"Good one Leigh!" Drew almost snarled at his best friend, only barely stopping himself from slamming his empty glass down on the bar, as angry as he had not felt for a long time. "What a stupid thing to say!"
"What?" Leigh nearly whined defensively. He knew he had stuffed things up, not just for both of them, but for Drew, whom he never liked to displease.
"What? What, are you as thick as people say you are?" Drew's voice was rising, and he knew how it hurt Leigh to be called stupid, but just now he wanted to hurt him. He knew he had been so close to getting the beautiful woman out into his car, he knew she wanted it, and then Leigh had said that. Idiot! "What!? Oh! 'You could do both of us!'" he cruelly mimicked his friend. "As if a classy woman like her would be into that. For fuck's sake!"
He ordered himself another beer, pointedly not buying Leigh one, as was the custom in those days-take turns buying the rounds of drinks.
The beautiful woman they were both referring to had, after Leigh had blurted out his "You could do both of us," merely smiled at him, picked up her bag and excused herself to go to the toilet, which was in another bar. In those days, the public bar was meant to be a male domain (some pubs even refused to serve women in them) and there were never toilets for women, so they had to go next door to either the lounge or saloon bar (which in some hotels was still referred to as the Lady's Bar) if they wished to use a toilet. That is what the beautiful woman had done.
"She might come back," Leigh said, trying to please his friend, almost in tears. He hated upsetting Drew, and was terrified when he was angry with him.
"She won't come back," Drew growled, taking some anger out of his voice. Leigh was a great friend and he didn't like upsetting him. But sometimes he was just so stupid.
He looked around the bar, just to avoid having to look at Leigh. It was a large bar, and nearly deserted now, nine o'clock on a Monday night. All the after-work drinkers had long since gone home. He and Leigh had come in about seven, after spending the day at the beach ogling beautiful women in bikinis. They were both in the last year of their apprenticeships, on the first day of the Christmas-New Year break. They had money, and the weather was great, and they had come to the pub just to play pool and have a few beers. Apart from them, there were a couple of older guys up the far end of the bar drinking quietly and playing darts. Other than these, the bar was empty.
The idea of a fortnight of beer and beach and not having to get up early was a strong one in their young minds, and they had come into the pub in a happy mood, and set about playing pool and joking with the pretty barmaid (whom they had both gone to school with and whom Drew had once slept with after a party, but she was engaged now so there was no chance of her helping with the horniness that the day of ogling had produced in him) and talking about which beach to go to the next day.
And then about seven-thirty she had come in, the beautiful woman. She looked somewhat out of place in that working-man's bar, but her demeanour showed she certainly didn't feel it. She was tallish, about five-eight, slim, with thick black hair, stylishly cut to just below her shoulders. She had a beautiful oval face; brown eyes, long eyelashes, a perfectly formed nose, and a mouth that said kiss me. Her outfit hinted at fine long legs, a tight bum, slim waist and medium sized breasts. Everything about her was beautiful, and the word that immediately came to mind when looking at her was 'class'. She was wearing a fashionably tightish black just-above-the-knee skirt, a pale pink blouse and flat-heeled sandals. When she came in she had stood at the door for a minute, looking around the nearly empty room, then walked to the bar near where Drew and Leigh were, sat on a stool and ordered a glass of white wine, itself an almost unheard of thing to drink in public bars in those days. The barmaid had stopped herself from smirking and gone off to get the drink.
Drew and Leigh had spent about ten minutes concentratedly doing their best not to let her know they were looking at her, trying to focus on the pool game, and being careful not to appear young and silly. They guessed she was in her late twenties or early thirties, and her beauty eclipsed that of all the young women they had been ogling at the beach that day.
"Ok if I have a game?" she startled them by asking, after that ten minutes of letting them look at her. At least they are not drooling, she thought, smiling to herself.
"Course," Drew had answered immediately. Anything for an excuse to talk to someone so beautiful.
In those days the custom was to put a coin on the edge of the table, signifying that you would play whoever 'owned' the table when that coin's turn came up. The beautiful woman knew the conventions, stood up and walked casually over to the table and put down a coin. All male eyes in the bar were focussed on her arse, and she knew it, but resisted the urge to wiggle.
