Chapter 8

“So where are you taking me for dinner?” Melody asked sweetly.

“Sergio’s,” I replied, as I buckled up.

I leaned over and kissed her cheek before she got us underway. Sergio’s was a nice family restaurant that I’d been to a few times. I liked the food, but Beth had never been happy with the place, so we rarely went there. I was hoping that Melody was the exact opposite of Beth in every way. Melody had never been to Sergio’s, so she asked a lot of questions on our way, with me giving directions.

“Sergio’s started out as a pizza place,” I explained. “They got popular and added more to their menu and then it grew from a pizza shop into a family restaurant. They still do pizza and stuff like that, but they have a killer Italian menu, too and they’ll do special orders, if you’re in the mood for something that’s not on the menu.”

“I’d kill for good pizza!” she told me. “New York or Chicago style?” she asked.

“They have a dish I’ve always wanted to try, but never had a partner in crime to share it with. It’s a pizza cake.”

“A pizza cake?” she asked, wondering if I was making it up.

“It looks amazing. They line a pan with pizza dough on the bottom and sides and then add in all the toppings, another layer of crust, more toppings, more crust and toppings right to the top of the pan and then they bake it,” I told her. “They do it to order, so it takes a while to come to the table once it’s ordered. I could never eat one by myself. In fact, I don’t even know if the two of us could finish it, but I’ve always wanted to try it.”

“That sounds like so many calories that I’ll have to spend all week on the treadmill!” she told me. Then with a sly smile she happily said, “Let’s do it!”

That decided, I noticed she picked up the speed a little bit, eager to see what this was going to look like. We were seated right away, having arrived before dinner hour on a Sunday afternoon. Once we had our order in, we were told it would be a little while, so we sat with our drinks and talked to each other. She asked me about being a chemical engineer and I found out about her life in Washington. Until she’d found the group, she had few friends around Charlotte.

“I’d been thinking of selling the house and moving into the condo in Miami, when Stan dies,” she admitted. “At least, I was until I met you.”

She blushed at that, thinking she’d said too much, but I was too enchanted by her to feel anything but elation that she felt as strongly about me. I reached out and took her hand.

“The place where I work is likely shutting down in the next six months,” I told her. “When the rumor started, I didn’t feel like there was anything holding me here in Charlotte. I’d been sort of talking to myself about finding a new place to call home. I feel the same way you do, Charlotte’s home as long as you’re here.”

She grinned at me and I knew that I was in love with her. I had been since she’d followed me into the kitchen.

“I know this is happening really fast,” I told her gently. “It sometimes feels like we’ve known each other for years.”

She nodded about that.

“When I see you looking at me, I can feel like you know what I’m going to say before I say it.”

I smiled at her knowingly. “I’m not psychic,” I reminded her. “But I feel a connection to you that I didn’t even know was missing from my life. When I look at you, nothing else seems to matter. When I kiss you, nothing else seems to exist.”

She grinned at me sweetly and we kept up a steady dialogue of lover’s chatter, murmuring sweet nothings across the table to each other. It must have been very sickening to the rest of the patrons. Neither of us noticed. When our meal came, it looked amazing. It had been cut into slices in the kitchen and we each took one, digging in. We were famished from all of the work that afternoon and the dish was as good as I’d hoped it would be. She loved it too, and conversation was lost in the scramble to sate our appetites.

In the end, the cake defeated us. We barely finished half of it before packing up the rest for us to take home. I tried to get her to take some home with her, but she refused.

“I’m going to be at your place all week anyway, to supervise the contractors,” she pointed out. “I’ll just take a piece out of your fridge. I can’t wait until you see it when it’s done!” she enthused.

We took the leftovers with us and got in the car. She was dropping me off and despite the very strong desire we had for each other - or maybe because of it - she decided she couldn’t come in to talk further tonight.

“Maybe tomorrow, Stan will be honorable, and stop breathing,” she suggested. She patted my cheek and then we shared a very deep, loving kiss. I looked in her eyes and had to confess what I was feeling.

“I’ve fallen completely in love with you, Melody,” I told her, my voice a whisper. “I don’t know how you did it. I only just found it in myself to say hello to people and you’ve pulled me into the deep end of the pool. I’d only just decided to get my toes wet and now I’m floating.”

She looked like she was going to cry, and she launched herself at me, kissing me again, like she was trying to consume my soul. It was hers to take. When she finally pulled back to look at me, she did have tears in her eyes, but they were obviously not sorrow.

“Why couldn’t you have met me in high school?” she asked. “As much as I want to go inside with you, I’m going home instead, and I’m going to call my best friend and tell her about what you just said. We’re going to do this right. You deserve to have all of me. I ... I love you too much to come to you as anything but a free woman.”

I nodded and held her hand in mine, kissing the soft skin on her fingertips before letting her go and opening the door.

“I’ll miss you,” I said to her.

She smiled at me and blew me a kiss.

