Twelve Days
An Exclusive Bonus Chapter from The Resort Rebound
by Riley Kendra
⚠️ This bonus chapter takes place during Holly’s second residency block, after Chapter Seventeen. It contains spoilers and extremely explicit content. Read the novel first. 18+.
Twelve Days
DANIELLA
I was in the chair at twenty past eleven.
It’s on the wall schedule. The third Saturday in January, beside RUSSO, under the line where Marco’s name now closes and mine used to, in black marker and capitals: 11:30 — H. I wrote it the morning she flew. My sous has read it. The dishwasher has read it. Nobody has asked, and since eleven o’clock everybody has been extremely busy at the far end of the building.
It was day seven of twelve.
In December I lasted four of them before I got on an airplane. This time I had a closing coming, a lawyer with a folder, and a restaurant I was in the middle of making mine, and Holly had taken my face in both hands on a departures curb and said, “Stay. Sign things. I want to come home to a woman with a deed.” So I’d stayed. I had missed her for seven days, in order, with nothing skipped.
I locked the office door. Then I unlocked it and opened it, and found my general manager four feet away, polishing a water glass that was already clean.
“Marco.”
“Chef.”
“You have a key to this door.”
“I do. I think about it every day.”
“For the next hour, you don’t.”
He looked past me at the telephone propped against my monitor. He looked at the glass.
“I’m going to put the chairs up,” he said. “At the far end. With the radio on.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“Chef,” said Marco, with great gentleness, “it’s a small building.”
I locked the door again.
The office is nine feet by seven. A desk, a monitor, a shelf of binders, and a chair I’ve been meaning to replace since the year we opened. A pink paper umbrella stands upright beside the keyboard. I do payroll in that room. I’ve let four people go in it. In fourteen years I had never once used it for anything I’d have minded an inspector walking in on.
I’d read up on the practice. I’d made three notes and folded them in thirds. LIGHT IN FRONT. PROP IT, DON’T HOLD IT. ASK.
At eleven-thirty exactly the screen lit. HOLLY (EMERGENCIES ONLY). I’ve never changed it. I’ve come around to the view that it’s accurate.
The picture arrived in pieces. A ceiling fan. A lamp. A great deal of green silk, very close, and then her face swinging into the frame, flushed, with her hair coming down and a shine across her collarbones.
“There you are,” Holly said. “I’ve been all over this island.”
It was half past twelve where she was. She’d come straight from the lounge. I could hear it; after a set her voice drops half a step and picks up a burr along the bottom. Behind her was room 206, the slider open on the dark, the bed made by pulling the cover up over whatever was in it.
“How was the room?”
“They came with me. I did the new one. The Ohio sisters are back, did I tell you? They brought a third sister.” She was walking; the picture swung. “Lorraine says hi. Desmond says he’s doing the eggs your way and he’d like it known he was always going to. And Sonia says—”
The picture stopped. Her mouth stayed open on a vowel. A small wheel turned in the middle of her forehead.
“Holly.”
Nothing. I waited. I’ve waited on fish.
“—and I told her that was between you and God. Hello? Are you frozen? You look incredibly stern. It’s a good look.”
“You froze. I lost everything after Sonia.”
“It’s the Wi-Fi. It goes when the wind’s out of the east. Winston says it’s the frogs.” She sat down on the end of the bed and the picture steadied, and she looked at me properly. I watched her take the inventory: the jacket, the apron, the side towel still through my apron string. “You’re in your whites.”
“I came off the line nineteen minutes ago.”
“You’re in your whites, in your office, with the door—is that door locked?”
“It’s locked.”
“Say that again. Slower.”
“Holly.”
She laughed. Then it went out of her face, and she only looked at me, across fifteen hundred miles of bad connection, with her chin on her fist. Seven days. I could see what they’d cost. I expect she could see it on me.
“Company, distraction, or quiet?” I asked.
She thought about it. She does, now. She’s stopped answering before the question’s finished.
“Instructions,” Holly said.
It went through me like a pilot light catching.
“That isn’t one of the options.”
“I’m renegotiating. I’ve run that room seven nights in a row. Tonight I ran it for seventy-five minutes and a third sister. I’m tired of being in charge of my own hands.” Her voice dropped. “I’ve been thinking about you telling me what to do since Tuesday. I started a list. Then I thought, no. Hers will be better.”
