Summer Swap 3.5

Arlo closed the door to his and Lily’s suite behind them, then rested his forehead against the cool steel. Lily sensed the heavy weight of her husband’s concern, even though Arlo acted to hide it from her.

She whispered, “What is it, Daddy?” He hated the fright hidden in her voice.

He turned and rested his back against the door, avoiding her eyes. But that’s not what Lily needed. He stood straighter, set his jaw firm and showed his wife his strong, dominant gaze.

Lily licked her lower lip, visibly eased by his return to confidence, looking less frightened and more questioning of the man who took care of all of her problems, looking for the clarity he might reveal. She said, “Is it bad?”

Arlo didn’t answer. He crossed the room to her, arms extending, and Lily melted against him at the foot of the bed. He held his little girl.

“You can tell me,” she said softly, her cheek at his collar.

“Oh, Lily,” he sighed, his hand stroking up and down his wife’s narrow back. He caressed her neck, then cupped her cheeks and held her back. “One of them is going to come for you, Lily.”

Lily’s expression shrank from curiosity to unease. She met his gaze, her eyes quivering. “You can’t stop them?”

He thumb-stroked her soft cheeks, just underneath her big corn-silk-blue eyes. “I’m going to do everything I can, Lily. You know I will. I’ll fight them to the very end. You know I often quote Sun-Tzu.”

She nodded.

“Battles are won or lost before they’re ever fought. We might need to comprehend some sort of rapprochement.”

She said, “A meeting in the middle.”

He stroked her hair back from her perfect face, smiling. “You’re so wonderful. That’s what I mean. Tell me, Lily…”

Her brow knit together. “Tell you what?”

“Is there any of them—just one of them—that you would…”

“Would what?”

His expression slimmed to seriousness. “Is there one of them you would lie with?”

Lily’s eyes widened, and she shook her head against his palms in adamant wags.

“Not even one of them?”

She clutched him and hugged him harder, burying her face in his collar. He stroked her back again. He said, “Not even Cody?”

“No,” she muttered.

“Everyone likes Cody. He’s very nice, Lily.”

“Good for him,” she mumbled.

Arlo chuckled, brought her face so he could look at it again, holding her jaw in his hands. “I’ll fight them, Lily.”

“I know you will,” she said, eyes welling up, chin dimpling.

***

Scarlet found Cheyenne on the third deck, passed out on an outdoor couch with a blue icy-gel pack over her eyes and brow. She looked like she had melted into the couch seats, laying there, small frame hiding inside one of Byron’s sweatshirts. She wore khaki shorts, her long tanned legs crossed over at the ankles. Scarlet ran the edge of her thumbnail from Chey’s bare heel, up between her toes. Chey yelped and jumped back to one side of the couch, the ice pack falling into her lap.

“What the hell, Scarlet? Why would you—”

Scarlet shooed Cheyenne further into the couch’s corner, fanning her hands toward her, then sitting down where Chey’s feet had rested. She patted her thighs, indicating for Cheyenne to put her feet there. She said, “I did it because it’s funny. Don’t worry, I’ll make it up to you,” patting her thighs again, encouraging her untrusting friend.

Cheyenne could only open one eye fully, the other still squinted. She slunk back down, tossing her feet into Scarlet’s lap—and purposely digging in her heels, lifting her weight up to get better comfortable.

Scarlet said, “Ow, ow, ow—okay, okay.” When Chey settled, smiling a little, adjusting the ice pack across her brow once more—but leaving a sliver for her eyes to watch Scarlet—Scarlet said, “I deserve it. Just chill, okay? You have no sense of humor when you drink too much.”

“I didn’t drink that much.”

Scarlet stared at her, her eyes peeking out from underneath the edge of the ice pack. “You sure look like you did.”

“Then why would you be so cruel, tickling my feet like that?”

Scarlet began rubbing Cheyenne’s ankles, laughing, saying, “It’s part of the learning process, Chey. Hangovers are supposed to remind you of your limits—I’m just doing the same.”

“A hangover is not my friend. You’re supposed to be my friend.”

