Triskelion
- 3 years ago
- 21
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Risk free porn video
First of all, I want to thank everyone for reading my previous two stories. Your comments are always appreciated. As with the other two stories, this one is not a stroke story so if that’s what you’re after, it’s best you move on now This is a romance, a character study if you will and what I’ve always enjoyed reading about is people, even here on Literotica. As with most true romances, this one may take some time to develop so be patient. Here is my contribution. As always, this is a work of fiction. Only the bicycles are real.
Part One
‘I could never wear that. That’s sick. How could you even think to ask me that? I never want to see you again.’
With those words, the little world I had imagined for myself came to a crashing end. Susan stormed out of my life, out of the house I had bought for us, taking the clothes, (but not those clothes), I had bought for her, the jewelry and the BMW convertible I had put in her name, vowing never to return.
Luckily, we weren’t married yet, not even living together. I had wanted to and now was grateful she had told me she wasn’t ready. I wondered if she had somehow seen something I hadn’t but decided not. She certainly wasn’t that insightful. Perhaps she had just been in it for the money. I just didn’t know.
I heard from her lawyer of course, but there was nothing much to say. She had no case. There really had been no ‘ours’ just hers and mine. She had her job, her apartment and her own life as did I. It was just as well.
I had loved her, or at least thought I did and believed it when she said she loved me. Perhaps she did. She was no great beauty, hardly a ten, but neither was I. She was more like a five or six to be honest, but she was pleasant enough and I enjoyed being with her. I had no illusions about myself either. I was certainly not a ‘ten’ myself and was realistic to expect that I wasn’t going to get one. I was shorter than average (in more ways than one to be honest) and slightly over weight. Although only thirty, there was already a bald patch on the top of my head. My glasses were thick, my hair thin and I felt completely ill at ease around women. It was a miracle I had met Susan at all. I did not expect another.
With her departure early that summer, I threw myself into my work. I was a day trader, working out of couple of rooms in the house I bought with Susan’s encouragement. I know what you think. Most day traders fail, most, but not all. I had a knack for it, a talent if you will, for spotting trends before they became trends, sensing when stocks would slide or climb. I was hardly perfect. In fact I had some really bad days where I lost more money than most people make in a couple of years but then I had those days where everything I touched turned to gold, and I had enough of those good days that at the end of the year, they more than made up for the bad ones. At tax time my accountant informed me that I owed the IRS a huge amount of money. I wrote out the check, almost glad because I realized that if I owed them that much, it meant that I had made a hell of a lot more than that. That was all that mattered. It had become more a game to me. Money was how I kept score, nothing more.
That fall and winter the markets had absorbed me but as spring rolled around, they calmed down and I gradually got over Susan. I realized one morning that I needed to get out and get some exercise. It would do me good I thought. When I was a growing up in Chicago, I had liked to bicycle and I now lived a couple of blocks from a good bike trail. In fact, the area where I lived, the so called ‘North Shore’ suburbs just north of Chicago, seemed a great place to bike. There are quiet, safe streets, a couple of bike trails and limited traffic. It seemed ideal so I went to my local bike shop.
No thanks, the mountain bikes I tried were not comfortable at all, the road bikes were worse. I searched the internet and learned about recumbents, decided on one I liked and drove an hour to test ride it and a few others. ‘Now this is it,’ I smiled as I sat down on an eight foot long bike with a padded seat. It was called a Tour Easy and it had a twenty inch front wheel, a twenty seven inch rear wheel and it looked almost like a Harley Davidson motorcycle without an engine.
The bike shop owner and I somehow managed to squeeze it into my SUV but it was a tight fit. The next day I went and bought a used minivan and took out the seats. So, yes, I bought a twenty thousand dollar minivan to haul my two thousand dollar bike around. Go figure.
I loved the bike. In fact, I even started going out during the week, leaving my stocks to their own devices. It was such a joy to ride. I liked people’s comments about it too. It became a conversation piece almost every where I went. I had so much fun, I even joined a local bike club that spring and started going on rides with them.
Most weekends, the club had (or actually has, they are still around) several scheduled rides, some planned and others that were so called ‘show and go’ rides. Those who showed up decided where they would go. These were often shorter, slower, more informal rides than the planned ones and as I was still far from being in good shape, more to my speed and liking.
