After I graduated high school and found out that we were going to move down to Florida, I talked my parents into letting me take a year off between high school and college. My dad wasn't a fan of the idea at first but when I absolutely promised that yes, it'll just be a year and yes, I really will go to college, he finally relented.

My mother was easier to convince because she agreed with the idea, she said that it'd really help out my modelling career which isn't why I wanted the year off but if it helped my mom get on board then I was all for playing the modelling card. Granted, I'm not a big fan of the modelling and I only do it because it makes my mom happy, but I don't really hate it either.

Anyway, I wanted to take a year off because I hated high school and I wasn't ready to jump back into school with only a three month vacation. It wasn't enough. I felt too overwhelmed with the American education system that I couldn't really understand who I was as a person, I still don't know. And I think that I need to take this time to get to know myself. I know that people usually do that in college but I don't think that I could do both things at once. I need this year to take a deep breath and figure my shit out. I need to figure out who I am.

I don't know who I am, but I do know who I'm not, and that's a spoiled brat type of girl who lives off of her parents. My dad is going to make millions off of this hotel and I could be one of those girls who never works a day in her life. That's fine for those girls, but it's just not me. I don't want to spend this summer and this following year just relaxing on the beach, swimming at the pool, and maybe flirting with the cute bellhop. I want to really help out around the hotel. I'm not sure what I can do but maybe I can get one of the maids to show me the ropes, or I could try my hand at lifeguarding.

I just don't want to do nothing and maybe, if I'm a big help around the hotel, I can have some real reasons for when I tell my mom that I don't want to model as much as I did back home. We've only been at this hotel for one full day and she's already on the phone with some modelling agencies in town.

This morning, I'm going to take the dogs to the beach and go for a jog but after that, I'm going to talk to Gregory or somebody else in charge to see what I can get quickly trained on so that I can help out around the hotel sometimes.

I get dressed in a purple sports bra and black jogging shorts before putting on my running shoes and putting my dark blonde hair up in a tight pony tail to keep it out of my face. I don't think that I'll be outside for too long so I don't bother with sunscreen, I just hook Ronny and Tony up to their strong rope leashes and start leading them out of my room and through the hotel.

The hotel has a rule about dogs. They allow small dogs but they have to weigh less than like, ten pounds or something. My dogs weigh at least four times more than that limit but being the owners of the hotel does have its perks. My dogs are sweethearts though, and they're pretty well-trained too so they aren't a risk to the people or the hotel at all, but as I'm walking through the lobby to get to the beach, I get a lot of alarmed looks. Big dogs just freak out people sometimes. I feel bad about that but I just pretend not to notice them.

I have to walk around the pool area to get to the beach so I have to hold on tightly to Ronny's leash as he tries to go for a dive in the pool. He does love swimming and at the first sight of such a nice, big pool, he starts wagging his golden tail and he's ready for the adventure.

"Chill out," I order him, which is the command that I taught him as a puppy that means exactly that. Chill out. He stops tugging as much but his tail is still wagging so much that his butt is wiggling with each wag and he's still looking longingly at the crystal clear water of the pool. There are children splashing around in the shallow end and women laying out in expensive bikinis along the sides of the pool with their husbands. There's a lifeguard sitting high up on a lifeguard chair watching over the large pool and I really don't think that she'd appreciate Ronny taking a dive in that pool. "Wait until you see the ocean."

Once we get passed the pool area, we walk over a wooden pathway and then into the sand. My shoes sink into the sand and I start to think about how much sand I'm going to have to pour out of my shoes when I get back after this jog. Before I start running though, I take my dogs to the shoreline. Luckily, it's low tide so I unhook Ronny from his leash and he takes off into the calm ocean water. He's going to have the time of his life here.

Tony, however, isn't a big fan of the water. He decides to stay in the sand but he's no stranger to exploration either so he starts digging a hole in the sand. Most of his hair is black but it's thick wiry hair so although he's going to cover himself in sand, he will still be really easy to wash off.

"I think we're gonna like it here, boys," I say with a grin as I sit down in the sand beside Tony and I watch Ronny swimming around in the ocean but whenever he looks like he's going out too far, I call to him, "Closer, boy," And then he'll swim in a little closer to shore.

