The phone rang.
“Do you want to get that, dear?” Sally said to her husband. She was sitting at the kitchen table, chatting with Katya over breakfast.
Her husband, Alex, put down the spoon he was using to make coffee, and scratched his sleep-mussed hair. He yawned. “Not really...”
Sally made a show of straining to get up, “Fine, fine, grumpy-head.” She picked up the phone.
“Hello?...Oh, hey there. How are things? Oh? You know I’m on vacation right? Until Monday? But...hmm. Call him, eh? Alright, I’ll do that. Yeah, I’ve got his cell number.”
Sally put down the phone. “Crap!” She looked at the other two people in the room. “I gotta go make a call. Be right back.”
Alex and Katya raised their eyebrows at each other, but didn’t say anything and busied themselves with small things
Katya looked over at Alex reading the newspaper while standing up at the kitchen counter. “You can sit beside me at the table here, you know. I won’t bite.” She grinned.
Alex looked up at Katya. She had straight black hair down to her shoulders, which she was always trying to pin behind her ears though strands would always coming loose and dangle in front of her face. She displayed her usual happy grin, on the edge of breaking out into laughter, and her bathrobe concealed, but did not completely hide, the voluptuous curves of her body.
“You might not, but you know I’m not a morning person...no telling what I’ll do,” he deadpanned.
They were quiet until Sally came back into the room a few minutes later. Gone was her amicable morning mood, and her face displayed the strong lines of the determined businesswoman.
“I promised I’d call back in a few minutes,” she began. “They just handed me a load of crap and I feel like I’m being forced to take it.
“Donald - uh, a guy I work with, Katya - was at a conference at this resort on the east coast, but he’s come down with appendicitis. They say he needs to get into the hospital now, he’ll be out of commission for at least a week. They’ve scrambled around the schedule, but they still need somebody to be there. And that somebody seems to be me. They want me to leave on a flight at about noon.” Sally frowned.
“The worst part of this,” Sally continued, “is I don’t want to abandon you, Katya. I mean, first Matt, your own husband, backs out of this visit at the last minute, and now your best friend is gettin her arm twisted to abandon you too!”
Katya said, “And I guess Alex is just chopped liver?” She smiled.
“Hehe, no, I just mean...well, I don’t even know when I’ll be back. It’d suck if this is the last that we see each other for who knows how long. Oh! But they did say if I agree, I get another two weeks paid vacation this year! And they’re paying me crazy overtime for this.”
“Well, that’s settled then,” Katya said “You go take care of business, and then you and Alex can return the favour by visiting me and Matt sometime soon.”
Sally turned to Alex. “Can you take a few days off and show Katya around town?”
“Pfft. I could miss a month and they wouldn’t even notice anything until the end of the year.” Alex walked up to his wife and gave her a tight hug, and spoke in her ear, “You go play hero, and we’ll have fun and try to behave.”
Sally drew back, putting her hand on Alex’s chest. “I don’t want you to behave, I want you to show her a good time!” They all laughed.
“Just remember,” Sally continued, “Katya flies out two days from now, Sunday. I don’t want to come back and find you’ve married her and kicked me out of the house. I’d have to switch off to Matt, and I’d get the bad end of that trade, let me tell you.” She winked at Katya and then tilted her head up and kissed her husband on the lips.
*****
“So, what were you guys going to do today, anyway?” Alex asked Katya. The two of them were in a car, driving away from the airport after having said their goodbyes to Sally.
“Um. Art Gallery.”
“Oh.” Alex looked at the time. “If we head down there now, I don’t know how much time we’ll have. It’s the sort of thing you’d want to spend the whole day at. Did you really want to see it?”
“No, not really. Sally wanted to show me some stuff, but I’m not hung up on it.”
“Hey,” Alex said, “in all the stories that you guys told me about what you’d done over the week, I never heard you say once that you just walked around. Do you want to do that? You know, we’ll walk around downtown, look at store windows, walk in a park, eat somewhere...get a real taste of the city, you know?”
“Sounds very neat. But, can we do more than look in the windows, and actually go inside some stores?” Katya chuckled.
“Interesting concept...I’ll consider it.”
*****
They’d been walking around in the warm weather for a few hours when Katya tugged Alex and said with a laugh, “Lookit that store! ‘Female customers get 10% off all dildoes!’ Oh dear, who can resist a bargain!”
Alex began walking towards the adult store. He noticed Katya was following him in small, reluctant steps. He turned back to her, “C’mon, you said you wanted to take a look.”
Katya shook her head side to side and looked down at the sidewalk. “I...uh...seems kind of awkward.”