I saw Carol there for the first time one Sunday morning. She seemed a regular, knew a couple of others and rode with them, not saying more than a polite ‘hello’ to me. I wasn’t sure if I cared or not either. I hadn’t got completely over Susan and to be honest, wasn’t sure if I found Carol attractive or not. I certainly don’t mean to be cruel (those who live in glass houses etc) but it just seemed as if she was made up from pieces that didn’t seem to fit together too well, leftovers perhaps. She was tall, perhaps taller than I was, and very angular. The nose and eyes didn’t seem quite right, and her hair, tucked underneath the helmet, was of an uncertain and indeterminate color. It was a most awkward look and not at first a pleasant one either.
She rode her mountain bike that morning with almost the zeal of someone out to prove something. Like many of the others as I referred to them ‘gear heads’, she seemed so serious in her riding, never smiling, barely looking up at the trails and streets around her. I was delighted to be leaning back on my recumbent. I smiled. I laughed. I looked around as I rode not being bent over. I had fun and it seemed that most others did not.
Her bike and clothes both seemed used but serviceable. I didn’t, and still don’t know one mountain bike from another. They seem so cookie cutter to me now, so ordinary, much like her that morning. She wore little if any spandex and her cycling shoes, while the clipless style, had probably also seen better days.
As we rode through streets, she barely talked, chatting only once or twice to the lone other woman in the small group of seven that morning. My advice to men is don’t join a bike club thinking you’re going to meet up with some cute young woman. You’ll be far out numbered and if you are like much like me and hardly a ‘ten’ you’ll just be wasting your time. Me, I didn’t bother even trying to talk to her. I was there to enjoy the ride and I did.
I saw her again the following Sunday. Another show and go ride as I’d decided against the main ride. Eight of us showed up including her. We decided to ride north to the Botanical Gardens, make a quick stop and then south along another trail and return back to our starting point in Evanston.
At our stop in the Gardens, she, along with several others who were there, stopped to look at my strange contraption. ‘Mind if I sit on it?’ she asked out of the blue.
Of course I didn’t mind. I offered to let her try riding it but she was not that ambitious that morning. I suspected that she could have ridden it, the seat being not too far back for her to peddle but she declined and smiled and said it was comfortable but strange. Exactly.
Our group made its way back and began breaking up once we hit Ev
anston. She split off before I did and I left and took a short cut home, and thought nothing of her.
Two weeks later and another small group rode north to Lambs Farm and back. It was my longest ride so far and on the way back, there was a McDonalds right on the way. We stopped as we were all hungry.
We locked our bikes and all went in except her. ‘Aren’t you coming in?’ I asked politely.
‘I’m broke,’ she said quietly.
‘I’m not. Had a good week myself. Let me get you something.’
‘It’s not necessary.’
‘I know,’ I smiled. ‘That’s why I’m making the offer. Besides, I was always brought up to be a gentleman and when a gentleman sees a lady who is too broke to eat at McDonalds, then he always offers to treat,’ I half laughed. ‘Besides, it’s not like we’re talking zillions of dollars here. Not only that, I like this group here today, so why not come in, let me get you something and join us? It really is OK, you know.’
So, she went inside with the rest of us and I got her some fries and a Coke which seemed pretty good to myself and she sat and ate them pretty much alone as did I and I wondered why.
I didn’t see her again for three more weeks. I’m not sure why really and wasn’t sure it mattered either. Big deal, so I had bought her fries and a coke and talked for half a minute. It was hardly a start.
That morning in August it would all change, oh would it ever. The cloud filled sky was threatening rain yet the Weather Channel insisted it was not going to happen. I looked out the door and decided on the show and go ride, and stashed my rain jacket into the bag that was over my rear wheel and took off to the starting point.
I was the only one there at nine in the morning and I wondered if I had made a mistake. Were my clocks not working properly? Was I still asleep and only dreaming? No, I suspected the threat of rain was keeping everyone away.
Suddenly, she showed up.
‘No one else?’ she asked.
I shrugged and mentioned the forecast.
‘Could go home,’ I suggested.
‘No, I need to ride. Let’s try for the Gardens.’
I merely nodded and tried to keep up with her pace. It was almost a struggle for me but I managed it quite nicely thank you. We hardly spoke at all, even stopping at the Gardens for a quick turn around and as we say politely ‘pit stop.’
