Chapter 1

I hugged Ashley goodbye, once the cab had delivered us to the bar. Her car was over there, mine was over here, and we had things to do Sunday evening, before returning to work in the morning.

As we held our embrace, she whispered, “I sent myself a message from your phone. Let me know when we can have a rematch!” Then a kiss, another quick hug, and she was nearly skipping down the sidewalk to her vehicle.

Monday I was bit “off my game”, as she filled my thoughts. Tuesday I was more focused, and I had slept better, as well.

Wednesday, after I had washed my dinner dishes, I sat down and regarded my phone. I picked it up, set it down, walked around my house a bit, and picked it up again. I set it down, walked a bit. This indecisive random movement continued for several minutes, until I realized that I had not had a drink, had not wanted a drink, for, now, going on to 4 days. I missed my children, terribly. I burned with anger at my ex’s cheating. Not the sexual infidelity: by this point, she could fuck anybody that she wanted, and I hoped she contacted The Dread Disease Of The Month. No, my fuming was over her ignoring the terms of the court order, and separating me from my kids.

I realized why I was not in need of a drink. I still felt the loss, the pain, the anger, the feeling of nearly boiling over with a need to DO SOMETHING, with nothing, effective, to be done. But, I had connected with a person, a woman, who touched my pain, and had been willing to drink from that seeming endless fountain. Now, I could imagine that I would get better, that my emptiness might one day, God Alone knew when, begin to fade, the open wounds in my heart might begin to staunch their flow.

I could see myself having a future not blinded by the noonday sun of my loss. And, I realized how this had happened.

I picked up my phone, and dialed her number. I got increasingly nervous as ring followed ring and followed ring. What if she had come to her senses, and realized how hopelessly damaged I was? What if she had decided that spending time with a guy old enough to be her father, was lame, or, perhaps worse, creepy?

The ringing persisted, six, seven, eight times now, and I moved to terminate the connection, and wallow in new found self loathing. As I pulled the instrument from my ear, I heard a voice, breathless, come on.

“Oh, Mark? Is that you? I’m ... I’m sorry I took so long to pick up, I ... I was in the bathroom, and I heard my phone ringing as I turned off the shower! What took you so long to call? I was beginning to worry! I wondered if you thought I was too young, too immature, if you thought that I was the sort of silly girl who would get caught up with somebody like Tim, and drag you into my drama! I’m so glad you called! I ... I ... Oh, I’m babbling, aren’t I? Oh, I’m so sorry! I ... I...”

As she struggled to both catch her breath, and organize her thoughts, I interjected. “Hush! Shhh! You are fine, it’s OK. I am the one who ought to apologize! I am sorry that I am so indecisive. I did not realize, until this evening, that you have changed me, even after one weekend together. I slept--I SLEPT!--last night, and the night before, and I did not need alcohol, I didn’t need sleepers. You have touched me, and I was afraid that you would think I’m too old for you, that you would realize that I’m damaged goods, that I’ll forever have a hole in my heart, where my children used to be, and I was afraid you wouldn’t want anything to do with me, after you threw a sympathy fuck my way. I ... I was afraid.” I finished lamely, and held my breath awaiting her response.

Seconds piled up, and I was afraid that I had said too much, had said the wrong thing. She was, what, 10? 20? years younger than me, and had her entire life before her. I was a wreck, and, well, 10 months of self medication had not done me any favors.

She whimpered into the phone, and started to speak. “You gave me the best loving I can remember having, and, mister, that was no sympathy fuck! You are bent, not broken, and the intensity of your love, of your longing, for your children tells me how deeply you feel. Yeah, you are older than me. Did you think that I did not know that? Did you think that you somehow coerced me into sleeping with you? You let me sleep undisturbed Saturday night. I had to literally leap into your arms, and then coach you to take me to bed. Does that sound like a sympathy fuck to you? I coaxed a matinee out of you. Does that sound like a sympathy fuck, or does it sound like a woman who found someone who can give her some good nookie, and she wanted more? I am flattered, oh, so flattered, to hear you tell me that I have touched your life. I am honored to have been able to leave you better than I found you, because the man who rescued me Saturday night, and who romanced me on Sunday, is and was a fine man, a wounded man, but a fine man.”

She drew in an audible breath, and continued. “Does that mean you would like to see me again?”

That did not require a lot of reflection. “Yes, hell, yes! I’d like to take you out for dinner, and then a walk along the lake shore. If you have a different idea, then I’m certainly open to that, as well, but, well, I ... I want to see you again, and on any terms that will work for you.”

“Dinner? So, you do know that I can cook, right?”

“I had assumed that most adults are able to cook, yeah.”

