She is a little dramatic," someone else said, and the room hummed.
Both of them flinched like dogs who've been given too much leash.
"You're showing off," Davis mouthed at me later, when he thought no one looked. "Keep the drama to a minimum."
"Keep the lies to a minimum," I mouthed back.
I let it simmer until the next moment came—the one that would make everything shift.
*
The scholarship ceremony was the perfect stage. My father's laugh filled the auditorium, a rough, proud sound. Forbes Bond liked to be known as plain and unstoppable. He liked to show up in old trousers and an honest grin and then do something that left people stunned. He wore the kind of authenticity that made gossip look small.
"Forbes!" someone called as my father came up to the stage. "You're here! Tell us about Alexandra!"
"I came to see my daughter take what she deserves," he said into the microphone, and the entire room turned toward me.
"Is she in the audience? Come up, Alexandra!" he said, with a wink.
Everyone thought Forbes was some eccentric father of a modest girl. That was the whole point. Laughs, whispers, assumptions—perfect theater. The room was still when I walked on stage, palms cool, heart a little too loud.
"You look beautiful," Davis said from the crowd. His voice reached me like sandpaper.
"Trust me," Forbes whispered in my ear, "we're on."
"Welcome, everyone," the moderator said. "The Bond Family Scholarship was created to encourage excellence." He read names.
"This year," Forbes added, "I want to make it interesting."
He started to talk about fairness and truth. He teased the audience with stories about campus troublemakers and minor scandals. All the while, my plan danced like a slow-moving wind behind him.
Suddenly, from the darkness of the audience came a shout: "Wait—what about the pictures?"
Hudson Evans clicked a USB stick into the projector. The screen lit up with images: a man, a woman, and laughter that had secrets.
"Is that—" a student whispered.
"It's Davis Gerard, isn't it?" someone else said.
A slide appeared: texts, photos, the kind of casual betrayals that meant everything to an audience hungry for story.
Davis's face changed. He had been smug enough to think that a spike in romance was just performance. He had no idea his image would be dissected like this.
"Stop it!" he shouted, standing up. "This isn't—"
"They're just rumors," Jazmin cried. "It's fabricated."
"Is this true?" Forbes asked gently, as if the truth were a garden he wanted to examine.
"You don't have to lie in public," I said, my voice measured. "Just—tell them yourself."
Davis's face went through the classic phases in a heartbeat: blankness, a forced grin, denial, anger, then a cold, visible crumble.
"No! This is—this is a private matter!" he said. "You can't—"
"You chose to make it public," Hudson said, calm and cutting. "He proposed in front of the whole school. He made it public."
The projector kept running. Messages that sounded ordinary in private were monstrous in public: "Glad you're free" and "Meet tonight, I'm by the pier" and photos that aligned like puzzle pieces.
People pulled out phones. Some recorded. Others watched as if they'd been given front-row seats to a much-wanted show.
"Who showed these?" Davis accused, breath quick.
"Who needs to know?" I asked, almost laughing. "Everyone. Because you made it matter to everyone."
Then came the part I had planned: the names. Photos with Jazmin, texts, the way Jazmin had winked for a camera as if writing a love note on her palm. The auditorium buzzed and then burst: whispers, gasps, a low hum that felt like collective judgment.
Davis's reaction became a story of collapse. He went from fighting to silence to pleading.
"Alex—please," he said, voice cracking, eyes shining with a fear I wanted to burn. "I didn't mean—"
"You didn't mean to be honest," I said.
Then the audience turned.
"You used us as your audience and your alibi," a student said, voice sharp. "We gave you applause; you gave us lies."
Forbes stepped forward, not as a bully, but like a man correcting a ledger. "Is that the man you want to marry my daughter?" he asked Davis.
Davis swallowed. "I—"
"No," many voices said at once.
"Not here," someone jeered.
People's faces overlapped: amusement, disgust, pity. A teacher in the front row snapped a photo. Students who had once hung on Davis's reputation moved away like tides.
Then Davis's demeanor changed. The smugness cracked into something raw. "Please," he said, eyes shining in the stage light. "Alex, I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
"You can say sorry," I answered, "but sorry in tongues never fixed what you broke. You chose a scene. The scene is done."
His public pleading grew louder, his face red with shame. He walked up the aisle and then stopped, as if the crowd itself blocked him.
"You made promises," Forbes said, quietly, "and you made them public. Now we make public what you hid."
Students stood and posted comments live. The auditorium filled with an electric noise—the internet finding its next feast. Davis's panic was a physical thing; he staggered through denial, then sparring, then a final hollowing.
"Don't film me," he begged, but his voice was swallowed.
Jazmin had risen too, pale as paper. "I didn't know—" she murmured.
"Nobody asked you to know," Hudson said, his voice measured and cold. "You chose to be part of this."
The rest of the scene unfurled like a long, slow curtain call. Cameras flashed. People whispered. Davis's face crumpled and he left the stage, groping for some dignity that would not be returned.
