Chapter 72

5:30 p.m. Sunday

"Did you have fun today?" Regan asked as they walked down toward the marina.

Andy nodded. In fact, he'd had a great time spending the day with Regan. He had helped her adjust to holding a baseball bat correctly for the first time. She had swung at and missed the first several pitches that came past her. Andy had adjusted the automatic pitching machine to "softball" and "low speed" but the balls still whizzed past Regan before she could swing. The bat that Regan had appropriated from Andy's backseat was too long and too heavy.

He'd found her a lighter bat and had her watch a couple of pitches to judge the speed. The next time she'd swung, she made contact. Andy thought she might have just won the World Series by her reaction. He didn't point out that the ball would have been about 40 feet foul; instead he had tried to get her attention back on the pitching machine before she got hit in the back.

After 30 minutes, Regan had started to make contact consistently – but rarely managed to hit anything that would find its way into the field of play. She'd kept her batting helmet on while on the sideline after she'd insisted on watching Andy hit. He'd not tried to hit a baseball in almost two years and it showed. But after a few misses, he put on a better show.

Regan took her turn to shine when they switched to the golfing side of the complex. She had done her best to show Andy the difference between a baseball grip and a golf grip but he was too used to holding a bat to learn quickly. For her part, Regan had hit almost every shot down the middle.

After the sporting events, the couple had taken a leisurely walk around the downtown business district and a waterfront park. It was during their walk that Camille and Rita had given their consent for their children to stay at the hotel again that evening – with the caveat that neither be late for school in the morning.

Now they were at the marina where "Life of Riley," the family's yacht, was moored.

"I figured we might as well get this out of the way," Regan said, elbowing Andy gently in the side. She had watched him gawking at the boats, some on the bay and others at the docks, as they walked along the path.

"Huh?" Andy asked, jerking his attention away from the water for a moment. He remembered something else Regan had suggested they "get out of the way."

"Not that!" she said, rolling her eyes. "Maybe if we didn't have to go to school tomorrow but it's too late in the day for that now."

"I wasn't... ," Andy began – only to have Regan elbow him again.

"I know," she said. "Look, the boat is ... big."

"Bigger than your closet?" Andy wondered. His grandfather had taken him fishing years before. He knew Regan's family didn't own a small boat. Nothing they had was anything less than ostentatious.

"Yes," Regan replied before he realized that he was joking.

"I figured when you said we could spend the night on it that it wasn't one that had oars," Andy said. As the day had progressed – as usually happened when he was with Regan, he realized – the specter of the disparity in their income had disappeared.

Still, Andy wasn't prepared for the behemoth that Regan led him toward.

"Yeah," Regan said. "It's 75 feet long and it sleeps 10. It has four staterooms and a master cabin. It's capable of circumnavigating the globe without stopping for any supply but fuel. It's ridiculous – but it's a lot of fun."

"Does it have a crew?" Andy wondered. He could picture dozens of people racing around the deck like on an aircraft carrier.

"It has a captain and two stewards," Regan told him. "We have a company we use for special occasions. They can provide long-term or short-term crew if we're going out for a couple of days or a couple of months. Mostly, well, it just sits here. It might as well be a houseboat."

She produced a keycard from her purse and ran it through a reader outside of an imposing fenced in area.

"We need to sign in," she told him. "If you want, we can just eat here, too. The club isn't busy on Sunday evenings."

Andy glanced down at his shorts – stained where he'd run his dirty hands over the legs to dry the sweat off them.

"Yeah, good point," Regan agreed. Her shorts were in the same condition and the batting helmet she'd worn had made her hair a mess. "If I'd had thought of it, we could picked up sandwiches and had them on the deck. Oh, well. I just wanted to show you around. You know, so you'll be able to find your way around next weekend."

She wiggled her eyebrows at him and he laughed.

"So, like, we could just sail off into the sunset?" Andy asked.

"We couldn't," Regan laughed. "I don't know shit about operating this thing. I can – sometimes – get the coffeemaker to work. Dad can run it. He's taken classes on navigation and things like that. Mom and I just usually spend time getting tans and goofing around. It's really pretty boring if we're out for more than a day or two."

Andy nodded absently. His eyes were on the vessel in front of him.

"Will the captain be aboard next weekend?" he wondered.

"No!" Regan said. "He checks on it every day but he doesn't live there. We'll be alone."

"Cool," Andy said. The tour took almost an hour. Even Regan's cabin on the boat was larger than his bedroom at the apartment. Regan was scant with the information she provided – not because she was trying to hide anything but because she had never taken an interest before. Now the thought of taking the boat – alone with Andy or with some of their friends – for six or seven weeks seemed like a lot more fun.

"Let's find somewhere to eat," Regan said as she took Andy's hand when they left the dockyard. "If you want, we can take a cab back to the car and get our clothes. We can shower here. I mean, we're hooked up to the utilities at the pier. Hell, we even have satellite television."

