Chapter 27
They walked to Mia and Alexa’s hotel, which turned out to be three blocks from the final bar and about as far from Ellie and Becca’s rental as it was possible to get while still technically counting as a habitable space.
The lobby smelled of chlorine and cheap air freshener, the elevator made a sound that suggested it was considering retirement, and when Alexa unlocked the door to their room Ellie got a pretty clear picture of what a week of spring break on a college budget looked like.
The room itself was decent enough: a double bed, a sofa bed pulled out under the window, a bathroom near the door and a window that seemed to look out directly onto another hotel just a few yards away.
It was clean, functional, there was nothing wrong with it except that it was clearly designed to be slept in rather than lived in, and after a week of occupation it showed.
Bikinis were drying on every available surface, a suitcase had clearly exploded on day one and never recovered, and there was a precarious tower of empty cans on the chest of drawers that Mia seemed genuinely proud of.
“Welcome to the penthouse,” Alexa said drily.
“It’s… cosy,” Becca offered.
“It’s not luxury, but it’s got character.” Alexa grinned. “And hey, this is the full spring break experience, right? We promised to show you.”
“It’s a shithole,” Mia said cheerfully, rummaging in a bag and producing a bottle of rum that was about two-thirds full. “But it’s our shithole, and it has rum.”
She poured four generous measures into the only receptacles available, two actual glasses which she gave to their guests and two chipped mugs. They stood in the space between the two beds and the four of them clinked their mismatched vessels and drank.
The rum, if Ellie was being honest, was terrible, but nobody cared.
“So,” Mia said, looking between the four of them with an expression that was ninety percent bravado and ten percent oh God what now. “This seems to be happening.”
“This does seem to be happening,” Becca confirmed.
“Cool. Great. Love that.” Mia took another drink and winced at the taste. “So, Alexa and I have a method that works. We’ve done this enough times before.”
Alexa laughed. “Not this exactly, not a married couple…”
Mia smiled. “No. Not women either. But… you know. Hookups where we’re both in the room.”
“At the same time?” Ellie asked, and was surprised by how level her voice was given that her heart was doing something that felt like she may need medical intervention sooner rather than later.
“Same time, same room, yeah. We’ve got rules.” Mia glanced at Alexa, who nodded. “Lights off. And whatever you hear from the other side of the room, you ignore it. None of your business. It sounds weird but it works. We’ve been doing it since sophomore year.”
“It’s not weird,” Becca said. “It sounds practical.”
“It’s the only way one of us can get laid without the other having to sleep in the hallway,” Alexa said. “Which happened once, by the way. Freshman year. I sat outside our door for forty-five minutes in my pyjamas.”
“It was twenty minutes,” Mia said.
“It was forty-five. I timed it. I didn’t have anything else to do.”
“He was drunk and took his time. Don’t blame me.”
Ellie caught Becca’s eye and the look they shared was a mix of affection, amusement, and something bordering on disbelief.
They were standing in a budget hotel room with two college volleyball players, drinking bad rum out of a water glass, negotiating the logistics of something kind of crazy using rules designed for sneaking boys back to a dorm room.
It was so far from the boutique hotel with Cass, so far from Kelly’s ranch, so far from any version of this they’d imagined, that Ellie wanted to laugh.
Not at Mia and Alexa but with them, at the beautiful absurdity of how the evening had delivered them here.
“Lights off works for us,” Ellie said.
“Yeah?” Mia looked relieved, as if she’d been bracing for a more complicated negotiation.
“Ok. Cool. So, I guess…” She looked at Alexa, then at Becca, then at Ellie, and for the first time all evening her confidence wobbled.
“God, how do you actually start this? With guys they just sort of… launch themselves at you. This feels way more civilised and I don’t know what to do about that. ”
“You could start by turning the lights off,” Alexa suggested quietly, and there was something in her tone that told Ellie she was ready even if Mia was getting a last minute attack of the nerves.
Mia reached for the light switch. “Last one to the bed gets the sofa bed.”
Ellie stood still as the room went dark and she heard movement around her, then Alexa laughing. “Looks like I win…”
The only faint light was an orange glow from the other side of the curtains, enough to see shapes and movement but not a lot more. Ellie felt a hand take hers and squeeze, then Becca’s voice in her ear, whispering quietly, “Just me. Have fun.”
