Audrey's Road Trip

by Susan Bella Ikin

  Of course, it soon became clear that Audrey was not looking for a casual relationship, so despite the fact that I was enjoying myself looking at her lying in the bed next to me, I knew that I should not be foolish enough to suggest that we share a bed. We had to spend the next three months together, I wasn’t going to get my face slapped on day one – or was it day two now? I checked my phone, which I had set to local time, and found that it was after 7pm, which would explain why I was hungry. I got up and gathered some clothes, taking them into the bathroom where I dressed and brushed my teeth again. I had taken a shower before I went to bed, and had brushed my teeth then, but the nap had left me with that yucky furry feeling.

  I went out to the small sitting area and found that Kerry and Andrew were already there, flicking through brochures. We talked quietly for a while, then heard Audrey moving around. When she came out of the bedroom, she was dressed, although she still looked sleepy. We all piled into the car, this time Andrew was keen to drive, and I sat next to him as I had the maps, and we found a burger place that was open late.

  Andrew and Kerry wanted to sit next to each other, so I slid into the booth next to Audrey. It wasn’t a big booth, so I was pressed up against Audrey, and I felt her tense up. Hopefully she would learn to relax around me soon, I wasn’t planning to pounce on her. We all ate our dinners and then went for a walk on the beach for a while. Audrey lifted her face and I could see her inhaling the aromas of the sea and the greenery.

  “I like this place”, she said quietly. “Even that weird oil rig off shore, can you believe it is so close?”

  I looked and she was right, it was very close to shore, but I was more interested in the view of Audrey, standing still with her arms held out wide, and her face lifted to the sky, her pale blonde hair shining in the moonlight. I revised my earlier plans. Maybe I might pounce on her at some time, but not right now, and not until I got a signal from her. I hoped she would send me that signal before the trip was over, as I was finding it difficult to look away from her right now. Her posture was causing her body to be outlined in the moonlight, and I could see her breasts upthrust as her head was tipped back, and her backside was counterbalancing her by sticking out a little more than I thought it might normally. I started to harden up while I was looking at her, so I had to look away. I noticed that Andrew and Kerry were just a little way ahead, and that they were embracing passionately, hopefully they were quiet tonight, as I didn’t know how I was going to lay in the bed next to Audrey, if I could hear Andrew and Kerry doing what I was beginning to want to do with Audrey.

  As it turned out, I was out of luck. Not long after we returned to the motel, Audrey went back to bed as she was still tired, and I followed shortly afterwards. I had just gotten into the narrow bed when I heard a giggle come from the common room, and a door shut loudly. I noticed Audrey jump a little at the loud noise, and hoped it hadn’t woken her up. Soon the sounds of soft moans and groans could be heard through the thin walls, and shortly after that came the sound of a headboard banging against a wall. It just kept going on and on, and as I laid there in the dark, I could feel the heat rising in my face. It had been a really long time since I had been embarrassed, but I was lying here in a dark room, with an attractive woman in the next bed who was off limits, and in the next room I could hear my friends going at it like wild creatures. Then I had a strange thought – did I sound like that? All I could hope for was that Audrey had gone back to sleep, but was disappointed with that too.

  “How long do you think they will take to get the job done?” I heard her soft voice across the room.

  “I don’t know, I’ve never shared a house with them before. Hopefully soon so we can get to sleep."

  We both laughed, and thankfully after a couple of extra loud groans, the noise from the next room stopped. Eventually I dropped off to sleep, only to have disturbing dreams where Audrey and I were sharing the master room, and Andrew and Kerry were in another room yelling at us to keep the noise down.

  The next day, we all decided to stay in Seal Beach for another day so that we could explore the area during the day time. When I had the opportunity, I pulled Andrew to one side and told him that Audrey and I had heard way too much last night, and asked him to keep the noise down if possible, or at least to pull the bed away from the wall!

  Andrew was a bit embarrassed, and asked me not to say anything to Kerry as she would be mortified. He asked me to speak to Audrey so that she didn’t say anything to Kerry either, and I said that I didn’t think Audrey would, but I would speak to her.

  For the next three weeks, we spent time at all the beachside towns. After leaving Seal Beach, we traveled down to San Diego, where we stayed for a few days, and then worked our way back up the coast road stopping whenever we saw anything of interest. Audrey asked if we could go through Hearst Castle, and although I was initially a little reluctant, I was actually quite intrigued by the story behind the Castle and astounded by the view from the forecourt.

  Andrew and Kerry were more circumspect which was good, as some of the accommodations offered less privacy than we would have liked, and sometimes all of us ended up sleeping in the same room, so it would have been impossible for them to conceal their amorous adventures if they hadn’t.

  However, it was difficult, the four of us spending so much time in each other’s company, even though we often went our separate ways during the day when sightseeing, we slept in close quarters and drove together in the car a lot, so it should not have surprised anyone when the politeness couldn’t last for ever.

