There is some French-Canadian swearing in this story. While the literal translations have a religious meaning (the tabernacle, the chalice, the ciborium), in this context they mean "OMG", "holy fuck" or "daaaaamn girl."
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My wife Sarah and I usually try to break the winter up with a trip to the Caribbean. Her older sister Jo had recently divorced, and since her 40th birthday was in February, we decided to bring her along to celebrate the milestone.
After spending a couple of weeks shopping around, we stumbled into a good deal that just happened to be for the same Cuban all-inclusive resort we had stayed at the previous winter. Since Sarah is the life of every party we had gotten to know most of the resort workers, and looked forward to reconnecting with several of them.
Rather than have Jo fly alone and meet us down there, we decided to travel the 1000 km to her place, so that we could all fly down together. We arrived at her place around 7 PM and had a pre-vacation cocktail together.
We awoke the next morning to a surprise snowstorm, that lead to a series of delays and resulted in our mid-morning flight being rescheduled to early evening. When we arrived at the airport and cleared customs, there were still another 4-hours until boarding. We found 3 seats together in the departure lounge, and settled in for the wait.
Since I'm an avid reader, I had packed a couple of novels for the week, and figured now was a good time to start one.
"Hey Sarah, can you pass me the Lee Child I packed in the carry-on?" I asked.
"Sure." she replied. The bag was on the floor between her feet, so she bent over and unzipped it. As she felt around for my book, she happened to look down and noticed that her neckline was gaping, and she was putting on quite the downblouse show for anyone who might be looking. She glanced up to check the lay of the land and immediately locked eyes with the gentleman sitting directly across from her.
He was a huge mountain of a man, perhaps 6'-5" or larger, with a ZZ Top beard that was just starting to show flecks of grey. He had two complete sleeves tattooed on his well-muscled arms and was wearing a bandana with a ponytail sticking out the back. He was either a biker or a Viking, and his Harley Davidson t-shirt led her decide it was probably the former.
Sarah's options were cover up, feign ignorance or flirt. Emboldened by 'Biker Dude's' smile, she chose flirt. She passed me my book, then began chatting with her admirer while she continued to be hunched over reaching into the bag.
"Are you heading to Cuba too?" she asked.
"Yes." he replied, speaking with a big bold French-Canadian accent, "I'm meeting up with 4 buddies I've known since kindergarten to celebrate our 25th high school reunion. I'm Marcel."
Sarah finished zipping up the carry-on, then reached across the aisle to shake hands, not exactly increasing her exposure, but giving him a closer look down her cleavage. "I'm Sarah, this is my husband Brian and my sister Jo. We're heading down to celebrate her birthday."
"Nice." he said, "Where are you staying? We're at the Chevy's."
"Same with us." she replied, "Where are your buddies?"
"They all still live back in Montreal, so they flew down together yesterday." he answered. "I was supposed to be a day behind them, but with these delays it'll be almost two by the time we get to the resort."
There was some good banter back-and-forth and we eventually discovered that he used to be a coach on Jo's son's football team.
"Dude is 6'-5..."
"6'-6" corrected Marcel.
"My apologies." replied Sarah, "Dude is 6'-6", handsome, bearded, tattooed and has beautiful hair and it took you 15-minutes to recognize him?"
"He was a defensive coach. Calvin was a running back. We didn't associate much with people from the less talented side of the ball." Jo teased.
"Oof! That hurts." Marcel replied while mockingly rubbing his heart.
When a seat became available, he moved his bags across the aisle to sit with us for the rest of the wait.
When we finally prepared to board, we discovered that we were in different sections of the plane, so the ladies each hugged him, I shook his hand, and we made plans to catch up on the other end. An uneventful 4-hour flight followed.
After clearing customs, we headed out to the parking lot to find the bus that would take us to the resort. The girls got on the bus to find us seats while I stood outside waiting for the bus driver to stow our luggage underneath.
On the bus we found that Marcel had saved an entire row for us. Jo and Sarah were in the two window seats, with Marcel in the aisle beside Sarah, leaving the aisle seat beside Jo for me. All three of them were drinking cans of Cristal beer.
