Chapter 1

Splashy, Splashy

It might be hard to believe, but I didn’t plan on any of this happening. A series of small events, some fortunate and some unfortunate, led to where we are. I guess that is true of everything, now that I think about it. A different choice here or there, even if it seems small at the time, leads to vastly different outcomes.

To start with, I have become, as they say, independently wealthy. The means by which this happened aren’t very interesting and don’t have any bearing on the story, so you may fill those circumstances with your own personal preferences.

The wealth came in a very short timeframe and allowed my wife and me to totally reexamine our circumstances. At the end of our examinations, we decided that there didn’t appear to be any reason for us to stay married. We had been married for a good long time and, as many couples do, discovered that our interests, and even political leanings, have diverged, so we parted as amicably as could be expected and went our separate ways.

I guess to summarize, I was free to do what I wanted with my time and my resources.

Amazing as it may seem, I began to get a bit bored. Say what you will, but having a “normal” job does at least get you to shower, shave, and change out of your pj’s on a regular basis.

So I set myself a bit of a schedule to force myself to not become a recluse. This involved small things like going to get groceries every few days and committing to dressing at least presentably when I would venture out.

On one of my visits, the girl running the cash register told me “You are the nicest customer that comes in here.” in kind of an offhand way.

I often found myself in her checkout lane because one of my long-standing personal rules is “Life is too short to not go to the cutest checkout girl.” and she was definitely cute. Short and slim, but not skinny. She had dark hair, deep brown eyes, and a deep tan. This, along with the name “Maria” on her nametag seemed to suggest some Mexican or Latin American ancestry.

I didn’t really treat her differently from what I would have treated anyone else. Really just what I would consider normal pleasantries like “Please,” “Thank You,” etc ... There must be some real human trash bags running around for something so simple to have made enough of an impression that a teenage girl would make such a comment to a middle-aged man.

We began to engage in mini conversations when I would visit the store. Small things like movies, music, the weather, and school frequently came up, but nothing really personal from either of us.

On one visit I noticed that she seemed a bit more subdued than usual. I asked, “You doin’ okay?”

She sighed a bit, “I just found out how much college is going to cost, and I’m not sure what we’re going to do.” “That is always a shock,” I responded. “Have you looked into scholarships and things like that?”

“Yeah, I’ve just started. My guidance counselor gave me a few things to start with, but it’s hard to know where to start.”

“Well, if you want, I have two pieces of advice. Number one, put your guidance counselor to work for you. It’s their job to help you sort through this stuff. Keep in mind it’s their job to help dozens of people, so they aren’t your full-time assistant or anything, but if you get stuck make them help you. Number two, don’t get too down about it. You aren’t the first, only, or the last one to face this, and feeling bad about it doesn’t have any positive effect.” I offered.

“At the end of the day, Dory from “Finding Nemo” had about the best advice when you are facing something daunting.”, I continued. “Just keep swimming.”

She smiled a bit at the reference and we parted ways.

If I had a normal job or obligations, I probably wouldn’t have thought much more about it. But, as often happens with interactions with pretty girls, she flitted through my mind occasionally. It eventually hit me that I could offer financial assistance. I didn’t think she would accept me just giving her money directly, so I called my financial advisor and had him investigate setting up a scholarship. It didn’t take a lot of effort and I could pretty much structure it to offer it to whoever I wanted. I planned on keeping it going at some level, going forward, so it wouldn’t be like I was just doing it to benefit her. Maybe she would be okay with that.

I had it structured so that it would pay based on the GPA for that semester. It was set up to pay a decent amount, not quite a full-tuition, but a sizable share of it if the student achieved a 4.0 GPA (all A’s) for that semester. Then it reduced as the GPA went lower. If you somehow got a 0.0 (all F’s) it would still pay about 25% of the full amount, at least for that semester.

She was very excited about the possibility the next time I saw her and I gave her the information that she would need to set things up.

The only real requirement was that she would need to verify her progress every so often. She decided that we should get together monthly to discuss how things were going.

