The taxi pulled up to their rental just before midnight and Mia’s reaction was priceless.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
“It’s nice, right?” Becca said, understating it considerably.
“Nice? This is…” Mia stood on the path looking at the house, the Gulf a distant murmur beyond. “This is obscene. We’ve been living in a room the size of a closet for a week and you’ve been twenty minutes away in actual paradise.”
“The tech salary helps,” Ellie said with a shrug.
“I need to marry a tech person,” Alexa said quietly, taking it all in.
“I thought the plan was a rich man,” Mia said.
“Like I said earlier the plan is sophisticated. It just evolved.”
They went inside and Mia and Alexa wandered through the house like they were visiting a museum, touching the countertops, looking at the lit pool from every window they could, Alexa opening and closing kitchen cupboards for no apparent reason other than that they were there.
“The second bedroom’s through there,” Becca said, pointing. “It’s got its own bathroom. You’ll need to share the bed, but I figure you’ve had worse.”
Alexa grinned. “Much, much worse.”
“Dump your stuff and come out to the pool.”
By the time Mia and Alexa had deposited their hastily packed bags, Becca had produced a bottle of cold white wine from the fridge along with four actual wine glasses, no chipped mugs, and headed straight for the pool.
Mia was in the water before anyone else had their shoes off, still in her bikini from the day, jumping in with a whoop that probably woke up half of their neighbours. “Oh my God it’s warm. This is heated? You have a heated pool?”
“It’s Florida,” Ellie said. “I figured the sun just does that.”
Alexa lowered herself in more carefully, gasping as the water hit her waist, and Becca followed. Ellie sat on the edge with her legs in, handing glasses of wine down to reaching hands, keeping the bottle safe on the poolside.
They swam, they drank, they talked nonsense. Alexa found the lilo that Becca had insisted buying when they arrived tucked behind one of the sun loungers and commandeered it, floating in the middle of the pool with her wine balanced on her stomach, looking up at the stars with the blissed-out expression of someone who’d just been promoted from the most budget of economies to first class. Mia was doing laps around her, periodically threatening to capsize the lilo, while Becca joined her.
At one point Mia said she wanted to see the ocean and Ellie offered to take her through the gate in the hedge. The two of them walked barefoot down the short path to the beach, the sand cool under their feet, the Gulf stretching out dark and enormous under the moon.
“This is unreal,” Mia said, standing at the water’s edge, the waves washing over her toes. “Like, actually unreal. Six hours ago I was in a bar getting hassled by frat boys and now I’m on a private beach.”
“It’s not private. It just feels like it at midnight.”
“Don’t ruin it.” She looked at Ellie and smiled, the bravado that she’d had when they first met stripped away by the night and the sheer improbability of where the evening had taken them. “Thank you. For all of this. For the bar, for whatever that was at our hotel, for bringing us here. I think you might have saved our spring break.”
Ellie laughed. “Mine too.”
They stood there for another minute, listening to the waves, and then walked back to the pool where Becca and Alexa were havinga splash fight that Alexa was comprehensively losing on account of refusing to give up what she was now callingherlilo.
The wine went down fast… warm night, swimming pool, not to mention good company made it inevitable. By the time the bottle was empty all four of them had hit that happy, loose state of people who’d reached the plateau where everything was fun, nothing was complicated, and absolutely anything seemed possible.
Ellie pulled herself up to sit on the pool edge, looking at the empty bottle on the stone beside her, and had an idea, ridiculous and perfect.
“Ok,” she said. “I have a suggestion and I need everyone to promise not to judge me.”
“Promising nothing,” Mia said.
Ellie held up the empty bottle. “Spin the bottle.”
Mia looked at her. Alexa looked at her. Becca bit her lip.
“What?” Ellie asked.
