A Wager With Sadie: 006

Everything changed their fourth day at the resort. They woke to blissful early morning sunshine. It flooded their villa; their heads turned on the pillows, looking at each other. They beamed. The rain was over.

She begged Graham to come run with her, but he complained about a bad back. Bad back, my ass. She knew he’d take a break from exercise when they were on vacation even though he said he wouldn’t. So she went out by herself, left Teddy in the villa reading a book and drinking a coffee by their private poolside. Had to admit, it looked pretty good the way he sat there relaxing. But she’d already taken three days off from running—what with the rain—and Teddy luring her to stay indoors with him.

Once she was out, sneakers pounding the trail, she got mad at Teddy for not coming along. The running trail snaked through the resort, then extended out past the grounds and into the Hồ Tiên Du Wildlife Preserve where she ran in the cool shade under the mangroves.

First thing she said when she got back to the villa was, “Hey, lazy boy, you missed a monkey.”

Teddy frowned, and his face moved up from the book he was reading. His brow pinched even more perplexed above his sunglasses. He said, “What on earth does that mean?”

She said, “Literally a monkey, Teddy Bear.”

Those eyebrows popped up now. “Really?”

“Threw a rock at me,” she said, sassing him, loving the disappointment on his face before she swished around, then sashayed to the bathroom to get cleaned up, wagging her butt, sneakers squeaking on the teak floor.

***

Later they had breakfast together at the Bayside Restaurant out on the patio and under the scorching sun. They decided to spend the day on the beach. Three days of rain and rainy day activities punctuated now by this gemstone blessing of a day were a perfect intro to enjoying a guilt-free day of doing nothing.

A lot of the resort’s tenants had the same idea, and they found the beach busy. Not crowded, because the beach was only available to resort guests, and only extended in a crescent on the resort’s property. They found the two lounge chairs associated with their villa, side by side and sharing an umbrella, almost dead centre on the crescent’s apex, with a wonderful view of the Bay. Far on their left was the pier and the raised deck with the thatch-roof bar, and on their right, nothing but sand until you hit the forest edge.

Teddy said to her, “You see a server?”

“One over there, Teddy,” she said, index finger—hidden, holding her place in the New York Times bestseller she was reading—pointing toward a young Vietnamese guy in a cool, tropical resort uniform delivering drinks on a tray to another couple on loungers hidden in the nest of a clamshell tent.

Teddy waved the server over while they set up their spot, stepping out of her flip-flops, setting her book on the table between their teak loungers and slipping the sunglasses down from her hair to cover her eyes.

While the guy approached, Teddy said to her, “Think it’s too early for a beer?”

“It’s not even lunchtime, Teddy Bear,” she said.

“I’m still on Minnesota time.”

She chuckled, said, “We’ve been here almost five days, but, hey, you want a beer, get a beer, my man.”

“You’re not going to join me?”

But the server was there now before she could answer Teddy, and she ordered a mango and green tea protein smoothie.

“Make it two,” Teddy told the server and set his beach stuff down on the table, then shrugged off his T-shirt and lay it flat to cover the lounger’s blue- and white-striped head pillow.

She said, “You could have told him to put a shot or two of vodka in yours.” She unknotted her beach wrap where it tied at her armpit.

Teddy said, “You’re right, I am on vacation, and that way no one would know I have a drinking prob—”

Bam. She let the wrap fall into her hands and slung it to her lounger, let Teddy take in the new bikini she’d bought. For two weeks before their vacay, she’d stuck with water and lean meat and cruciferous vegetables. No starchy carbs and almost no wine at all. He’d seen her naked already, but this was bright sunlight on a public beach. The satiny blue bikini looked good against her current skin color, and would look even better when she’d taken some sun. Heck, it looked good in the dressing room of the wintry Minneapolis boutique where she’d bought it.

Teddy’s cheek twitched, his mouth tucked slim, almost hidden under his reddish beard and mustache. His eyes darted over all the bare skin revealed. She acted nonchalant. No big deal, just going to do some sunbathing, dressed pretty much how people dressed when they went to a beach—and took good care of their body.

Along the beach, down in the surf playing frisbee, she’d caught the attention of two young guys, maybe in their early twenties. One gestured discretely and his friend turned. They both stared. She turned her back to them, shook her hair out, tied it back, then sat on her lounger. Teddy watched the whole time, struck dumb, standing there and not moving. Once she was down and stretched out, he chuckled, then sat on his lounger. “That’s some bikini, Sade,” he said over his shoulder.

“You like it?”

“I’m a red-blooded American male, Sadie, with a working set of eyes in this old crock pot”—he rapped knuckles at his temple—“you better believe I like it.” Now he spun and set his feet on the lounger’s cushion bed, hoisting himself to sit comfortably, elbows planted on the seat arms.

After a moment watching the beach, Teddy leaned her way, smiling, saying, “Think those guys like it, too.”

The boys who’d eyeballed her now resumed their frisbee game, but every once in a while would sneak a peek in her direction.

