“Who’s that?”
“A girl I went to college with.” Callie’s eyes crinkled up when she smiled. “She had light brown hair and she was shorter than I am. You look nothing like her, by the way. Your hair is much better than Kelly’s, and your eyes are gorgeous. I’m a sucker for blue eyes.”
With a half smirk, Regan said, “Angela used to teasingly call me a pale-eyed devil.”
“Your skin’s fairer than I thought it would be.”
“I’m Irish. We’re all pale.”
“Does everyone in your family have that beautiful dark hair?”
Regan grasped a hank of her hair and let it fall from her fingers. “My dad and I have the darkest, but he’s turning gray. My sisters are more brunette, like my mom. I never envisioned you as a redhead, but your hair is beautiful, as advertised. But you can’t look at me with those adorable dimples and tell me not to say you’re cute.”
“I guess there are worse things to be, but I’d rather be hot. I think you dark-haired girls achieve hot easier than us redheads.”
It was clear that Regan was a little embarrassed by the compliments. She put on a pair of running shorts and a tank top, then put sunblock and a magazine into a bag. “Ready?”
“Yep. I’ve got a new sunblock that guarantees ‘no more freckles.’”
“Do you want me to count the ones you have now so you can get your money back if it doesn’t work?”
“No, I don’t mind them. At least I don’t have them all across my nose like Gretchen has.” She chuckled evilly.
*
Regan was undergoing her own travails in fitting Callie into her mental view. In her mind Callie was trashy looking. She’d looked like the kind of girl who was still hanging around the bar at two a.m., trying to outshine the competition. In fact, Callie was adorable. Fresh faced, bright-eyed, and energetic. Those dimples made her look impish and…adorable. There was no other word that she could think of, and that was as big a surprise as if she’d been missing a few teeth and had two inches of dark roots showing from platinum blonde hair.
*
Each quickly adjusted to the reality of the other. Callie was irrepressible. She had almost boundless energy and was childlike in her enthusiasm. As soon as they found a place for their towels, she ran into the ocean, shouting for joy. “This is phenomenal!” She splashed the clear, clean water around with her hands, making big sweeping motions. “I’ve never been in the Atlantic. It’s now my favorite ocean.”
“You’re easily convinced.” Regan ran in, splashing around a little less riotously. “You’ve been here for two seconds.” She picked up her feet and treaded water with just her arms.
“But I’m in love. L. O. V. E.” Callie dunked her head into the water, blinking rapidly when she pulled her head out. “I can see for miles!”
“You can rent a mask if you’d like to have that be a little less painful.” Callie couldn’t have been any cuter. Marina would have had to have the sex drive of a goat to keep up with her and have energy left to screw around.
After spending two solid hours frolicking in the water like a pair of children, they finally lay on their beach towels, both nearly exhausted.
But Callie still chattered away. “I wonder if it’s less expensive to ship all of my electronics here or if I should have my sugar momma buy it all new.”
“Don’t think I didn’t notice you saying you’d take a sugar daddy. Is that true?”
“I’m clearly not very good at picking sugar anything. I couldn’t get Marina to buy me a pack of gum.”
“Really? You didn’t share your money?”
“Nope. Nada. What’s hers was hers and what’s mine was credit card statements. She made a lot more than I did, and she didn’t share the wealth.”
Regan took a minute to process Callie’s situation. Had she and Marina even been partners? What kind of partner would let you struggle financially when she could help?
Callie tilted her baseball cap, keeping her eyes shaded. “When I left the corporate IT world to start my own business, I really took a hit.”
“Did you do that when you moved to Dallas?”
“Yeah. I wanted to be with Marina and I didn’t want to waste another year in IT. I should have waited until I had a cushion but”—she puckered her lips in an air kiss—“love pushed me.”
“Regrets?”
Callie rolled over onto her stomach. “Can you move the umbrella just a little? I don’t want to burn my feet.”