The sky opened up in Glencoe along the side streets. I was a mile or less from my home and said so. ‘You can dry off and either wait it out or I’ll drive you home,’ I offered.
She was very undecided until a clap of thunder shook us both. Already soaked to the skin, my rain jacket now attempting to cover her too late, I dashed along the familiar streets, up to the gate and found the garage door opener in my bag and prayed it would work. It did and I skidded inside beside the Mini Cooper and van. She had followed.
‘Come on in,’ I offered leading the way. ‘Mind the two cats.’ She followed me up the stairs and I showed her the guest room. Washer and dryer were located up there as well. I found a seldom used robe she could wear and offered a pair of clean sweat pants and sweat shirt if she wanted.
‘I’ll be down stairs in the kitchen once I change,’ I announced.
‘This place is huge,’ she stated. I was in the kitchen looking out at the monsoon rains and hadn’t seen or heard her. ‘You live alone?’
‘Bought it with the idea that someone else would be with me. We broke up over a year ago. Now it’s just the cats and I.’
She merely sat down. She was in the robe then. I assumed the sweat suit too small perhaps or whatever. I decided not to assume. ‘Can I offer you something? Beer? Pepsi? Donut? Sandwich?’
‘Pepsi will be fine.’
It suited me too. Ice and a couple of glasses and an awkward gap in the conversation, neither of us knowing quite what to do next.
My black cat Lucky saved us. She jumped up on the table beside her and checked Carol out. ‘She and the other one just moved in after I bought the house. I thought they might have lived here before but I asked the neighbors and they told me the last owners had dogs so I don’t know.’
‘And you’ve let them stay?’ she asked.
‘Of course. Even I know that people don’t adopt cats, they adopt you. Odd that they never liked Susan. Perhaps that should have told me something.’
Emma, the other cat, a calico, also found Carol and showed her as much attention as she ever showed me. Carol just smiled perhaps for the first time. I too smiled.
We sat and talked about meaningless things as the rain continued. Her clothes in the dryer upstairs until the buzzer sounded. I hated the sound as she went up and changed. ‘Still a bit damp,’ she smiled. ‘Another ten minutes I think should do it.’
I had a flat screen TV in the kitchen. It was where I often ate anyway and turned on the Weather Channel. Radar had more rain heading our way. ‘They lied to me this morning,’ I said. ‘I took the risk anyway though.’
‘I thought it would rain but I didn’t want to stay in my apartment. My roommate and her boyfriend are there. Mind if I stay a little while longer?’
‘Why in the world would I?’ I said quite honestly. I was slowly beginning to like her.
She shrugged and said no more. ‘Do you take lots of risks?’
‘Don’t we all?’ I asked. ‘I’m a day trader and very good at it if I do say so myself but I never risk it all, never more than I can afford to lose. No matter what happens, this house is mine.’
‘But it wasn’t supposed to be, was it?’
‘No, it wasn’t.’
‘May I ask what happened?’
‘It was not be,’ I replied not offering to give any more details, not sure I could to such a stranger, hadn’t really told anyone, even myself exactly why.
The buzzer sounded and she stood up and we both bounded up the stairs and I asked politely ‘and you don’t have a boyfriend yourself?’
Now it was her turn to be silent. ‘No, not now.’ She grabbed her dry clothes and dashed into the guest room.
We left serious discussion behind and talked of bicycles and rides and music and art and movies and all manner of somewhat superficial things (except perhaps to my mind the bicycles) and the rain slowly let up and then almost stopped.
‘I think I can make it home now,’ she announced.
‘I’m sure I can fit your bike in my minivan,’ I insisted.
‘You don’t have to.’
‘I made an offer. The offer still stands.’
‘Ok then.’
As predicted, her bike fit right inside the van. How could it not? She navigated me to her apartment in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago, though I already knew the area quite well, about a five mile bike ride from the club’s starting point.
‘Let me carry your bike up then,’ I offered.
‘Are you always such a gentleman?’
‘I know of no other way to be,’ I replied most sincerely.
She looked at me in disbelief as if I was a Martian and suddenly I half thought I knew something more about her. ‘I meant what I said.’