I looked at my notes. ASK.
“If you want it to stop, you say stop.“
“I know.”
“Aloud.”
“I’ll say stop. Daniella. Please.”
“Prop the tablet against the lamp. I want all of you. I’ve no use for your chin.”
She moved. The picture tilted and settled: the end of the bed, Holly standing at it in the emerald dress, and behind her the mirror on the wardrobe door, which gave me the back of her as well, the long zipper and the fall of her hair. I hadn’t planned that. I was grateful for it.
“Keep the dress on.”
“That’s turning into a habit.”
“It’s a good dress. Take off what’s under it. Slowly. Show me.”
She put her hands up beneath the silk at the slit and drew the lace down her thighs, and stepped out of it, and held it up to the camera on one finger.
“On the nightstand. Fold it.”
“Fold it?”
“Once.”
She folded it. She was already breathing through her mouth.
“Sit on the end of the bed. Knees apart. Bring the skirt up to your waist. Higher. I want to see what I’m working with.”
I’d like to report that I was composed. On a screen the size of my palm, a woman in green silk opened her thighs for me, pink and soft and shining wet under a hotel lamp, and I took hold of the arm of that chair and forgot the name of my own restaurant.
“You’re wet already.”
“I sang the slow one. Third song. I sang it at an empty two-top, front and left, and thought about your hand on my thigh under a beach towel.” She swallowed. “In front of sixty people and a third sister.”
“Did you bring Gerald?”
“I brought Gerald.”
“What else did you bring?”
A pause. “Why would I have brought anything else?”
“Because you looked at the nightstand drawer, and you’ve started to hum.”
She stopped humming. She reached into the drawer and held it up to the lens.
Wine-colored. Smooth, with a curve to it. I chose it myself, on South Street, on a Saturday morning before prep. I hadn’t cared for the purple.
“That’s mine,” I said.
“It’s ours. It was in my drawer.” Her chin came up. “Second from the top. I have a drawer, and I took something out of it and carried it through customs with a completely straight face. I’d like some credit.”
Something turned over under my breastbone that had nothing to do with what was between her legs. My drawer. She’d said it as though she’d been saying it all her life.
“You’ll have credit. Put Gerald on the bed; you won’t want him yet. Did you bring—”
“The stuff Juniper liked. It’s in the sunglasses case.”
“Use it. More than you think you need.”
I watched her slick it. Her hands are small and quick and entirely sure of themselves on a microphone. They weren’t sure now.
“Lie back on your elbows. Heels on the edge of the bed. Now hold it against yourself. Not in. Just the head of it, there. Draw it up to your clit and down again. Slowly. That’s the pace. I’ll tell you when it changes.”
She did it. Her head tipped back. All that green, bent open on a hotel bed, and her own hand drawing that dark curve up through herself and down again, leaving it wet to the middle.
“You’re rushing.”
“I’m not—”
“You are. Halve it.”
She halved it. A sound came out of her through her nose.
“Good. That’s very good, Holly. That’s exactly right.”
Her whole body rippled. “You can’t just say that from another country.”
“I can say what I like. I’m the one in the chair. Now. One inch. Stop.”
She stopped, with her mouth open.
“Another. Stop. Tell me how it feels.”
“Thick. God. It feels like you. It feels like your hips are right behind it.”
“Another inch. Angle it up. I wrote that down for a reason.”
I walked her onto it an inch at a time. I know how; I’ve taught nineteen-year-olds to break down a halibut with a knife they were afraid of. One instruction. Wait for it to land. Then the next. By the time she’d taken all of it her thighs were shaking and she had a fistful of the bedcover, and I could hear my own breathing in that little room.
“Now fuck yourself with it. Long strokes. All the way out, all the way in. Eyes on me.”
“Yes, Chef.”
There wasn’t a joke anywhere in it. It came down the line the way it had the first time, from somewhere underneath her voice, and I pressed my knees together under my own desk.
She did as she was told. Long, slow, deep. I could see her cunt take it and let it go, and the shine on it each time it came out of her, and her stomach tightening under the bunched silk. She’d started to talk, the way she does, oh and like that and my name. The flush was coming down over her chest. I know that flush. Her hand went faster. Her hips came up off the bed to meet it. She said, “Daniella, I’m—”
The picture stopped.
