The Vacation Wife David Stone (phonics reader .TXT) 📖

stuck her head out the window to blow out her hair. Her dress was nearly completely undone, but she left it as it was. I felt like I was already recovering.

“You know,” said Marci, introducing a new topic. “Just call me pretty and I’ll come and keep coming until you stop. How many times do you think you could come in a single day?”

I wasn’t entirely sure as I’d never tested it. At the height of my “self-discovery” phase, when I first discovered masturbation, I might have a go several times a day. More than that seemed improbable though not impossible.

“I’m not sure. Three or four times.”

“We’re up to two so far.” We’d made love early that morning before either of us was truly awake.

“This morning feels like it was yesterday.”

“Still counts.”

“What’s the most you’ve ever orgasmed in a day?”

“With men? Or alone? Or both?”

“Men.”

She thought for a moment. “It was with you. Eight times. Remember when we stayed up all night screwing. That night.”

“That was the night we moved in together.”

“You’re right.”

Marci was quiet for the next thirty miles and seemed to doze. Feeling sleepy myself after Marci’s deft demonstration of her oral skills, I stopped for coffee and a pee. She stayed in the car and by the time I’d returned, she’d straightened out her dress. brushed her hair properly, and even applied makeup, something she usually never bothered with. I handed her a coffee and we set out again.

“This is better, isn’t it,” she said, once underway. She didn’t say this in the form of a question. She was making a statement.

“What?”

“Doing it this way. I’m talking about us. This works. The other way didn’t.” I knew what she was referring to. As a couple, she didn’t get the space she needed. At heart, she was a true introvert, and much more than myself. That she gave the opposite impression to most people spoke of her determination to appear otherwise. The truth was, it exhausted her to do so, and she would need alone time to recalibrate.

“You’re talking about being a full-time couple, versus a part-time couple.”

“Kinda. I mean, I loved our time together, but...”

“The twenty-four/seven was hard for you. You told me you needed a lot of space. Some people are like that. I’m like that too occasionally. I understood.”

“Right.”

“This way we can just enjoy each other,” I said. “There’s nothing more implied. We’re not locked into spending the next forty years together. We get to choose when we want to be a couple.”

“The difference between us is, you need to have someone like Susan in your life. I don’t need a Susan. I’m not like that.”

“I’m not sure ‘need’ is the right word, but I get your point.”

“I may never get married. Not in a traditional sense. It’s just not in my DNA. That’s why I feel so liberated with you. You know that already, so I’m not going to let you down. Does that make sense?”

“Yes, it does… You don’t have to get married if you don’t want to. Plenty of women choose not to.”

“I’ll always need someone like you though, Ryan. I didn’t feel whole after we split. Now I feel whole again.”

“You’re worried about how long this will last. I wouldn’t be.”

“No? Good.” She leaned over and kissed me. “I’ll be your vacation wife as long as you’ll have me.” She settled back into her seat and slipped into a brief meditation, then held my hand, lacing our fingers.

“What happens if Susan gets tired of Greg?”

I didn’t know what would happen if Susan tired of Greg. As I was giving it a think we arrived in Tulum, which wasn’t so much a town as a riot of color poured into the surrounding jungle. At least, I think it was surrounded by jungle. I knew it contained fierce, black jaguars, and that was jungly enough for me. Within a few turns, we gained the road to the hotel which had billed itself as bohemian-chic in the brochure.

“I don’t know, Marci. Susan told both of us something about ‘getting it out of our systems’, meaning she being with Greg and you with me, but without giving it a specific time-frame. That’s as far as the discussion went.”

“I don’t want to get you out of my system, Ryan. I love you. You know it. As long as you’re with Susan we’re safe. Do you get that?”

“I do.”

A lucid sense of panic tickled my gut. Marci was absolutely right to wonder about us, about where we could possibly be headed, and for how long. That I couldn’t say outright bothered me. I simply didn’t know. For that matter, and despite feeling all was well, I wondered what was going through Susan’s head at that moment. Did she miss me? Was she even thinking about me when she was with Greg? Or when he made love to her?

I chased these matters out of my head. We pulled into the hotel which indeed had a bohemian air. Inside, it looked like a Moroccan palace decorated by traveling gypsies who had acquired their influences during the Spanish colonial period. It was a mish-mash of contrasting colors and textures that, surprisingly, went quite well together. A strutting peacock passed through the lobby without raising an eyebrow.

The other guests, by way of their dress, seemed to have tuned into the general ambiance. A few were in their bathing suits, milling through the lobby on their way to the pool or beach. I sensed there were many Europeans and only a few Americans. Our fellow passengers on the plane down had been a motley crew, and I was pleased not to see them represented here.

We found our way to our room with the help of a hotel clerk, Chloe, the woman who checked us in. She was definitely a European but of uncertain nationality though her coloring suggested a Mediterranean climate. She was pleasant and if I was not mistaken, particularly taken by Marci. She opened our balcony doors to reveal an