She watched her screen, as if willing him to respond.
Within minutes, his response came back.
“So did I. I can’t wait to see you again tomorrow. I already miss you. Have lunch with me?”
She smiled at the message and then typed. “Of course.” Then she sent another one. “I miss you too.”
“Did you see your folks?” he texted.
“Yes. My aunt Rita is moving in with my parents.”
“Is that good?”
She knew that he’d never met her aunt Rita before. “Yes, she’s my dad’s older sister. Recently divorced her husband of thirty years after he decided he liked twenty-one-year-old models instead.”
“Ouch. Stupid man. When you find someone who can put up with your shit for thirty years, you’ve found gold.”
“Good answer,” she typed and then added an emoji of a gold star.
“Hey, my parents are proof that you stick with love and not mess around,” he texted.
She felt her stomach flutter a little as she relaxed back in bed.
“Aren’t you supposed to be asleep?” she asked after seeing it was past ten.
“Morning does come early. I’ve got to clean the pools before guests start jumping in.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow. Goodnight.” She smiled at the emoji he sent of a sleeping bear.
“Night.”
The next morning, she had to fill Beth and then Zoey in on their weekend. She knew that she would probably have to answer questions about her and Damion’s weekend more than a dozen times before lunch.
When he strolled in to get her for lunch, she was so excited to see him again. She tried to convince herself that the weekend hadn’t been that breathtaking.
Then she saw him walk through the front doors wearing a pair of grey board shorts and a white camp shirt, and her heart literally jumped in her chest.
Damn it. She was in love.
“Hey.” He walked over behind the counter and hugged and kissed her. “Missed you,” he said into her ear.
“Ugh,” Beth groaned as she flipped her long dark hair out of her face. “You two are already acting like the rest of the lovestruck couples around here. Go have lunch before you make me puke,” she joked.
Beth was basically Jules’s height. They both wore heels behind the counter most of the time just to see over the computer screens. But where Jules was wider, Beth was petite. Very petite. So much so that Jules would have bet that she could place her hands around Beth’s waist and have her finger touch.
Jules laughed at Beth’s joke as she grabbed her purse and took Damion’s hand and headed towards the employee dining room.
Normally, she would take a walk or eat her lunch outside if it wasn’t too cold or too hot. Today, she enjoyed sitting at a table with him near the windows.
The employee’s dining room was about a quarter of the size of the main dining hall. Instead of facing the water, this room faced the woods. To Jules, the view was even better since there was normally not a soul in sight out the windows.
She loved the woods that surrounded the campgrounds. There were cabins scattered throughout the trees, some facing the beach, others on the Gulf side.
“How does it feel being back?” he asked her after she took a bite of her salad.
“Boring. It’s strange. When we were away, time seemed to go by so quickly. The weekend was like…” She snapped her fingers. “Now, it’s not even halfway through my workday and I feel like I’ve been here for days.”
Damion laughed. “I feel the same way. It took me forever to clean the pools this morning. I was counting down the minutes until we could have lunch.”