Chapter 18 #2
“Right? It’s this little stretch of coast, really upscale, beautiful restaurants, quiet beaches. It looks perfect.” She took the phone back and scrolled to another tab. “And it’s available for the whole week.”
“Book it. Seriously, that looks amazing.”
“Yeah?” Becca was smiling but there was something else behind it, the look Becca got when she had more to say and was waiting for the right moment to say it.
Ellie narrowed her eyes. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing! It’s just…” Becca bit her lip, trying and utterly failing to suppress a grin. “So 30A is the quiet, upscale bit. But about twenty minutes down the road is Panama City Beach.”
“Ok?”
“And our week off happens to fall during spring break.”
There it was. Ellie looked at her. “Spring break. We’re twenty-five, Bec. We don’t do spring break.”
“We’ve never done spring break. That isn’t the same thing.
” Becca put her phone down and turned to face Ellie properly, her legs folded under her.
“We never went when we were in college because, well, that wasn’t us.
Haven’t you ever been curious? We’d be staying somewhere gorgeous and quiet, our own pool, nice dinners, long walks on the beach…
a proper holiday. And then if we felt like it, whenever we felt like it, we could head twenty minutes down the road and… ”
“…dip into the chaos?”
“Exactly. Dip in. See what it’s like. Tick off the life experience. No plan, no pressure.”
Ellie looked at her. “Bec, isn’t spring break basically just… thousands of college students getting drunk and hooking up on a beach?”
“That’s a very Stanford way of putting it.”
“We went to Stanford. We spent our spring breaks studying and fooling around in your dorm room, which I’m not complaining about by the way, but I’m just saying… that’s not really our scene.”
“It wasn’t our scene because we didn’t need it and, how can I put it nicely, we weren’t exactly the cool kids. We had each other.” Becca’s foot nudged Ellie’s thigh gently. “But we wouldn’t be doing spring break. We’d be on our holiday and see what it’s like then escape.”
“See what it’s like,” Ellie repeated, and she could hear the scepticism in her own voice even as something inside was already warming to the idea. “And by see what it’s like, you mean…”
Becca held her gaze, and the grin had settled into a steady, excited smile. “I mean let’s keep our options open. Bars, the beach, the energy of the whole thing. No plan, no pressure. And if nothing happens, we’ve had a beautiful week on the coast together.”
Ellie studied her wife’s face. “‘Nothing happens’? You’re not really talking about sightseeing, are you?”
Becca bit her lip, then laughed. “No. I’m counting on it being more than sightseeing. Is that ok?”
Ellie thought about it. Becca in a bikini on a crowded beach. Being noticed, being wanted, being approached. Ellie watching from behind her sunglasses, feeling that familiar loop revving up. And then in the evening, bars, music, and the reckless energy of people far from home…
The hot geek from Stanford who’d spent every spring break in a dorm room looked at her wife and nodded.
“It’s very ok,” Ellie said. “Book the house.” She paused.
“But just so we’re clear: a drunk eighteen-year-old in a bikini who’s had too many Jello shots, is straight and is going to wake up the next morning regretting what she did is not a plausible rival.
You know what I need for this to work. It has to be someone real.
Someone who actually makes both of us feel something. ”
Becca nodded, and Ellie could see that she appreciated the clarity on the boundary rather than resenting it. “Someone we’d both want to spend time with. Not just a warm body.”
“Exactly. If we find that person on a beach in Florida, amazing, but we don’t force it. If we don’t find them, we’ve had a gorgeous week together and I’ve watched you turn heads in a bikini for seven days, which is frankly a holiday well spent either way.”
Becca grinned. “Deal.”
Becca leaned over and kissed her, quick and happy, then picked up her phone to start the booking, already typing. Ellie watched her and thought about Florida, about white sand, warm evenings, and whatever might happen, and felt nothing but anticipation.
***
That Sunday they went to their usual brunch spot, and as ever the wait was too long and the migas were absolutely worth it. They sat at one of their usual tables by the window, ordered their usual coffees, fell into their usual comfortable silence while they waited for food.