“I’ll talk to Stan’s doctor tomorrow and find out how he’s doing,” she promised.

I got out and closed the door, exchanging words of love once more, before I stepped back and watched her drive away, the leftovers from Sergio’s clutched in my hand, until her taillights disappeared from sight. I thought I saw a curtain twitch across the street, telling me that there was a good chance that our exchange had been observed.

I looked at my watch, as I walked to the door to see how long it would take Beth to call me about this new report. As it turned out, I didn’t get a call from her that night. I put away the leftovers, swept up the now empty Master Bedroom and made sure that everything in the bathroom was moved out as well. I gave it a thorough cleaning, even though it would be gutted this week for whatever Melody had planned.

I settled in to explore some of the websites that Beth had suggested, and found that, yes, this was a world I’d barely touched as I lost myself in seeing what was available. I wanted to find everything that Melody liked, and this was my first step to discovering what she’d love and hate.

I went to bed that night without any messages or phone calls and had very erotic dreams from the porn I’d been watching but dreaming of Melody and me performing the lewd acts. I woke up the next morning sweating, and so erect that I couldn’t get back to sleep even though I had another half-hour before the alarm would go off. I’d like to tell you that I took a cold shower and let my problem resolve that way, but I could feel the slight ache in my balls that meant I’d be a jerk to everyone around me if I didn’t get some relief, so I closed my eyes and focused on the dreams that had woken me as I quickly brought myself to orgasm with the images in my mind bringing me there much more rapidly than I’d have liked, but I felt like I could probably stand there all day and get myself off over and over while I held those thoughts of her in my mind.

When I got to the gym, I dropped my bag in my locker and went to warm up before class. I’d still been dwelling on thoughts of Melody while I stretched, so I wasn’t paying attention to what was going on around me until someone spoke to me.

“That’s never happened before,” Mary said playfully.

I glanced up at her curiously. I’d been on the floor, stretching out my legs and she was glancing down at my crotch where I’d reacted to the images of Melody that had been foremost in my thoughts. I blushed. I’d been in the middle of the splits and it was readily visible, as my shorts were pulled tight in this pose. I rolled out of the position and adjusted myself surreptitiously.

“Sorry,” I said to her. “Didn’t mean to put on a show. I was just lost in thought.”

“Must have been some good thoughts,” she kept up the teasing.

I shrugged.

“I was just noticing that a lot of our poses are pretty sexually suggestive,” I told her, deciding that this was a pretty good angle toward flirting with her.

“That’s part of the reason the ladies were initially a little uncomfortable with having a guy in this class,” she told us. “There have been a few creeps come in here to stare at the girls.”

“I can understand that,” I said. “A couple of the women lately have made me feel a little uncomfortable with the way they’ve been looking at me and talking about me.”

Her eyes widened at that. She’d made a few comments about me getting attention from the girls in class, and probably wasn’t sure whether that had made me uncomfortable at that point.

“Look, Rand,” she said slowly. “I don’t think anyone wanted you to feel awkward. We ladies always have to deal with a lot of that talk. I’m sure it was just a little teasing to show you how the other half lives.”

I put a look on my face as if I was thinking about that.

“That’s still kind of mean, don’t you think? I mean, I never made any of those comments. I barely even talked to anyone until a week ago. It would be like me treating them poorly, because my ex-wife hurt me, since they’re women too. That wouldn’t be even remotely fair.”

She shrugged.

“I think people might understand a certain mistrust of women after a messy divorce, like you had,” she allowed awkwardly. “I think you should be really proud that you don’t hold that against us.”

I smiled up at her and decided to return to my stretching, since I was still sitting on the floor.

“Well, like I said, none of the ladies here have done anything wrong. Some of them might have suggested that they’d like me to move to the front of the class where they can get a better look, but I thought about it, and I didn’t think they wanted me to feel self-conscious. A couple of other people mentioned on the weekend that I’m in much better shape than I thought, now.”

She smiled knowingly. “Your lady-friend from the group?” she asked playfully.

I grimaced, looking down.

“She ... She’s unattainable right now,” I told her.

I’d worked this angle out with Melody and Belinda beforehand, and it was true. We were waiting and praying for Stan to just give out and gasp his last, but until he did, we were in a holding pattern.

“Oh,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry to hear about that. I know you were very fond of her.”

She sat with me and put a hand on my shoulder.

“Are you okay?”

I nodded. “I’m doing okay. I guess that brings us to why I was sitting here showing a little more than I realized when you came up, huh?”

I motioned, returning her attention to the matter at hand.

She nodded. “What’s on your mind this morning?”

“Well, I thought about what the girls here had said about me showing off, and one of the guys in the gym was talking to me about competing in fitness competitions. It sounds like everyone agrees that I’d be competitive at something like that, so I thought about being a little more visible in class, and see if I get a taste for being looked at like that, or if I should skip on those competitions. I guess I was a little charged up, thinking that some of the girls in class might be attracted to me like that.”