A/N: Mia Madison's Weekend in Paradise is the inspiration for and deserves credit for fifty percent of this story. RIB's Glee universe is about twenty percent. I changed a lot. According to most resorts websites, guests have to take a COVID test before flying to the resort, upon entering the resort, the guest has to be retested. If the guests stay three to five days, then they will have to be tested again before leaving the resort and quarantined in their same room if they test positive, the cost of quarantine at the property will be covered for up to 14 days after the original departure date. Extended stay due to quarantine includes the guest plus one travel companion sharing the same room. This program remains valid as long as CDC and government travel regulations are in place. So don't worry about our quartet, they aren't messing around with the coronavirus in 2022 after witnessing the effects of the disease from two first hand accounts. Thanks for reviewing, favoriting, and following this work. I really appreciate it. It motivates me to continue to retell this short story.

Chapter Two

Hello, my name is Rachel. I was pursuing a career on Broadway when the pandemic first occurred. Now, I am just an artist trying to make a living the best way I know how. I am a gifted singer, dancer, and actress who is not opposed to receiving dick pics. If you would like to cash app me or to make sure you are not being catfished, check out my OnlyFans page. Become a fan and then hit me up, by the way, I must agree on sharing COVID testing information if you make the right decision and choose to date me.

Trying to find someone online to take to a couples resort was definitely not the best idea my best friend Mike Chang had ever given me. So far the matches I have received have been women trying to earn money during the pandemic by offering virtual sex or had been men using other women images from a basic Google search and names that were made up.

I knew it was my fault for not cancelling the reservations. However with med school, my rotation at the teaching hospitals during a pandemic where young and healthy future doctors were seen as a miracle, I had let it consume me and used this to keep my mind off of Katherine.

Katherine was supposed to be my future wife. Even though Artie had shared with me Brittany's Fun with Fondue video with Katherine revealing all especially how she didn't love me and was only stringing me along, I had actually thought about taking her back after she completed rehab. I believed that she was only high and the pandemic had brought out the worst in her, but after witnessing for myself that she had been in and out of five different rehabilitation places after her parents forced her to come home, I realized the truth.

Katherine wasn't going to change unless she wanted to be clean for herself. Until that happened, she would not be ready to be in a relationship with anyone. And that left me between a rock and a hard in love with someone who wasn't able to love you back.

Mike had tried to cheer me up. He had even fixed me up with other medical students that we both knew were single and on paper good catches. I had gone out on dates with some of them and even tried to hook up with one named Quinn, who resembled Katherine, when I had one two many drinks, but I couldn't because she reminded me of my ex. And meeting someone new was difficult for me because I was just damn awkward when introduced to new people. When I am nervous I would still even introduce myself as Sam I am and I don't like green eggs and ham.

Attending a male only boarding school, and meeting my so-called future wife at fifteen had guaranteed that I didn't have any game which is what a fellow medical school student named Santana had told me.

I had let Katherine run our relationship. She called the shots. She organized our dates, when we lost our virginities, and when we would eventually get married after I had completed my residency at a suitable hospital in New York or LA, so she could continue to pursue her acting looked and acted like my mother. I realize now that was sort of icky and bespoke of a possible Oedipal Complex.

I tried not to think about Katherine. It still hurt. I actually loved her. She was the first woman I'd committed myself to. She was the only woman in my life since high school.

How in the world was I going to be able to find a woman to go with me to a couples-only resort in less than three days?

Usually, people who break up with someone are encouraged to heal their broken heart by getting underneath someone new. I just couldn't do it. I needed to clear my head, because I was hurt, and it wasn't worth breaking another woman's heart just to heal my own.

I've never been a cheater. Breaking hearts with broken promises wasn't something that I was interested in. My fraternity brothers were convinced that I was gay, and that my girlfriend was a beard because I wasn't trying to hit it and quit it with the women at our college when Katherine wasn't around. I just wasn't interested in being unfaithful. Even when she graduated and decided to leave Chicago for New York to pursue acting, I didn't have a problem remaining faithful to her these past three years.