I took the bike up the narrow stairs of the run down apartment building. ‘I enjoyed this, really and I’d like to see you again,’ I half stammered as we got to the door.
‘My roommate and her boy friend are still here,’ she said at the door.
I had taken a small risk and lost as she went inside. After she slipped the bike inside, while the door still open, she smiled at me at least and said her thanks and closed the door.
Part Two
I left her apartment and drove back home as the rain let up and wondered if I hadn’t made another stupid mistake, wondered if I should have just kept my mouth shut instead of saying that I’d like to see her. What in the world was I thinking? Why was I setting myself up to be crushed again, crushed as Susan had done to me, crushed by who I was and what I liked and wanted.
I could not take the words back. The damage was done. There was little I could do about it. At the same time, we had
not exchanged phone numbers. Mine was unlisted. I was certain hers was, assuming she even had one.
Back home, I sat down and half wondered what she would look like, dressed up in the clothes I had bought for Susan, hoping against all hope she would wear them. Carol would indeed look quite good I decided.
I snapped back to reality. I would not risk being hurt again like that. I found the packages, found those clothes she had found so disgusting that she had stormed out of here almost in a rage, found them and bundled them up and tossed them into the garbage. I should have done it long ago but I could not. No one would ever wear them. No one.
Certainly not Carol I realized over a microwave dinner. She wasn’t Susan’s size, not even close. Did I like her, I wondered? I really wasn’t sure. She was intelligent when she chose to be and witty or so it seemed and not as superficial as most young women appeared or was it that I was just reading what I wanted into her? I did not know. I just did not know.
The following weekend, the club had a fifty-mile ride. I decided to go and skip the show and go, partly as a challenge and partly as a passive-aggressive way of avoiding dealing with Carol, hoping she would not show up. She didn’t and I was both happy and depressed that she didn’t.
A week later was the North Shore Century — a huge daylong ride – which the club organized and ran so I did not ride. Instead, I helped man a check in booth at the start and end of the ride.
A show and go was scheduled for the following weekend, one of the very last as it was now the end of September. I was deliberately late, arriving a good ten minutes after I knew the group would be gone.
A solitary bike was there. Hers. I could have turned around I suppose and so could she but there we both were.
‘You’re late,’ she smiled, ‘or were you lying about wanting to see me again.’
‘I honestly wasn’t sure.’
‘Fair enough. Neither was I. I’m not who you think.’
‘Nor am I. That’s why people date. To find out about each other.’
‘So I’ve been told. Is this a date then?’ she asked.
‘I guess it is,’ I agreed.
‘Then where are you taking me?’
‘Lunch at the Gardens? My treat of course. We can take the long way or the short way.’
‘It’s a nice day. Let’s take the long way. My roommate and her boyfriend are there.’
We zipped along the quiet Sunday side streets that run through the middle class neighborhoods, chilled by the crisp fall air. I kept pace with her easily. Either I had gotten stronger and faster — quite likely actually — or she was going slower on my account or perhaps a bit of both. The talk was casual and easy and when it permitted, we rode side by side. We’d never done that before and she would look down on me from her mountain bike and smile at times.
I chose not to pry into her life but mentioned my own. I too had lived in Rogers Park. Long ago I had grown up there. Three children and a single mother lived in the two-bedroom apartment. Father dead, we made the best of it I suppose.
‘I was the one everyone laughed at in school,’ I said aloud for perhaps only the second time in my life.
‘You’ve done quite well though it seems.’
‘In some ways, in others no. I found I have a talent. I can work long hours and sense stock trends very early on. By no means perfect, but I do better than most,’ I explained as we coasted to a stop by the bike rack in the Botanical Gardens. We locked our bikes together and made our way inside.
Too early for lunch, we wandered into the manicured gardens, Carol telling me that like myself, she had ridden there many times but never stopped to walk. This time we walked. Somewhere along the path, she touched my hand and held it. It felt just so natural, so right to do I thought nothing of it.
She paused beside some flowers whose name I’ve long since forgotten and caught me looking at her with a very pleasant smile on my face, as if I had seen something wonderful. Perhaps I had.
‘You see something?’ she asked.
‘A very beautiful woman.’
She looked around and seeing no one. ‘I don’t see anyone,’ she said. She was not joking either.
Charlize
- 03.06.2022
- 10
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