Regan leaned over and adjusted it carefully. “How’s that?”
“Excellent. It’s nice to have a beach buddy. It’s harder than I thought it’d be to set up an umbrella for maximum coverage.”
Callie hadn’t answered the question. How could she not have regrets? It sounded like all she got from Marina was the ability to sleep with other women. But she had that when she was single. Why bother being in a relationship at all? “Glad to help. Now back to the sugar daddy issue. Are you…flexible?”
“Fairly. I was thirty-three the first time I experienced the love of a bad woman, so lesbianism isn’t a lifelong habit.”
“Thirty-three?” Regan exclaimed. “How old are you?” She scrambled to take the bite out of the comment. “That didn’t come out right. You don’t look like you’re even thirty. I thought you were my age, or younger.”
“Good save. I was just gonna kick sand in your face. My mother and sisters and I just had a fun-filled thirty-fifth birthday party last week.”
“But you were with Marina for a year and a half.”
“She was my first.” She put her hand over her heart and made it pat rapidly.
“Freaky. I don’t mean that judgmentally. I’m just surprised.” Flabbergasted was the better word. Callie’d gone from never being with a woman to being with anyone who walked by? What in the hell…?
“I always knew I was attracted to women, but I was in two long-term relationships with guys and all of a sudden I was thirty-three. It catches up with you.”
“You liked being with men?”
“Yeah, I did.” She gave Regan a puzzled look and said, “I didn’t sleep with men to punish myself. Why do you act like it’s odd? That’s the majority position, you know.”
Regan slapped a hand over her face and left it there for a second. “I’m not being very smooth today. I think I’m trying to say that I don’t know any women who switched once they’d been in the game for a while.”
“Now you do,” Callie said, wrinkling her nose. “I think I’ll stick with women, even though being in a relationship with a woman wasn’t as different as my friends said it would be. But women smell a lot better and they’re generally less gross. Not having to use birth control is a big plus too.” She smiled broadly.
Being with a woman was just like being with a guy when you set up your relationship in a way most guys would kill for. She probably could have slept with men too. Or would that have crossed Marina’s boundaries? Did she even have any? Their entire relationship was beyond comprehension.
Regan gazed at Callie, and once again that nearly angelic face made her doubt her gut reaction. “You know, you have two completely different smiles. When you smile really wide your dimples don’t show and the corners of your mouth curl up. But your other smile is more like a grin and both dimples show. It’s fascinating.”
“I’m glad I can entertain you with just my face.”
“I don’t know anybody with dimples. That’s probably why I’m trying to figure them out.”
“All three of us have them. You should have come to my birthday party last week.”
“I would have if you’d told me about it.” She tossed a bit of sand at Callie. “I’m buying your dinner tonight as a belated present.”
“When’s your birthday?”
“May 28th. It’s usually Memorial Day weekend.”
“Great. We’ll spend Memorial Day together and I’ll reciprocate. What birthday is this?”
“Mine.” She grinned impishly.
“What’s the number? You said you thought I was your age.”
“Twenty-nine. Again.”
“Come on. How old are you?”
“If I live that long, I’ll be thirty. I’m really looking forward to spending my thirtieth birthday living in my old bedroom. Maybe my parents’ will take me out for ice cream.”
“They’ll have to fight me for the pleasure.” She put both hands up like a boxer.
“You win. I know just where we’ll go.”
“I like people who can make quick decisions.”
“Then you’ll love me. I make ’em all day long.”
*
After another bout of splashing and playing in the gentle waves they lay on their towels again, enjoying the encroaching sunset. “How old were you when your parents got divorced?” Regan asked.
“Mmm, I was in second grade, so that’s what…about eight?”
“Was it hard?”
“Whew!” Callie whistled. “Hard isn’t the word. My dad had an affair, and my mom threw him out and salted the earth that he’d walked on.”
“Ooo, that sounds horrible.”