"We're parked near the hotel," Andy pointed out. "I don't mind the idea of a cab but we can always shower there."

"Once we get to the hotel, we're going in the bedroom, getting undressed and we're not dressing again until three minutes before we leave in the morning," Regan told him.

"OK," Andy agreed instantly. "Who needs food?"

"I do!" Regan told him, thrilled that the day had gone so well.

"Most places, we can just eat smelling like we do right now," Andy said with a shrug. "What are you in the mood for?"

"Getting naked," Regan told him.

"Room service?" Andy suggested.

"I figure we should wait until those three leave for Chris' house," Regan said. "I think they planned to do it in every room."

"I hope they don't use our bed," Andy said.

"I think they planned to leave out the occupied bedrooms," Regan told him. "But, who knows. We might walk in on them doing ... whatever ... right there in the living room. Joy said, uh, she said she might do it in the butt today."

Andy shook his head and sighed.

"I know," Regan replied. "I like it when you ... do stuff ... there but that's..."

She trailed off.

"Have you done that?" she wondered.

"No," Andy said. "Leslie ... she wanted to try but we broke up before we could. Erin wasn't interested in that. It seems ... I don't know. I like your butt. I mean, you know, I like to touch you there. But inside is ... another matter."

"I know," Regan told him. "I just seems – dirty."

"And not dirty in a sexy, cool way," Andy added.

"Yeah, I mean, dirty as in not clean," she told him. "I ... I saw a website that Joy was reading. It was talking about how to 'prepare yourself.' I'm not really interested in some of the things they suggest."

"Yeah," Andy agreed. "I mean, I guess you can do it without..."

"An enema," Regan finished.

"That," Andy agreed. "But it's supposed to be really messy."

"Shitty," Regan said with a laugh. "I really like to have your dick in my mouth. Three weeks ago, I can honestly say that I wasn't really interested in that. I mean, I sort of was but it wasn't high on my list of things I had to do. I wasn't sure I'd like it. That's the way I am with ... uh ... anal sex. With a blowjob?"

She shrugged.

"If I didn't like it, I'd spit it out and I wouldn't do it again," she continued. "I wouldn't have trouble swallowing food for three days afterward. I wouldn't risk having part of my throat hang out of my mouth."

Andy gave her a questioning look.

"Hemorrhoids," she clarified. "It's supposed to be something a woman needs to watch for, I guess."

"Gross," Andy said.

"Yeah," Regan agreed. "Plus, it wasn't like I would throw up constantly the day after and the day before I put your dick in my mouth. Despite that, the idea ... isn't horrible. I mean, we might do that if you want."

"I think we could probably wait until we do it the normal way first," Andy joked.

"True," Regan said. "The thing is, God, this is embarrassing. Last week, I ... I played with myself and I put a finger up there. It was ... interesting."

"I'm not ... opposed, I guess ... if you decide you want to do that," Andy told her. "But I'm probably not going to ask you to consider it. We'll play around if you want."

"I'm not sure," Regan told him. "Did you know Ruth can suck her own nipples?"

The change of topics caught Andy flat-footed. He stopped in his tracks as he processed the new information. He was holding hands with Regan and it forced her to stop, too.

"That's ... interesting," he admitted.

"It was fucking cool," Regan told him. "I tried but I can't do it."

"That's what you have me for," Andy told her. "Any time you want your boobs licked, just let me know. I'll be happy to accommodate."

7 p.m. Sunday

Andy and Regan found the other occupants of the suite sitting in the living room when they returned from the burger joint they picked for dinner.

Paul turned to Andy with huge grin as he sat down.

"Noel totally got busted last night!" he said with a little too much mirth in his voice.

"The sophomores and freshman decided to have a big party," Elizabeth said, picking up the story.

"The cops rolled up," Paul added. "They caught Noel butt naked in the woods with some dude from another school. She was wasted and tried to slap one of the officers. Mom had to go pick her up at the police station. She is in so much shit it isn't funny – underage drinking; public lewdness; assault on a police officer. Dad said it was lucky that they didn't just tase her dumb ass. Oh, shit, man. I had to leave the house before I burst out laughing when he told me. John, God love him, he was having as much trouble as I was. I grabbed him by the shoulder and dragged him out of there with me. I told Dad I was going to have a talk with him to make sure he didn't do something like that in the future."

"We took him to the jazz festival with us," Elizabeth explained.

"That must have sucked," Andy said. "I mean, I like the guy but you guys were planning on a date."

"We still went on a date," Elizabeth said, grinning. "We swung by and picked up Lupe, too. It was sort of a double date."

"Oh, cool," Andy said. "I was thinking about something like that for this summer. I mean, John is cool and I know Paul won't let him do anything hateful. That's my biggest worry with her. She's never been on a date and she would be easy pickings for some of those guys."