The game ended with Leigh the winner this time, and his heart leapt that here was something he had beaten Drew at, he would get to play against the beautiful woman first, and he almost swaggered back to the bar to sit and wait for her to break.
She went over to the table after ordering another drink, put her money in, released the lever that let all the balls out, and set up the triangle. As was the custom, as the 'challenger', she broke, it was a good break, and it was obvious to the two young men that she knew what she was doing. And she did know what she was doing, in many ways. She had worked out from the way the two spoke to each other and to her that the tall thin one-Drew-was the dominant one in the friendship, and she also worked out very quickly that the shorter, medium built one-Leigh-was quite shy and uncertain. She let him win that first game.
Over the next hour or so, they had all introduced themselves, become quite friendly, joking and being quite at ease with each other. Drew and Leigh made the most of whenever she was facing their way and stretched over the table to play a shot, getting glimpses of the tops of pale breasts in a pale green bra with pink lace edging, or the couple of times when, after sitting down, she had for a moment ignored the riding up of her skirt, giving them glimpses of white thighs, and at the top of them the same pale green fabric, the same pink lace edging, of panties tight over her crotch. Both young men had extreme difficulty not staring, and she knew it, and enjoyed that they were. That was the whole point of the evening after all. She had told them her name was Sonia.
When they had gone off to the men's room-where after a brief discussion they had agreed that she wasn't a prostitute, something that had occurred to them at first until she had told them that she had her own interior design business which was going very well, as it was-Sonia surmised that they were discussing which of them would get the first try at making a move on her. That thought amused her-she wasn't sure which she wanted to take back to her car, though she was leaning towards the shy one, Leigh. She had a very good instinct for these things, and she sensed that she would be his first, and that added a new flavour to this, one of her increasingly frequent Random Fuck Nights.
They had started several years ago, these nights, and increased in frequency with the increase in frequency of dickhead-husband's so called business trips. She looked at the clock on the wall, as she waited for Drew to set up the next game-she had just beaten Leigh and it was her table. Twenty to nine-twenty to eleven where he was: no doubt now in bed with his so-called research assistant. Each time he went away she would have one of these nights. She loved them. She would randomly pick a pub a reasonable distance from her home, one she had never been to before and would never go to again, one where she was confident she would be unknown, drive to it, pick up a nice-enough looking man-or, on an especially good night, a woman-go somewhere and fuck for a few hours, then drive home, relaxed and satisfied and proud of her adventuresomeness. She was thirty-two and loving her life.
In those days the pubs shut at ten on week-nights, and Sonia figured it was getting close to the time to make some decisions. Drew, unaware of doing it, actually opened the window of opportunity for her.
She went over to the table for her shot, and Drew asked her should they play for some sort of stake. He was by no means drunk-she would have left by now if they were-but he had had just enough to make him brave.
"Like what," she said.
"Oh I dunno...," and now his nerve seemed to fail him. He had been going to suggest that if he won they would go somewhere in his car and fuck-he was sure she was after some sort of sexual adventure, though not sure if that was just wishful thinking on his part-but he couldn't bring himself to say it, so he just mumbled, " maybe go for a drive somewhere...you and me..." Sonia arched her eyebrows and smiled at him, softly said, "Maybe," and went on with her shot at the table.
Taking heart from the "Maybe" Drew concentrated as hard as he was able to, she seemed to be sticking close by him, the scent of her perfume was driving him crazy, such a subtle scent that suggested so much. He was willing that maybe to develop into something more certain, trying too hard, and Sonia beat him easily.
They all sat back at the bar, and Sonia bought drinks for all of them. Drew was trying to get Leigh to go for a piss or something, but he wasn't getting the hints-or was he, and just ignoring them? You could never tell with Leigh. Leigh himself didn't want to leave his stool. They were seated in a kind of triangle, the two young men at the bar, and each time Sonia, who was sitting away from the bar, leant forward to either get her drink or put it back, she was giving Leigh especially a very good look down the front of her blouse, just as she intended, and he was the first of the two to get a glimpse of a full breast, even if it was covered in that pretty pink and green bra cup. Once he was sure he had seen a part of a dark pinkish-brown nipple against very white skin, and he swore at himself for his persistent shyness and awkwardness. She's showing me, he thought, and all I can do is sit here and stare.