“It was…it really was. We went from being on the edge of upper middle class to lower middle in a weekend. And the worst part was that we became pawns in their arguments that continue to this day.”
As she spoke her voice started to shake and tears filled her eyes. She seemed to try to stop them, making a determined face, but it did no good. The tears would not stop. She looked so sad, but it was clear she didn’t want to show it. Callie’d probably looked just like this when she was a little girl trying to be brave. “Poor thing,” Regan said softly. She felt a knot in her throat, and realized she was on the verge of crying herself.
“I hardly shed a tear over Marina, but I can bawl like a baby talking about my parents’ divorce. Funny, huh?” She wiped her eyes with the corner of her towel.
“No, it’s not funny at all. It must have been horrible.”
“It was. Gretchen was on my mom’s side and Emily and I were caught in the middle. I was always daddy’s girl, so I was really stuck. I felt bad for my dad, but I was also mad at him for doing something so stupid and harmful.” She sighed. “This was before I even knew what sex was, so that made it worse. I just knew that one day my mom hated my dad and he was moving out.”
Regan grew quiet, just watching the rhythmic ebb and flow of the waves. The divorce must have set the course for this strange path. Having your parents split when you were so young must have been world-shattering. Maybe it made her more casual—less invested in a relationship. A few minutes passed and when Regan spoke again, it visibly startled Callie. “I’m surprised you’re not more upset about Marina and Angela. I’d think cheating would be a big deal for you.”
“Ask my last boyfriend how big a deal it was,” she replied, rolling her eyes. “He had the fires of hell rain down on him.”
“Damn! Your boyfriend cheated, too?” Okay, this was starting to make sense. She’s been burned and burned again.
“Kinda. Sorta.” She shrugged. “Not technically.”
“Thanks for clearing that up.”
“Oh, fine. You give me that ridiculously charming smile and I can’t ignore you.” She took a breath so deep her chest perceptively rose and fell. “He was using the internet to go to chat rooms. I caught him when I was fixing his computer and found a cache of porn.” She made a face. “Disgusting.”
Looking at women was disgusting? How did that make sense? Marina was having sex with real people, not images on the internet. There had to be more. A lot more. “What about the chat rooms?”
“Having virtual sex.” She scowled. “Like that makes it all right.”
“With strangers? Or women he knew?”
Callie blinked, as though the question was a ridiculous one. “Strangers. He never would have done that with women he knew.”
So he had talked dirty with strangers. And that was enough to throw him out. But Marina could have real sex with real women and that was perfectly fine. Maybe it was a question of honesty. “Did he confess?”
“Yeah. He told me when I said I’d seen the porn. I’ve got to hand it to him. He confessed to everything. I didn’t have to browbeat him like I did Marina.”
“Was it horrible porn?”
“What’s horrible porn?”
“I don’t know…like bestiality or something?”
“No! It was regular porn. Dozens of clips of women having sex.” She paused, her eyes narrowing. “A lot of it was stuff we didn’t do, now that I think of it. I guess he liked looking at things that were…different.”
“You broke up with him immediately?”
“Yeah, pretty much.” She looked up at the sky, which had turned a beautiful shade of lilac. “I make it sound like I tore him limb from limb, but I really just cried for a week. I wouldn’t let him come near me, so he left to stay with a friend.” She sighed heavily. “He never came back.”
“Your choice?”
“Yeah. I shouldn’t have been so harsh. He never touched another woman, and he was always ready to have sex when I was. So I wasn’t really harmed by his ‘hobby.’ But he was so insensitive about it. He wouldn’t admit he’d done anything wrong and I couldn’t forgive him when he wouldn’t.”
“You were hurt.”
“Heck, yes! I was really hurt. If he would have at least acknowledged that I was justified in being hurt I might have forgiven him. But, in his defense, he was usually very sensitive. I think he was embarrassed, and he got hardheaded when he looked foolish. We should have worked harder to reconcile, but…we didn’t. I’m not sure why.”
