Chapter 7: Girls’ Day Out

Monday

Liz Cramer rolled out of bed at half-past seven and immediately headed to the bathroom. While she no longer suffered from morning sickness, she was peeing for two, and that wasn’t something she could get Bob to do for her. Besides, even if he could, he had already left to go fishing with Tully Winston. After a seeming eternity on the toilet, she flushed and then brushed her teeth, took her vitamins, and jumped into the shower. She was looking forward to a girls’ day out with Babs Winston and Brenda Oliver.

Liz dressed very casually, in cargo shorts and a tank top. Underneath she had on plain cotton panties and one of her new bras. That was a bit of a nuisance as far as she was concerned. She was small and slim, and her A-cup breasts didn’t really need any support, so most of the time she went braless. Now, with a baby on the way, she had blossomed, as her mother called it. Now she needed the support. She wondered if this was permanent, or if it was temporary and she would shrink back down after the baby was born. She knew that most men liked bigger boobs, but they didn’t have to lug the things around, and Bob seemed perfectly happy with what little she had.

That was one of their standing jokes, actually. Ever since she had started growing, she had teased him about her new cleavage, with the comment that he should enjoy it while it lasted. That would lead to an almost immediate request to test-drive her bigger boobs, and he would promptly pull her down onto the nearest horizontal surface and begin kissing and playing with her tits. Liz didn’t mind, and while she knew intellectually that the flood of hormones released by her pregnancy were making her hornier than ever before, she certainly wasn’t going to complain about her husband screwing her as much as he was doing lately.

Well, not that morning, anyway. After their performance on the balcony the night before, they had retired to the bedroom and had a second round in a more comfortable setting, with her riding him cowgirl style on the bed. This morning, however, he had been up much too early for her taste, and after cleaning up, had given her a quick kiss and been out the door. Maybe that afternoon, after he returned, they would be able to have some fun. She could either provide a celebratory fuck to the mighty fisherman or a pity fuck for the failed fisherman. Either would be a lot of fun.

Dressed and wearing running shoes, she grabbed her handbag and key card, and headed down to the dining room. Breakfast was a buffet. Even though she was peeing for two, she really wasn’t eating for two, and breakfast for her typically consisted of juice, coffee, and fruit salad. That was especially interesting to her now, since the fruit salad had some differences with what she normally found in Christchurch.

“Liz! Liz!” she heard as she entered the dining room. She looked around and saw Brenda Oliver waving from one side.

“I’ll be over there,” she told the hostess. She let the hostess take her over and ordered juice and coffee. She sat down across from Brenda. “Hi! How you doing?” she asked.

“Great! Bob get off all right?” asked Brenda.

“Well, he didn’t get off, but he’s out fishing, if that’s what you’re asking,” she replied, giggling.

Brenda snorted out a laugh of her own. “The same goes for Steve. We had fun last night, but he’s off being a mad scientist today, and he already left. He took the Land Rover, too, so we’ll need to take the shuttle bus.”

“And he just runs around taking samples of plants?” asked Liz.

“Basically. It’s all about biodiversity, taking samples of different plants and sending them to a lab back home for storage and study.”

“Do you ever help him?”

Brenda shrugged as she sipped her coffee. She was finishing breakfast while Liz was just starting. “Sometimes. Not so much at home, though. There he has students to do that sort of thing, slave labor as he likes to call them. Here, it’s just us. When I do help, it’s mostly just labeling things and prepping them for shipment. He’s the botanist, not me.”

“And the slave labor part?”

“Not if he knows what’s good for him!” Brenda commented, with another smirk.

They took a break at that moment to go to the buffet, Liz for her fruit salad, and Brenda for a bowl of her own. When they returned to their table, they continued quizzing each other about their work and their husbands’ work. They were still talking when Babs came into the restaurant looking for them. “Here you are! I was wondering if you were coming or not.”

Brenda looked at her watch. “Is it that time already? I am so sorry!”

Babs waved it off. “Don’t sweat it! We’re on holiday, aren’t we?”

Brenda waved their waitress over and requested their checks, and after another couple of minutes Brenda and Liz paid for their breakfast. Brenda asked Babs, “Did we miss you? What did you do for breakfast?”

“Did that an hour ago. I gave Tully a good sendoff and then came down here afterwards. I’ve been out walking on the beach for a bit.”

“Just how good a sendoff did you give Tully?” asked Liz, smiling.

Babs wiggled her eyebrows. “Damn good, if you ask me! I’ve never heard any complaints, that’s for sure!” All three of the women laughed at that, and Brenda and Liz followed Babs out of the restaurant. They returned through the lobby and then headed outside.

“I told Liz that Steve has the Land Rover,” said Brenda.

“Then it’s either walking or the shuttle,” replied Babs. She looked at Liz. “How are you doing? Getting around, I mean.”

“I’m good. It’s like I keep telling Bob when he starts hovering, I’m pregnant, not broken. If you want to walk, I can walk,” Liz replied.

“You might change your mind if you have a load of shopping bags with you,” commented Brenda. “I know I did back then.”

Liz made a wry face at that. “That’s true enough. Well, we can walk now and ride later. How about that?”

“Works for me,” answered Brenda.

Babs nodded in agreement as well, and the trio headed towards the Promenade. “The easiest way to walk to town is the Promenade. We can walk right into town and see what there is to see. Neither of you have ever been here before, right?”

“No. I’d never even heard of the Maltesanos until Steve got the assignment to come here,” admitted Brenda.