  Audrey

  As I sat in the back seat of the car next to Kerry, I silently seethed in anger. We were only about half an hour out of San Francisco, and all had heard all day was about how romantic the city was, and how Kerry was looking forward to spending time with Andrew there. She had thrown a few sidelong glances at me, and I think that she was hinting that it was somehow my fault that she didn’t have enough privacy to bonk Andrew when and where she felt like it. Well, what did she expect? She planned a trip where she knew she would be sharing rooms with other people, did she really think that we would sleep with earplugs in? Or maybe go and sit in a bar for a few hours so that she and Andrew could have the room to themselves? I had tried to look the other way as much as possible, but the situation was becoming very uncomfortable for me. I know that James had spoken to Andrew after that first night, but I was too embarrassed to talk to him about other times when I had pretended to be asleep, and had heartily wished that I was.

  The thing that had really annoyed me this morning, was having to wait to go to the bathroom, because it was ‘occupied’. By two people. When the door finally opened, Andrew and Kerry came out giggling. I angrily grabbed my toiletry bag and stormed in. Not only was urgently needing to use the toilet, but I also had started my period and urgently needed some privacy to tend to myself. It annoyed me that I had to wait to access the bathroom facilities, when Andrew and Kerry were clearly having sex in there. I had spent the day stewing and had not been talking to anyone, not knowing what to do about this problem. James didn’t know what the problem was, he had been out walking, having woken up much earlier, so wasn’t aware of what had happened. I certainly wasn’t going to tell him, and apparently the other two were happy enough to keep him in ignorance as well.

  As Andrew had spent most of the day in the front seat talking to James, James had obviously not noticed the silence coming from the back seat, and that annoyed me too. I thought that we had developed a good friendship over the last three weeks, and yet he had not noticed that I was upset, so I ended up being angry with him too.

  The other three had been out of university for a couple of years now, so they had some time to work and to pay down their student debts, but I had only graduated last year, and had only found temporary work up to recently, so my budget was much tighter than theirs. That meant that although I would have liked to book my own hotel room tonight, one that I didn’t have to share with anybody, I couldn’t aff
ord to. I started wondering if I should just use some of my remaining cash to buy an air ticket home from San Francisco, and started checking my phone to see how much it would cost. Ouch, that much? It was the height of the American summer, so it appeared that air travel was going to be prohibitively expensive. Maybe I would just have to put up with it, surely when we got away from the big cities to the national parks, the camping grounds would be cheaper and I might be able to afford my own space.

  So I sat there, simmering, and at some point it must have become apparent to everyone in the car that not everyone was enjoying themselves, and the chatter slowly died out, leaving only the noise of the radio, and the sound of the car tyres on the freeway. When we arrived at our hotel, I will admit I behaved like a small child, when everyone else got out of the car to go to reception, I stayed in my seat, saying that they could all check in, they didn’t need me to do that.

  James came out after a while, and tapped on my window. I rolled it down.

  “Ok, we have a problem”, he started.

  I rolled my eyes, and said “Another one? What’s wrong now?”

  James frowned. “We don’t have a reservation for the room we chose, the family room with the two bedrooms, we must have booked for tomorrow night by accident, and it is booked for tonight. However” – and he held up a hand as I went to interrupt - “I’ve managed to negotiate with them for two adjoining rooms, at a cheaper rate than they normally charge. So you have a choice. We can go on somewhere else, but they tell me that there’s a convention in town and rooms might be hard to get, or we can take both rooms and then you only have to share with one person instead of three. Now, if you go for option two, there’s only one double bed and a sofa bed in each room, so you will either have to share with Kerry, or with me and I’ll take the sofa bed”.

  I sat up straight – not to have to spend a night with Kerry? That would be blissful – and I wasn’t worried about sharing with James, we had slept in the same room before without a problem – he didn’t even snore!

  “Can we get that rate for the whole three nights we were going to be here?” I asked excitedly, “I’ll share with you, if you’re sure you don’t mind the sofa bed, I'll even take turns with you and let you have the bed tomorrow night – Kerry and Andrew will love to have a room to themselves for a change, so yeah, option B please!”

  Andrew smiled and turned to go back into reception. Shortly afterwards he came out and climbed into the driver’s seat, telling me he would move the car to our assigned parking spot, and we could start unloading the luggage, Andrew was just getting a luggage trolley for the bags.

  Shortly afterwards, I found myself in a room that wasn’t exactly five star, staring at a miserable looking couch. We had all known that it wasn’t a great hotel – we were all on a budget after all, and the room wasn’t really bad, but that couch did not look at all comfortable. James was in the bathroom, unpacking his toiletry bag, and I was pushing on the cushions, noting that they felt quite hard. I felt around for the opening mechanism, and opened it out into a bed. I sat on the mattress and my worst fears were confirmed – it was hard and uncomfortable. There was no way James could sleep on that!

  “I said I’d take the sofa bed”, James said from the bathroom doorway, I hadn’t even heard him approach. I looked around.

  “I don’t think anyone will be sleeping on this”, I came to a decision and took a deep breath, “Now, don’t think I’m making a pass at you or anything, but I can cope with you sleeping in bed with me, if you can. This is an awful mattress, and look, the metal bar will dig into your back all night”, and I pushed on the mattress to demonstrate my point.