Scarlet said, “Who says a hangover isn’t your friend? Just because I—”

Chey gasped and jolted, and all talk of alcohol was wiped away as she suddenly recalled the last time she’d seen Scarlet. She swiped away the ice pack and steadied her eyes on Scarlet, smirking to one side. “What happened in that closet?”

Scarlet dug her nails into the tender soles of Cheyenne’s feet. Cheyenne pouted, saying, “Please, don’t.”

“I’m not going to,” she said, then began to rub.

“Are you going to tell me?”

“It’s kind of my business, Chey.”

“I know you’re going to tell me. Don’t make me go through the whole thing, all the begging and stuff.”

Scarlet chuckled. She rested a hand on Chey’s ankle and then pinched the bridge of her nose. “Chey, Chey, Chey,” she sighed. “You certainly did it.”

“Me? What did I do?”

“You really started something.”

“Listen,” Chey said, “what I do is my business. When I hand off the baton to you, what you do with it is your business.”

“That’s fair.”

“Except for the part where you tell me everything that happened.”

“I guess you did tell me everything.”

“What happened in the closet?” Now all amped up and rosy-cheeked, Chey continued. “Did you guys make out?

“Did we make out? This whole swinging thing turns you into a teenager, apparently. No, we didn’t make out, Chey. It’s not like that.”

“Just physical, huh? Like no mouths, just your dirty body parts.”

“Now you get it,” Scarlet said, laughing, rubbing Chey’s insole. Then she said, “It’s not really like that. It’s more than that. Plus, you didn’t want to kiss Cody at first, either. Look, I do like Philippe. He’s a nice guy.”

“Yeah,” Cheyenne said in an unconvincing tone.

“What, you don’t think he’s nice?”

“No, he’s nice.”

“What is it, then?”

“Nothing,” Chey said in a comical but abrupt tone.

Scarlet studied Cheyenne, trying to figure out what Chey’s problem was with Philippe. She said, “Anyway, we didn’t make out. Get this—turns out he’s ticklish.”

“What were you doing in there, tickling him?”

“You think that sounds lame?”

“No,” Chey said, thinking about it. “Crafty.”

“Crafty how?”

“It’s like an excuse, you know, to put your hands on him. ‘Oh, look, you’re ticklish—is your giant hog ticklish, too?’”

“I didn’t touch his hog, Chey.”

“You didn’t?”

“Well, no. I did.”

“You’re such a liar,” Chey said, and stomped her heel into Scarlett’s inner thigh.

They both laughed a moment, and Scarlett said, “It wasn’t like they shut the door and I just grabbed it—”

“Like the last donut in a box.”

“No, I didn’t do that. It was awkward; in a normal way.”

“There’s nothing normal about people our age locking their married friends in a closet without any clothes on.”

“That was your idea, Chey,” she said, narrowing her eyes.

Chey smiled. “You’re welcome.”

Scarlet said, “Thank you,” and they both nodded with mutual respect.

“Anyway,” Scarlet said, resuming the foot massage, “he’s a nice guy, and we were just kinda talking and joking around; he’s respectful—”

“He was?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow, and ticklish?”

Scarlet chuckled. “Yeah, I guess I did kind of use that as an excuse to—”

“Grab his hog.”

“No, to put my hands on him. To tickle him. You know, I like, uh…”

“Like what?”

She faced Chey, nodding in the affirmative and scrunching her nose. “The body hair.”

“He is furry.”

“And muscular.”

“He is muscular.”

“Yeah, he has a good body.”

Chey said, “So, at what point did you touch his hog?”

“Not long after that,” she said. “Oh, get this: he started getting hard.”

“Such a perv.”

“That’s not nice. . . . Sully said the guy didn’t stand a chance being locked in a closet with me naked.”

“That’s what I meant.”

“Anyway, we were hugging—”

“How were you hugging?”

“He was trying to stop me from tickling him.”

“And then he got hard.”

“I’ll say. I swear to god, Chey, his thing was like”—she leaned back into the couch seat, abandoning Chey’s feet for a second to touch her sternum—“it like came up to here.”