This was the first punishment: the university as witness, my plan a mirror. I watched him finally meet the consequences of his choices. The auditorium had become a court of social opinion, and he had no lawyer. He had only the tremor of a man who had believed himself clever.
*
But one public punishment was not enough; Jazmin had to feel the unraveling of the image she'd spun, too. For weeks she had carried herself like a fragile porcelain doll, letting people prop her up and whisper about VIP dinners and charming fathers.
The hotel dinner should have been the second act.
"Let's all go to Cloud & Harmony," Jazmin had invited us, voice sweet as sugar. "My dad's a VIP there."
"How convenient," Cassandra said, flipping her hair. "Lead on."
We snaked into the grand lobby like a small storm. Jazmin's smile was brittle now, and I had already set the table for her unmaking.
At our private room table, the chatter was easy, polite. Someone mentioned the resort's connections. Someone else joked about who knew whom. Wine glasses chimed.
"Zoe," a classmate said, meaning Jazmin, "your dad really works at Cloud & Harmony?"
"Yes," she said. "He knows people."
Then Forbes walked in like a man with comfortable shoes. He greeted old acquaintances, and then he saw Jazmin. He put a hand on his own chest and laughed.
"Your father is here?" someone asked.
"Yes," Jazmin said quickly, then paled.
Forbes stood by the doorway. He waved to the manager. "This is my daughter, over here," someone said, thinking he knew how the story would line up. The manager blurted a polite "Oh, Ms." and bowed, because managers bow to anyone who might be important to the hotel's business.
But then something small happened: Forbes smiled and said, loud enough for the room, "So this is the famous Ms. Clapp? The one who keeps getting Cloud & Harmony deliveries?"
Silence fell like a lamp being switched off.
Jazmin's face went white. "My dad is indeed a friend of the hotel," she tried to say, but the manager's forced recognition turned into an awkward shift.
"Forbes," the manager began, "we have regular guests with that name, but I don't think—"
"Judging by the stories," Forbes said, voice amused, "you like to tell tales about VIPs. It makes you feel taller. But everyone's tallness drops when truth comes up."
The manager's face reddened. "We mean no disrespect."
"This girl's story," Forbes continued, "about VIPs and special dinners and deliveries—does it have a real name attached, or is it a costume she borrows when she wants to dine like someone else?"
A few mouths opened. Someone laughed nervously. Jazmin stammered, trying to call someone, to force a rescue.
"Her father is not a Cloud & Harmony VIP," Forbes announced, and the sentence landed with the weight of a gavel.
"What?" Jazmin moaned, shrinking.
A new sound rose: the slow, cruel drum of applause from the table across, then whispers, then a bubbling amusement. The manager's expression turned to pity and then to professional distance.
"Ms. Clapp," he said, "it's not right to claim privileges that aren't yours. If you've misled guests and staff—"
"This is ridiculous," she snapped, eyes wet. "My father gave me that dinner once. He told them to send something. It doesn't mean—"
"It means you borrowed an angle," Forbes said. "You borrowed a story and wore it like a sash. Now you get to take it off."
People turned their chairs, phones out, faces hungry. The scene became a slow boil of humiliation. Jazmin had nowhere to hide. She searched the room for solidarity and found none.
"You're unfit to claim that weight," someone said. "If you want help, ask for it, but don't steal people's trust to raise yourself."
Jazmin's composure cracked. She tried to apologize. Her voice caught.
"Stop!" she cried, finally collapsing into tears. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"
But sorry does not always buy a reverse of consequences. People had already started to record. They filmed the way she had smiled like a queen, then fell like a doll.
"She used us," Cassandra said. "She used our trust."
"She lied," Jessie added. "She used a story to climb."
We watched Jazmin's change: from entitled to frantic, then to a rigid, painful silence. Her reactions moved through denial, anger, bargaining, and then a self-focused, small collapse. The diners at our table sifted through emotions like through a menu—some eager, some sickened.
"Are you alright?" a waiter asked politely.
"No," she said. "I'm not."
People turned away. Phones raised higher.
"Do you want to leave?" I asked quietly.
She looked at me, eyes red. "How could you—why do you hate me so much?"
"I don't hate you," I replied, and I truly didn't. "I hate what you did."
Her humiliation was not violent, but it was complete: the slow exposure of a lie in a room full of faces. It was public. It had a timeline and a soundtrack: the managers' murmurs, the clinking of cutlery, the rustle of jacket sleeves as people shifted away.
Then came the worst part: her network began to unravel. A friend sent a text that showed she had been using names and favors to get special treatment. A staff member admitted on camera to the manager that the "VIP" notes were orchestrated. Jazmin's face, once composed, now looked like a weathered statue.
She fled the room, not running but moving like someone trying to escape a recounting. People laughed, others whispered "what a show." Some felt sorry; a few felt triumphant. Her world—the one built on borrowed names—crumbled in real time.
Jazmin's punishment was not the dramatic arrest or physical fall you'd see in a movie. It was deeper. It was the small, clean burn of social currency collapsing: the favor calls that wouldn't return, the polite invitations that would stop, the sliding scale of trust she would now face.
