“I’m not telling.” I giggled. “Then it wouldn’t be a surprise.”
“Oh come on!” He stopped packing and came over to me. “If you don’t tell I’ll be forced to get the information out of you by other means.”
“What other means?” I giggled more and found out as he started tickling me. “I’m not telling!” I squealed and the two of us fell onto the bed where I squirmed, writhed, laughed and tried to get away. Soon I was bucking my hips underneath him and I quickly realized that he was becoming highly aroused.
“Gabrielle, I think it’s time for a quickie,” he said thickly and started kissing my neck. I moaned and wrapped my legs around him.
And then the knock on the door came. Because you knew that there had to be a knock on the door. Braden and I practiced coitus interruptus more often than most Catholics.
“Yes?!” Braden called out none too warmly.
“I’m sorry guys!” Cam answered sounding embarrassed. “The food’s here, though, and everyone’s waiting.”
“Okay! We’ll be right there!” I called out in what I hoped was a light cheerful voice and I heard him walk away.
“Does it seem like we don’t get to have sex very often without a waiting period being involved?” Braden asked, rolling onto his back and staring at the ceiling blankly.
“It’ll be worth the wait,” I rolled onto my tummy, gently stroked his hair and leaned down to kiss him softly on the forehead. He looked up at me for a second and smiled and then got up silently and went to go splash cold water on his face and pace around to reestablish the blood flow. Five minutes later we sat down at the table to dig in to our Italian cuisine. Braden was still not looking very jolly though.
“Oh, I think someone’s a Gloomy Gus,” Adam said with barely suppressed mirth.
“I’m sorry I bothered you guys,” Cameron said, looking a bit more contrite but also rather amused. “We’re running kind of late though.” He shrugged and pointed at his watch helplessly.
“Your fiancée there has us scheduled for drinks with the X-Files gang tonight,” Adam, who obviously had a death wish, went on. “Wouldn’t want to be late for that.”
“I was looking at the schedule,” Lily chimed in. “They’ve got a local historian coming to tell the stories of both the UFO sighting and the ghosts that supposedly haunt this place.”
“I’m sure that’s much more fun than whatever you had planned, Brade.” Adam smiled.
“Keep it up and you’ll be the next ghost haunting this place,” Braden said, which just made Adam laugh more.
“So, we listen to the historian and…?” Jess asked Lily who was still reading the schedule.
“And there’s a ‘meet and greet’ and then some folks will be heading out to the woods to see if they spot any UFOs,” Lily answered.
“How about instead of searching for aliens and sitting in a forest at night we come back here and search for some alcohol and sit in the hot tub?” Jess suggested.
“Ah! Come on! I wanted to hunt the aliens!” Cam laughed.
“How long do the lecture and the meet and greet last?” Braden asked. I had a feeling he was mentally counting down the minutes until we could go to bed.
“Um, well it runs from eight until ten,” Lily answered. “And it’s seven-thirty now so we’ll have just enough time to clean up and head over to the Lodge.”
We finished up and while Jess and I cleaned up and Lily stocked the kitchen with the few groceries we had brought along, Cam and Adam stocked the bar with the large supply of alcohol we had brought. Braden, meanwhile, checked to make sure that the hot tub was working and to quickly finish our unpacking. Twenty minutes later we headed to the Lodge on foot. It took less than five minutes to get there but the darkness and woods made it feel kind of spooky. When we arrived we followed signs to the saloon where the ‘meet and greet’ was taking place. As soon as we got in the door we saw a table with “Hello” badges and went over to fill them out. The ink had barely dried when we were approached by a positively exuberant couple with badges indicating that they were Earl and Marge.
“Hello there!” Earl said enthusiastically. “Earl Samuels, and my better half, Marge.” He reached out a hand and vigorously pumped all of our arms a few times.
“Nice to meet you!” The woman, who resembled a codfish, said in a slightly manic voice. Marge looked like she had drunk about sixteen pots of coffee.
We introduced ourselves and they shared that they had been attending this conference for several years. We also learned that Earl sold insurance and Marge was a service desk manager at K-Mart and that they both firmly believed that aliens walked among us. Yeah, this was going to be a long night. We finally managed to extricate ourselves and make it to the bar.
“Did you think that Earl could be the shadow?” I asked Adam.
“It’s hard to tell. Like I said, I didn’t get a great look at his face. I thought he might have been a little younger, but Earl seems to be in decent shape and he’s about the right size. It’s possible.”
“They didn’t act like they recognized us, though,” Braden commented.
“Marge seemed pretty nervous,” I pointed out.
“Honey, I get the feeling that Marge is nervous a lot,” Jess put in.
After fortifying ourselves with alcohol we decided to work the room a little more. The next couple to approach looked like former hippies. They appeared to be in their sixties and it seemed like they hadn’t had a haircut since then either. The woman was dressed like a gypsy and the man was dressed like Tonto.
“Hello,” said the woman pleasantly. “I’m Rain and this is my lover Forrest.” I laughed loudly. Nobody else laughed at all, loudly or otherwise.
“Oh!” I said. “You weren’t kidding.” Braden quickly pulled me to his side and reached out to shake their hands.
“I’m Braden, my fiancée Gabrielle, our friends Cameron, Jessica, Adam and Lily.” They all smiled and waved to Rain and Forrest.
“Wow man, it’s really cool to have new people here!” Forrest said. “We want to share your thoughts so I hope that you’ll take some time and rap with us.”
“Well, personally, I don’t really like rap, but I do like the blues,” I assured him.
“What he means is that we want the information to flow freely. We are all here to explore the possibilities and expand our minds,” Rain added helpfully.