I only let them play for a few minutes until I call Ronny back to the shore and I put his leash back on so that we can go for a jog. They don't need the leashes because they'd stay right with me without them but the leashes give everybody around me some peace of mind that my dogs won't go rogue and kill everybody, which is what people assume will happen if they don't have leashes.

My jog isn't a very long one because the sun is a lot hotter than it is at home in Illinois so only about twenty minutes down the beach, I stop for a break and let the dogs play in the sand for a little bit before we're jogging back. It's still kind of early in the morning so there's not a lot of people out on the beach yet except for other joggers and possessive tourists who absolutely need to get the best spots on the beach before it gets crowded.

Once I get back to the hotel, I use the shower on the wooden deck area to hose down my dogs so that they aren't as sandy as they were and then I use one of the complimentary hotel towels to dry them off so that they don't drop through the hotel.

Patting both of the dogs on the head, we start heading back through the pool area. Ronny is too exhausted now to be excited about the pool but only halfway through the pool area, I'm stopped by the lifeguard who is off of her chair now and standing right in front of me. She's wearing a bright red one-piece bathing suit with a whistle around her neck and a red visor holding back her brunette pony tail. A wide grin widens when I look up at her.

"Hi!" She greets me. "You have some lovely dogs here. Unfortunately, I can't allow them around the pool area or into the hotel. It's White Cloud policy."

"Yeah, I know," I say with a tired smile. I'm so sweaty and gross now even from just that short jog that I did down the beach and I'm kind of tired now too so I'm not in the mood to deal with the employees that I haven't had the chance to meet yet. "My dogs are angels though, so they're allowed in."

"I'm sure that they are," She pipes, sounding very polite but I can tell by her wide eyes that she's annoyed. "But it's hotel policy that large dogs aren't allowed on hotel property."

"We'll just have to see about that, won't be, Tony?" I ask in my baby voice as I pet Tony's head and run my fingers over his floppy ears. I look back up at her and smile again. "I'm Bea Holloway. My dad is the new owner of the hotel."

"Oh. I'm so sorry then, ma'am," The lifeguard rushes out, looking embarrassed now and I feel kind of bad for embarrassing her.

"It's alright. Good for you for being good at your job, right?" I assure her that there's nothing to be embarrassed about. "I'll see you around."

I don't wait for her to respond before I'm walking around the stunned girl and walking back into the hotel. The dogs are still wet but they aren't dripping so they don't make a mess through the hotel or anything but I don't want them in my room. The one thing that I could never train them on was not jumping onto the bed. Couches? Sure. Tables? Definitely. But they will not give up their rights to nap on my bed.

And now that my blankets are white and the dogs are wet and still kind of dirty, I'd rather them not go up and mess up my nice, fluffy dry bed. So instead of taking them back upstairs, I start going down the East hallway to where the doggy daycare place is where rich people leave their tiny less-than-ten-pound dogs. There's a grooming place in there too so maybe they can give my dogs a bath while I go shower and explore the hotel some more.

"Miss Holloway," I'm interrupted when a blur of red stops in front of me. Lionel is grinning at me in his red bellhop uniform, standing in front of me. He glances down at my dogs and then at my boobs before looking back up at my face. "Enjoying your morning?"

"Try again," I give him a frowning look, absolutely hating the amount of people that have called me 'Miss Holloway' in the past 24 hours.

"Right. Bea. Enjoying your morning?" He rephrases.

"Yeah," I sigh, hating that this guy who is really cute is now seeing me in all of my sweaty glory. My pony tail must look awful now and I'm a little wet from the dogs shaking off their shower water so I probably smell like a mix of sweat and wet dog which isn't a pleasant smell. "Just finishing a jog and now I'm headed to the doggy daycare."

"I'll walk with you," He suggests.

"Don't you have a job to do?" I raise my eyebrows at him.

He shrugs one of his shoulder pads. "Not at the moment, we're not very busy."

"Okay then," I agree and I start walking again, now with Lionel walking beside me. I hope that he's a mouth breather and he can't actually smell me right now. "Show me the way, oh wise one."

"Gladly," He remarks. "Your dogs are enjoying the beach, I take it?"