She continued. “I live a couple of blocks from the lake, I’d like you to come over to my place, I can cook you some dinner, and we can start that walk from my apartment. OK?”

“Outstanding! When do you want me there?”

She pondered. “I’d suggest tonight, but, well, I’m naked. Of course, that is nothing you haven’t experienced before--me, naked--but, I don’t have anything else ready for you!” She chuckled a little.

“Well, I’d offer to be right over, but, for one thing, your address would make that very much easier to accomplish. As much as I’d like to be there in, oh, 7 minutes, maybe planning something for Friday or Saturday would give me more opportunity to get my mind right, and not be a anxious bag of nerves when I show up on your doorstep.”

Her musical laugh caressed my ear. “I don’t know, seven minutes sounds sort of slow. Are you sure you really want to see me again?”

I pretended to ponder. “So, would 3 minutes be better? I don’t really need to put on my pants, or shoes, or grab my wallet, or stop for foolishness like traffic lights, do I?”

She laughed again. “Well, at least until you get inside my door, pants would be nice. That would be one less thing for my neighbors to talk about! Maybe Friday would be better, after all! I’ll be home around 6 pm, and can get dinner around by, say, 7 pm. Sound good for you?”

“Seven o’clock Friday, I’ll be there. Do you want me to bring anything?”

Her answer filled me with happiness. “Well, some white wine. Oh, and an overnight bag and change of clothes. I don’t think you’ll want to wear the same clothes home on Sunday!”

We said our goodbyes, and ended the call. Moments later, the text with her address arrived. I promptly copied her address and phone number onto my wall calendar. Important information deserved redundancy!

Sleep came to me Wednesday night, despite the whirlwind of my thoughts. I relived last Saturday, and Sunday, I wondered what she saw in me, and imagined how Friday might go. I fell asleep, finally, with her smile dancing before me, eyes alight as from a joy only she could know.

Thursday was alright. My boss commented that I looked better than I had, for months, in his opinion. “I know you took your divorce hard, and I can see how you miss your children. I don’t know what you have done this past week, but it looks like it is good for you. Thanks for gutting out the last 6 months. I knew you’d get your head screwed on straight, eventually. Let me know if you need anything. Time off, some work from home assignment or two, let me know. If I can do it, I will. You always worked hard for us, and took care of business. Now, let the business take care of you.”

I thanked him, and told him that I figured that I could hold out for my vacation, planned for a couple of months from now. I turned to my work, and churned out reports and polished up projects, until I looked up to see that it was quarter to five.

I tidied up my work, completing a couple of thoughts, and closed my computer.

I ate with an appetite that I had not had for a long time, and cleaned up. Looking around, I noticed that my place looked unkempt. I hauled out the vacuum, and swept up the corners. I picked up the little bits of paper and whatnot that I had not felt the energy to clean up, and gave my kitchen a thorough cleaning. Those ceiling fan blades were grody, more so than I had thought. Pine Sol and elbow grease made it all better, Once they were back in place, and the curtains in the wash, I could almost smell the sunshine.

I had worked up a nice little activity burn, and fell asleep without a care. That was a unaccustomed pleasure!

Friday I awakened before my alarm. I grabbed my gym bag, and tossed in a change of underwear, jeans, and a clean polo shirt. I rummaged in my dresser, and tossed my toilet kit into the bag as well. I set everything next to my lunch pail, showered, and dressed, and headed off to work early, arriving 15 minutes before start time.

This day dragged, in contrast to Thursday. I desperately wanted to be at Ashley’s apartment, to watch her move, to smell her hair as we embraced, and that desire to have the freaking day DONE, and be gone, of course, made everything drag.

The elevators ran slowly, for reasons I could not imagine. My computer picked TODAY! to update, and, it appeared, Microsoft had felt the need to update every. single. line. of. code. in the freaking program.

The coffee in the break room was cold, as I waited for the updates (“File number 75 of 2,332,987”) to load, so I made a fresh pot. The coffee pot took FOREVER! to perk, and then, once I had returned to my desk, the never sufficiently cursed updates were STILL loading. Then, the fracking thing had to reboot, and re-open, and so, by the time it was ready for me to start my day, it was nearly Ten O’clock.

I finally opened my files, and set to work. For some reason, I was uninspired; the words on the screen appeared to be in some foreign language, and I could not imagine what I had thought I wanted to say next. Frustrated (Gosh, isn’t THAT a surprise!), I keyed in a few paragraphs, only to erase them as complete gibberish.

I continued on in this manner, breaking for lunch, staggering my way through the day. If I had been this productive before Ashley, it was a testament to the benevolence of my boss that I still had a job at all. I suppose that I managed to create a total of 5 pages of workable prose, almost linear in thought and kind of worth the effort of reading, but I wasn’t going to be inspiring anybody with that sort of output.