“Well, he is taller than you.”

“Yeah, but seriously, Chey, like right here,” she said again, tapping an index finger to her breastbone.

“Guy’s got a big dick.”

“It wasn’t even like a hundred-percent hard. Like I lifted it up, the thing had weight, and put it against my chest—”

“Maybe you’re the perv.”

Scarlet began rubbing Chey’s feet again, looking out across the third floor deck’s overhang to the bright ocean horizon beyond. “I kinda want to see what it’s like when he’s all the way hard. How big does it get?”

“Pretty big,” Chey said.

“I’ll bet.”

They sat for a moment, both of them lost in their thoughts, Scarlet working absent-minded fingers over Cheyenne’s feet, helping out her hungover friend. She said, “Everything is still okay with you and Byron?”

“More than okay,” Cheyenne said and chuckled.

Scarlet said, “You know what? I’m really glad. Really glad because—” She let Chey’s feet go. “What do you mean pretty big?”

Cheyenne readjusted the ice pack to cover her eyes and laced her fingers across her sweatshirt stomach.

“Chey? It was the way you said it. Pretty big. A confirmation, not a supposition. Did you see it?”

Just her mouth moving under the ice pack: “See what?”

“I asked you if you saw it,” Scarlet said, hooking both of Cheyenne’s ankles with an arm, holding Cheyenne’s feet like she had someone in a headlock. “Do not make me do it.” She jabbed a thumbnail into Cheyenne’s sole but didn’t run it up to her toes. Yet. This was only a warning for now.

“Hey, hey,” Chey said, pulling her feet back, but Scarlet had a good hold. “Okay, okay,” Cheyenne said, pleading.

“You saw it then, did you? When the hell did you see Philippe like that?”

Chey tossed the ice pack onto the coffee table and sat upright, now both of them facing the same direction. She rubbed her eyes then stretched, shoved her hands into the pouch of Byron’s sweatshirt and hunched forward. She muttered, “Doesn’t seem like a big deal now, but I just chickened out telling you earlier.”

“Telling me what?”

“It was kind of like this . . . I don’t know, mixup?”

“A mixup?”

“Yeah, I thought…” Chey rolled her head around like she didn’t really want to tell this, and Scarlet placed a hand on her back and ran circles. Cheyenne slumped against her. “When I was with Cody...”

“The other night.”

“The first night.”

“Go on.”

“Cody called Byron to come into the room to watch us.”

“Okay.” That was what Chey had secretly wanted.

“We were having sex, okay?”

“You and Byron?”

Cheyenne growled with exasperation. “Just let me tell it. Not me and Byron.”

“You and Cody. And then Byron came in...”

“Right. And he watched us having sex.”

“Okay. Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

Chey sat up, and now swayed the opposite direction, thumping down onto the pillows against the couch arm.

Scarlet said, “What is it?”

“It wasn’t Byron watching us.”

Scarlet’s anticipatory smile began to fade and worked into a shocked ‘O’ shape. “It was Philippe?”

Chey said, “It wasn’t on purpose. It was an accident. I thought Cody was calling Byron, and he said he knew this cowpoke who was kind of hard up...”

“And you thought that was Byron?”

“There were a lot of things going on, Scarlet.”

“No, it’s fine. Okay, so you thought it was going to be, you know, your husband...”

“But it wasn’t. I open my eyes and like Philippe is sitting there. Watching.”

“Did you freak out?”

Cheyenne didn’t answer, her head on a pillow, eyes looking out at the blue sky.

“Chey?”

“No, I didn’t freak out, okay?”

“So, what, you guys are having sex and then you see Philippe watching—how could you not be freaked out?”

“I don’t know, Scarlet,” Chey said. “I’m not looking for any judgments here.”

“I’m not judging you. Seriously.”

“No, I did not freak out.”

“Okay.”

“That’s it.”

Scarlet said, “Why wouldn’t you tell me that?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you saw it hard, you said. That’s why I’m asking this. Was he not wearing…”

“No, okay? He wasn’t.”

“Wasn’t what?”