"Definitely. Oh, and hey while you're here, if you could do any job in the hotel, what would it be?" I ask him curiously figuring that I could ask him what jobs I could try and take on.

"Is that a trick question?" He wonders suspiciously.

"No, I just want to try and help out around the hotel but I don't know what kind of jobs there are that don't take very much training. Do you think that the desk clerks like their job?" I ask him as we're walking down the hallway.

He nods slowly, still unsure of how honest he can be with me. Maybe he's afraid that I'll tattle on his gossip to my dad but that's definitely not my intention. I don't know if he'd believe me if I told him that though. "Sure. The lifeguards have a lot of fun but you have to get trained, obviously."

"Yeah, I met one of them. She seemed nice but I don't think she liked my babies very much."

"Ah, that would have been Mackenzie then, she's the only girl lifeguard. There's three," He explains. "And yeah, she's nice. Kind of a hard ass but she does her job well."

"Do you like being a bellhop?" I ask him as we arrive at the doggy daycare place. There's a room with glass windows so I can see all of the small dogs in the room just chilling out in doggy beds. One of them is chewing on a squeaky toy and another one is peeing on the tiled floor.

There's a window on the wall near the door where there's a lady sitting in front of a computer on the other side and before Lionel can answer me, the lady looks up at me with a wide grin. "Good morning, ma'am, how may I help you?"

"Hey, Beth. This is Bea Holloway," Lionel introduces me. "Beth is the best damn groomer in the place."

"Hello, Miss Holloway," Beth greets me.

"She prefers Bea," He tells her before winking at me.

"Well, Bea, what can I do for you?" The older brunette woman asks me with a polite smile.

"Right, so I've got these dogs and they're kind of bigger than ten pounds but I was hoping that you could still take care of them for a few hours?" I ask her.

"Of course," She confirms, standing up so that she can lean over the counter to see my two wet dogs. "We can't keep them with the other dogs but we can keep them in the grooming room. You can bring them in through the door right here."

I go through the door that she instructs me through and after filling out a form and saying goodbye to my dogs, I leave the doggy daycare area and thank Lionel for his help. He offers to take me to Gregory's office so that I can talk to him about the different positions at the hotel but I decline the offer. I'll find it later but right now, I need to take a shower. So I say goodbye to him as well and head back up to my room.

I take a nice long shower and then get dressed in a cute yellow sun dress and sandals before I go back downstairs. My mom is spending the day shopping and Dylan was forced to go with her because she wanted to have a one-on-one conversation with him. He wasn't very happy about that but with my dad working in the behind-the-scenes offices of the hotel, which leaves me alone to explore.

Although right now, I just want to find Gregory to talk to him about the types of jobs that I can learn without going to school or any type of training class.

Downstairs, I ask the front desk clerk where I can find Gregory's office and, leaving somebody else in charge, she leads me through a door behind the front desk and into a hallway where there are many closed doors with nametags on the front.

"Here is his office, ma'am," She motions toward one of the closed wooden doors, the one with the metal plate that reads "Gregory Windsor" and I thank the clerk before she nods and walks away. I knock on the door and then open the door a little bit.

"Miss Holloway," Gregory greets me with a warm smile. "What can I do for you today?"

"Hi, I've been thinking lately and I've decided that I would like to help out around the hotel. Maybe help clean rooms or try my hand at being a lifeguard or something?" I ask him, taking a seat in one of the chairs across from his desk.

"Oh sure, if you want to help out, I'm sure we can find somewhere for you," He assures me before he looks back at the screen of his computer and starts typing something in. "Let's see... we have been looking for a fourth lifeguard lately but you will have to get lifeguard certified before we can allow you to work at the pool. If you think that that's something that you'd like to pursue, you can always shadow one of our lifeguards or just talk to them to see if it sounds like something that you're interested in. Another beginning level job that we have is the cleaning service."

"Maybe that one first," I suggest. "I think that I can clean."

"Okay, we can work that out," He smiles at me and then types something else into the computer. "If you would really like to start today, I can introduce you to one of the house keepers on duty. However, if you would be okay with waiting until tomorrow, Sherry will be here and she is the manager of housekeeping and I would feel more comfortable with you getting your training from her."