Five o’clock finally arrived, and I was out of the door at as close to a dead run as I thought I could accomplish without overtly dashing down the stairs. I reached my car, and checked for my gym bag. Relieved that it was still there (as if anyone would steal a damned gym bag!), I sat a bit to calm myself.

I stopped at the liquor store in our town, and picked up a white wine my sister spoke highly of.

I had looked up Ashley’s address, once or twice. (that is, if a thousand times was “once or twice”) I believed that I was familiar with the route to her apartment. Of course, by now it was around quarter to six. Of course, she was expecting me around seven. So, I could go fidget somewhere for an hour or so, show up pathetically early, or come up with a third, better option.

A third option.

A better option.

A better, third option.

As you likely have figured at this point, I had no better, third option. None appeared to be forthcoming. I felt that impatient fidgeting was likely my best choice, and so I pulled into a parking lot near the lake, dug out a book, and settled in to read.

I was a chapter or so farther into the story when my phone chirped an incoming text.

“are you ready? I’m ready for you!”

I replied, “I’m ready, alright! just killing time until you told me you’d be ready!”

She texted back, “now is good! food nearly done. and, I have a surprise for you!”

I thought that I knew where this was headed. “do I get to unwrap my surprise?”

And I was mistaken, as she hinted to me. “Well, yes, but I’m talking about a different surprise!”

I always have been bad about suspense. “what is this surprise?”

She was going to let me continue to be bad with suspense. “just you never mind! simply come on over, and I will tell you all about it!”

“on the way!”, and I put the car in gear and drove the three blocks to her parking lot.

I parked, and leapt up the stairs. The door opened nearly as soon as the doorbell echoes faded, revealing a smiling Ashley who beckoned me inside.

Once the door closed, she settled the wine on a table, and drew me to her embrace, sniffing deeply at my shirt front.

“Hmmm! Smells like the man I’m going to feed, and romance, and then ravish, until he has had my way with me!”

“Well, I’m certainly happy to see you, too!”, I answered her, with an embrace of my own.

She smiled up at me. “Let me turn the food down, and tell you what I found out! Then, you may be even happier! Go sit on the sofa, I’ll be right back!”

I settled in, and wondered what sort of surprise she might have for me.

Ashley bounced back into the room, coming to rest (after a manner of speaking: she was fairly vibrating with excitement) next to me. “So, you know, Mark, that my big brother, Bobbie, is a cop, right?”

I had not known that. “Uh, no?”

She was undeterred. “Well, he is! And, when I told him about Saturday night, well, he was ready to go visit Tim, and ‘have a stern chat’, as he put it. Then I told him about how you saved me, first from a face plant, then from Tim’s badgering, and, well, Bobbie seemed even more determined to ‘set Tim straight!’, as he put it.”

I interrupted. “How much did you tell Bobbie about Saturday night?” I had visions of being on the receiving end of a ‘stern chat’, myself, from Bobbie, should he not agree that I was treating his baby sister right, and the prospect was, well, unexciting will describe my reaction adequately.

Ashley gushed. “Oh, I told him how you challenged Tim, and out maneuvered him, and how Tim wound up unconscious in the alley once you out-stepped him, and he head butted the door frame! And how you took me to your home, in a cab because we both had been drinking, and how you let me sleep undisturbed all night, even offering to sleep on your own sofa! Bobbie thought that was a class act on your part!”

Cautiously, I persisted: “Did you tell him about Sunday, by chance?”

Excitedly, it appeared that she had. “Oh, yes! I told him about breakfast, how you let me shower alone, and gave me some sweats to wear, and then drove me to my car, once I had called myself on your cell phone!” She blushed a bit. “Well, I might have fibbed just a little bit! Anyhow, when I was telling him about how you cried for your lost children, and the soulless wench who had taken them from you, he asked me if you had lost all visitation in your divorce. When I told him, no, you had a 50/50 split custody in your divorce order, he looked surprised. When I told him that she had gone off the radar with your kids, he asked me to ask you if it would be alright if he looked around a little bit, simply to see if she had left any tracks that her attorney had overlooked. He said that skipping town like that, looked like a contempt of court thing, because she sounded like she was violating a court order. If so, and she had left any tracks, maybe he could let her attorney know a thing or two, and that attorney might slip a little note to your attorney, and your judge might be able to let her know just how pissed she was, once your ex was back in court. In handcuffs. And in jail orange. He wondered, if she was jailed for contempt, who the court might find to care for your kids, while she was in jail? Somebody, oh, I dunno, like their father?”