Page 14

Cultural Experience

T

here was still an hour or two of daylight when Liam and the others touched down on the grassy runway near their resort on Yasawa Island. Like before, a waiting shuttle cut down their time spent traveling back to its luxuries. Showers followed. Like always, Liam’s occurred outside, and he shared it with the bustiest woman on the island.

“Avril wants to have your tennis match tomorrow,” he told Victoria, soaping the deep curves of her body from behind. “She tried to bribe me into favoring her with my calls as the ref.”

“With?” Victoria asked, sounding wholly unsurprised.

“I’ve got your birthday down to the final two days of the trip. I wanted her to remove one of those days.”

Victoria glanced over her shoulder. Water streamed down her face and body, but her eyes still cut so sharply. However, she looked just a tiny bit amused.

“Since you’re telling me this, it sounds like you refused her.”

“I did.”

“Why?”

Liam paused. “Because… the winner should be decided by you all, not me. Fairness and all that.”

The woman who’d secretly cut a deal with him to win at their game of strip poker raised an eyebrow. “So, you’d deny me if I tried to make a counter deal to earn Anna and me some preference in the forthcoming match?”

Liam swallowed and forced out a nod. “Wouldn’t be right. Especially with the prize I have in mind for the winners.”

“Ah, the mysterious prize. How could I have forgotten?”

“Do your best to win,” Liam said, pressing his lips against Victoria’s shoulder. “I do have a preferred pair of winners in mind, though I’ve promised to be impartial tomorrow.”

“Duly noted,” Victoria said. “Well, if you can’t be bribed, I suppose I’ll keep how I would have bribed you to myself. For a time when you’re not feeling quite as virtuous.”

Liam swallowed again. He’d expected Victoria to respond differently to his revelation, not shove a second stake of regret into his ribcage.

Should have played both sides, Liam realized. They’d have been pissed at you for a little while, but maybe even impressed.

He absorbed the lesson from the missed opportunity and promised to do better next time. These women were competitive, but they also enjoyed the games that could take place behind the scenes. It was part of what enabled the relationship they now all shared.

After showering and regrouping with the others, Anna mentioned wanting to attend a cultural experience that was due to begin at the resort in roughly ten minutes. After they all agreed it was worth attending, they made tracks in the sand toward where it would be held. Sitting on log seats in a circle around a small fire with several other resort guests, Liam listened to their speaker—a broad-shouldered Fijian who knew a few tricks with fire that he used to enhance the show—share a mix of legend, lore, and verifiable facts.

A musical accompaniment aided his storytelling, the most prominent instrument being called a lali. It was a type of drum which the person manning it used with striking—literally, as he wielded a pair of thick, carved sticks in his hands—efficiency. The instrument resembled a hollowed-out canoe, large enough for a small child to fit inside. The performer matched the orator’s intensity, upping and lowering the power behind his strikes with the practice of a hundred prior tandem performances.

During the storytelling, the orator passed out a mix of props to the tourists, discussing each one. These included Fijian clothing, such as their warrior skirts, and more. Near the end of the performance, he passed out dark clay bowls, which he informed them they could keep and have filled if they wished to visit the nearby Fijian village on the morrow, where a second show involving a lovo—an underground oven meant for feasts—and a fire dance would be held. After that, he opened things up for questioning, happily answering them for a time.

The timing of his chosen ending was impeccable, with the last glimmers of sunlight pulling back right as he finished answering the final question. Some guests drifted away during the question-and-answer portion, satisfied by what they’d learned during the trip. Others, Anna among them, were happy to linger—and so Liam was too.

Sitting with Avril and Victoria, they discussed their forthcoming dinner plans, some of what they’d been educated on today, and tomorrow’s planned tennis match.

“We’ll get to it early,” Avril said. “Not too early, but early.”

Victoria found no issue with that, and once Anna was ready to go, the five of them made their way to the resort restaurant. Neither Anna nor Tess complained about the plans, yet Liam noticed a growing sense of competitiveness throughout the rest of the night. During dinner, on the way back to Anna, Avril, and Tess’s bure, and while the five of them spent a relaxed evening under the stars, breathing in the salty tang sitting in the wind.

When he and Victoria made it back to their bure, she coaxed him into a few games of chess. Afterward, with them retiring fairly early, Victoria’s desire to get a good night’s sleep somewhat truncated their evening fun. Part of him wondered if they’d skip things altogether tomorrow morning, but Liam didn’t fret much over it. So long as Anna and Victoria won, he’d make up for lost time. Even if they didn’t, biased as he was toward their victory, he knew he’d still very much enjoy the coming evening.

About eight hours later, Liam woke up a little before Victoria. Letting her sleep in, he went about his morning ritual with quiet steps. After taking care of his hygiene-related needs, he found her sitting up in bed.

“Come here,” she said, dropping the covers and revealing her heavenly breasts.

So, no, the morning fun didn’t end up being skipped. It was as much a part of his morning ritual as anything else.