Chapter 28
The taxi pulled up to their rental just before midnight and Mia’s reaction was priceless.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
“It’s nice, right?” Becca said, understating it considerably.
“Nice? This is…” Mia stood on the path looking at the house, the Gulf a distant murmur beyond. “This is obscene. We’ve been living in a room the size of a closet for a week and you’ve been twenty minutes away in actual paradise.”
“The tech salary helps,” Ellie said with a shrug.
“I need to marry a tech person,” Alexa said quietly, taking it all in.
“I thought the plan was a rich man,” Mia said.
“Like I said earlier the plan is sophisticated. It just evolved.”
They went inside and Mia and Alexa wandered through the house like they were visiting a museum, touching the countertops, looking at the lit pool from every window they could, Alexa opening and closing kitchen cupboards for no apparent reason other than that they were there.
“The second bedroom’s through there,” Becca said, pointing. “It’s got its own bathroom. You’ll need to share the bed, but I figure you’ve had worse.”
Alexa grinned. “Much, much worse.”
“Dump your stuff and come out to the pool.”
By the time Mia and Alexa had deposited their hastily packed bags, Becca had produced a bottle of cold white wine from the fridge along with four actual wine glasses, no chipped mugs, and headed straight for the pool.
Mia was in the water before anyone else had their shoes off, still in her bikini from the day, jumping in with a whoop that probably woke up half of their neighbours. “Oh my God it’s warm. This is heated? You have a heated pool?”
“It’s Florida,” Ellie said. “I figured the sun just does that.”
Alexa lowered herself in more carefully, gasping as the water hit her waist, and Becca followed. Ellie sat on the edge with her legs in, handing glasses of wine down to reaching hands, keeping the bottle safe on the poolside.
They swam, they drank, they talked nonsense.
Alexa found the lilo that Becca had insisted buying when they arrived tucked behind one of the sun loungers and commandeered it, floating in the middle of the pool with her wine balanced on her stomach, looking up at the stars with the blissed-out expression of someone who’d just been promoted from the most budget of economies to first class.
Mia was doing laps around her, periodically threatening to capsize the lilo, while Becca joined her.
At one point Mia said she wanted to see the ocean and Ellie offered to take her through the gate in the hedge. The two of them walked barefoot down the short path to the beach, the sand cool under their feet, the Gulf stretching out dark and enormous under the moon.
“This is unreal,” Mia said, standing at the water’s edge, the waves washing over her toes. “Like, actually unreal. Six hours ago I was in a bar getting hassled by frat boys and now I’m on a private beach.”
“It’s not private. It just feels like it at midnight.”
“Don’t ruin it.” She looked at Ellie and smiled, the bravado that she’d had when they first met stripped away by the night and the sheer improbability of where the evening had taken them.
“Thank you. For all of this. For the bar, for whatever that was at our hotel, for bringing us here. I think you might have saved our spring break.”
Ellie laughed. “Mine too.”
They stood there for another minute, listening to the waves, and then walked back to the pool where Becca and Alexa were having a splash fight that Alexa was comprehensively losing on account of refusing to give up what she was now calling her lilo.
The wine went down fast… warm night, swimming pool, not to mention good company made it inevitable.
By the time the bottle was empty all four of them had hit that happy, loose state of people who’d reached the plateau where everything was fun, nothing was complicated, and absolutely anything seemed possible.
Ellie pulled herself up to sit on the pool edge, looking at the empty bottle on the stone beside her, and had an idea, ridiculous and perfect.
“Ok,” she said. “I have a suggestion and I need everyone to promise not to judge me.”
“Promising nothing,” Mia said.
Ellie held up the empty bottle. “Spin the bottle.”
Mia looked at her. Alexa looked at her. Becca bit her lip.
“What?” Ellie asked.
“Spin the bottle,” Alexa repeated, a grin spreading slowly.
“It’s a spring break thing, right?” Ellie said, feeling her cheeks going red. It was, wasn’t it? “You said you’d show us how the pros do it.”
“El,” Becca said gently, wading through the water to come closer to her, her expression not far removed from the exaggerated kindness that’s saved for delivering bad news to a child. “Spin the bottle is a middle school thing. Like, fourteen-year-olds at a sleepover. It’s not really a spring break…”
“It’s definitely not…” Alexa started to say.
Ellie realised her mistake and didn’t care. “I wasn’t one of the cool kids growing up,” she said. “I was a nerd from Portland who went to Stanford and married her first college girlfriend.” She shrugged. “I’ve never played spin the bottle. This is my one chance.”
The three of them looked at her, and then Mia started to grin. “You know what? Fuck it.” She pulled herself out of the water on to the side. “Give me the bottle.”
“We’re doing this?” Alexa asked.
“We’re doing this. The woman wants to play spin the bottle by the pool of her beautiful house in Florida.
Who are we to deny her?” Mia took the wine bottle and set it on its side on the flat stone between the loungers.
Once the others had climbed out too and were sat two to a lounger she continued.
“Ok. Rules. Whoever it points to, you kiss. Properly. No cheek kisses, no pecks. No less than a minute. This is not middle school.”
