“Eeeeew! Women know that goofy look. She must have thought you were making a pass at her! Ugh! The waiters are probably still wondering what’s wrong with you.” Amy laughed and ran her hands through his hair. “Very resourceful, Commander. Now maybe we don’t have to worry about being invited again. Or maybe we do.” She raised her hips and pushed down on his shoulders. “If you see something you like, don’t let me get in your way.”

“Look who’s making it nice. I love you, Amy.”

“Lower.”

He made that old, bad joke, she gave him a noogie, a little one, and then rubbed it better, and he got busy, gently. Very gently. She rubbed his head and worked her hips. She had never had to teach him anything about this. He’d done it right the first time he’d ever got her pants down. Fifteen years old. After that, she’d known exactly what she would get for her sixteenth birthday. “I almost couldn’t wait,” said the birthday girl that night. She’d been in love with him ever since. She held his head and worked her hips faster. When she began to feel too sensitive, unable to take anymore, he raised her legs and filled her. She climaxed quickly, with a shuddering sigh, and then him, and soon after they were asleep, still tightly coupled, holding each other.

They made love again at dawn, awakening ready for it, without foreplay, much talk or even thinking, their own long slow ride, the odor of their sex strong in the moist air. Nice, they whispered to each other. Nice. Exchanging nuzzles and little kisses, the muscles of her vagina whispering involuntary contractions around him in the way they had discovered years ago so he could almost feel the dampness of those old country sheets of their very first afternoons together. He had to look into her eyes to see if she was remembering, too, and he wanted to think she was. They had this moment with each other more times than he could count. She hugged him tightly and spurred him to the short strokes, ending in a very sudden rush of orgasm together, another emptying of the tension that had been concealing his exhaustion this past month. Soon he was thinking he wanted to do it again, but he was asleep again before he knew it, awakening when he heard the shower at two-oh-three in the afternoon, according to the digits of the hotel clock radio.

He rotated through the bathroom one step behind her, hugging her, kissing her breasts and backside. She gave him that little-girl smile that said they were fine again.

“Are you hungry?”

“Starving. For food.”

“That’s what I meant. For food.”

“Well, food first.”

“Come to think of it, we won’t really starve.”

“No, we really won’t.