“Don’t worry,” Alex said. “I’m sure they get all sorts of nervous, sweaty, trembling people all the time. You’ll blend right in!”
Katya looked up at him, challenging his taunt, “I’m not a prude or anything, you know! I’ve just never been to a store like that before. A girl has a right to be a little nervous.”
Alex put a hand on her shoulder and gave a friendly smile, “C’mon.”
Once inside the store Katya lost her nervousness quickly. She looked over all sorts of merchandise, including getting into a detailed discussion about sex toys with one of the scruffy-looking employees, asking questions that even made Alex blush a little. They left without buying anything, but Katya had an extra bounce in her step as she left the store.
They had dinner on an outdoor patio, with a generous amount of wine. After the sun had set they made their way slowly back to the car. The streets were busy with the Friday night crowd.
Katya spied the flashing neon of a strip club. “Woo, a peeler bar! What a way to end a perfect evening!”
Alex raised his eyebrows but smiled, “You really want to? Okay, I guess we could...”
“No no. No, I was just kidding.”
“You know what? It sounded like one of those, ‘I really mean it’ jokes. To be honest. C’mon, it’s nothing to be scared of. Like that shop we went to earlier.”
“Um...do they usually have women in there? As customers, I mean.”
“Well,” Alex said, “I haven’t been to one in a while, and not many in all, but I don’t think it’s unusual. If anyone says anything about you we’ll kick their teeth in, huh? And then they’ll kick us out, or maybe call the cops and we get to spend the night in jail. Talk about a memorable vacation!”
“Alright, alright,” she said. “You could just give me a little word of support without making me feel like a fool, huh? Let’s go.”
*****
As they drove home, the buildings and lights they passed created an anonymous blur. At a red light, Alex looked over and saw Katya leaning back in the passenger seat, staring out the open window, with one hand between her legs gently rubbing the crotch of her jeans.
She felt his gaze and snapped back, drawing her arm away. She looked down, then gave a sly look back at him, and a sideways smile. “Sorry.”
“Oh, no,” Alex stammered. “Um...be as comfortable as possible. Y’know.”
“It’s just,” she didn’t return her hand between her legs, but did lean back again in the way she had earlier, legs spread, “it’s just all the wine, and then the beer after that, and then the sex, and the warm night...uh, sex show! I meant sex show, of course...uh, it just all makes me...y’know.”
They drove on. The car was quiet.
“So,” Katya said, “what are you thinking about?”
“Honestly?”
“Of course.”
“Well,” Alex said, “I’m just thinking about the show. They’ve sure gotten more...um, explicit. I mean, all that pussy-on-pussy rubbing...”
“Can I ask you something about Sally?”
“Sure.”
“Does she really say what she means, about being bi, and liking women and stuff? I know she always talks...but I always thought she was being silly. You should know, being her husband. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.”
“Um...well, I’m not saying anything about any experience. But as for appreciation from afar, and thoughts and ideas...yeah, I would say she’s serious.”
“Hmm.” They didn’t speak for a while after that, but on the far side, where Katya thought Alex couldn’t see, she stroked a hand up and down the back of her thigh.
*****
At home that evening, they ran into each other again, in the narrow hallway which led off to the bedrooms. Katya had a towel in her hand and a bag of bathroom supplies, and was wearing a bathrobe opened wide and low so that most of her cleavage and the swell of her breasts was visible, though not revealing her areole. Alex was still in his street clothes.
“I’m just going to take a shower,” Katya said, but stopped in front of him.
“Y’know,” she continued, moving closer, “tonight really reminded me of all those times, back when we used to hang out? You know how my parents, and Matt, as well as the people I knew...well, they thought it was a crime to even talk about sex. And I could always ask you about stuff, and you’d be totally honest, but caring too. Well, I mean, I had Sally too, but she couldn’t give me the guy’s viewpoint like you could.
“Thanks.” She kissed him on the cheek, then just drew away just enough that her lips left his skin. In the silent moments, their warm breaths fell on each other’s skin. “You’re a sweet guy.” Katya moved her head in front of him, and then pressed her lips to his. Neither of them moved at all, just holding their lips together.
Finally Alex broke off, and then Katya quickly moved back too.
She looked down at the floor, and said quietly. “I’ll go...I’ll go take that shower now. I noticed you have one of those detachable showerheads. You don’t mind if I use it...to masturbate, do you?” She tried to suppress a giggle, not succeeding completely.
“Huh?” Alex seemed dazed.
“Y’know, use it to play with my pussy. Run the pulsing water over it ‘n’ stuff.” She breathed deeply. “I...I really like that. It gets me off.
“If you want to see another show tonight...I won’t close the door.” She walked off quickly, into the bathroom.