“Wearing anything, Scarlet! God, make me spell it out for you.”

“You wouldn’t have to if you just came clean.”

“Okay,” Cheyenne said, sitting up, riled, grabbing handfuls of hair and swishing it behind her back. “Yes. I thought it was Byron watching us, Cody finishes and he gets off me—”

“And you see Philippe, you’re naked and he’s—”

“Naked.”

“Yes, he’s naked,” Scarlet said.

“And he’s hard.”

“That stands to reason.”

“It stands to reason, thank you. Because he was watching. And he’s, you know...”

Scarlet’s eyebrows raised. “Doing something with his...”

“Exactly,” Cheyenne said, appreciative of Scarlet’s help. Cheyenne turned to face her now. “And I let him, you know . . . finish.”

“You were watching him?”

“And he was watching me.”

“What were you doing?”

“Nothing,” Chey said.

“Nothing?”

“No. I just stayed the way—”

“Cody’d left you?”

“Yes, like that.”

Scarlet nodded, picturing it. “With your legs open?”

“With my legs open.”

“And you just lay like that so Philippe could finish?”

“Is that so wrong?”

“I don’t know. If you’d asked me last week, I would’ve said absolutely. But now, things are different. Like maybe that was the polite thing to do.”

“It was exactly like that, Scarlet. That’s exactly what it was like. I didn’t want to be rude. I didn’t want him to feel bad, like if I freaked out and like jumped off the bed and hid on the other side...”

“Yeah, you’d really hurt his feelings.”

“Thank you, Scarlet,” Cheyenne said, like she was glad someone finally saw it her way.

Scarlet smiled. “And you said he was the perv.”

It took a second for Cheyenne to get it, and then she looked over, scowling. “You don’t mean that.”

“I don’t. I’m trying to be funny. For your benefit.”

“Like I was for Philippe. I didn’t want him to feel bad.”

“I don’t want you to feel bad.”

“There’s no reason I should feel bad.”

Scarlet shrugged. “You’re right.”

Chey, more serious now, said, “The next day I wanted to tell you everything, but I chickened out. It just . . . it was a lot. Things that shouldn’t have been happening were happening, and they went farther than I thought and in the end, what was done . . . I didn’t know what that made me.”

“Now you and Byron, you guys are past it.”

“Past it? We’re not past it, we’re in it.”

Scarlet nodded. “Glad to hear that. So, what do you mean?”

“We both want to do it again.”

“Wow. That’s great, I mean it. Really great.”

Chey sighed heavily, like there was weight to her next statement. But then she smiled, and it all eased away. “If Byron wants to try again with Carla, I want him to as well.”

“Chey’s growing,” Scarlet said and hooked an arm around Chey’s shoulders.

Chey leaned into Scarlet. “Look. I didn’t freak out with Philippe watching, because, yes, Philippe is a nice guy. A really nice guy. Yes, he might be a little perverted—”

“No judgments, Chey,” Scarlet reminded her.

“You’re right, you’re right,” Chey said, putting up her hands in surrender. “I was a party to his perviness and my hands are not clean.”

“You know what this tells me? You’re still not clear of some guilt you have over that.”

“Why?”

“Before you admitted that he’d watched you, you were hoping the perv label on top of Philippe like it would shield you from the thing that happened between you two. Put the blame on him.”

Chey was silent, just breathing and watching the sky. Then she said, “That’s it, a hundred percent. I’m such a jerk.”

“Nah, you’re a good kid. Just a little mixed up.”

They both chuckled, and Chey sat upright, shifting so they faced. “That night I toilet tubed Philippe?”

“Yeah?”

“We got to talking...”

“You were down there a while.”

“You want to know why he and Paloma split?”

“Fuck yeah,” Scarlet said, scooting closer, detecting juicy gossip in Chey’s tone.

Chey tucked her long hair behind her shoulders again, squirreling her hands up inside the sleeves of Byron’s sweatshirt, looking around to make sure no one was near enough to them to overhear. They were the only ones on the whole level.

Chey whispered, “Philippe’s got a big, big secret...”