I watched how my father treated my mother. He had the talk with me about respecting girls and imagine if it was my little sister Stacy being disrespected. How would that make me feel? I would want to hurt anyone who hurt my baby sister. I tried to respect Katherine in the same way. I let her call all the shots. I didn't pressure her into having sex. We waited until she was ready, and I made sure to use condoms every time to keep her safe from an early pregnancy. I even allowed her to be batshit crazy when she drank too much and told me to call her Kitty and let her use a whip and wear a catsuit during several of her blame it on the alcohol escapades.

Now I see how literally and figuratively whipped I was. I was a fool in love being new to relationships, I did not see how toxic and unbalanced our relationship was. I was different now. My eyes were open. The next time I was in a relationship with a woman it will be a relationship built on and based on equality and respect.

Being manipulated, used, and cheated on was not okay. My relationship with Katherine had not been okay. I had to move on.

I guess I had been susceptible to Katherine gaslighting me because I had grown up always believing in the best of people. I grew up in an upper class family in the South. My father's family had been in the construction business since Reconstruction. They were Irish and not considered the elite, but when farming and plantation life became less profitable, debutantes from good families were encouraged to seek marriage with any affluent Southern gentleman.

My mom was a debutant from a family that could trace their lineage to minor English and Scottish aristocracy. She decided we would be Methodist and not Catholic as my father had grown up as. She ran our household just like her mother before her. My dad's philosophy was a happy wife means a happy life, and he let mom run roughshod over us all. She decided that I had to attend the same boarding school as all the men in her family had. She had decided that I would be a doctor like her father and not work in construction like my father's side of the family. That Stacy had to attend the sister school that Katherine attended and she attended. She approved of Katherine as my girlfriend and encouraged me to marry her as soon as I graduated from medical school.

I never wanted to be a doctor. I am dyslexic, and school has always been hard for me. My parents paid for tutors and I had help, so I was able to overcome my learning disabilities. I really wanted to be a high school science teacher or an astronomer. My mother shot down both these dreams by telling me that I wouldn't be able to afford to give my family the lifestyle that they deserved if I chose those careers. Katherine cosigned my mother, and that is why I am a year away from being a medical resident at a hospital in Chicago instead of pursuing my childhood dreams.

I was twenty-five years old, and realizing that I hadn't mind pursuing medicine only because of a pandemic. Being in the hospital and helping save lives made me feel like the superheroes that I grew up reading about in comic books and watching on television and in the it feel like this in a post pandemic world? Would I be happy practicing medicine at home in Tennessee inheriting my Pop Pop's practice as my mother intended, but Katherine had convinced me not to do but to specialize in plastic surgery, so she could always become a future Real Housewives of New York or Beverly Hills?

My future was uncertain now. I no longer had to sacrifice my dreams to make someone else happy. Emergency room care was now where I was leaning. I was lost in my thoughts when I heard my phone's ringtone.

"Hey?"

"Hello Sammy Sam."

"Tina… What's up?" I was curious about why she was calling me. Mike's girlfriend had never called me before.

"Are you still trying to find someone online for the couple's retreat?"

"I would, if they weren't a bunch of potential stalkerish psychos or catfishes."

"I have someone perfect for you."

"Who?" I licked my lips. Tina had some gorgeous friends. They were all smart and according to Mike real just like Tina..

"My roommate Mercedes. You have met her before, and you can ask Mike who will assure you that she is the perfect pretend girlfriend."

Mercedes...Mercedes Jones?

"Tina… I don't think she likes me. We have probably said ten words to each other, and we have known of each other for almost three years."

"Sam, you were not even trying to get to know her, you were too much in Katherine's flat ass. Besides, Mercedes is perfect for you. You both are not talkative, will give each other space, and plus she needs this vacation. She did something that I know that you have wanted to do for a long time. She basically told her parents that she didn't want to be a doctor; that she wanted to follow her dreams and her passions, and her dad disowned her, but she didn't let that stop her from pursuing her dreams. She is basically the antiKatherine. She is independent, smart, funny, sexy as hell, and you could use a friend who kind of understands your dorkiness. She is a secret dork herself.""

"Tina, you know this is a couples retreat, right?"

