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    Fred
    Fred
    Fred
    Ebook106 pages1 hour

    Fred

    By Joe Bondi Beach

    ()

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    About this ebook

    In this sequel to "Sarah's Honeymoon," the relationship begun with a stranger on Sarah's own honeymoon grew into a lifelong romance after Sarah and Matt married. Their love grew to include Fredericka, a refugee from abuse.

    For their twenty-fifth anniversary, Sarah, Matt, Fredericka, and their four children returned to the island where Sarah and Matt first met. Adventure ensued.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLulu.com
    Release dateAug 4, 2019
    ISBN9780359825189
    Fred

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      Book preview

      Fred - Joe Bondi Beach

      Fred

      FRED

      Joe Bondi Beach

      Also by Joe Bondi Beach

      California Central Valley Summer Heat

      Swimming with Kate

      Sarah’s Honeymoon

      Cheerleaders in Paradise

      A New Life for Julie

      Chloe

      A Picnic with April

      Julie

      Emily

      Micol: Three Stories (Ed.)

      Emily and Daniel

      Spring Break in Napa

      and Other Stories

      Morning at the Baths

      Julie’s Spring

      Goddess

      Redemption

      Promise

      Cocksucking

      Azotea

      Contessa

      Stockings

      Sarah’s Honeymoon

      and Other Stories

      Harper

      Amélie

      Copyright

      FRED

      Copyright © 2019 by Joe Bondi Beach

      All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

      First ePub Edition

      August 2019

      Find digital and print titles by Joe Bondi Beach at Lulu and other online booksellers.

      ISBN: 978-0-359-82518-9

      This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

      Clearing Rain Press

      El Cerrito, California

      [email protected]

      Acknowledgements

      With thanks once more to S, especially for her cover image suggestions, and to N, who helped me see the life Sarah and Matt made together.

      The cover and frontispiece image is derived from Sunrise on the beach at the Gran Bahia Principe resort, Dominican Republic (2013), by Joe deSousa. According to the relevant Creative Commons license, it is in the public domain.

      The endpaper image is a detail from and transformation of Ama, date and artist unknown. The derived image is Copyright 2019 by Joe Bondi Beach.

      Use of these derived images does not constitute any endorsement of this work or its author by the artists or models.

      Harper’s journal was published earlier as Harper (2018). The Prologue is a slightly edited excerpt from Sarah’s Honeymoon (2016).

      FRED

      On the southwest side of Capri

      we found a little unknown grotto

      where no people were and we

      entered it completely

      and let our bodies lose all

      their loneliness.

      — From Nude Swim in Love Poems,

      by Anne Sexton (1989 edition)

      Prologue

      We're in the departure lounge. Flight about to be called. I'm remembering a conversation Sarah and I had a long time ago.

      I don't think I've met very many red-headed Sarahs.

      She laughed.

      Mom told me she was going through her Old Testament phase when I was born. I guess she liked the name. I don't have much in common with the original Sarah. My family is Irish, I'm Catholic, and I'm not going to wait until I'm ninety years old to have children, that's for sure.

      For sure, that not-waiting thing. Four children in our household now, and that's probably as many as we can handle. Not to mention two dogs, three cats, and one turtle. And a snake. Jesus. Why did we ever let Allison have a snake?

      It was twenty-five years for us last month, and we're heading for the island where we first met to celebrate. We still swim nude whenever we can, the kids, too, but Sarah isn't going out on that little beach alone this time.

      †

      Two long flights with a layover in Miami. The kids are with us, but our kid-wrangling expertise won't be needed today. Two of the kids are twenty-something adults now and the two younger ones, also adults, are not far behind them.

      There's time for me to remember and reflect.

      1

      Bill

      I did not

      expect to like Bill, Sarah’s then-husband. To start with, his aversion to oral sex made him sound weird. I’d told Sarah, when she first revealed this after we met on her honeymoon, that I didn’t think there was a guy anywhere, no matter which team he played for, who didn’t like a blowjob. So I was prepared to meet a stick-in-the-mud. On the other hand, I knew he couldn’t be too much of a jerk or Sarah wouldn’t have married him.

      Was he gay? I have no idea. Sarah says they weren’t on the same wavelength and that’s enough for me.

      Instead of the strange person I’d feared I found an intelligent, funny and interesting guy. Except for his obsession with deep-sea fishing, he seemed pretty normal. Fishing never interested me, although my business partner Doug had explained more than once it wasn’t really about the fish. It was about a lot of other things. The fish were an object of meditation, or a means to meditation and self-knowledge, he said. I found that hard to believe.

      Matt, unless you’re really lucky you’re going to spend a lot of time sitting around, Doug told me when I called bullshit on his argument. We’d had a couple of beers and were starting to feel pretty mellow. So you’ve got plenty of time to think.

      Sure, buddy, I interrupted him. So what about that cooler of beer you always take along for the day? Don’t tell me that never gets cracked open.

      He laughed.

      You bet it does. But that’s just lubrication for your mind. Unless you’ve got a pretty rowdy bunch aboard. Then all bets are off.

      Bill echoed Doug’s enthusiasm for fishing. I met him on one of my first trips to Santa Barbara after he and Sarah decided to split. I’d come down to give Sarah a hand in packing. They were going to put the house on the market.

      Sarah and I hadn’t made a formal commitment yet. I was there as a good friend, but Bill made his view clear.

      Look, Matt, I don’t know you at all, but Sarah likes you. I don’t need to hear anything else.

      He looked me straight in the eye.

      Take care of her, Matt, he said, and let me know when the big day comes.

      Whoa, Bill, we’re good friends. That’s it.

      He shook his head.

      Unless you’re bullshitting me you’re pretty much without a clue, Matt. I’ve known Sarah a long time. She’s got her eye on you, and you’re toast. Bill laughed. Seriously, she and I were friends long before we began to date. Maybe getting married wasn’t the best idea, but she means a lot to me.

      †

      In California there are a handful of grounds to have a marriage annulled. They decided Bill would assert he’d entered into the marriage without intending to fulfill his marital responsibilities. Neither of us would contest the assertion, Sarah told me. Bill called in a favor or two and got onto the court’s docket when a couple of parties ahead of us settled out of court. We got our hearing only forty-five days after we filed."

      She fiddled with her coffee cup.

      You know, this wasn’t all that far from the truth. Bill can speak for himself, but I think he simply hadn’t thought the whole thing through. I don’t know if he realizes it even now. Anyway, the judge bought it and granted the annulment. Bill and I shook hands and walked out together. It might have cast doubt on our sincerity if we’d hugged and kissed, which we almost did, but perhaps not. We never claimed we hated each other, only that the marriage had failed on the most basic requirement of all. Sex.

      Sarah did invite Bill to our wedding, and after the ceremony they kissed like the old friends they were and would continue to be.

      Keep her safe, Matt.

      Without thinking

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