Her head thrown back. Her mouth wide. One knee fallen open and the green silk rucked up to her ribs. The little wheel turned in the middle of it.
The sound did not stop. I’d like that entered. I had her voice, perfectly, as close as if she’d been in the room. The catch in her breathing. The wet, steady noise of what she was doing to herself. A cracked little “oh.” And a photograph.
“Holly. You’ve frozen.”
“What? No. No, no, no—”
“Don’t stop. I can hear everything. I can’t see.” I leaned toward the telephone. “So you’ll have to tell me.”
“Tell you—”
“What you’re doing. You talk. You’ve talked through every single time I’ve had my hands on you, and I’ve come to depend on it. Describe it. In order. Leave nothing out. You’re a professional; sell it to the back of the room.”
A breath. Then that voice, low and right on top of the microphone, the one she gives a second verse.
“It’s all the way in. I’m so wet it’s running out around it. It’s on the bedcover, Sonia’s going to bill me. I’m holding it deep and rocking on it, the way I rock on your thigh.” Her breath hitched. “My other hand’s on my clit. Two fingers, one each side. The fast one. The one you watched me do.”
“Go on.”
“I’ve pulled the strap of the dress down. My nipple’s so hard it hurts. I’m pinching it. I’m pretending it’s your teeth.”
“Harder.”
“Fuck. Yes.”
“Take it nearly out. Now in. All of it. Again. Tell me.”
“I can feel every inch of it going in. I keep clenching on it, I can’t stop. I keep thinking about the base of it against you. What it did to your face that first night. You said oh like somebody’d handed you a present. Daniella. I’m close. I’m so close. Please.”
“Not yet.”
A sound like cloth tearing.
“Three breaths. With me. In.” I breathed. I heard her breathe, ragged, an ocean away. “Two. Keep your hand moving. Three.”
The picture came back.
All at once, and in color. She was looking straight into the lens with her eyes wet and her lip caught in her teeth, holding herself at the very edge of it by her fingernails, because I’d told her to.
“There you are,” I said. “Now. Come for me. Let me watch.”
She came with her entire body. Her back bowed off the bed and her heels slid and the silk shook. She cried out with the slider standing open on half of Jacaranda, my name and then only noise, her hips jerking down onto her own hand again and again. I didn’t blink. I don’t believe I breathed.
Afterward she lay in a wreck of green with her arm across her eyes, laughing.
“The frogs,” she said. “I’m going to kill every frog on this island.”
She got her breath back. She drew the thing out of herself slowly, with a shiver I felt in my own spine, and sat up, and pushed her hair off her face.
I knew the look. It’s the one she gives a room she has decided to take.
“Your turn.”
“I’m perfectly—”
“Daniella Russo. Do not tell me you’re fine. I invented that.” She pulled the tablet closer. “How wet are you?”
I’ve promised her accuracy. “I haven’t checked.”
“Liar.”
“Considerably.”
“Take off the apron.”
I untied it. I folded it. She watched me fold it and her mouth twitched. I laid it on the binders.
“Jacket open. Not off. I like the jacket.”
Ten buttons, double-breasted. They take a moment. I’ve done them up every working day for twenty years, and I had never undone them because someone told me to. Under the jacket I had on a plain gray bra, for a Saturday.
“Push it down. I want to see them.”
I pushed the cups down. The office was cold. I felt my nipples draw tight in it, and I saw her see it.
“Oh, look at you,” Holly said softly. “In your office. Touch them. The way I do it.”
I did. My own thumbs. I’m a competent woman with my hands, and I was as clumsy as a first-day commis.
“Now the checks. Open them. Push the chair back so I get all of you. Put your foot up on the desk.”
“I do payroll at this desk.”
“I know you do. Foot up.”
I set my heel on the edge of my desk, between a stack of invoices and a paper umbrella.
“Hand inside. Tell me.”
“Soaked.” It came out like a short count on a delivery.
“From what?”
“From watching you take instruction.”
“From giving it. Say it right.”
“From giving it.” My face was burning. “From telling you to wait, and you waiting.”
“There she is. Two fingers, one each side. You know the one. You memorized it off my hand in Fishtown; I watched you do it. Slow circles. Slower than that. I’ll tell you when it changes.”
Nobody had ever used my own sentence on me. It turns out to be an extremely effective sentence.
