For perhaps twenty years, Adam had one thing at the top of his bucket list: to have sex with a woman who enjoyed it, or at least acted like she did.

Well, he thought as he awakened early the next morning to the nearly-forgotten sensation of having a woman in bed with him, I can mark that one off the list. And with a big black marker, too.

It had not been the performance he’d expected out of a mid-fifties woman who he thought of as an “old maid schoolteacher.” Not that it had been wild or athletic – just intense and sensual, and Carolyn had clearly enjoyed it as much as he had. That was something new in his experience; until this night he’d never had sex with a woman besides Brittany, who tolerated sex at best – and her best had been pretty rare. It had been years since he’d even gone to the trouble of trying; it just hadn’t been worth it.

If he’d had any doubts about the wisdom of divorcing Brittany – and he hadn’t – they were gone, washed away by the enjoyable time he’d spent in the cabin of the Knick-Knack. It wasn’t the feeling that better times lay ahead, but the feeling that some bad times were clearly in the past.

He wasn’t sure how long he laid there next to her, his mind running in neutral, just enjoying the afterglow of what had been an incredible evening, but after a while he noticed her stirring. Her eyes opened, and she got a smile on her face. “Well, good morning,” she said softly. “How are you today?”

“Better than I was this time yesterday.”

“I think I am, too,” she replied in no more than a whisper. “I needed that. It’s been a long time.”

“It has for me, too. Much too long.”

“Adam, I don’t want to rush you, but at my age when I wake up in the morning I need to use the bathroom.”

“It’s that way for me, too,” he said, stirring around to get out of her way; there was only one way out of the dinette that had been quickly made down into a rather narrow double bunk. “I’ve been gritting my teeth because I didn’t want to wake you up.”

“Same here,” she smiled. “I was getting to the point where I was going to have to wake you up anyway.”

“You go first,” he offered as he got to his feet in the narrow spot available on the floor. “I’ll poke my head out of the hatch, and if there’s no one around I’ll go hang it over the side.”

“That’s one advantage to being a man,” she said as she sat up.

Adam slid back the hatch and looked out – from what he could see there was no one around, at least not very close; a power boat was a mile or more away, probably fishing for walleye. He slid the screen out of the hatch, scrambled out on deck, and soon felt very relieved. He took the time to look around; it was about the same as the day before, the same milky blue sky, the same oily-smooth water. Everything seemed fine around the boat.

Eventually he heard noises coming from the cabin, so he looked back inside. “Boy, there’s just about no room in that head, is there?” she commented.

“I think that’s so you don’t fall off if you have to sit on it in heavy seas,” he snickered. “If we’re up to stay, maybe we should break down the bunk and get some breakfast going.”

“Breakfast would be nice,” she smiled. “But if you’re interested, we don’t have to break the bunk down just yet. I mean, I hate to waste the opportunity.”

“My feelings exactly.”

It was a very pleasurable hour and a half later before they decided it was time to get up and stay up – an hour and a half that was better, if possible, than the night before had been. Carolyn was not only comfortable with doing things that Brittany would never have considered, she’d been enthusiastic about them; as a result, they’d done things he’d never dared to dream about and had enjoyed every minute of it. It had finally tailed off into just lying on the rather thin padding of the bunk, touching a little, kissing a little and enjoying it a lot.

“You know,” she finally said. “Coffee sounds pretty good right about now.”

“I think so too,” he sighed. “I could spend the day doing this, but I guess we’d better face the music.”

“Tell you what. We’re both pretty sweaty. Maybe we’d better take a dip in the lake before we get dressed.”

“I’m up for it,” he said. “But let’s break the bunk down so we’ve got some room to move around in here.”

It was only the matter of a couple minutes to turn the bunk back into a dinette. In the process, Carolyn stuck her head out of the hatch and looked around. “No one out there,” she said. “The hell with swimsuits.”

Adam turned to go get the swim ladder out from under the V-berth when he heard a splash outside. He glanced around to see no sign of Carolyn, and it didn’t take much to put two and two together. His suspicions were confirmed when he heard her yell, “Hey Adam! Come on in! The water’s fine!”