Ellie was reading something on her phone when she became aware that Becca was watching her, her expression a mix of amusement, curiosity, a little delight.
"What?" Ellie asked.
"Don't look now," Becca said quietly, "but the barista has been checking you out since we sat down."
Ellie did, of course, look, casually, over her coffee cup, and saw her. A young woman behind the counter, pink hair, nose ring, cute in a confident, artistic way. She was making a coffee but her eyes kept drifting towards their table, and not towards Becca.
Towards Ellie.
When the barista caught Ellie looking she didn't glance away. She held the eye contact for a moment, smiled, a little private smile that lit up her eyes, then went back to the espresso machine.
Ellie turned back to Becca, feeling her cheeks go red. "She's not checking me out."
"She absolutely is. She's been doing it for five minutes. I've been watching her watch you." Becca was grinning now, enjoying this. "She's cute."
"She is cute," Ellie admitted.
"You should go get her number."
Ellie looked at Becca, trying to read whether she was serious. She was… or at least she was serious about making the offer. Her expression was open, genuine, the look of a woman who was testing a hypothesis she’d formed and was genuinely curious about the result.
"No," Ellie said.
"No?"
"It doesn't work that way round. For me, I mean. It's not..." She paused. “This thing we’re doing, it’s about me watching you being desired by someone else, not the other way around.”
“From where I’m sat, I seem to be watching you be desired by someone else.” Becca’s eyes were twinkling with amusement. “It’s kind of hot.”
Ellie decided to roll with it. “Let me guess. First of all jealousy?” Becca nodded. “Then, a little after, something else?” Becca nodded again. “Feels weirdly good even though it shouldn’t?”
“Yeah,” Becca said, nodding one more time. She took a sip of her coffee, her amused eyes studying Ellie. “I think I might get what you see in it.”
“Good.” Ellie paused and grinned. “But I’m not getting her number.”
“No?”
“No.”
Becca studied her for a moment, then a look of relief crossed her face. "Good," she said. "Because honestly? I am nowhere near emotionally ready for that. If you came home with someone else I'd be a mess. A complete, absolute, non-functioning mess. I’d need some time to get my head around it.”
"So we're in agreement. You're the one who does it. I'm the one who watches."
"We're in agreement." Becca reached across the table and took Ellie's hand. "Although for the record, you are very hot and that barista has excellent taste."
"Noted. But she's still not getting my number."
"Her loss." Becca squeezed her hand and let go, picking up her coffee. "I reckon I’d enjoy watching."
"No you wouldn't."
Becca thought about it for a split second.
"No, I wouldn't. I’d hate every moment of it.
" She laughed, and Ellie laughed with her.
“But I feel like I get what you get from it now.” Becca paused.
“How about you? How does it feel knowing that her checking me out has triggered that jealousy-arousal loop in me that you talk about?”
Ellie hesitated, caught in the sudden realisation…
it felt good. Knowing that Becca could see Ellie being desired by someone else, knowing that Becca was happy that Ellie was being desired.
She knew it could only possibly be a shadow of the depths of feeling that must come for Becca when she was naked, writhing in pleasure, knowing that Ellie was watching and enjoying, but it was a lightbulb moment.
“I think I get it too,” Ellie admitted. “Just a little.”
“Feels good, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah. It does.”
Their food arrived. The migas were perfect, as always.
Ellie saw Becca glance over at the barista again and then redden just a touch, and she loved that she’d seen it, thrilling to know that Becca was feeling just a little of what Ellie had been feeling for her in their encounters.
And that thrill, she now understood, knowing that your wife was excited that you were being desired… that was part of Becca’s side of it.
She picked up her fork and started eating, and Becca started telling her about a client she'd seen that week.
It was ordinary, their normal weekend, but beneath the ordinary something extraordinary was bubbling away. Ellie knew that they had genuinely discovered something amazing, something transformative for their marriage. What came next, she didn’t know.
What she did know, though, was that she couldn't wait to find out.