What was with Graham? Everything to do with her in the last twenty-four hours, her husband filtered through the lens of others. Even now, in her knockout bikini, he was looking to see who else liked it. In a strange way, maybe she found it flattering. Teddy was proud of the wife he’d scored.

In a case of perfect timing, a man strolled about a dozen feet from the feet of their loungers, passing from left to right, his head swiveling her way, taking her in, unashamed eyes touching across her navel. It was lecherous, though the man showed no expression on his face. Both she and Teddy watched the man pass. He was older, and while his head of thick curly hair was salt and pepper, the chest hair that sprinkled his narrow, sagging chest was bright white.

She said aside to Teddy, “See? I let you pick, you’d think it was funny to send me off with that guy.”

Teddy chuckled and fidgeted in the corner of her eye. He leaned closer and said, “Those two guys playing frisbee more your speed?”

She regarded them with honest assessment. Both early twenties, not too bad looking, but their bodies were thin and almost adolescent. She said, “They’d do in a pinch, but I wouldn’t be excited to do it. You know?”

Teddy did that grumbling, appreciative chuckle he’d been doing a lot since she’d divulged that super-secret diary story she wished she’d kept to herself.

Teddy said, “They?”

She smiled, waited a beat, leaned to her husband and peered over the top of her sunglasses, waiting for him to look over. When he did, she said, “I have two hands, Teddy.”

***

The weird thing was, Teddy’s dirty talk had her wondering what both those young guys penises looked like. She watched them over top of her book, pretending to read, but instead conjuring what she believed to be accurate representations of their dicks. Most likely, she figured, they’d both be kind of the same. Both would be average length, the brown-haired guy’s would be average girth, the blonder-haired guy’s would be marginally thinner. Both guys would be circumcised. From their skin color, she surmised they’d both have slightly brownish dicks, both with their circumcision scars about an inch from the coronal ridge; the skin there would be pinky, their cock heads would be brownish and not large.

She set the book down on the table between her and Teddy with a satisfying whack. Teddy looked at her, innocent. “What?”

“Nothing,” she said, firm and even, mad at him for nothing she could explain. Your dumb talk has me thinking of dick right now, and I can’t even concentrate on my stupid book. And I was enjoying that book.

She sat up, rubbed her cheeks, pivoted sideways to face Teddy. “I’m going to go work out or something.” Maybe take a cold shower.

“Mm,” he said, looking over her breasts and stomach, then returning his gaze to his iPad where he was watching an action movie on Netflix, one ear pod in. “Go do some yoga.”

“Where?”

“There’s a yoga class at 12:30.”

“Where, Teddy?”

“I don’t know, here at the resort,” he said. “I saw a sign in the lobby, some astrological shit and a silhouette of somebody floating cross-legged.”

“Look it up.”

He sighed, closed his movie, went to a browser. . . . “Oh, cool. Outside. Just”—now he looked over his shoulder and back up at the raised outdoor level that ran the outside of the main hotel building—“I think maybe around the far side. It’s outside and they have a platform and you can see the ocean and it’s under some palm trees. It looks really nice.”

“Good. Perfect. I need to work up a sweat and get my mind in focus. Come with me.” She nudged his thigh with her toes, then left her foot on his leg.

“And do yoga?” His eyebrows tented above his sunglasses.

“Come on and get some exercise.”

The bowed arch of his brows peaked higher. “I’m watching Extraction.”

“Again?”

His sunglasses stared back at her. She saw herself reflected in them.

She sighed, said, “When’s your movie over?”

“I’m halfway through.”

“What time is it?”

Teddy checked his iPad. “Twenty after twelve. Yoga’s in ten minutes.”

“You’re not coming with?”

“Chris Hemsworth, Sade.”

She rubbed her neck. The dick that guy would have. Hoo, that first Thor movie . . .

Teddy said, “And it’s after twelve. I was seriously about to order a beer.”

“Fine” she chuckled, trying to picture Teddy in the yoga class and not quite seeing it. “Enjoy your beer, enjoy your movie. I need to go do something.”

Teddy smiled under his black sunglasses. “Well, you know where to find me.”

“I do,” she said, a twinge of anger at him. It was him who’d done this to her, sitting there now and taking it easy.

She stood, re-tied the wrap around herself, then bent and kissed his forehead. He said, “You see the server, can you send him this way?”

“Sure thing, babe,” she said, walking around his lounger and strolling up the sand, headed to the hotel’s main building. Then she pivoted, hiked the dozen feet back to him.

She got close to his ear and whispered, “You got me so hot thinking of dick, Teddy Bear, if this yoga doesn’t shake it off, I’m going to need some more American hot dog up in the villa. Capice?”

Teddy swallowed, touched his glasses down his nose and looked up at her with widened eyes. “Capice,” he said, voice tight.

She smiled, rose and turned, sashaying again, wishing the wrap was gone and he was looking at her ass in the bikini.

Get me horny, will you? Two can play, Teddy Bear.