"You know you can't go without being coupled with someone, right?" She replied sassily. "Look, check your DMs. I just sent you a picture of her in her red bikini."

I admit that seeing the picture of Mercedes made me realize that she was more than the cute, shy young woman that I remember. She was gorgeous with a somewhat shorter, curvier body.

I had never dated outside of my race before, and I could admit that Mercedes was sexy enough to convince me to try. Besides, I was fleeing my Oedipal Complex. Women that reminded me of my mother were no longer going to be hot to me.

"What do you think?" Tina cut in. "I know you have had enough time to look at the DM I sent."

"She's a cutie." To be honest, she was beyond cute. The more I looked at the picture, I stopped looking at her obvious assets and looked at her face. Those eyes. Those lips. I couldn't take my eyes off her lips. They were succulent, pouty, and kissable.

"Does she have a valid passport?" I asked.

"Yes, she has her passport, and she's free. She's on Spring Break just like me."

By no stretch of the imagination was this woman unattractive. She was downright stunning. Standing 5'3" with black curly hair and those doe shaped eyes and a mouth made for kissing.. I had never seen her before without heels, but Mike had told me she was as short as Tina and gave great hugs.

I didn't think I should hug her because I knew I would be distracted by her amazing and real breasts that were not unnaturally up to her eyeballs. I had always been a breast man, but her hips and her ass were just as amazing. She had been sandbagging herself the entire time I knew her wearing glasses and sweats. Thank God or she would have tempted me when I was with Katherine.

My mind began racing a mile a minute, and my heart started pounding. Mercedes could solve all my problems, while she also created some brand new ones.

She was my best friend's girlfriend's best friend and roommate. And she was young, sexy, and alluring. I'd seen some beautiful women, but there was something in her eyes and that sexy smile that triggered my desire. There was something in her pose in her eyes that could put me in serious trouble.

If I was stupid enough to actively pursue a rebound relationship with her, she'd be off-limits, for sure. Our circles were just too close for comfort for us to try something serious.

But if she were willing to play along with me for a weekend, something told me we'd get along just fine…

"Sam!" Tina's voice snapped, forcing me back to the present. "Are you okay with her coming with us or not?"

Tina was someone I could trust. I had known her for almost four years. So, I decided then and there to look Mercedes Jones up on Instagram, and I couldn't take my eyes off of her in that yellow dress in her profile posts surprised me. She was a Marvel/DC fan just like I was. She even listed Avatar in her top twenty films. That movie had sparked my interest in astronomy and was my favorite movie of all time.

Most of her pictures were with Tina, but some were pictures of her in her jeans, tennis shoes, glasses, and ponytails that I was used to seeing. I found a picture of her in a dress next to Tina. Both of them looked good, and I realized Mike and I were some lucky bastards. Who could say they were dating women who were both probably smarter than the both of them combined, were gorgeous, and were not trying to be someone they were not. They were confident in themselves and having spent a lot of time with Tina, he knew that they did not play games. What you see was what you got. Honest, caring, and just plain good people as his Granny Evans would say.

I would be a fool to look this gift horse in the mouth. The company of a beautiful woman, one who wouldn't be in it for unsavory reasons?

It beat trying to convince one of my lady friends that this was nothing more than a weekend arrangement. One that more than likely would give them false expectations. I had no interest in being romantic, falling in love, or attending any couples' classes. I just wanted to get away, experience the beauty of the surroundings, and perhaps enjoy companionship with a beautiful woman who didn't expect me to pursue a relationship with her afterward.

"Sam have you gone to sleep on me or what!"

"I am still here, and yeah it's fine that Mercedes is coming along with us." I said. "Mercedes is probably just what the doctor ordered. Can't wait to see you both in a couple of days. Stay safe."

I was not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I no longer had to try to find a woman on these online dating sites. Tina had already found someone who more than met my criteria. She was not a complete stranger, and based on her Instagram, I could be myself around her.

I missed the companionship that came with a relationship, but my heart was broken. Until I got over Katherine, I didn't need to pretend I was interested in anything more than a little carefree company.

What could possibly go wrong?