“We’d heard of them, I mean, we planned to come here for our honeymoon, but we’ve never been here before.”

“Your honeymoon?” asked Brenda curiously.

Liz blushed. “Junior came along a bit early. We had a quick marriage, but had already booked the room, so we took a long weekend back in the spring and decided to do a pregnant honeymoon. It doesn’t seem to have slowed us down,” she said, smiling.

Babs laughed at that. “Give it another month or two. By the time the sprog comes out, your honeymoon will be the last thing on your mind!”

Brenda laughed at that. “God knows that’s true enough ... I think. What’s a sprog?”

“Ah, a sprog is just an Aussie term for a child. No idea where it came from.”

“Oh. Uh, not trying to be rude, but does everybody in Australia talk like Tully? I swear, Steve and I only understand about half of what he’s saying. Please don’t say anything to him.” Brenda looked apologetic at that.

Babs roared in laughter. “Oh, that is tremendous! I am definitely telling him! You’ll make his day, for sure! Tully’s hobby is collecting Aussie slang and running a website to teach it to non-Aussies. Some of it is pretty dated, too. I’ve known him almost forty years and I can’t understand him half the time!”

“How did you meet?” asked Liz.

“We were both in the Navy back then, Tully in the Aussie Navy and me in the U.S. Navy. We were both based at Fleet Base East, which is in Sydney. Tully was assigned to logistics, which simply means he worked in a warehouse, and I was part of a U.S. Navy liaison team. We met on the base.”

Brenda asked, “Wait a minute. You were in the Navy, but you get seasick?”

Babs rolled her eyes and grinned. “Tully says the same thing. Not everybody in the Navy is on a ship. I spent my entire time on land. I didn’t learn about being seasick until he took me fishing once when we were still dating. I almost dumped him!”

“Did he talk like that back then? How did you ever understand him?” asked Liz.

Babs smiled wickedly. “Some things you don’t need to know a lot of English for.”

“Really?” commented a smiling Brenda.

“It was like electricity when we first met. I’m not sure if it was love at first sight, but it was certainly lust at first sight. The love came later. Either way, I decided Tully was the guy for me. I mustered out about six months before he did, and we got a flat together off base. As soon as he got out, I took him home to meet my family and marry him, and then we moved back to Sydney. We’ve been married...” Babs looked a bit distracted as she worked it out, and continued, “ ... thirty-six years now.”

“Wow!” said Liz.

“And still going strong?” quizzed Brenda.

“Pretty strong. Of course, you need to work at it, but all marriages need to be worked at. The electricity is still there, that’s for sure.” Liz looked surprised at that, and Babs caught it. “What, you think us wrinklies don’t have electricity anymore? Trust me, we have plenty of electricity! We’re sixty, not dead!” she said with a laugh.

Brenda laughed along with her. “Neither is forty, or thirty-nine in my case. I swear, our kids think they invented sex.”

“Ours were the same,” admitted Babs. “Where do they think they came from, huh?”

“How old are they?” asked Liz.

“Heather is sixteen and Steve Junior is fifteen.”

“And are they...” Liz stopped midway through the question. She hadn’t lost her virginity until she was almost eighteen.

Brenda’s eyes popped open at that. “I don’t really know. Little Steve - he’s not really all that little - anyway, he isn’t dating yet and doesn’t have a car. Heather, her I’m not so sure about, and I’m also not so sure I want to know. She is dating, and if she hasn’t gone all the way, I am pretty sure she has gone a fair way. I made sure she was on the Pill, just in case.” She eyed Liz’ baby bulge curiously as she said that.

Liz blushed. “The rubber broke. What can I say?” she said with a shrug.

The other two smiled at that and shook their heads. Brenda looked at Babs and asked, “What about you? You and Tully have any kids?”

“Three boys, all married, and five grandsons, all trouble.”

Brenda smiled at Babs’ laughing description. “Trust me, you had it easy. Boys are a lot easier to raise than girls! I’ve got two sisters, and now that I’m a parent I can’t understand why my father didn’t become an alcoholic!”

“What did you mean by making your marriage work?” asked Liz.

Babs looked over at Brenda for a moment, and then looked back at Liz. “I don’t know, not exactly, anyway. What I can say is that you can’t just leave things to chance in the belief that romance is forever. You have to know the things to do together and the things not to do together.”

“Like?”

“Like, after Tully got out of the Navy and we got married, he became a golf pro. Now, he was good at that, I mean, he made a living although he never made it big or became famous. The problem is, though, that I can’t golf to save my life! Tully tried to teach me, but he’d get so angry when I didn’t improve, and then I’d get angry at him. We had to agree not to golf together,” explained Babs.

“Oh.”

“On the other hand, like I said, the electricity is still there, so we both make sure we take care of each other every day,” she finished.

“Every day?” asked Brenda, a surprised tone to her voice. Babs smiled and nodded, and Brenda said, “That’s not easy. That’s well above average.”

“Really? Bob and I are always doing it. What’s the big deal?” asked Liz.

“Trust me, it’s not that easy,” said Babs.

Brenda agreed. “It’s easy when you are newlyweds and it’s just you and him. Just wait until next year, when you’ve just changed your fortieth diaper of the day and Junior there is teething and screaming, and the house hasn’t been cleaned and you still have to make dinner and Bob comes home and decides he wants a quickie right then and there. All you are going to want at that moment is a nap and no sex, period.”

“Oh. Never thought about that, I guess. Is it really like that?” asked Liz.