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And then I was alone.
There was nothing, no one else.
I sat up in bed, searching for Ricky, for my sweet darling, but he wasn’t there. I was still just alone. What…?
A dream. It had all been a vivid dream.
My body was covered in sweat, and the sheets were wet. But, there was no Ricky…
Wow…what a dream. I wanted it to be real so badly that I felt like I was going insane. I leapt out of my bed. I slept in the nude, and my body was cold with the air conditioning rushing against my sweaty form. It had been unseasonably warm recently, and to me it might as well have been the middle of July.
I paced back and forth in my room for several minutes after chugging the bottle of water I always kept by my bed. Shit…that had been so intense. I didn’t smoke, but I wished I did. I had a feeling that a cigarette would have hit the spot.
Ricky was there taking my virginity and it had been spectacular. Was this what I really wanted? Or was it all just some silly dream? Love… the word love had been prominent in my thoughts during this dream. What in the hell did that mean?
I’d only met Ricky once. But I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I knew it was wrong and that I should keep my nose focused on my work, but if he was going to be around, I was only going to have dirty thoughts about him. There was something about him that had touched me deeply inside. I felt like I was going to explode if I had to constantly hide my growing attraction to him.
And yes, as I thought about it, he was the type of man that I might be able to love one day if things escalated. But would they? That was the real question. I didn’t have any idea. But I knew all of the reasons why it was a bad idea for this to happen.
I sighed heavily as I sat down in the chair in the corner. I was so pent up, so worried about what might happen between Ricky and me. There was a nervous anxiety coursing through my system. I wasn’t sure how to really handle these feelings. I hadn’t really ever felt like this for anyone before. And I’d just met this man. What did that mean? I wasn’t sure if it was just my own overactive imagination, or if this was a sign of some sort of destiny. I’d never really believed in that sort of thing before, but after having a dream of that intensity, I wasn’t sure what to believe. I felt like I was having a nervous breakdown as I sat there and tried to regain my composure.
What if this thing with Ricky did by some chance escalate into a romance and then it went beyond that? Would that be bad? No, that actually would have been utterly amazing. But right then there were too many questions up in the air to consider. I didn’t know the man enough to understand how he might handle it. He might decide that he couldn’t stand this and that it was better to let me go. He was still getting over the death of his wife, after all. I could see the pain still very visible in his eyes when he spoke of her. It might have been a few years and on the outside he might have projected to the world that he was doing just fine, but that sort of thing did not fool me at all. I could tell he was still very much heartbroken. A man like that sure wasn’t looking for romance.
And he might just bark at the idea and I’d be out of a great job. The money was perfect, the conditions were great, the hours gave me plenty of time to work on art and other things, and it was only a ten-minute drive from my place. And if it went sour, there was no telling how long I would have to wait to find another halfway decent job. This time of year, it just didn’t seem needed as much.
I had to get a grip on myself. It would be alright.
I would just do everything in my power to make sure that I didn’t let my feelings for Ricky get out of hand.
Chapter Five
Ricky
I curled the dumbbells higher up until they almost reached my shoulders and then curled them back down for the final rep. My body was about to give up under the weight and I sat them down on the rack with a long sigh of relief. My lungs were gasping for air now and I felt mildly nauseous. I knew that I was pushing myself to the limits, but there was something about the way I felt today that just made me want to explore the extremes.
And I had a pretty good idea what it was exactly that was giving me the extra motivation. Julie.
I hadn’t been able to get that beautiful woman off my mind since I’d met her the day before. And she was coming to the house that day at three to start work. There was a monthly training exercise we had to do, otherwise I would have the day off since it was the weekend. But you had to do what the job entailed, even if I did think this particular training was trash. It did nothing but waste your time and make people feel good about themselves. People had to feel that their tax dollars were going to be utilized for something useful. It was a good thing that there were not actual fires every single day.
“Wow, man. You are hitting those things hard today. I want to get a ticket to that gun show!” Evan Wilder said sitting at the weight bench beside me.
“Yeah, who are you trying to impress?” Doug Vance asked. “Doing sets with fifty pound dumbbells. Are you training for some iron man competition that we don’t know about?” Evan asked.
I laughed it off. “You guys are nuts. No, I just realized that I’ve been slacking with my workouts lately, so I’m just trying to make up for that. That’s all.”
“Yeah, you only have an eight pack,” Doug laughed.
I shook my head. “It isn’t about vanity; it’s about functionality. I want to get stronger and faster. That girl I saved the other day—that was too close of a call. I don’t want that to happen again.”
“What’s the big deal? You did great. You saved her life.”
“Yeah, but I could be better. I know it. I want to be in the best of my ability at all times. I think we could all strive for that, right?”
“Sure man,” Doug replied.
I chugged a big gulp of water from my gallon jug I always took with me and grabbed the dumbbells to do another set of bicep curls. Taking a deep breath, I began to curl the weights. They felt like they weighed a ton. I was almost caving under their onslaught of brutal heaviness. There was no way I was going to hit eight to ten reps this time. I sucked in a deep breath and gave it all I had, grunting and straining to complete the set, but I topped out at five reps. Shit.
But the pump was out of this world.
