* * *
Todd returned within an hour bringing a bottle of champagne for each of them and insisting that they drink them before moving to phase two of the celebration.
Phase two included Mary Catherine. One Sunday afternoon shortly after her miscarriage, Roark had taken her out for ice cream. Seeing the promenade of young couples with babies had caused her to get weepy. She confided that Todd had fathered the embryo she lost.
“Son of a bitch must’ve had a sixth sense about it. He’s avoided me ever since.”
Months went by. The two were civil to one another but cool. Eventually they reestablished themselves as friends but only friends. To Roark’s knowledge they hadn’t slept together again. He assumed by tacit agreement.
Today, the rift and the cause for it were distant memories. Wearing three postage-stamp-sized patches of electric-blue fabric that passed for a bikini, Mary Catherine arrived ready to party. She got there just in time to help them polish off the champagne.
“Foul!” she cried petulantly. “I only got two swallows.”
“There’s more where that came from, sweetheart.” Todd rubbed her ass and smacked his lips, first with appreciation, then regret. He turned her around and gave her a gentle push toward Roark. “She’s all yours tonight, pal. Don’t say I never gave you anything.”
“Consolation prize?” The good-natured question had only a trace of an edge.
“Can you imagine a better one?”
Mary Catherine looped her arms around Roark’s neck, mashed her breasts against his chest, and massaged his crotch with hers. “Fine by me. I’ve had a lech for you for a long time.” She poked her tongue into his mouth.
Courtesy of the champagne, he had a lively buzz going. She tasted good. She felt damn good. He liked her. He had sustained a blow to his ego, and Todd was trying to make it up to him. He’d be an asshole to decline his friend’s gesture of condolence.
He applied himself to kissing her.
“Hey,” Todd said after a few moments. “Am I gonna have to turn the water hose on you two?”
Laughing, they clomped downstairs and piled into Todd’s much-maligned car. He drove them to a marina where he had chartered a boat from an old salt named Hatch Walker. They’d leased boats from him before. His rates were the cheapest in Key West, and he got only mildly abusive if you stretched your contract time and came in late.
Walker wasn’t long on charm anytime, but today he was particularly querulous. He was wary of turning one of his boats over to three people who had obviously been drinking. Roark was just drunk enough on champagne—and wildly aroused because on the drive to the marina, Mary Catherine had given him a private lap dance in the passenger seat—not to care about the old man’s opinion of them or the amount of their alcohol intake.
As soon as the rental agreement was signed, Todd jumped aboard and climbed the steps to the pilot’s chair. Roark staggered aboard, then turned to lend a hand to Mary Catherine, who managed to stumble against him as she stepped onto the deck. “Oopsy-daisy,” she giggled as she squirmed against him. She gave old Hatch a gay little wave as he untied the ropes from the cleats and tossed them onto the deck.
“Crazy kids,” he muttered.
“I don’t think he likes us,” Mary Catherine whined.
“What I think is, you have on too many clothes.”
Roark reached around to untie her top. She shrieked and slapped at his hands, but the protests were all for show. Roark came away with her bikini top and waved it like a banner above his head as Todd slowly guided the boat out of the marina. As soon as the craft cleared the channel, he gave it full throttle and it shot into the Atlantic.
Todd had proclaimed this would be a celebration none of them would ever forget and obviously he meant it. Roark was surprised by his friend’s extravagance. The coolers he had brought onboard were stocked with brand-name liquors. The food came from a deli that had the self-confidence to call itself Delectables.
“This is a mean shrimp salad.” Roark licked spiced mayonnaise from the corner of his lips.
“Let me do that.” Mary Catherine straddled his lap and sponged away the mayo with her tongue. She had taken her role as consolation prize to heart, devoting herself entirely to entertaining him and granting his every wish. That or converting him into a hedonist. Either way, he wasn’t fighting it.
The shared secret of the miscarriage had forged a special bond between them. When they were alone he called her Sheila. She’d given up on the mermaid idea as impractical because “the tail would probably be itchy.” But she was considering a chambermaid routine and had asked him to come up with a catchy name for her.
Although they flirted frequently and outrageously, the friendship had remained platonic. She’d made subtle overtures, but Roark had pretended not to notice them because he hadn’t wanted to mess up a good friendship.
But as she sucked at his lips, he asked himself what would be so terrible about altering their friendship to include sex. Be friends with Sheila, but don’t have sex with Mary Catherine. Who wrote the rule that you couldn’t be both friend and lover?
Why not make happy with the iron hard-on he was sporting, compliments of her incredible proportions and her agile tongue and her hands, which were keeping themselves busy inside his swim trunks?
Maybe Todd had paid for her services today. So what? She was a good kid, trying to make a decent living using the assets she’d been given.
It was also possible that she was coming on to him only to make Todd jealous. He wouldn’t let that bother him, either. In fact, he wasn’t going to let anything bother him tonight.
Fuck writing. Fuck getting published. Fuck words that wouldn’t come.
Fuck Mary Catherine. That topped his things-to-do list. Definitely. He was sick to death of being such a damn Boy Scout. Nose to the grindstone all the time. For what? For freaking nothing, that’s what.
He was going to eat this rich food until he puked on it. He was going to get slobbery drunk. He was going to let Mary Catherine perform on him every debauched act in her extensive repertoire. He was going to have a good time tonight if it killed him.