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Disclaimer: All sex is between characters over 18. Enjoy.
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There are times when I love the travel that comes with my job, and there are times I don't. I travel every week, more or less, getting to be home every weekend. On the plus side: Seeing new cities, visiting different companies and helping them with their tech problems, getting them solved and then moving on. Meeting new people. Frequent flier miles that let you take great vacations inexpensively, and first-class upgrades that make the experience of flying more comfortable. Being on an expense account that pays for everything from when you walk out your door headed to the airport to when you get back.
The down sides? The occasional bad hotels with crappier beds, cancelled flights, jet lag, and the absences from your family that you're working to support. Eating nothing but hotel/restaurant meals. Getting stuck with a middle seat on the plane between two big guys.
My wife Sheila had been understanding of my absences, while enjoying the perks I could share with her, engaging in plenty of phone sex with me on nights I was in a hotel, then screwing my brains out once I got home. Whether or not absence makes the heart grow fonder, it certainly made us hornier for each other.
Occasionally, if I got an assignment in a city she wanted to visit, she'd come with me for a week, shop or sightsee during my work days, and we'd go out for dinner before going back to the room, and screwing all night. Our two-week trip in Waikiki when I had an assignment in Honolulu was particularly memorable. Our daughter Pam had just graduated high school, and we brought her and her younger sister Wendy with us as a reward, renting a condo instead of staying in the hotel, and the girls had so much fun in Waikiki while I worked in Honolulu, then we had the weekend to sightsee as a family. The expense account and using frequent flier miles made the whole trip not that expensive. Like I said, there is a plus-side to travelling so much.
But then ovarian cancer took Sheila from me when we were 44, and both girls were in college. They were old enough I didn't need to quit my job to be there to watch them, and my travelling continued. After they graduated, got jobs and moved out, I downsized to a small condo, since I just didn't need the space anymore, especially when I wasn't home that much.
But perhaps the worst part of all was being away from home on special days like my anniversary or birthdays, like I was going to be away on my birthday the year I turned 50. I was on a four-months long assignment, at a company in the suburbs of Baltimore, travelling there weekly from San Diego, and the project schedule just didn't allow me to work remote or take the week off to observe my birthday. The hotel I was asked to stay at by the customer (they pay the expenses, ultimately) was okay, not luxurious but just solid and well run. The best part of it was the attached restaurant and bar, serving a better-than-average menu. And the best part of that was Casey, the bartender who worked there the same nights I stayed there, waiting tables on Sundays instead of tending bar.
I thought she was twenty years younger than I was, though she was gorgeous for any age. 5'9", she was curvy without being chubby, with 38DD breasts that strained her work uniform, but were clearly natural, curly red hair reaching her shoulders, and an ass that begged to be pinched. She waited on me the first Sunday night I stayed there. Her flirtations were probably aimed at boosting her tip, so I didn't take them very seriously. But she surprised me the next night when I came into the restaurant, as she cheerfully said, "Hello, Sam!" from behind the bar as I was walking towards my table.
After I finished eating, I went back to the bar, and sat down. She saw me and came over, saying, "Hi again, Sam. What'll you have?" I asked her how she knew my name, since I hadn't mentioned it the night before. She replied, "You paid with a credit card, silly. I'm just one of those people who remember things they see like that. I think they call it a photographic memory."
I ordered a rum and coke, and wound up talking with her for about an hour, as the hotel wasn't very full that night, and the bar nearly empty. She told me she was 34, hadn't been able to afford college, and had worked as a waitress at this hotel for eight years before being trained to be a bartender. Married once, but divorced before having kids, and a single child like me, her parents had died three and two years earlier. We commiserated over our lost ones, and I showed her pictures of my wife and daughters off my phone The photo album of the digital age.
She was so very charming and funny, and I soon found myself looking forward to "Casey time" at the bar each night she worked there, eating at the restaurant on Sundays where she was usually my server, while eating at other places around town the other nights, stopping by the bar when I returned to the hotel. I'd spend about an hour at the bar each night, ordering just one or two rum and cokes, before heading up to my room to prepare for bed. Some nights she would be busy, and we couldn't talk much, but on others, she was spending a lot of time talking with me, our conversations intense, funny, and bordering on the risque. It felt like a lot more than just being friendly with a good-tipping customer, but I thought my instincts were pretty rusty. I'd been travelling so steadily since my wife died that I hadn't even tried to go on a date. I wasn't even sure I was ready yet, even 5-plus years later.
I was working up the nerve to ask her out for a date, knowing that she'd be losing money in order to take a night off if she said yes. But when I heard another bar patron try, she told him that she wasn't allowed to date customers. So I pushed the idea out of my mind.
My birthday fell on a Tuesday about two months into the project. Having to work on my birthday always irked me, and having to do it out of town was five times worse, and the fact that it was my 50th multiplied that by another factor of 10. All kinds of stuff was blowing up on the project, too, and I didn't get back to the hotel until 8:30 after putting out fire after fire all day. Dinner had been a vending machine sandwich and a Coke at the office.
So I was in a pretty sour mood when I sat at the bar that night. Casey spotted me, started making my usual rum and coke, then ducked into the area behind the bar, and came out holding a chocolate cupcake, with a lit candle in it, picked up my drink in her other hand and started singing "Happy Birthday To You!" as she walked towards me. The half-dozen others around the bar and a couple of waitresses joined in, and she set the cupcake and drink in front of me.
I sputtered. "How did you know? Let me guess, you memorized my birth date from my ID, too?"
"Of course. Now, make a wish before that candle melts all over the place!"
What I wished for, to have sex with her, would probably have gotten me slapped if I had said it out loud, but I knew wishes never came true if you said them out loud. Not that I really expected this one to. I blew out the candle, everyone clapped, congratulated me, then got back to the business of getting a buzz on. I felt the best I had all day.
I left the bar just before closing and headed to my room. I had just finished "Happy Birthday, Dad" calls from both of my daughters, when I heard a knock-knock-knock on my door. It was nearly 11 o'clock. "What the hell?" I said to myself, as I moved to answer it. I opened it to see my favorite bartender.
"Casey? What are you doing here?"
"Shhh!" she whispered, as she stepped into my room, and closed my door behind her. "If my boss knew I was here, I'd get fired."
