Chapter 3: Escalation, Second Base, and Satisfying Alice

Jim took Monica to a major league baseball game in the city, followed by dinner at Benny’s Sports Bar, and then a slow drive home along the picturesque waterfront. He played the perfect gentleman at her home, ran around the car, and opened the door for her. As she emerged from the car, she flowed into his arms.

The kiss between them might have appeared to be automatic, but it wasn’t. Both Jim and Monica had thought of little else since the end of the ballgame. One kiss became several, and then Jim walked her to her front door, bid her goodnight, shared one more kiss, and left.

Matt and Sheila also had a fun afternoon playing photographer and model. They went to the coastline, but instead of swimming spent hours as Matt posed Sheila, and took a thousand photographs of her. Sheila relaxed from her ice princess visage, got into playing model, and did everything from hamming it up with funny faces to looking as sultry and sexy as she could. She even made a few wardrobe adjustments to tease the camera, without ever really displaying anything vital. The date had been just the right touch to appeal to her ego, draw her out, and put her at ease that she was liked without conditions.

Over dinner at a little bistro, Matt downloaded the pictures to his laptop computer and together, sitting closely side by side, they went through the hundreds of shots and picked the best ones. Matt assembled a small album of the best and most liked, and emailed them to Sheila. Sheila displayed no reticence about the date or being close to Matt.

After dinner, Matt drove her home. Sheila said, “Come in for a while.”

Matt balked, “I don’t want to be an inconvenience or anything.”

Sheila insisted, and soon they were again side-by-side on the sofa in her family room watching some television and talking about the photo shoot.

Sheila whispered to him after a lull in the conversation, “Do you like me?”

“God, yes. Why would you ever think I didn’t?”

“Because you haven’t tried to kiss me.”

Matt’s answer to her statement was to slowly take her face in both of his hands, turn her towards him, and lay one hot seductive and smoldering kiss on her lips that lasted well over two minutes, including the little side excursions to kiss her eyes, nose, ears, and cheeks. Sheila purred.

When he stopped, Matt stood suddenly and fanned his face. “I think I better be going, otherwise I’m going to be in trouble here. Thank you for a fun day – one of the best in my life. I really like you.”

Before Sheila could even open her mouth to protest, he bolted down her hallway and out the front door.

Bob’s date with Zoey was also a bit unusual. He started at eleven in the morning with her, and they drove to the lake and then slowly around the huge perimeter, stopping at every antique and junk shop along the way, and there were a lot of them. Zoey was enthralled that Bob even liked that kind of thing, not realizing that he’d seen the backgrounds in many of her online photos that showed many carefully selected relics of early North America and even some Native American art and crafts.

Zoey and Bob lingered over what started as an early dinner. Somewhere in the discussion, Bob let it be known that he was working on distilling the ten secrets to life, love, and happiness.

Zoey pleaded, “Oh, come on, you have to tell me now that you’ve confessed to your intellectual hobby. What’s your list?”

“They’re not in any order, except as I thought about them or wrote them down, and I’m not finished yet. The first is to love and care for others, friends and family. Relationships are key.” He explained about the constellation of friends.

Zoey pondered that and said, “So I could claim that you, Jim, and Matt are in my constellation on the male side of things.”

“Yes, and Monica and Sheila would be on your female side too. I like the idea of the three of you being in my constellation. I hope you realize that the three of us are really taken with the three of you.”

Zoey blushed at Matt’s admission, but diverted the conversation by asking, “What’s next?”

Matt held up two fingers, “You have to have clear goals in the important areas of your life – relationships, career, recreation, health and fitness, sex, and your creative side. The goals should inspire action to achieve them in the timeframe you want.”

“Next, you have to believe in yourself and your capabilities, and not take in negatives. Attitude counts for a lot. You need to be creative and never stop learning. You need to worry the details, and you need to focus your efforts, time, and money on your goals and not get distracted too much. You also need to live in the Now – not let the past bog you down, or worry too much about the future.”

“As of today, I’ve added another. You have to communicate effectively and efficiently in both directions – receiving and emitting. To do that, we need to learn to hear or read between the lines about what motivates others, and what makes them happy.”

Zoey smiled, “You made me very happy today. How’d you know I’d like antiquing?”

