Chapter 1

I was sitting in my favorite restaurant, one where I ate breakfast four or five times a week, and working on the New York Times crossword puzzle when the waitress slid onto the seat across from me.

"Well Rob, are you ready yet?" Dixie asked.

I knew what she was asking so I gave her a shrug and said, "Not yet Dixie. Not quite yet."

"It has been six months Rob. You need to get over it and I'm the girl who wants to help you do it."

"I thank you for that Dixie, but I don't know if I'll ever be ready."

"Come on Rob. You can't go the rest of your life without. For one thing it isn't natural and secondly it isn't healthy. I give great head Rob and I promise you that I can fuck your brains out. I can make you forget her Rob. All you have to do is give me a chance."

"You forget Dixie; I've already been there and I know what I'm passing up, but I'm just not up to it."

"When you are Rob just remember I'm here. I will tell you this. If I ever get my hooks in you again I promise that I'll never let go."

She got up and went back to waiting on customers and as I watched her walk away I wondered where we might have been if I had refused to take "no" for an answer.

I met Dixie on the day I had returned home from spending three years in the Army. It was a Wednesday when the bus let me off on the corner of Evans and Silver Hope and as it pulled away I saw Angie's Café across the street. It had been a long bus ride and I was tired and hungry. My plan was to walk over to where my dad worked and ride home with him, but it would be two hours before he got off so I walked across the street to Angie's.

Angie was at the register when I walked in and when she saw me she came out from behind the counter, took me in a big hug, gave me a kiss and said:

"Welcome home Rob. Your dad said that you would be coming home soon."

I'd known Angie forever. I had dated both of her daughters and I'd spent my seventeenth summer working for her as a dishwasher. She walked me to a booth, sat down with me and asked me what my plans were.

"Get a job and get on with my life."

She laughed and said, "That life won't include Linda or Lori. They are both married now and Linda is expecting."

"My loss. Too bad I felt the need to go and put some excitement in my life."

"Did you?"

"Did I what?"

"Find the excitement that you were looking for?"

"Not much excitement in being a clerk in supply. I did get to see Japan, Korea and Hawaii which I probably wouldn't have if I'd stayed home."

A customer walked up to the register so Angie got up to go and take his money and as she slid out of the booth a totally hot redhead walked up and Angie said:

"Take good care of him Dixie."

The redhead smiled at me and said, "I wonder just how good she wants me to take care of you."

One thing I have never been is shy and so I said, "Since she is your boss I think you should keep her happy and that means you should treat me in such a way that I tell Angie good things about you."

"What do you think it would take for you to make a good report?"

"We need to sit down and discuss that. What time do you get off and what are your days off?"

"Five and Thursday Friday."

"Tell me where to pick you up tomorrow and at what time."

"What if I say "Whoa up there hoss; you are moving a little too fast."

"I give Angie a really, really bad report."

"Oh God, we would not want that" and that is the way my relationship with Dixie started.

We were sharing beds after the third date and we went at it hot and heavy for the next six months and then I asked her to marry me. She said no. She thanked me for asking and then told me that while she had some strong feelings for me she just wasn't ready to settle down.

"I'm young Rob and I want to have some fun while I can."

Instead of trying to talk her into changing her mind I got pissed and decided "Who needs her anyway" and I started looking for other opportunities. I started dating and I avoided Angie's except on Dixie's days off. After about three months I did stop in at Angie's on a Saturday and Dixie was the waitress for the section I sat down in.

"Where have you been Rob? I haven't heard from you in a while."

"Didn't want to interfere with your having fun."

"Why would you say something like that?"

"Isn't that what you told me? You wouldn't marry me because you wanted to have fun? To me that meant that you weren't having fun with me so I got out of your way. I'll have the short stack with a side of bacon."

She wrote the order down and walked off in a huff and when she brought me my order she set it down in front of me and walked off without a word. From then on I made sure that I didn't sit in Dixie's section when I stopped at Angie's.

It was a little over a year after Dixie and I split that I met Ellen. A week after I'd gotten home from the Army I'd gotten a job in the warehouse at Wayman Industries. They hired me because they wanted someone with strong inventory management skills and that was pretty much what I did in the Army. Inside of six months I had everything computerized and inventory controls in place. The bean counters said that the system that I had put into place was saving the company between 16 and 20k a year just in materials. Who was I to argue with them?

When the manager of my department retired I was offered his job and I took it. As a manager I had to attend meeting and it was at one of those meetings that I met Ellen. Ellen worked in purchasing and we had talked a time or two on the phone when she had called for information on order points or some such, but we had never met face to face.

We ended up sitting next to each other at the meeting and we got to talking at the break. It turned out that we both had a lot in common. We both liked bowling, NASCAR racing and country-western dancing, but the thing we really had in common were the places we had been. She was an Army brat and she had been to Japan, Korea and Hawaii with her dad and mom. We got to comparing what cities we had been to and what places we had visited and we were still at it when the meeting resumed. I asked her if she would like to continue over dinner and to my great delight she said yes.