She went from being "someone with access" to "someone who pretended." People stopped offering opportunities she had once hoped to harvest. Her phone calls became fewer. She posted apologies that looked mechanical. Her friends stopped inviting her to certain circles. At the end, she sat alone in the lobby for a long time, the hotel lights washing the marble with a pity that felt like salt.
For her, the worst part may have been the change in people's faces: the ones who once smiled at her now felt awkward. They had been made complicit. That complicit guilt made them step back.
Meanwhile, I walked out into the night, the sea air heavy with salt and coconut. I did not feel triumphant. I felt like someone who had fixed a broken picture frame—it's in its place, but the cracks are visible.
"Is this too much?" Jessie asked, catching up to me. "Do you think we went overboard?"
"Not enough," I said.
She stared at me. "You're cold."
"I'm careful," I corrected. "And I like my life without liars in it."
*
Weeks later, the aftermath settled like a film of dust. Davis's friends drifted away. Jazmin's invitations dwindled. The university's gossip wheels moved on to something shinier and newer. I moved into the apartment my father had bought for me—a small, clean place where I could watch the city and not the stage.
"Alex," Max said one afternoon, unexpected, gentle as a dawn. "You should come to the library with me. There's a talk."
"Max?" I blinked. He was awkward in an admirable way: steady, tall, someone who didn't need a spotlight to be interesting.
"You looked different the day your dad announced things." He smiled without teasing. "It was a lot."
"It was a theatre," I said. "And the stage was full of people who wanted to play parts they didn't belong to."
He sat down, giving me his full attention like a gift. "And you? Are you okay?"
"People I let in lied," I said, "and I learned how to let them go."
He nodded. "You deserve people who don't confuse you with their props."
His hands were calm. His words were steady. The kind of care that didn't dazzle but did not disappoint.
"Would you like coffee?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. "Black. No drama."
We laughed. He walked me to the door of a small café and finally, in the thick steam and smell of roasted beans, he reached for my hand in an unhurried way.
"This feels like the beginning of a story that's mine," I whispered.
"Let it be," he said softly. "But let's make sure it's not a show."
We touched fingers, a fragile and promising contact.
*
I kept a coconut on my windowsill for a while, a silly souvenir from the resort. Sometimes I would spin it with the heel of my palm and feel its rough shell. It became a sort of totem: a reminder that things looked simple on the outside but could hold sweet, bitter water inside.
People asked me why I had done what I did. They said I was cruel. They argued I could have forgiven. I listened, and sometimes I said, "I wanted honesty, not secrets."
"It's not revenge," I told Jessie once, stirring a cup of tea. "It's clearing the stage. It's refusing to be an actor in someone else's lies."
She frowned. "And Davis?"
"He learned in front of a crowd," I said.
"And Jazmin?"
"She learned, too. Maybe she will be kinder. Or maybe she will be smaller. Either way, she will have to live with what she chose."
Life after that was quieter. I studied. I wrote applications. My scholarship was a small, practical help, and I used it to keep my place. Max and I started with coffee, then walks, then book talks.
Davis tried to apologize, again and again, in the way men do when they realize their audience has left the theater. I listened once, maybe twice.
"I never wanted to hurt you," he said, voice thin.
"You did," I said. "You wanted to have your cake and wear someone else's smile at the same time."
He left, finally. I felt relief like a breath long held. There was no triumph, only a strange softness. I had won something that mattered: I had refused to be small for someone else's comfort.
When people asked if I planned to go back to the resort, I told them yes. It was mine in a way: memory, proof, a place where I had taught myself a lesson in clarity.
"Do you regret it?" Jessie asked once, when Max and I were walking along a wet street after an autumn rain.
"Sometimes," I said. "But regrets are different from lessons. I keep the lessons."
We rounded a corner and I caught the edge of my reflection in a shop window. A coconut shell sat on my windowsill at home, and I could almost hear the faint "thud"—the sound of everything I had set right.
"Next time," Max said suddenly, "if there's ever a drama, call me."
"Will you be in the audience?" I asked.
"I'll be the one who helps you fold the curtains," he replied.
I smiled and thought of Forbes hunched in the audience that day, laughing and proud. The van, the flip-flops, the ridiculous pride—these were mine too. I could have been ashamed, but I wasn't. The van had driven me home in more ways than one.
At night, I would wind the rim of the coconut with my fingers and listen to the quiet. People changed; so did I. The lights on the resort still blinked miles away, like a memory that refused to stop reaching.
One day, I might tell the story differently, maybe with less sharpness, maybe gentler. For now, when someone says, "How did you do it?" I keep my answer small.
"I picked up a coconut," I say. "I cracked it open. I drank what was inside."
That always gets someone's eyebrows up.
"Then what?" they ask.
"Then I closed the shell and threw it into the sea," I answer.
Max squeezes my hand when I say it, and for the first time in a long time I like the sound of my own voice. The sea answers with the hush of the tide, and everything else is background.
The End
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