"That's totally fine, I can wait until tomorrow," I confirm with a nod. "I can meet her at the front desk at one?"

"That will work and I will let her know," He offers me a wide smile and I stand up from the desk to leave the office now that we have everything figured out. "We look forward to having you on board with us, Miss Holloway."

"Thank you," I smile at him and then offer a small wave. "Enjoy the rest of your day, Gregory."

I leave his office and then go back out to the front of the hotel and now, I don't know what to do for the rest of the day. Beth said that my dogs will be ready in an hour but that was half an hour ago so I have half an hour to explore the hotel some more before I pick up the dogs and we head back up to the room. I know that the hotel has a spa, a restaurant, inside pool, game room, restaurant, a gym, and even a hotel bar. There's two ball rooms too, so there's a lot to explore in this place. I don't want to explore where I'm not welcome though.

Like, I don't want to go into the ballroom and accidentally walk into the middle of a wedding ceremony. My safest bet is to find the game room and to explore that first. I can't mess anything up in a game room. So I spend half an hour in the nice little game room around the corner from the spa to try and get on the leader board for Pac Man. I get pretty good at it and eventually, after many rounds of death and disappointment, I beat the number one player who very maturely made his or her three-letter identifier 'ass'. I type my actual initials in, BVH, and then check my phone. It's been an hour and a half since I dropped the dogs off at the doggy daycare place so I guess I got a little bit too carried away in this Pac Man game. Oh well.

I leave the game room and go back to the doggy daycare place to get my dogs.

With my dogs by my side again, I decide to stop by my dad's new office to see how he's doing on his first full day on the job. However, when I get into his office, he gives me a stressed frown.

"I don't want the dogs back here, Bea," He scolds me as I shut the door behind me and let go of their leashes. He's sitting at a nearly empty desk with a laptop and some file folders in front of him.

"We won't be here long," I tell him, ignoring his tone because this must be a stressful time for him and I know that he's never really been a fan of the dogs. He's never been an animal person but he's tolerated my babies just because of how much I love them. "I just wanted to see how things were going."

He shrugs. "It's tough figuring everything out but I think that I'm getting through it. I just need to suffer through this first part and at least they already have everything organized. How are you doing? Are you liking it here?"

"Oh yeah. The boys absolutely love the beach and the new groomer," I say with a wide grin as I pat Ronny on the head. "And I talked to Gregory about helping out around the hotel. He said that their head of housekeeping is going to teach me how to turn over the rooms tomorrow."

"Really?" This makes my dad stop working and he looks up from his paperwork to give me a surprised look. "You got a job here?"

"Well, I'm not going to get a paycheck, I just want to help out," I tell him with a small shrug.

My dad just blinks at me a few times as if he's processing what I just said. "Bea, I love that you want to help out but you know that even if you do get a fake job here, you won't be able to stay here without getting a college degree, right? You get this one year off but that's it and I'm really putting my foot down about that. You can't work here without a college degree."

"I know," I insist. "I just don't want to sit around doing nothing."

"Doesn't your mom have modeling jobs for you?" He asks, going back to his paperwork.

"She's working on it but until then, I'm going to be a house keeper," I explain to him with a small smile. "Maybe I could even try being a bellhop."

"No," He decides, shaking his head. "I don't want you working with that kid... Lucky or Lance or whatever his name is."

"Lionel," I remind him.

"Right. I don't like the kid," He tells me. "Stick with the house keeping."

"He's nice," I justify but my father is so incredibly stubborn that I know that I won't get him to like Lionel. "But I don't really want to be a bellhop anyway. But either way, you're clearly busy so I'll leave you to it. I'll see you tonight for dinner?"

"I don't know, sweetie, I think that I'll be working on this pretty late. You can take your mom and Dylan to that crab shack down the road and let me know how it is, alright?"

"Sure, Dad," I sigh, taking the leashes of my two dogs and start leading them out of the large office. Back home, my dad was kind of a workaholic and I guess that I was just hoping that this midlife crises and buying the hotel would change that. I don't know why I thought that owning a fancy hotel would make him work less but that was one of the reasons I was so grateful to be moving down here. Oh well, I guess some things just never change.