It was a couple minutes before he got the swim ladder rigged, and then he jumped into the water himself. The lake proved to be comfortable, just pleasantly cool on what was clearly going to be a hot day. They swam around a little, mostly laughing and having a good time before they finally got back on the boat. Carolyn plopped down on one of the cockpit seats, still in the nude, of course, and said, “Now I think I’m ready for some coffee.”

“I think I could handle a cup, too,” he said, feeling refreshed after his swim. He headed below, got some water in the old-fashioned percolator, put some coffee in the basket and set it going on the stove. While he worked at it, he was still impressed at how different it was. Even if he’d been able to get Brittany on a boat – and not much chance of that – there still would have been absolutely no chance whatsoever for a morning bout of lovemaking or a morning skinny dip over the side. Even if it never happened again, there was no chance that he’d ever think about going back to what he’d had.

Breakfast was a little on the skimpy side – some instant oatmeal, and some day-old doughnuts he’d bought at the supermarket, but he and Carolyn ate it out in the cockpit, neither of them yet bothering to put any clothes on. The coffee tasted good, though – fresh and real, black and unadorned, not like the fancy coffee you had to pay five bucks a cup for in trendy coffee shops.

In time, he got the coffeepot and warmed up both their mugs. “Adam,” she said finally. “I’m very glad you invited me along on this trip, and I’m very glad we wound up anchoring here. We couldn’t have done anything like that in a crowded harbor.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “This hasn’t worked out anything like I expected, but I’ve really enjoyed it.”

“You sure acted like you did,” she smiled. “And I sure have been enjoying it, too. But Adam, maybe there’s something I ought to make clear to you.”

Oh-oh, here it comes, he thought. I knew this was too good to be true. “What’s that?”

“Like I said, I enjoyed this a lot, and maybe we can do it again sometime. But don’t start thinking about anything permanent, because it’s not going to happen.”

“Carolyn?”

“Look, Adam,” she sighed. “I like my life the way it is. I enjoy being a teacher and I plan to keep on doing it for a while. But I’ve come to like being single and the freedom it gives me. It’s no secret that I haven’t had much luck with relationships.”

“That’s what I understand from Jake,” he replied, feeling some dreams that had been slowly building in his mind get dashed.

“To make a long story short, it was their fault, but it was my fault, too. I’m a pretty independent person, and I like it like that. I got engaged three different times but it broke up each time. The third time, I realized that at least a part of the reason things went bad was that I really didn’t want to be married. I didn’t want to be tied down to one guy, and having to bend my life to fit his. After that, I quit trying, and decided to just be my own person and live my own life.”

“I thought there must be some good reason for it.”

“I’m not sure it’s a good reason, but I’m old enough to realize I don’t want to change things now. Like I said, I like my life the way it is. I know some people think of me as an old maid schoolteacher, and I guess in one sense of the word that’s what I am. But I do enjoy having some fun every now and then, and, well, a good lusty roll in the hay every now and then is part of it. That was a good one, Adam, and I’m not saying we might not do it again some time, but I don’t want to make a habit of it. Adam, if we let things get too serious I don’t think I’d like it, and I don’t think you’d like it, either.”

“Well, when you put it that way, I think you might have something there. At least you have the maturity to know what you want your life to be like. I certainly didn’t have it when I married Brittany, and I spent a good many years paying the price.”

“I know you did, and while you and I haven’t been close, I hear a lot through the family about Brittany, and I often wondered how you put up with it for as long as you did.”

“Inertia, as much as anything else,” he sighed. “That and Matt. It was never good, but for a long time it wasn’t bad enough to make an issue out of it. Or, at least I thought it wasn’t bad enough, but last night you taught me I was wrong on that, teacher.”

“Good, then maybe you learned something,” she smirked. “And who knows, maybe I can teach you a little more along the way, because you’re a good student. What I’m saying is that I’d love it if you asked me to go cruising again in the future, and while I hate to use the term, it’s appropriate – I’d really enjoy it if we can be occasional fuck buddies along the way. It’s just that I don’t want to commit myself to anything more than that.”

“I think I can get along with that,” he said, trying not to let the vague disappointment he felt show. At least this didn’t look like it was going to turn into a total loss.

“If we can remember what we’re doing, that will be fine,” she said. “But there’s one other thing. We’re going to have to keep pretty quiet about this, and I’m sure you realize why. I don’t think it’s a good idea for it to become known around Amherst that I occasionally like to get a little loose, so I’ve always stuck to the old Army rule of keeping affairs a hundred miles from the flagpole.”

