“Right? It’s this little stretch of coast, really upscale, beautiful restaurants, quiet beaches. It looks perfect.” She took the phone back and scrolled to another tab. “And it’s available for the whole week.”
“Book it. Seriously, that looks amazing.”
“Yeah?” Becca was smiling but there was something else behind it, the look Becca got when she had more to say and was waiting for the right moment to say it.
Ellie narrowed her eyes. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing! It’s just…” Becca bit her lip, trying and utterly failing to suppress a grin. “So 30A is the quiet, upscale bit. But about twenty minutes down the road is Panama City Beach.”
“Ok?”
“And our week off happens to fall during spring break.”
There it was. Ellie looked at her. “Spring break. We’re twenty-five, Bec. We don’t do spring break.”
“We’ve never done spring break. That isn’t the same thing.” Becca put her phone down and turned to face Ellie properly, her legs folded under her. “We never went when we were in college because, well, that wasn’t us. Haven’t you ever been curious? We’d be staying somewhere gorgeous and quiet, our own pool,nice dinners, long walks on the beach… a proper holiday. And then if we felt like it, whenever we felt like it, we could head twenty minutes down the road and…”
“…dip into the chaos?”
“Exactly. Dip in. See what it’s like. Tick off the life experience. No plan, no pressure.”
Ellie looked at her. “Bec, isn’t spring break basically just… thousands of college students getting drunk and hooking up on a beach?”
“That’s a very Stanford way of putting it.”
“We went to Stanford. We spent our spring breaks studying and fooling around in your dorm room, which I’m not complaining about by the way, but I’m just saying… that’s not really our scene.”
“It wasn’t our scene because we didn’t need it and, how can I put it nicely, we weren’t exactly the cool kids. We had each other.” Becca’s foot nudged Ellie’s thigh gently. “But we wouldn’t be doing spring break. We’d be on our holiday and see what it’s like then escape.”
“See what it’s like,” Ellie repeated, and she could hear the scepticism in her own voice even as something inside was already warming to the idea. “And by see what it’s like, you mean…”
Becca held her gaze, and the grin had settled into a steady, excited smile. “I mean let’s keep our options open. Bars, the beach, the energy of the whole thing. No plan, no pressure. Andif nothing happens, we’ve had a beautiful week on the coast together.”
Ellie studied her wife’s face. “‘Nothing happens’? You’re not really talking about sightseeing, are you?”
Becca bit her lip, then laughed. “No. I’m counting on it being more than sightseeing. Is that ok?”
Ellie thought about it. Becca in a bikini on a crowded beach. Being noticed, being wanted, being approached. Ellie watching from behind her sunglasses, feeling that familiar loop revving up. And then in the evening, bars, music, and the reckless energy of people far from home…
The hot geek from Stanford who’d spent every spring break in a dorm room looked at her wife and nodded.
“It’s very ok,” Ellie said. “Book the house.” She paused. “But just so we’re clear: a drunk eighteen-year-old in a bikini who’s had too many Jello shots, is straight and is going to wake up the next morning regretting what she did is not a plausible rival. You know what I need for this to work. It has to be someone real. Someone who actually makes both of us feel something.”
Becca nodded, and Ellie could see that she appreciated the clarity on the boundary rather than resenting it. “Someone we’d both want to spend time with. Not just a warm body.”
“Exactly. If we find that person on a beach in Florida, amazing, but we don’t force it. If we don’t find them, we’ve had a gorgeous week together and I’ve watched you turn heads in a bikini for seven days, which is frankly a holiday well spent either way.”
Becca grinned. “Deal.”
Becca leaned over and kissed her, quick and happy, then picked up her phone to start the booking, already typing. Ellie watched her and thought about Florida, about white sand, warm evenings, and whatever might happen, and felt nothing but anticipation.
***
That Sunday they went to their usual brunch spot, and as ever the wait was too long and the migas were absolutely worth it. They sat at one of their usual tables by the window, ordered their usual coffees, fell into their usual comfortable silence while they waited for food.
Ellie was reading something on her phone when she became aware that Becca was watching her, her expression a mix of amusement, curiosity, a little delight.
"What?" Ellie asked.
