When in Cancun

One Ticket to Paradise

She stared once more ahead of her in distaste. Furrowing her eyebrows, Malia refrained from ripping the paper to shreds and picked up her phone, dialing a number she knew all too well.

"Malia, you better be calling me because you're done with the article and you can't wait for my editors to work it over and get it all shiny, nice and published." The voice on the other end spoke sharply, and Malia knew that she had caught him in a bad mood. She cursed silently.

"Hey, Harold, hello to you too." She spoke, coating every word she said with her signature sarcasm. "Actually I'm calling for an extension." She waited a beat, two beats before the explosion happened.

"Another extension? Sweetie! I needed it yesterday. So I figured that if I gave today, that would suffice, no?"

"No." She said, cradling her phone between her shoulder and her ear. "Truthfully, Harry? Not one of our readers care to read about the different kinds of staircases they have in London. Im a travel journalist, not a stair connoisseur with a little hobby for writing. Sue me if I'm a little uninspired."

She heard him sigh and she swallowed hard. Not many people had the kind of relationship with their bosses like Malia had with hers. "Fine. Fine. Just know that you're in so much hot water with the bigger people already, hmm? And that they were counting on you for this article. I know you've gone through a hard time with the break up, but you haven't shown up for actual work in four days."

"I have strep." She lied with a displeased expression. "I almost died. They came out with the defibrillator and everything. The valves in my heart? Used to belong to cows. You know I can't stomach hamburgers anymore?"

"Honey, strep is a non-lethal throat infection and lasts as long as 48 hours." She could almost visualize his flat expression on the other end of the line. "And don't act like no one from work saw you at Burger King yesterday molesting that Big Mac with your mouth."

Now it was Malia's turn to wear a flat expression. "It was a Whopper. Big Macs are McDonald's."

"Whatever. Either way, you're a liar with no staircase article. I'll talk to my boss's boss's boss. See if we can throw you a career lifeline. Just show up to work tomorrow, dammit."

The line went dead.

Malia pressed her lips together. She stood from her desk and walked to the wall that she shared with the other duplex. She knocked loudly.

"Ava, its an emergency!"

Within seconds came the response in another series of knocks. Then a shout. "What is it this time, my dear?" The muffled shouting definitely belonged to her best friend.

"I have to glow up and stat. I have to work tomorrow and my five o clock shadow is real." Malia joked, knowing her friend understood her lingo perfectly.

Seconds later, Ava Winston was standing outside her door, with two tubes of lipstick in hand.

"MAC or Anastasia?"

Ava was a tall woman who eerily resembled Jordin Sparks. They could have been long lost twins, for all she knew. When she first met Ava, Malia was running over to complain about the noise that was being made on the other side of the thin wall. The door had been left wide open and in the middle of the hall, Ava was making out with a women dressed in an obnoxious pink sequins dress.

"Oh. Forgot you moved in. Whoops." Ava had offered her, while Malia looked at her in confusion and slight disgust. Clearly, Ava was used to the expression, and she wasn't happy with it. "What, a girl can't be into both of the anatomical assets that both genders provide?"