“That’s shouldn’t be much problem. I don’t know how far Amherst is, but it has to be at least a hundred miles.”

“I’m not worried about Amherst,” she said. “I’m thinking of my folks. They don’t know that I, uh, sleep around a little. I mean, not that I do it very much, but well, they have this vision of me that I don’t want to disturb. And on top of that, my folks are pretty close to Brittany’s folks. Does that suggest anything to you?”

“Yeah, shit,” he replied. “Brittany is going to be moving down there, so anything from your folks about me is going to go right straight to her. She could raise hell, not that it really matters to me.”

“But it does to me,” she said soberly. “Adam, my folks have been bugging me for, hell, thirty years, about getting married, and I think they’ve come to understand that I have no intention of doing it. But if they knew we were getting it on, well, the old issues would start up all over again. And I don’t want to think about the stink Brittany would make.”

“No shit. Even though we’re divorced, she knows and I think she understands there’s no hope of us getting back together; having her know that we’re sniffing around each other would light her up like a Christmas tree.”

“And her folks would get an earful of it, which means that I’d get an earful of it from mine. That’s something I would really rather avoid. But, if we watch ourselves, I think we can avoid it. For years, my folks have known that I occasionally take off for a weekend and don’t fill them in on the details. Sometimes I just stay home and unplug the phone, but after many years I’ve finally gotten them out of the habit of snooping on everything I do. That’s something else I don’t want to mess up.”

“I can see how it wouldn’t take much to upset a delicate balance.”

“You get the picture. By the way, Jake doesn’t know much about how I really feel about this. I get up to see him a couple times a year, maybe a little more often than that. So that means you can’t even hint around about our arrangement to him, either.”

“I don’t see Jake that often myself, at least not these days,” he said. “I mean, last summer I was up there to go out on the Pixie every chance I could get, but I haven’t been up there since we went sailing on this boat that time.”

“He knows we went sailing that time, and that’s not a problem, but we might want to be a little careful about letting him know we’re going out on overnight cruises together once in a while. And I do want to go again Adam. This has been an awful lot of fun in more ways than one, even if we didn’t make it to Put-In-Bay this time. I can’t do it every weekend and I do have other things to do this summer, but maybe we can get together and be fuck buddies two or three more times before fall. Once school is back in session, things might get a little stickier since I have more things I have to do on the weekends, but we still might be able to get together once in a while even if it doesn’t involve going out on the boat.”

“I’m looking forward to it, and not just for the fuck buddies part,” he said. “If we don’t go to Put-In-Bay, there are other places we can go. I’ve found that it’s a lot more fun to have someone along with me. And, by the way, we don’t have to keep it to the weekends. There’s no reason I can’t juggle things around to be away from work for two or three days during the week.”

“That’s good to know. It opens up an awful lot more options.”

“Yeah, along with the fact that places like Put-In-Bay won’t be quite as crowded during the week as they are on the weekends.”

They sat there talking about it a bit more, but for the most part they’d said about what they’d had to say on that topic. The hopes he’d allowed to build up for a few hours that he’d found someone to solve his companion problem had been just that, hopes; it was clear now that he hadn’t solved the problem. But it was an improvement; having an occasional sailing companion and fuck buddy beat the hell out of not having one at all. And it was a whole hell of a lot better than having a cold fish like Brittany instead. All in all, while he hadn’t solved the problem, he had few complaints at this point.

Eventually they finished off the coffee – it didn’t taste quite as good as it had when it was fresh and hot, but it still tasted awfully good here at anchor behind West Sister Island. “I suppose we ought to think about getting under way,” he told Carolyn. “I mean, I could sit here all day but it’s going to be getting hot before long.”

“I suppose you’re right. Are we still going to go to Put-In-Bay?”

“Not this weekend, I think, unless you can come up with some objection. I don’t think we’re going to have as much wind as we had yesterday, and it’s going to be pretty much in our faces on the way. We could be all day getting back to Frenchtown Harbor and the outboard might have to help us out in the end.”

“Well, I can think of worse ways to spend the day than sailing into a little breeze. We can go to Put-In-Bay some other time.”