I did as I was told. In a nine-by-seven room that smells of toner, with my jacket hanging open and my trousers undone, I touched myself for a woman on a telephone. I was so swollen that the first slow pass made my hips come up off the seat. The chair creaked like a ship.
From the other side of the door came the scrape of a chair going up on a table. Then another. Some way off, a radio, playing something with horns.
“That’s Marco,” I said. My voice wasn’t mine.
“I can hear him. Hi, Marco.” She didn’t raise hers. “How far away is he?”
“Thirty-five feet.”
“Then here’s the thing, Chef. You’ve kept quiet in that building for fourteen years. Except once. At the pass. I was there. I want it again.”
“Holly. He’s my general manager.”
“He’s got a radio. Fingers inside. Two. Now.”
I pushed two fingers into myself, and my head went back against the chair.
“Heel of your hand on your clit. Rock on it. Look at me. Don’t you look at that door. What does your line say when you call an order?”
I knew what she wanted. I hadn’t known how badly I wanted to give it to her.
“Heard,” I said.
I get it forty times a night. I had never once said it to anyone.
Her eyes went black. “Oh, I like that. I like that so much. Again. Harder.”
“Heard.”
“Deeper. Call it back.”
“Heard—”
“I’m coming with you.” She’d picked something up off the bedcover. A click, and a low hum I’d have known anywhere: teal, third setting, small slow circles a little to the left of where one would expect. I found that setting myself. “Look at me. I’m right here. I’ve got you on the best table in the house. Now let me hear you.”
I’d have preferred to be dignified. I fucked myself in my office chair with my heel on my desk and my jacket open, and I was loud. It came up out of my stomach with nothing between it and the air. It filled that little room and went out under the door.
Outside, a chair stopped halfway to a table.
There was a pause of about one second. Then the radio went up, a great deal, and someone with enormous tact and no talent whatever began to sing along.
“Now,” Holly said. She was shaking; I could see it. “Come for me, Daniella. In your chair. In your restaurant. Yours.“
Mine. Inside sixty days it would be, on paper.
I came looking straight at her. It took the whole length of me, hard, in long pulses around my own fingers, and I said her name at a volume my staff will be discussing until spring. She went with me. I watched her go, the hum and her wet eyes and her mouth saying mine, and for once the picture held, and neither of us froze.
She’d rolled onto her side with the tablet propped on the pillow, so close that her face filled the screen. No makeup left. The small pale scar on her chin.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hello.”
“You said heard.“
“I’m aware of what I said.”
“I’m going to think about it all through originals night. I’m going to lose the second verse.”
“You’ve never lost a second verse in your life.”
“Twice. Ask Auggie.”
I laughed, the real one. I was slumped in a chair I ought to have replaced years ago with my clothes in a state, and I found I had no wish to straighten any of it.
“Five days,” she said, smaller.
“Five. I’ll miss you for every one of them.”
“Out loud.”
“Out loud. And in ink.” I looked at her until I was sure she’d taken it. “Eat something before you sleep. There’ll be banana bread in the welcome basket. It’ll be underbaked. Eat it anyway.”
“I love you.”
“I love you. I’ll be at the—”
The picture stopped. Her face on a pillow, eyes half shut, mouth pushed out in the shape of a kiss. The wheel went round.
It was a good photograph. I’m told one can keep them. I kept it.
Then her voice arrived, a long way behind the rest of her. “—gate. I know. You’d better be.” And the call dropped.
I did up ten buttons. I sanitized the arm of the chair and the edge of the desk where my heel had been, because it’s a desk and I’ve standards. Then I unlocked the door.
The dining room was dark, forty-eight chairs with their legs in the air. The radio was off. The front was locked. He’s good at it. He’s better at it than I ever was.
A prep sheet had been pushed under the office door. Block capitals.
LOCKED UP. WALK-IN’S FINE. THE RADIO ONLY GOES LOUD. I HEARD NOTHING. — M.
And beneath that, smaller:
TELL HER THE LINE SAYS HI.
I folded it in thirds and put it in my pocket.
Then I went out to the pass, took the marker down off its string, and found Friday on the wall schedule. It already said OFF beside my name. Fridays are mine. Underneath, I added a line, in ink.
PHL. 2:40. ARRIVALS. BRING HER A COAT.
She’ll come through those doors in a sundress. She always does. This time she’ll take it.
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