“How long were you together?”
“Six years. We were thinking about having a baby.” She sniffled, wiping her eyes quickly. “He got married this year to someone not nearly as cool as I am.” She lowered her eyes and showed just a hint of a teasing smile.
“You poor thing.”
“Yeah, he really broke my heart.” She sat up and squared her shoulders, looking like she was taking her first view of a new day. “But that made me rethink my views on fidelity. When Marina happened along a few months later, I decided that it made sense to try something different.”
That could explain a few things. Keeping your lover at a distance. Letting her do the things you fear so you don’t get hurt when she does them. “How’d that work? Generally, I mean? I know it didn’t work so well in one case.”
“It worked well. Until…you know. She told me from the beginning that she didn’t do monogamy, so it felt more honest.”
“Uhm, I guess that’s one way to think of it. For me that would be like saying, ‘I’m gonna hit you every once in a while, so you’d better learn how to duck.’”
Callie laughed, showing her dimples. “It’s not for everyone. And it took me a long time, probably close to a year, to get even vaguely comfortable with it. I was just hitting my stride.”
Regan’s vivid blue eyes darted back and forth for a few seconds before she revealed, “I decided to give Angela another chance when she told me about your and Marina’s relationship.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I figured she got seduced by you she-devils.” She laughed, almost guffawing. “But now that I know you, I can’t even conjure up the evil home-wrecker image I had of you. You’re a very kind person.”
“I try to be. I told Marina I could only consider it if we would only have sex with people who were single or had the same kind of relationship we did. I never wanted an innocent woman to be involved.” She reached over and grasped Regan’s arm, squeezing it. “I’m so sorry you got hurt. If I hadn’t agreed to it…”
That was a huge relief. At least Callie had tried to protect other women. Knowing she’d tried to keep the damage of being in that kind of relationship to just herself and Marina was admirable. “No way. Marina was a cheater, pure and simple. She was a bigger cheater than Angela, in some ways. She could have had hundreds of other women, bu
t she chose my Angela.”
“I don’t know if I believe her, but she says she did it to ingratiate herself so she’d get promoted to Angela’s level.”
Regan stared at her for a very long time. Then she said, in a low, dangerous sounding tone, “If that’s true, I’d better never meet her. I think I’d kill her.”
Chapter Eleven
They had a nice belated birthday dinner for Callie at a restaurant not far from their hotel. Even though it was fun, Callie could tell that Regan was still bothered by their talk at the beach.
After dinner they went back down to the water, took off their shoes and walked along the low, quiet surf. “You seem kinda…down,” Callie said after they’d walked a long time in silence.
“Yeah. I am.” She walked along, not speaking for a while, then she said, “It doesn’t seem to bother you much that Marina was trying to screw her way to the top. That bothers me. A lot.” Her voice was cold and dangerously low.
Callie reached out and took her hand, slowing her to a stop. “No, no, that’s not true. I…I think I have to tell you the whole thing.”
“What?” Regan’s eyes looked dark and hard in the moonlight.
“We talked a couple of times after I left. I think I got the full story out of her.” She paused, took a breath and said, “Do you want to hear it? It’s…not good.”
“Yeah, I do. I need to know the truth, no matter how bad it is.”
They started to walk again, with Callie finding it easier to talk when she wasn’t looking into Regan’s innocent face.
“They started working together a year before Marina and I met. She said she was attracted to Angela from the beginning but she didn’t know she was gay.”
“Probably true. Angela isn’t out at work, even though I know she could be.”
“Neither is Marina. Which irritated the heck out of me. She wouldn’t even consider taking me to events at work, even though two of her salesmen are openly gay.”
“Same for Angela. It would have had to change for us to get married.” She nodded her head slowly when Callie stopped and stared at her. “Yeah, we were thinking of getting married. We wanted to start a family.”
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