The school she was going to was nearby (within an hour), so we decided I would just meet her for dinner once a month at a restaurant.

As I would see her through the rest of the school year and summer, she would never fail to report something she had gotten ready to go, or was excited about for school. She went from “cute checkout girl” to “adorably excited (future) college student.”

She started college in the fall. When it came time for our first meeting, I found myself anticipating it eagerly, myself. Truth be told, I missed seeing her.

We met at the nearest Village Inn. I was waiting in the booth when she got there and she plopped down across from me and got right to business. She opened her laptop and pulled up the college’s site that allowed her to keep track of her own progress. To her credit, she was a very good student and would have no problem getting very close to the full 100% of the scholarship. We spent some time discussing what she liked (new student friends and the opportunity for a wide variety of classes) and didn’t like (living on campus as they were required to do for the first year). The jury was still out on her roommate.

The sparkle in her eyes showed that she was very engaged with the whole process and was truly enjoying her college experience. Our meals arrived and she continued chatting between bites of her omelet.

We finished our meals, rose from the booth, and bade farewell to each other for that meeting. I made sure to let her walk out ahead of me as I went to pay the check. I didn’t want to waste the opportunity of watching her cute little butt as she walked away. That would go against another long-standing personal rule.

Things went like that for the first few meetings. I did arrange that we would meet at some more varied restaurants in the area. Village Inn is fine, but I liked to take advantage of the variety of restaurants, and having a cute “date” to show off was a definite plus. With each meeting, I became more and more enamored of her. Her enthusiasm was infectious and her cuteness was more than a little intoxicating.

She was still very much enjoying school, but she was having a bit of friction with her roommate. Much of that was just down to two people learning to live in the same space, so she wasn’t too worried about it.

The pattern continued through the winter. I found myself taking her to somewhat nicer restaurants for the simple reason that I enjoyed being with her and nicer restaurants provided a somewhat more drawn-out dining experience.

In the late spring, we started discussing her plans for the next school year. She could request a different roommate, or she could move off-campus. She was really interested in moving to an apartment near the school but didn’t think she would be able to afford it without finding another roommate.

I didn’t really think about it before offering, but just off-hand said “I could get an apartment up there that you could stay at.”

She got a bit of a strange look in her eye but didn’t really say anything. She was a bit more subdued as we finished our meal and left. It didn’t strike me until I was halfway home that it might have sounded to her like I was suggesting I get an apartment to live at and have her move in there.

I was aghast at myself for not making it more clear that I would get an apartment for her to stay at, but I would live at my house. At the same time, it did start some wheels turning about the possibility of having some time alone in a private setting with a cute little college student.

I thought about stopping somewhere quickly to text her about what I just realized. But it popped into my head that maybe dashing off a quick text to try to correct an error without thinking it through first might just make it worse. So I thought about what I would say the rest of the way home.

As I pulled into the driveway I resolved to actually call her in hopes that she would hear that I sincerely wasn’t suggesting that she move in with me.

I stopped the car in the garage and pulled out my phone. Just then a text appeared from her.

“I like the apartment idea. It will be nice to have u around. Sry I didn’t say while u were here. I had to think about it.”

I sat there in shock. Was she saying she did want to move in with me? Against my better judgment, my heart actually leaped at the idea. Even at the most innocent possibilities of literally being roommates, it would be a joy to be around her more.

I decided against the call as I couldn’t really trust my voice not to quaver and betray my nerves, so I texted back a smiley emoji.

The next morning I went shopping. Apartments were thin on the ground, but I did find a little two-bedroom bungalow near the school. Arrangements were quickly made and I even got a contractor in to start on some renovations and upgrades.

I arranged it so that each bedroom had its own full bathroom. The living room, dining area, and kitchen was an open common area.

The renovations were done just before the end of term. It’s amazing what cash will do. For our final “meeting” I took her there as a surprise. I had purposefully not brought up anything about the arrangement any time we spoke before then.

She loved it. Apparently, my decorating style was at least completely acceptable to her.

