THE RESET: A New Year's Eve Story PART 6 - NEW YEAR'S DAY MORNING
Morning arrives, and nothing fits the way it did before.
Marcus woke up at 7:23am with a headache, a dry mouth, and the creeping certainty that last night had actually happened.
He lay there for a minute, staring at the ceiling, running through the evidence.
Sandy clothes on the floor. Check.
Damp towel hanging over the chair. Check.
Vague muscle soreness from swimming in the ocean. Check.
The memory of standing naked in the Pacific with his coworkers at midnight. Unfortunately also check.
"Oh god," he said to the empty room.
His phone buzzed on the nightstand. Group text.
Claire: Breakfast? Lobby restaurant. 8:30.
Jamal: I'll be there.
Aisha: Same.
Diego: Do we have to talk about it?
Becca: Eventually. But not before coffee.
Diego: Fine.
Marcus typed a response.
Marcus: I'll be there.
He showered. Dressed. Stared at himself in the mirror and tried to reconcile the person looking back at him with the person who'd stripped naked and run into the ocean twelve hours ago.
Same face. Same hair. Same everything.
But something felt different.
Lighter, maybe. Or just different.
He grabbed his keycard and headed downstairs.
The restaurant was half-full. Mostly other guests from the party, all looking slightly hungover and significantly more clothed than they'd been at midnight.
The six of them claimed a table near the windows. Ocean view. Morning sun. The kind of peaceful setting that felt deeply ironic given what they were about to discuss.
A waiter came by. Took their orders. Coffee all around. Lots of coffee.
For a few minutes, no one spoke.
Then Claire broke the silence. "So."
"So," Marcus echoed.
"That happened."
"Yep."
"We all got naked and jumped in the ocean."
"We're aware."
"Just checking."
More silence.
Diego poured cream into his coffee like it was a complex scientific process. "Are we going to pretend it didn't happen, or are we going to actually talk about it?"
"What's there to talk about?" Jamal asked. "We did it. It's over. We move on."
"Move on to what? Monday morning? Quarterly reviews? Pretending we didn't see each other completely naked?"
"That's exactly what we're going to do."
"That's insane."
"Welcome to corporate America."
Becca leaned back in her chair. "For what it's worth, I don't think we can pretend it didn't happen."
"Why not?" Marcus asked.
"Because it changed something. You felt it. I felt it. We all felt it."
"What changed?"
"I don't know. But something did."
Aisha nodded slowly. "She's right. We can't go back to how things were before."
"Why not?"
"Because now we've seen each other. Actually seen each other. Without the armor. Without the performance. And once you've seen someone like that, you can't unsee it."
"So what do we do?" Diego asked.
"We adapt," Claire said. "We acknowledge what happened. We don't make it weird. And we figure out how to work together as people who've shared something completely insane."
"That's your plan? Don't make it weird?"
"Do you have a better one?"
Silence.
The food arrived. Eggs. Toast. Fruit. Normal breakfast at an abnormal moment.
They ate in relative quiet, each processing in their own way.
Finally, Marcus set down his fork. "I have a confession."
Everyone looked up.
"Last night, in the water, I felt something I haven't felt in years. Maybe ever."
"What?" Becca asked.
"Free. Like I could just... exist. Without calculating every move. Without worrying about who was watching or what they thought. Just... free."
"That's the whole point of naturism," Aisha said. "Removing the barriers. The judgment. The performance."
"I know. And I thought it was bullshit. But it's not. It's real."
"So what are you saying?" Jamal asked.
"I'm saying maybe we've been doing this wrong. The competition. The constant jockeying for position. The armor. Maybe there's another way."
"Another way to what?" Diego asked.
"To work. To live. To not be exhausted all the time from pretending we're invincible."
Becca stared at him. "Who are you and what did you do with Marcus Chen?"
"I'm serious."
"I know. That's what's scary."
"Are you saying you didn't feel it? Last night?"
She looked down at her plate. "I felt it."
"And?"
"And I don't know what to do with it. I've spent my entire career building walls. Being untouchable. And in one night, we tore all of that down."
"Is that a bad thing?"
"I don't know. Ask me Monday."
Claire smiled. "Monday's going to be interesting."
"That's one word for it," Jamal said.
They finished breakfast. Signed the room charges to the company account. Headed back to their rooms to pack.
At eleven, they reconvened in the lobby for checkout.
The resort staff was efficient. Professional. Gave no indication that anything unusual had happened the night before. Which, for them, it probably hadn't.
Just another New Year's Eve at Sundrift.
As they loaded their bags into the van, Trevor appeared. Still chipper. Still holding his clipboard.
"How was your stay?" he asked brightly.
The six of them looked at each other.
"Transformative," Claire said finally.
"Wonderful! That's what we aim for. Did you get good team-building out of it?"
"You could say that," Marcus said.
"Excellent! Well, safe travels. And happy new year!"
He bounded off, leaving them standing in the parking lot.
"He has no idea," Diego said.
"None," Becca agreed.
They climbed into the van. Claire drove again. The two-hour trip back to the city stretched ahead of them.
As they pulled out of the resort, Marcus looked back through the rear window. The beach. The pool. The place where everything had changed.
Then he turned around. Faced forward.
Whatever happened next, they'd figure it out together.
Because that's what teams did.
Real teams.
Not the competitive, cutthroat version they'd been playing at for the past year.
The kind that actually trusted each other.
The kind that had seen each other at their most vulnerable and hadn't flinched.
The kind that jumped into the ocean together at midnight and came out different on the other side.
"Hey," Becca said from the seat behind him.
"Yeah?"
"Thanks."
"For what?"
"For not letting me do it alone."
He smiled. "Right back at you."
The van merged onto the highway. Six people. One strange night. And the uncertain promise of Monday morning.
But for now, they had the drive home.
And that was enough.
END OF PART 6 of 8