After the meeting we went to Sabatini's for dinner and I enjoyed her company enough that I asked her for a date. She said yes and Saturday night I took her to The Rose where we could dance to the music of Jimmy Little and The Barnyard Stompers. After we found a table and had ordered drinks I pulled her over to where a line dance was setting up.

"I thought real cowboys didn't line dance" she said as I moved us into position.

"I'm not a cowboy little lady; just a poor boy who works in a warehouse."

"Yeah, right" she said as the music started.

Ellen taught me the Electric Slide and I taught her the finer points of the 'Tush Push' but what Ellen was really into was western swing and that girl could go all night. I was worn to a frazzle when last call came, but she seemed fresh as a daisy and acted like she could go all night.

When I got her home and walked her to her door she went up on her toes and kissed my cheek, told me she'd had fun and then she said:

"We just have to do this again."

We did do it again — a half dozen times — and each time I felt like we had something good going. For the first time in my life I was afraid of doing the wrong thing and scaring the girl off so I did nothing except keep asking for dates. Then came the night when I took Ellen home after a night of dancing and she asked:

"Is there something wrong with me?"

"Of course not. Why would you ask a question like that?"

"We have been dating almost two months and you have never tried anything with me."

I was caught flat-footed and didn't know what to say and Ellen read the look on my face and said:

"Out with it Rob. What is going on here?"

I took a deep breath and told her how I felt. She looked at me and then shook her head as she said:

"Silly, silly man. So much time wasted" and then she took me by the hand and led me into her apartment. She led me to the couch and pushed me down on it and then she crawled onto my lap as she said:

"No goodnight kiss tonight Rob. Tonight it is goodnight kisses" and she took my head in her hands and pulled my mouth to hers. We made out like teenagers at a drive in for a long time before she got up and told me to stay put. She left the room only to return four or five minutes later as naked as the day she was born. She struck a pose and said:

"Does this give you any ideas sailor?"

Six months later we were married.

We spent our honeymoon in Hawaii visiting all the places we had seen when we each had been there. We made love on the beach at night and outside on the balcony of our hotel room. I found that my new wife had a touch of the exhibitionist in her when we were away from home. She gave me head in the cab on the way to the airport — in broad daylight — after tossing the driver her panties and telling him to cover the rear view mirror with them. When I paid the fare I tipped him twenty bucks and Ellen told him he could keep the panties as another tip. Waiting to board the flight home I asked Ellen what had gotten in to her.

"I just felt the need to be wicked and a bit slutty."

"Slutty?"

"You should have asked the driver if he could feel how wet my panties were when I handed them to him."

"Is this something that I need to look out for or look forward to?"

"Never know when the mood might strike me lover. You had best be ready for anything."

She did indeed hit me with a surprise every once in a while like the time at my father's birthday party when she pulled me out into my parent's garage and had me make love to her on the hood of my dad's Corvette. Then there was the time at our company Christmas party when she had me do her in the hotel's coatroom on the boss's wife's mink coat.

We had a great life together. We played golf on the weekends, went dancing at least one night a week, bowled in a mixed league and made love three and four times a week. The only fly in the ointment, at least as far as I was concerned, was that Ellen's job in purchasing as a buyer required that she travel some. Usually no more than four or five days a month, but that meant nights that I had to sleep alone and I did not much like not having Ellen's body close to mine when I woke up in the morning.

When Ellen and I married we made the decision that even though we both wanted children we would hold off until our fifth anniversary before trying to start a family. We wanted to be able to enjoy ourselves, go places and see and do things before tying ourselves down with children. Also, we wanted to be financially stable and in our own home before we started listening to the pitter-patter of little feet. Ellen did not like the feel of condoms so she took birth control pills and backed them up with a diaphragm and spermicides and they must have been effective because we did make it to our fifth anniversary without any surprises.

We went out dancing three weeks before our anniversary and on the way home Ellen asked"

"Are you ready to be a daddy yet?"

"The question is are you ready to be a mommy?"

"Yes I am."

"Then I guess fatherhood is in the cards for me."

"Good" she said as she slid over next to me, unzipped my pants and worked out my cock. "Enjoy this one lover because you won't get any more after I go off the pill. Once I'm off the pill all of your baby makers will go into the baby factory instead of my mouth. At least until after I'm pregnant."

The next day she was off the pill and we were working at getting her 'with child' as they say. Four days before our anniversary she left on a three day trip to Denver that was supposed to have her home in time to celebrate our anniversary but a snow storm closed the Denver airport for two days. The day she was due home a major problem occurred at our St. Louis plant and I got tagged to go as part of the team that was being sent to clean up the mess. We probably passed each other at the airport and it was three days before I got home.