They busied themselves with getting ready to go. There really wasn’t much to be done; do a few dishes and pick up below, then break out the sails and get the anchor up. In a few minutes they were drifting out of the lee of the island, the sails pretty close to slack. But once out of the wind shadow of the island the sails at least filled, although they weren’t going very fast.

“The sun is getting up to the point where we probably ought to be thinking about sunscreen,” Adam observed as they settled down on their homeward course. “Or, getting some clothes on. A full-body sunburn might be hard for you to explain to your folks.”

“If you don’t mind, I think I’ll take a pass on the clothes for a while,” she grinned. “But sunscreen isn’t a bad idea.”

“Well, now that you mention it, I think I’ll take a pass on the clothes for a while, although I think I want to wear a hat. I suppose you haven’t told your parents you’re a secret nudist, either.”

“I’m not,” she smiled. “Oh, one time a few years ago some friends of mine took me to a nudist camp for a weekend, and it was fun, but it isn’t something I’d do for its own sake. But sailing across a lake on a hot day with someone I like, that’s not the same thing.”

“No, it isn’t he agreed, taking a moment to check her out once again. She didn’t exactly have the body of a teenager; she was in her fifties, after all, but it was a well-preserved age, and she didn’t look bad. Once again, he couldn’t imagine anything like this weekend happening with Brittany. It was well beyond the realm of possibility in this universe.

The Knick-Knack drifted on at something less than the speed of a good walk; Adam occasionally checked their position with the GPS, and could see they were making progress, although not a lot of it. It looked like they’d be back to Frenchtown Harbor before dark, and really, that was about the best he could ask for.

“You know,” he said sometime after noon, as they sat in the sun, still nude, while they each sipped on a cold beer. “The heck of it is that there aren’t a lot of places to go for a weekend on Lake Erie, at least sailing out of Frenchtown Harbor, and most of the time they’re pretty crowded. I haven’t been to Put-In-Bay, but I’m told it’s pretty much wall-to-wall boats on the weekend. We were lucky to find a quiet spot to anchor behind West Sister, but it was worth it.”

“Yes, it was,” she agreed. “But I can tell you’ve got your mind on something.”

“Well, throwing it around a little, I guess. I mean, I bought this boat to learn how to sail it and get more confident with it, and it’s accomplishing what I wanted it for. But I’m finding that I like cruising more than I expected, even though I haven’t done much of it. I keep thinking that this thing was designed to be a trailer boat.”

“You’re saying take it somewhere where cruising would be more interesting?”

“Yeah, put it on the trailer and go somewhere with it. It would have to be something where we’d be gone for a week or so, but it could be done. I’m thinking maybe Georgian Bay. From what I’m told there’s plenty of quiet places to poke into up there, without lots of crowds and some pretty wild country.”

“It sounds like it has lots of potential, Adam. I know this boat is a little cramped, but it’d be possible to live on it for a week or so without it getting too bad.”

“That’s what I’m thinking. It would give me a little better taste of cruising, and maybe a little more input about what I want when I get around to buying a bigger boat. Think about it, real blue water, at least a little wilderness, and not muddy old Lake Erie.”

“Hey, you don’t have to talk me into it. You’ve done that already, if we can work out a time we can both go. I have a few things planned, but the one firm thing is that I need to be back in Amherst by about the second half of August. I’ll have plenty to do to get ready for the new school year starting.”

“That narrows it down quite a bit,” he replied thoughtfully. “Realistically, I can’t take off for that kind of time before the end of July. I still have the probate court date for my father’s estate, and as soon as that’s out of the way I’m going to have some work at the company I have to get done. But a week or so along about the first part of August in Georgian Bay sounds like it has a lot of potential.”

“Sounds good to me. Tell you what. Let’s shoot for about the second full week of August. That’ll keep me from wanting to let it run on too long.”

“Great. That’ll give me some time to research the sailing up there, get some charts, and that kind of thing. I won’t stock up much more than a week’s worth of food, and maybe that’ll keep us from going overtime, too. We can firm up the dates as we get a little closer, since there are some things coming up that could derail those plans. I hope not, but we have to be prepared for them.”

“Sounds like a plan,” she smiled. “Just remember, not a word to Jake about my going along, either.”

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