“You too,” she whispered back, then Becca let go. She heard the sound of Becca feeling her way over to the sofa bed then a giggle, probably Mia, followed by a whispered exchange she couldn’t catch before the sounds got quieter but more intimate. Definitely some kissing, she was sure of that.
Ellie stood by the double bed, waiting for her eyes to adjust, and felt Alexa’s hand find hers.
“Hey,” Alexa whispered.
“Hey.”
“I’m nervous.”
“Me too.”
“You don’t seem nervous.”
“I’m extremely nervous. I’m just good at hiding it.” Ellie paused. “Also I’ve had a lot of tequila.”
Alexa laughed quietly, and pulled Ellie down next to her. In the near-dark, with the sounds of Becca and Mia kissing a few feet away, Alexa kissed her again.
God, it felt good.
It was slower than on the dance floor, both of them had sobered up a little but only a little, and it felt like they had as long as they needed which was, Ellie realised, kind of true.
Alexa’s hand found her face and Ellie’s hand found Alexa’s waist, and the kiss deepened gradually until Ellie felt Alexa’s tongue against hers, her whole body responding with a jolt that she felt right down to her toes.
They lay on the bed kissing, their bodies pressed together. Alexa was a little taller than Ellie, longer-limbed, and the angles were different to Becca, different body too, different everything.
Alexa’s hand moved from Ellie’s face to her neck, to her collarbone, trailing down, and paused at the edge of Ellie’s t-shirt.
“Can I?” she whispered.
“Yeah.”
Alexa’s hand slid under the fabric, warm fingers on Ellie’s stomach, and Ellie felt her muscles tense involuntarily, not out of reluctance but rather because it was so unusual feeling a touch that wasn’t Becca’s.
Alexa’s hand moved up, slowly, over Ellie’s ribs to the bikini top she was still wearing, and when her fingers found Ellie’s breast through the thin fabric Ellie heard herself gasp into the kiss.
From the sofa bed, the sounds had moved beyond kissing.
Ellie could hear movement, the creak of the sofa bed frame, a low murmur from Mia that might have been words or might have been something else.
She couldn’t see anything beyond shapes moving, but the sounds were doing plenty: the sound of her wife with another woman, somewhere in the dark, a few feet away, while a different woman’s hand was inside Ellie’s top, touching her, and Ellie was letting her, wanting her to.
It was surreal. That was the only word she could think of for it. Completely, wonderfully surreal.
She reached for Alexa’s body, her hands finding the muscles of Alexa’s athlete’s stomach, feeling the hard definition under her fingertips.
Alexa’s breath caught when Ellie’s fingers moved higher and they lay there in the dark, touching each other through and under clothes, mouths and tongues meeting and breaking apart and meeting again, building slowly because neither of them was in a rush and both of them were, in their own ways, feeling their way through something new.
Alexa’s hand moved lower. Down from Ellie’s breast, across her stomach, to the waistband of her shorts, and paused there, fingers resting against the bare skin just below her navel.
“Yeah?” Alexa whispered again.
“Yeah.”
Alexa’s fingers slipped beneath the waistband, beneath her bikini bottoms, and found her.
The moan that escaped Ellie’s lips was entirely involuntary.
Alexa’s fingers fumbled to start with, finding their rhythm and exploring her, but Ellie shifted her hips to help her find the right angle and when she got it Ellie pressed her mouth into Alexa’s shoulder to muffle the cry of pleasure that went with it…
it felt good, really good, different to Becca but different good.
She could tell that Alexa wanted to get this right, and Ellie moved her body to help her.
Ellie let herself be selfish for a few minutes, then forced herself to copy Alexa’s path, down, under the waistband, finding Alexa very obviously ready for her, and the gasp that Alexa let out into their kiss when Ellie started to touch her was gratifying in a way she’d not anticipated.
She’d never made anyone but Becca make that sound, ever.
The power of being able to draw that reaction, the novelty, the intimacy of touching a near-stranger in the dark while her wife was doing God-knew-what a few feet away… it was intoxicating.
They got into a rhythm and Ellie could tell that Alexa was following her lead, understandable since while she didn’t know whether Alexa had been with a woman before she did know that Alexa wouldn’t be anything like as experienced as her.
It wasn’t rushed, but it was very good, both of them breathing hard, their free hands gripping whatever part of the other body they could find.
The sofa bed was creaking faster now, more rhythmically, and Ellie could hear Mia’s breathing getting ragged, low sounds that were climbing in pitch, and mixed in with that Becca’s unmistakable gasps and moans.