Contains M-F sex in detail
This is the second chapter of Under the Knife but it is not essential to have read that, but it may help with the characters and setting.
* Hi H. I've arrived safe. Sit Rep is ok but I'll know more tmrw. Be in touch, E xx *
Hannah read the message again, and then scrolled back to look at their message history that only extended a week. She smiled at the irony of it -- from tentative meeting through winks and kisses, to sad farewell emojis. A whole relationship encapsulated in thirty lines.
"Anyone interesting or just work?" Charlie asked, handing her a long glass of fresh juice.
"It was Eden. Letting me know she was back home safe," Hannah replied.
"Thanks Charlie, that looks lovely," she continued, putting the phone away to turn to her host.
"Is she okay?" Charlie asked. "Here, I've cut up some fruit for breakfast and I'll have those pancakes ready in five minutes."
Hannah had met Charlie the previous day, the same day that her friend Eden had to suddenly fly back to the UK to manage a family crisis. Eden and Hannah had met at a conference and decided to have some beach time together, but just as the door opened to romance, the crisis bomb exploded.
Charlie had retired in his forties and now owned a bar on a beach in Koh Tao. He was familiar with the comings and goings of holidaymakers -- the weekly tide, he called it. He'd turned tourist spotting into a hobby and boasted that he could identify a dodgy relationship at fifty meters, a bully at one hundred, and a Brit before they even stepped off the ferry.
Charlie hadn't admitted it to Hannah, but he'd watched the intense frisson between her and Eden the previous day and it made him jealous. Both women were attractive, slim, English and intelligent -- those details he read at a glance. What really interested him was their passion. From the safety of his bar, he had been able to watch their nascent relationship blossom in front of his eyes, right up to their kiss.
It must be their first kiss, surely, he'd guessed. Who were they? The tall one with short dark hair looked in her late thirties, professional, so maybe a lawyer? She looked like she could handle herself in an argument and win -- the sort of woman that younger men would either run away from or fall at her feet, begging to be dominated.
'I've got it!' Charlie suddenly twigged a similarity. 'She's like Trinity in the Matrix.'
As they'd flirted, the younger girl looked tentative. Maybe that was just her age, in her late twenties. Academic maybe? Clearly she did lots of sports and was an outdoorsy kind of a girl, with shoulder length, mousey coloured blond hair that was naturally wavy.
Neither woman was the sort to fuss overly with their appearance - tasteful high street fashion, he'd noted.
Yes, he was jealous. What man doesn't envy the intimacy of lesbians; but it was more than that. It was the rare joy of witnessing the flowering of love and it didn't matter what gender they were. To Charlie, love was boundless, intoxicating and beautiful. He envied their happiness.
He smiled to himself and recalled his own youthful relationships, until his musings were interrupted by the demand for cocktails. His speciality was a wooden bucket of the stuff, with crushed ice, coloured blue with Curacao and served with a handful of straws. All the beach kids loved it and he was often kept busy long into the night.
When he thought to look again for the two women, they'd gone, making him smile once again.
'Oh to be a fly on their wall,' his wicked imagination chuckled, until his inner, sober voice admonished him, telling him to grow up and show some respect.
Charlie's head was full of morality battles, but he was only flesh and blood and besides, what was he supposed to do when he saw bare breasts or the flash of pussy as a girl swung herself off a bar stool?
'Thinking it is no crime,' he reassured himself. 'Acting on it makes you a creep.'
Charlie took his professional boundaries seriously.
* * * *
The next day he glanced up from a drinks stock-take to see the same two women in a tense conversation. His heart sank.
'What has gone wrong?' he wondered. 'Hell, they were chewing each other's lips off last night. People! People! Why can't they look around and see how lucky they are to be in such a beautiful setting?'
He saw them leave in a taxi towards the harbour -- it was the only destination in that direction.
"Another ruined holiday by the looks of things," he sighed, wiping sand from the fridge top. He had staff to clean the bar, but they were Thai and couldn't see the top of the fridge because they were too short.
"Boss?" Prep, his barman asked, seeing Charlie's contemplation.
"Nothing. Just grockle-spotting." Charlie replied, taking the crate of diet Cokes from Prep.
"Pretty lady, boss?" Prep snickered, his eyebrows raised impossibly high in encouragement.
"Two pretty ladies, Prep. Two! And they've just left, dammit!"
"Shall I call my sister, Boss? She stays over for festival on Friday. You like my sister, Boss."
Prep laughed again, and ducked the dishcloth Charlie threw at him.
"You're a bloody pimp, Prep. Fuck me, stop pushing your sister on me. You'd sell your grandma if you could."
The smile vanished from Prep's scolded face and he nodded to himself as though adsorbing important knowledge. The two of them turned to fill the drinks shelves.
"You know, Boss," Prep ventured, "Grandma Prep make best Pad Thai in Samui. Maybe older man like you..."
He was too quick for Charlie, who launched an empty bottle at him, then chased him across the sand. They were both laughing as they ran, Prep easily out-running the heavier built Charlie, glancing round at his pursuer with a big-toothed smile.
They finished a few hundred meters away, gasping and laughing, Charlie leaned his hands onto his knees at first then straightened to point his finger in feigned threats to Prep, who danced, mocking him, from one foot to the other, safely out of reach.
Excitement over, they walked back with their arms over each other's shoulder to the bar.
It wasn't like real work at all and Shark Bay was a beautiful place to live. Charlie had travelled the world, but decided to stay seven years ago, and bought the bar.
Later that day, with a lazy drone of torpid customers dropping by, Charlie let Prep take charge, while he did what he enjoyed most -- taking his favourite seat to watch the world go by. Not long after he saw the blonde girl again and his curiosity was piqued.
She'd settled herself down on the sand to read, and just as he was trying to think how to start a conversation, a Swedish boy emerged to preen himself with an idiotic display of vanity. He was a regular at Shark Bay and was clearly a spoiled brat, getting off on his own ego by posing around with a ceremonial Tai Chi sword.
Charlie watched the girl for her reaction. She looked up at the Swede and her shoulders began shaking in mirth.
"He's a total knobhead isn't he?" Charlie spoke loud enough for her to hear. "He just wants to get laid, like everyone else, but someone gave him Tua and the Elephant and he thought it was a guide book.
