Chapter 4

The pool had gone quiet. Past two in the morning, the water lit blue from below, a few couples scattered across the daybeds moving slow and unhurried in the dark. A young man and his beautiful wife were getting fucked over by the far cabanas by two muscular black men. The soft sounds they made carried across the water, nothing urgent about any of it. The kind of hour where the resort stopped performing and just breathed.

Monika was stretched out on one of the long sofas with a drink balanced on her stomach, Ellie beside her with her legs tucked under, both of them naked, both of them vaping and watching the water do nothing in particular.

Frida came around the corner of the bar barefoot, hair still damp from a night swim and stopped when she saw them.

“There she is,” Monika said. “Hi, sweet thing. Get over here.”

Frida came over and sat on the end of the sofa, tucking her feet up.

“Where’s your pretty boyfriend?” Monika asked. “Thought he’d be glued to you by now.”

“He got invited to some all boys thing. Your husbands came and got him.” Frida shrugged. “They said something about a male-only party somewhere.”

Monika snorted into her drink. “Yeah, I bet they did. There’s a new kid checked in this afternoon, Greek lookin’ fella, built like a damn statue. Tom’s been circlin’ him since lunch.” She took a long pull off her vape and blew it out slow. “Them boys are gonna be busy till sunrise. Your Liam won’t be able to sit down for a week.”

“Should I be worried?”

“Honey, you should be jealous.” Monika grinned. “But don’t you fret. They can have their fun. We’ll have ours right here.”

Ellie held out her vape. “Want some?”

Frida reached for it, and Ellie stopped with the thing halfway between them, looking at the hand that had come out to take it.

“Oh my god.” Ellie turned her own hand over, then looked at Frida’s again. “Look at your hand. It’s tiny. It’s as small as the rest of you.”

Monika didn’t even lift her head. “Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. Girl’s a hundred and fifty centimeters tall. What’d you expect her to be swingin’ around, oven mitts?”

Ellie laughed, that low warm sound, and turned to look at her. “Well excuse me for noticing.”

“Noticin’.” Monika snorted. “That’s like noticin’ the sun’s warm.”

“Fine.” Ellie took Frida’s hand and pressed her own palm flat against it, fingers spread, comparing. Her hand went past Frida’s by more than a knuckle on every finger. “Look at that. Look how fucking cute that is.”

Monika finally sat up, set her drink on the tile, and reached over. She laid her hand against Frida’s on the other side, and now the girl’s hand was sandwiched between two bigger ones, small and pale and neat.

“Well, would you look at that,” Monika said. “That’s a real pretty hand, sweet thing. Nails all trimmed nice and everything. Somebody raised you right.” She glanced sideways. “Unlike your mother, who I once watched try to open a beer bottle with her teeth.”

“Oh my god, stop.”

“I’m just sayin’.”

Monika’s eyes went to Ellie’s hand, still resting against Frida’s. She took hold of it and turned it over, looking at it properly, the long fingers, the dark red polish that matched her mouth.

“Your hands are beautiful, though,” Monika said. “Look at that color. That’s a good goddamn color.”

“Thank you, honey.”

“Mine are gettin’ old.” Monika held her own hand up to the pool light, turning it. “Look at that. Veins comin’ up like roadmaps. Everything else on me held up all right but the hands went first. That’s how they get you.”

“Don’t.” Ellie reached over and pulled Monika’s hand down, laced their fingers together and held it up next to her own. “Your hands are beautiful. Stop it.”

“You’re full of shit.”

“I’m not.” Ellie brought Monika’s hand to her mouth and kissed the back of it, slow, her lips pressing warm against the skin. “I like your hands. They look like they’ve done things.”

Monika went quiet for a second. Then she laughed, rough and a little off balance. “Oh, they’ve done things all right.”

Frida was watching them both with her knees pulled up to her chest, the vape forgotten in her fingers.

Ellie let go of Monika’s hand and sat back, and something came into her face. A slow thing, unhurried, like an idea arriving and getting comfortable.

“I have an idea,” she said. “If you’re up to it.”

Monika reached for her drink. “Honey, I’m up to everything. You can’t think of a thing to do to me that I’d say no to. Genuinely. You could sit there all night tryin’ and you wouldn’t land on one. So just ask.”

“That’s a bold statement.”

“It’s a true statement. That’s how much I trust you.”

“Okay.” Ellie nodded toward Frida. “My idea is that she fists you.”

Frida’s head came up.

Monika took a sip of her drink, considered it for about a second and a half, and chuckled.

“Well, that’s a nice one,” she said. “Sure. Why not.”

“Wait,” Frida said. “What?”

“You heard the woman.” Monika drained the last of her drink, set the glass down, and swung her legs off the sofa. She stood up, stretched, and crossed to the nearest daybed, all of it as casual as a woman going to fetch the mail. She lay back on the cushions and got herself comfortable, one arm behind her head, and let her knees fall open.

“Come on, then.”

“I don’t know how to do this.” Frida hadn’t moved. “I’ve never done this. I’ve never even seen it. I wouldn’t know where to start.”

Ellie got up and came over to her, took her by the hand, and pulled her gently to her feet.

“Sweetie,” she said, “you’re going to do a lot of things you’ve never done before.”

Ellie crossed to the little cabinet beside the daybeds, opened it, and came back with a spray bottle of lube, the big kind, the kind the resort kept stocked everywhere like sunscreen.

“Give me your hand.”

Frida held it out, and Ellie took her by the wrist, turned the hand palm up, and sprayed it. Then turned it over and sprayed the back. Then worked the stuff over her with both hands, between the fingers, over the knuckles, down past the wrist, thorough about it, taking her time.