She looked in the bedrooms and said “I like this one.” as she was looking in the second one.

“Well, you can move your stuff in whenever you want. I haven’t ordered the bedroom furniture, yet, but I can have most of it the day after I order it. Is a queen big enough?”

She nodded but didn’t meet my eyes.

We chatted for a few more minutes before parting ways for the evening.

She texted me two days later with the details of when she would be moving in. I arranged to have all the fixtures and furnishings ready to go when she got there. She was able to move all of her belongings in a couple of trips.

Our next meeting time came and I suggested that I just throw her a little housewarming party for her and make her a home-cooked meal. I figured she had mostly been eating fast food or cafeteria food.

I gathered everything I needed to make my Chicken Parmigiana and let myself in to make dinner before she got back from her class that day.

I heard the key in the lock and she breezed in, throwing her school things in her room on the way by.

“It smells amazing in here,” she said as she drew in a deep breath through her nose.

“Garlic is probably doing most of the heavy lifting on that,” I responded. “It will be ready in about five minutes if you’re hungry.”

“Famished” she replied, gathering things to set the table.

I plated the food and as we ate she updated me on her classes and progress, much as she had done before.

We finished dinner and both cleaned up the dishes.

“Well, it’s been nice seeing you...” I started.

“Oh, I wanted to ask you if you would help me with one of my projects!” she interrupted before rushing off to her room.

She returned with her laptop and explained that she was taking a programming course and she hoped I would be able to help her as I had been a programmer in my previous life. My knowledge was somewhat out of date, but colleges usually aren’t at the bleeding edge of programming technology and the basics of programming are pretty transferable from one language and generation to the next.

We sat side by side at the table and went over what she was working on. As I suspected, it was a pretty straightforward assignment of building a form, getting user input, validating the input, making some sort of transformation, then outputting some result. We worked through the little problems she was having, and it wasn’t much (like she wasn’t converting one of the text box inputs into a number before trying to do math with it). Mostly simple stuff and we quickly got it sorted. She messed with a few more minutes before declaring success.

“Do you want to stay and watch a movie or something? It’s a shame to drive up here and head back right after dinner.”

I didn’t have any reason to rush off and I, of course, relished the idea of spending more time with her, so I said “Sure, that sounds like a nice evening.”

In the Living Room area, there was one couch in front of a fairly large TV. I had also set her up with remote access to my media server so she would have plenty of entertainment (even if it isn’t maybe the latest releases) without having to pay for it.

She took her laptop back to her room before returning to curl up on the opposite end of the couch to watch the movie.

I would occasionally sneak glances at her in the dimmed light of the living room. It didn’t really matter what the movie was (she chose “Spirited Away”), I just enjoyed being there with her.

As we chatted I looked at my calendar to see when our next meeting should be.

“Could we get together more often? I think I’ll really be able to use your help with my programming class,” she asked.

“Sure. Like every other week or every week?” I asked.

“Every week would be great,” she responded very quickly.

“Okay then,” I replied, trying hard to hide the giddy grin that threatened to show itself. “I’ll plan on making you dinner every week then.”

“Oh, that would be great too,” she responded, patting her uncomfortably full tummy.

“Well, I’ll see you next week, then. Any dinner requests?”

“Anything is better than the cafeteria. Surprise me.”

“Well. I’ll start planning now.” I said as I rose to leave.

“Ok, see you then,” she said as she walked me to the door. She seemed like she had something more she wanted to say, but she closed the door behind me.

The next week passed slowly, but soon I found myself in “her” kitchen making my Chicken with Creamy Bacon and Onion sauce.

She showed up a little earlier than the last time. She inhaled deeply right when she walked in the door and shouted “That smells awesome!!” from her bedroom as she dropped off her stuff.

We actually had time to work through her questions as I finished cooking. We didn’t have much time to talk during dinner as her mouth seemed to be always full (I think she really liked this dinner, or she really did hate the food).

We decided to do another movie. It was my turn so I decided to go the Sci-Fi route and chose “The Forbidden Planet”