Sex On The Beach. Delphine Dryden

       Chapter One

      They are totally eye-fucking. They’re eye-fucking, and they don’t even realize it.

      The limousine ride from the Honolulu International Airport to the north shore of Oahu should have been a pleasant trip. Plush leather, fresh flower leis, well-stocked minibar and hands-down the best scenery of all time. But Amanda had been fighting a headache since shortly after their plane took off after the stop at LAX. She’d lost the fight somewhere over the Pacific, and now instead of enjoying the lush tropical foliage and looking forward to the resort, she needed all her energy just to keep from barfing. Their current scenic route seemed to involve some drastic elevation changes as they traversed the island, which definitely wasn’t helping.

      And then there was the eye-fucking. Not a problem in theory, and she was certainly used to seeing her friends Julie and Alan make oblivious unrequited googly eyes at each other. But this time it mattered, because she’d made her own plans for Alan during this Hawaiian dream vacation. Plans that didn’t involve Julie, since Julie continued to insist she had no romantic interest in the guy. After three years, Amanda had decided to take her best friend’s word for it, ocular sex notwithstanding. Alan might not know it yet, but if he’d hoped for a vacation hookup he was already in luck.

      “Oh my God! Look at that bird!” Julie was kneeling on the limo’s side seat, all but hanging her head out the window. “Did you see it?”

      “Sorry, missed it.” Short responses were key to the nonbarfing program.

      “It was a tiny bright yellow ball of feathers. Greenish-yellow. I think it was a hummingbird. I’ve never seen one perched before. It almost looked like a little hibiscus bud!”

      Alan was already skimming through a bird-watching app on his phone, and a second later he held up a picture. “This one?”

      “Yeah, that’s it. Oh, it was a honeycreeper, those are really rare. Cool!”

      “We should start a list.”

      They were both extremely excited about the bird, about the greenery, about the prospect of seeing the swanky beachside cottages where they’d be staying. Amanda wanted to share that excitement. She would share it. Just as soon as her ears popped, her sinuses drained, and the tension in her neck and shoulders relaxed to a mere firm grasp instead of the current death grip. Once all that happened, the whole trip would become like a miraculous dream. A dream in which her pasty blonde self had to wear a lot of sunscreen to avoid an epic burn, but a good one nevertheless.

      Even with the headache, she couldn’t help marveling at her good fortune in being there at all. When Julie had first invited her, she’d thought she was being pranked.

      “Four all-expenses-paid days in Hawaii? Seriously?” The best door prize she’d ever won at a company event was a copy of one of the senior partners’ books about management. Maybe it was different for the high muckety-mucks or the big earners, but she was a corporate research librarian, support staff for the consultants. Vital as she might be, she wasn’t in the running for big employee-appreciation freebies.

      “Seriously,” Julie insisted for about the third time. Even over the iffy cell-phone reception and the ambient noise of whatever bar she was calling from, she sounded as if she couldn’t stop grinning.

      “How can your company even afford that?”

      “The CEO knows somebody.”

      Boy, did he ever. They’d given away two of these trips, and the other lucky winner was Alan. Who hadn’t brought a plus-one. Thus, Amanda’s plan to despoil him.

      It had just been so long since she’d had sex with a person. Her trusty vibrator was great, but she’d grown way too dependent on it in the year since her breakup with Jeremy. Her ex-fiancé might have been a jerk when it came to the issue of where to locate his company, but he’d never been lacking in the sack. Amanda had been sorely deprived, on top of the emotional impact. This vacation was the perfect time to close the door on that Chapter of her life, take decisive steps to move into the future. Alan was safe because she knew there was no danger of falling in love with him. It could be just for fun, no strings attached, and then they’d all get on with their lives.

      She’d tried to date Alan before; Julie had fixed them up years ago, a few months before Amanda met Jeremy. She’d given him three dates before pulling the plug, because it was obvious to her that Alan had a thing for Julie, just as Julie did for Alan. Even if it apparently wasn’t obvious to Alan or to Julie. No, no, they were just good friends and colleagues and Alan was Julie’s “work husband” and blah blah blah unresolved sexual tension blah.

      So she knew an actual relationship with the man was not in the cards. She’d known it then, she knew it now. Especially after being with Jeremy, knowing he was perfect for her, while he was Alan’s opposite in so many ways. Intense, ambitious, strung just a little too tightly at times, Jeremy had sounded like most of the guys in Silicon Valley at first, planning a start-up, developing a piece of software that could revolutionize whatever his particular niche of the industry was. But then he’d showed her the software in beta, and she’d realized he was on to something. A year later, his company was up and running and already profitable. Jeremy was impressive, and she’d been impressionable.

      The only thing Alan and Jeremy had in common, other than software development, was the nerdy-handsome Clark Kent vibe. Another default mode for the guys of her acquaintance. At least neither of them affected hipster glasses.

      “We’re almost there.”

      Thank God.

      It really was beautiful. And so green, especially compared to the already-yellowing hillsides of northern California. Every shade of green imaginable, from tender spring bud to deep evergreen, with bursts of vivid red, hot pink and sunset orange scattered throughout. Amanda hadn’t noted the particulars much, but the overall impression was amazing—a riot of growth and color.

      She wasn’t good with riotous things in general. Everything in her life was where it was supposed to be, pretty much all the time. And she was sick of that. Sick of her new normal, the long weekly slog interrupted only by the occasional girls’ night out. Tired of caring more about her job than about her friends or her own life, because if she stopped doing her job for one second she might really think about her life and start crying again. Because of Jeremy, whom she shouldn’t miss, because he was a jerk, but did miss. Still. Every day. All the damn time.

      It was time to be over him. A year was much longer than long enough. Amanda couldn’t wait anymore to feel over him, she needed to do something about it. A symbolic gesture, a break between her old life and the new. And a golden opportunity to take that first step into a new future had just been plunked into her lap, courtesy of her best friend.

      Step one: Get rid of this headache.

      Step two: Do some very unwise things.

      Step three: Profit? Probably not. But hopefully after step two, I’ll be too satisfied to care.

      * * *

      Jeremy still wasn’t sure why he’d called Amanda’s mother that fateful day a month ago. The mood struck him every few months, to keep in touch, to maintain even that peripheral connection. Although he got along fine with his own parents, he’d come to think of Sandy Perry as almost a second mom while he was with Amanda. Losing one should have meant losing the other, but he refused to accept that. So he called or emailed from time to time, and so did Sandy, and neither of them ever admitted that their agenda was less than honorable. He was not keeping tabs on Amanda, and her mother was not reporting behind her daughter’s back to the guy she still rooted for. Not at all. It was just keeping in touch. If a little information about Amanda slipped in on the side, well, that was only to be expected. They both knew her, after all. It only made sense she would