  James shook his head: “I don’t think that’s a good idea Audrey. I’ll manage, I’m not really comfortable with sleeping in the same bed with you. The same room yes, but a bed is a really intimate place, and it might put a bit of pressure on our relationship”.

  Now, ordinarily I would never have told a man that I was menstruating, thinking it was just something so private that it was no-one else’s business, but I thought James was trying to be noble, and as he hadn’t shown any real interest in me, I thought that he was ‘safe’. I was obviously not his type, so to put his mind at rest, I blurted out:

  “Well, you’re safe from me, I’ve got my period so there would be no hanky panky tonight even if I wanted to”, and turned on my heel going into the bathroom. Just before I closed the door, I thought I heard James saying softly:

  “Hanky panky?”

  What an idiot I was! Apart from blurting out something that James really didn’t need to know, I surely had just given away how inexperienced I was by my choice of words. Hanky panky indeed! Where had that come from, some cheesy old comedy on TV?

  I unpacked my toiletries from the bag that James had carried in for me, and then leaned against the sink for a while, trying to get control of myself. I both wanted to laugh and cry at the same time, I felt so foolish. I splashed my face with some cold water, and went back into the room.

  James was flicking around channels on TV using the remote control, and as I entered he turned and said that Andrew and Kerry had called, they had decided to go out for dinner later, so would see us tomorrow. James said that if I wanted to go out for a bite to eat, he thought Chinatown was about a twenty minute walk away, and he was happy to walk if I was.

  I was so happy at not having to be around Kerry for a while, that I turned and grabbed my bag straightaway, without thinking. James seemed a little surprised, so I told him I was hungry, and he turned off the television, put the room card in his pocket, giving me one to put in my bag in case we got separated, and we left the hotel.

  After a while it became apparent why our hotel was so cheap, it wasn’t in the nicest area of town. On every corner, there were groups of youths standing around, smoking joints and offering to sell us drugs, or ‘show us the sights’. We quickly realized that it would be best to put the map away as it was advertising the fact that we were tourists. After I folded the map up and put it in my bag, James put his arm around me and held me close as we walked along the street. I was touched by his concern, and found myself enjoying his closeness more than a little, to my surprise. I had thought that whatever crush I had on James from the past had remained in the past, but clearly I was not completely over that. I told myself that it was only to complete the illusion of us being together that my arm snaked around his waist, but I knew that I wasn’t being honest with myself about that, either.

  I was surprised however, that even when the area changed a little, James didn’t completely distance himself from me. Although he dropped the arm from my shoulder, his hand then sought my hand, and we walked the remainder of the distance hand in hand.

  We walked up and down Chinatown until we found a restaurant that looked like it would serve the kind of food we liked to eat. This was more difficult than I would have thought, as I had imagined Chinatown would be nothing but restaurants, but there seemed to be a lot of souvenir stores and similar establishments, and not as many restaurants as I would have liked. But we found one that looked good, and decided on some dishes to share. A short while later, full of dumplings, noodles and stir fries, we left to continue walking around the city. I thought James looked distracted, and after a while worked out why – he was trying to find an alternative route back to the hotel, hoping to avoid the same streets we had used previously.

  Just near our hotel, I noticed a drug store, and told James I needed to go inside. Absently he asked what for, and as I gave him ‘a look’ he flushed and said that he would just hang around the food fridges and see what they had. I located the feminine hygiene section and made my selections, stepping to the front counter to pay for my purchases. As I was taking the plastic bag that the shop assistant handed to me, James approached with a basket.

  “Look what I found”, he said as he put items on the conveyor belt, “They sell all sorts of foods here, I thought maybe we could use some of these fruits and yoghurts for breakfast, it will
be cheaper than going out for breakfast, and we can take these bottled waters out with us tomorrow, instead of having to buy it as we go. I noticed we have a bar fridge in our room, this small amount of stuff will fit in it”.

  As we left, I offered to take some of the groceries, as my bag was quite small, but James wouldn’t hear of it, so we walked the short distance back to our hotel and I opened the door as James’ hands were full of bags. I opened the fridge door for James, and he stacked the food inside as I took my purchases into the bathroom and put them away.

  We sat on the couch to watch some TV before going to bed, and as we sat, James fidgeted, seeming to move from one butt cheek to the other, and finally turned to me and said:

  “You were right about this cushion, I would have had an awful night trying to sleep, thanks for being so considerate. I will try not to be a blanket thief”, and he smiled.

  I appreciated it if James’s intention was to make me more comfortable about our sleeping arrangements, I was starting to worry about how we would deal with it. I yawned and stretched.

  “Tomorrow is probably going to be a busy day, I might get ready for bed now. If you want to stay up to watch TV, that’s fine, if you don’t, that’s fine too, whatever you like."

  I took my pyjamas into the bathroom and changed in there, brushing my teeth and washing off my eye make up. I turned off the light and headed out to the bedroom, and then stood at the bed, a thought had occurred to me, and I turned to James.