Bob smiled, “I looked at the backgrounds in many of your online photos.”

Zoey said surprised, “You studied me?”

“Intensely. I want to know everything there is to know about you.” He looked embarrassed. He admitted that Bob and Matt did too.

“You like me?”

“A lot.”

Sitting next to each other in a booth at the restaurant made it easy for Zoey to throw her small body into Bob’s arms. The kiss melted the nails in his shoes, and clearly signaled that she liked him. He was glad she’d initiated the kiss.

Despite the possibility of further ‘action,’ Bob ended the evening early, dropping off Zoey at her home, but sharing several more really hot kisses on her doorstep.

Two evenings later, in the park, Bob said, “Next step, we rotate dates again. I talked to Alice on the phone today, and she confirmed this was the next step.”

Jim and Matt listened attentively.

“This is hard, man,” Matt protested. “I could have made out with Sheila for hours. I can assure you that this ice princess is melting.”

“As I could have with Zoey, but we have a more lofty goal that we should not get distracted from. Remember to focus. We each want all of them, if I can put it that way.”

Sheila hugged a pillow to her chest as she sat on Monica’s bed, “Oh, I didn’t want to stop. Matt kisses divinely. I bet he’s a fabulous lover too.”

Zoey had been stretched out on her back on the floor in the middle of the room. She sat up, “You mean you’re ready to make love to him? You’ve only been on two dates with him, and one of those was all of us together.”

Sheila laughed, “The thought crossed my mind. Remember, this is the ‘new me.’ I keep saying to myself, ‘I am not an ice princess. I am open and receptive to the pleasing advances of men I like. I don’t want to die a spinster.’ I really am trying to change.”

Monica said, “Well, I liked Jim, and he behaved like a perfect gentleman. I was so surprised when he took me home, kissed me goodnight, and left. If I’d been a guy I would have been all over me. I had my green light shining high and bright.”

Two days later, Jim’s call to Zoey for a date left her speechless. She said to him, “Errr, I sort of thought maybe Matt might call. This is unexpected.”

Jim said, “Well, I know he liked your date and he said he had a lot of fun. I thought we could too, and I have a cool place to take you where I know you’ll have fun. Matt is calling Monica to see if she’d like to go out this weekend. By the way, Bob is contacting Sheila. We like each of you – a great deal and want to get to know all of you really well.”

“Oh. I don’t want to upset Matt, but if that’s accurate then sure, I’d love to go out with you.” Zoey did like Jim, and the idea of dating both men at this stage had appeal to her. If the three men wanted to date her, so much the better; and if they wanted to date her friends that didn’t disappoint either so long as no one got jealous or angry.

The other calls from the men had similar results.

Jim took Zoey to an early dinner, and then to a most unusual shop called Painting With A Twist. The store teaches people to paint with acrylics, having a teacher on a podium at the front of the room. Each person gets a canvas, and a paper plate with large globs of primary colors on it, along with black and white, and the teacher explains how to mix the paints to get the desired effect in a painting and teaches about brush strokes. Everyone paints the same thing. The paints dry quickly, sometimes aided by hair dryers, and you can take the completed painting home at the end of the two-hour evening. There were about thirty people in the class.

Zoey was jumping around with joy at the opportunity to do a two-hour painting. She’d painted before, but never in this casual and fun setting. A bottle of wine between the two of them helped the evening pass too.

Jim’s picture was obviously amateurish, but showed potential for him as a future artist. Zoey’s was beautiful, and something anyone would be proud to display in their living room.

As they carried the paintings to the car, Jim slipped an arm around Zoey’s shoulders. She looked up at him with a huge smile.

“I had fun. This was a very innovative date,” she praised and put her free arm around his back and hugged him.

Jim nuzzled into her hair and kissed the top of her head.

As they got to the car, Zoey whispered, “My lips are down here.”

They set their paintings on top of the car. A fraction of a second later Zoey was in Jim’s arms, and the pair rained down kisses on one another.

Jim said, “Come on, let’s go somewhere where we can be alone.” Although his statement had been made with authority, he listened and watched for any signal that might telegraph Zoey’s unwillingness to make out. There were none, and he even got a smile of approval.