“That’s a rule you just made up,” Alexa said.
“I’m the spin the bottle authority here. My rules.” She looked around the circle. “Who’s first?”
“Ellie should go first,” Becca said. “It was her idea.”
Ellie reached forward and spun the bottle. It scraped against the stone, rotating unevenly, slowing, slowing, and stopped pointing at Alexa.
Alexa looked at Ellie and smiled. “Well, at least this one I’ve done before.”
Ellie leaned across and kissed her, and Alexa kissed her back.
This time they were firmly putting on a show for the other two, hands pulling each other closer, tongues involved from the start, and it felt good, really good.
Alexa moaned softly into the kiss and Ellie felt the vibration, not just against her mouth but somewhere deeper down, somewhere more primal, and she knew with certainty right then that whatever that had been with Alexa earlier in their hotel room wasn’t exhausted yet, there was more to come.
They were interrupted by Mia. “Right, time’s up.” They broke the kiss and turned to look at the other two. “God, you guys need to get a room, that was hot.”
Ellie glanced at Becca and blushed when she saw her intense expression, an absolute mix of deep jealousy and insane arousal if she ever saw one.
Ellie raised her eyebrows in a question and Becca smiled slightly, nodding.
Yeah, that was good. And then her expression changed a little. Wait until you see my turn…
“Not bad for a nerd from Portland,” Alexa said. “Not bad at all.”
Becca spun next. The bottle pointed at Alexa again, which drew an eye-roll from Mia and a cheer from Alexa (“I’ve always been good at this game”), and Becca crawled across and kissed Alexa with a confidence that made Ellie’s stomach do its familiar flip.
The loop stirred, the sight of Becca’s hand on Alexa’s face and Alexa pulling her closer enough to light a fire inside her, though not yet the raging inferno that she knew it could become.
Mia spun. It pointed at Ellie, and Mia raised an eyebrow. “The other married one. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Mia’s kiss was more assertive than Becca or Alexa, her hand going straight to the back of Ellie’s neck, her mouth taking the lead.
When she slipped the tongue it felt good, really good, and Ellie felt herself leaning into the kiss, wanting and craving more.
When they broke apart Mia nodded approvingly. “Stanford teaches well.”
“Stanford taught me engineering. You’ve got my wife to thank for that.”
“Noted.”
Alexa spun, and the bottle rotated and slowed, gradually, coming to rest pointing directly at Mia.
Something changed.
It was subtle… a fractional tightening of Mia’s expression, a stillness in Alexa that hadn’t been there before. They looked at each other across the bottle and hesitated, and for a second Ellie thought someone was going to suggest a re-spin.
Then Alexa said, very quietly, “Come here.”
Mia leaned forward. Alexa met her halfway and they kissed, and from the first second it was obvious that this was not their first time.
They kissed slowly, their mouths moving together naturally, Mia’s hand finding Alexa’s jaw, Alexa’s fingers slipping into Mia’s dark hair.
It deepened without either of them seeming to decide to deepen it, a natural escalation, and within a few seconds it was the most intense kiss Ellie had seen all night: unhurried, intimate, carrying the weight of something much older and much more complicated than a game by a pool.
Ellie looked at Becca. Becca was already looking at her, eyes wide. Their eyes met and the same thought passed between them without words: oh my God, no way is that just a kiss.
Mia and Alexa broke apart slowly, and for a moment they just looked at each other, their faces close.
“Been a while since we did that…” Mia said, eyes focused on Alexa and nowhere else.
A smile twitched around the edge of Alexa’s lips. “Yeah.”
Ellie and Becca sat in silence, not sure where to look, not wanting to intrude, but then Alexa gave a little nod and seemed to pull herself back into the room, her smile widening and her head turning to look at them. “You know, team stuff,” she said by way of explanation.
“Back in junior year,” Mia added, a little too quickly.
Nobody pushed it. Becca, to her credit, read the room perfectly and reached for the rum bottle, pouring four measures into their wine glasses, and moved the conversation on.
They drank the rum and talked for a while, but that final kiss had changed something in the air, charged it differently, and all four of them could feel it.
It was suddenly much closer to the energy from when they’d left the bar to go to the hotel.
The pool lights rippled, the warm night wrapped around them, and the silences between the conversation were getting longer and more loaded.
Eventually, after a quick glance at Ellie for confirmation, Becca took the initiative. She stood, looked down at Mia, and held out her hand.
“Come inside with me?” she said, and while her voice was gentle her intent was crystal clear.
Mia looked at Becca’s hand, then up at her face, and took it without hesitation. They walked towards the house, Becca leading, Mia following, their fingers interlaced. Ellie watched them go and felt the loop spring into action.
She turned to Alexa, who’d gone to sit on the edge of the pool, her feet in the water, watching Mia and Becca disappear through the door with an expression that was half dazed and half something else, the aftermath of the kiss with Mia still visible in her expression, in her whole demeanour in fact.
Ellie reached out her hand to Alexa. “Would you like to join them?”
Alexa looked at her and the daze cleared. She took Ellie’s hand. “Yeah,” she said. “I really would.”