We'd gone away for the holidays and were currently staying in a nice motel. At least, it would be a nice motel except for a few small details. Details like the storm that had settled over the city and was pouring rain down on us with no apparent intention of topping any time soon. Two days, now, of the skies pissing down and putting a real dampener on our holiday.
Another detail was the lightning strike that had taken out the big old tree in front of the motel, neatly dropping it across the power lines, rendering us completely powerless. Not being a large motel they had no emergency generator and would just wait until the power was restored.
No power meant no TV, no PC, and no phone as its battery was now flat. And no damn lights.
I got sick and tired of just moping around our rooms, bored out of my skull, and decided to check out the motel games room. Maybe there'd be someone there to talk to. Fortunately there was a covered walkway all the way along the front of the motel and as long as I stayed near the wall the rain wouldn't reach me.
I trotted into the games room and was relieved to find another couple of girls there, both about my age. There were also a couple of men there, but they were somewhat older than us so we ignored them, leaving them to their pool table, although how they could see the balls was a wonder.
We did the standard introductions, me Karen, you Jane. Janet and Viola, in fact, but you get the idea. That done we subtly cross-examined each other, determining that we were all the same age, eighteen, at the motel for the same reason, dragged there kicking and screaming by our parents, considered the weather the pits, and were all bored out of our tiny skulls.
We fossicked around in the cupboards and found some cards and decided to play poker, using draft pieces as chips. Then I spotted an Othello set and we added those to the chips. That gave us about thirty chips each to start with which is much more interesting that just eight apiece. You could lose all eight in one game.
We played for a reasonable interval but it became pretty obvious to me who was going to take all the chips. Viola was a killer at the game, seeming to know more about my hand than I did.
I was right and Viola just cleaned us up. We didn't feel like reallocating the chips and starting again so we just sat back in our chairs and looked mournfully at the weather.
"Fucking rain," grumbled Janet. "What did people do to amuse themselves before we had electricity?"
"Precisely what you just suggested," called one of the men at the pools table. He put his cue down and stretched before ambling over in our direction, his opponent with him.
Janet looked at him, confused. For that matter we all did. The two men smiled at us.
"What are you talking about?" demanded Janet.
"I'm Tim," the first man said. "The loser is Quentin. Not his fault. You take the name you're given. What people did to amuse themselves? Well, they don't call it fucking rain for no reason."
I was shocked to my socks. The others looked it, too. He surely couldn't be suggesting that we, ah, we - well, you know.
"If you mean what I think you mean," began Janet rather belligerently, but the man held up a hand in a be-at-peace sign.
"I wouldn't dream of suggesting such a thing. I mean, really, we've only just met. There's no way I'd expect you young ladies to do any such thing, even if you were of age."
"We're eighteen," snapped an indignant Viola, "but we're still not going to, ah. . ." She waved her hand about to indicate what we wouldn't be doing.
Tim just laughed.
"Contrary to popular belief I'm not an idiot. To expect something like that on the very first meeting would be insane. We don't even know your names."
He quirked his eyebrow when he said that last bit and Viola hastily gave out names.
"So what did you mean?" she asked.
"One can enjoy a friendly little bit of slap and tickle without going to extremes," Tim said. "A bit of petting can be quite interesting and you get to try some petting of your own and see our reactions. If you're worried that we might get carried away just remember that there's only two of us and three of you. Even if we wanted to jump you the third person could run for help."