Each bus has a tour guide who doubles as bartender to sell 'bus beer' for the 45-minute ride to the hotel. Marcel had bought 10 cans for our group while he was waiting for us to arrive.
"Brian, here's a Cristal." said Sarah, who stood up and reached across Marcel to pass the can, her boobs were an inch from his face. She paused and looked down, noticing that she had indeed caught his attention.
It was approaching midnight, but the mood on the bus was light as everyone was finally on vacation.
"We're in Cuba!" Sarah toasted and put a hand on Marcel's thigh so she could reach across and cheers Jo and I, then turned to cheers him, affording him a very close up view of her cleavage. She then sat back down, but faced sideways so that she could continue to talk with us, her hand remaining on Marcel's thigh.
When we arrived at the resort, we stood in line to check-in. Marcel's buddy Denis was there to meet him.
"Tabarnak Marcel, we didn't think you were ever getting here." he declared, adding "We're all down at the 24-hour snack bar waiting for you."
"I'll be down as soon as I get my bags to the room." Marcel replied, before looking toward us. "Are you joining us?"
"Definitely." Sarah replied.
After check-in, we took a shuttle to our rooms. Sarah and I shared a room with Jo. We were supposed to have two queen beds, but we ended up with two singles and a cot. We decided to take turns on the cot so no one had to spend a week on it.
After a full day of travel, Sarah decided to put on a fresh tank shirt. It afforded plenty of cleavage under normal conditions, but combined with her push-up bra the effect was almost 'over the top.' As we left, Jo stayed behind to get ready for bed.
Sarah and I met Marcel in the hallway. He had the room beside ours. We walked to the snack bar and found that Denis had gotten us drinks, so we sat at their table and were introduced to Ricky, Bart and Ti-Jean.
Sarah hugged everyone as the introductions were made. Her cleavage did not go unnoticed, and she became the center of attention at the table.
"So how did you guys meet up with Marcel?" inquired Bart.
"I caught him looking down my shirt." Sarah teased, getting a laugh from everyone at the table.
"So you have a weakness for perverts?" joked Ricky, "Good to know."
"No, I'm just good at reading people." she replied.
"Do us then." challenged Denis.
"Ok." she said. She moved around the table studying them all, occasionally stopping to get one of them to stick out their tongue or let her check their pulse. I half expected her to get someone to turn their head and cough, as I knew it was all an excuse to flirt a bit. In reality she was only looking at two things: their eyes and their ring finger.
"Ti-Jean looks like the kind of guy his wife would trust to have a little fun with the boys without crossing the line. Bart looks like the kind of guy you were all afraid would secretly bring his wife on the guy's trip."
They all roared laughing, before Bart added, "I asked but she said 'no'. She's flying in the day the boys leave and I'm staying an extra week."
Sarah nodded then continued, "Denis is on the prowl. Some sort of rebound perhaps? Marcel is also freshly single, looking for a little fun, but isn't ready for anything serious. And Ricky...you're going to be in trouble if your missus discovers no tan line under your wedding ring."
This resulted in some clapping for Sarah's performance before their attention turned to razzing Ricky.
Eventually Bart looked at his watch and noticed the time. "Guys, we have to be in the lobby in about 4-hours if we're going fishing. I think we should call it a night."
"Fishing?" asked Sarah.
"Yes, we're going deep-sea fishing for marlin." replied Ti-Jean. "Booking this excursion seemed like a good idea when Marcel was supposed to arrive early this afternoon. It's feeling like a miscalculation now."
Bart stood up, expecting everyone to follow his lead, but with Sarah being her flirtatious self, he had no takers. Wagging his finger he announced, "Every one of you guys had better be in the lobby at 5:30 AM.", then headed off to his room.
Marcel headed to the bar to get the next round, and since Sarah and I recognized the bartenders, we went up with him.
Carlos and Guillermo recognized her too, and their eyes lit up. "Hola mi amor" shouted Carlos, as he signaled her to come around behind the bar. Carlos gave her a big bear hug, then kissed her on both cheeks. After he released her, she got the same treatment from Guillermo.
"You arrived tonight?" asked Carlos, "Just one week?"