Three #4
She was nice to look at. And everything about her was bright.
Sitting across the table from her was like being washed in sunshine.
Warm. Comfortable. “She” meaning the woman from my dreams. Rilee.
I needed to start calling her Rilee. In person she was kind of prickly.
Maybe I should be calling her Ms. Horner.
The weight stack clanked as I lowered it on my last rep.
I needed to concentrate on what I was doing.
Machines were safer because they held me in a static position and I could control the bend of my back, but I could still get messed up.
And they didn’t give the same kind of workout that a set of dumbbells could.
I moved over to the curls. The shoulder press would have been next on my circuit but that downward pressure did funky stuff to my back and I wasn’t in the mood to fight a bad leg day.
Maybe her prickliness was just because of the situation.
She’d been there to buy a pot not run into someone she knew.
Well, someone she really didn’t know. I’d just seen her the one time—when I was awake.
But I could see her clearly enough that I recognized that subtle dimple in her left cheek when she smiled.
Recognize it well enough that when a woman walked through the front door and gave the gym rat at the counter a token smile, I recognized her. What was she doing here?
Rilee wore some fitted sweatpants and started toward the ellipticals.
I finished working my biceps and went to the pull-down tower on the far side of the gym to set up for some tricep curls.
She was certainly good looking, and confident.
I tried not to watch her, no woman likes being ogled at the gym, but I had a hard time avoiding it.
Her blond ponytailed hair bobbed as she worked into a solid rhythm on the elliptical.
Struggling to keep my eyes away from her, I reset the weight stack for upward tricep curls.
Rilee was facing away, and this angle gave me three quarters of her profile.
The line of her cheek and subtle angle of her jaw line was unmistakable.
Rilee Horner was undeniably definitely the woman I’d been dreaming about.
The question was why? Why was she in my dreams?
And why was I dreaming of only her? Since she’d invaded my nights she’d pushed out the shuddering sounds of the accident and the cold sweats that shook me awake while I lay alone under the logs waiting for someone to pull them off me.
Now those were gone and in their place was her. Why?
Leaving the weight tower I settled onto an upright bench and carefully began using a single dumbbell.
It was only twenty-five pounds, about half of what I used to lift, but I had to concentrate so much more on form than before.
I compensated by working more reps but it still felt like I was wimping out.
Every repetition my mind slid back to her.
First the shape of her mouth, then the line of her eyebrow and the color of her hair.
That feeling of afternoon sun. Why was I dreaming of her?
I didn’t even like her. She was kind of pushy, except that there were those moments when she was so warm, like the sun coming out from behind puffy white clouds on a bluebird day.
She’d finished her elliptical run and moved on to free weight lunges.
Right now, she lived in my dreams, a magical seed sprouting each night, completely filling my thoughts.
And she was only a dream. Right now, Rilee Horner was just an idea, a construct.
Somehow, I’d made her up in my subconscious.
Like a shadow or shape in the first light of dawn, a shape that took on any form until the growing light of day allowed a closer look.
That is what I needed, a closer look. When I did, the full light of day would reveal her and she wouldn’t be an idea anymore, she’d be real.
And she’d be gone from my dreams like the fog curling between the pines when the sun rose.
Once I had a full sunlit picture she’d vanish and I could have some order again.
Racking the dumbbells, I took a drink of water.
A real drink was what I needed before doing this but alcohol hadn’t mixed well with my medication.
It had been a while since I’d had a drink.
Just something to loosen up. But I’d left the booze in the cupboard when I moved in with Kathy, and it was still before seven. I could do this without it.
Walking over to Rilee, the unnatural stiffness of the plastic ankle brace felt like a gear stripping out. Should I have taken it off before I’d come over? She’d probably already seen it.
“Hey, I didn’t expect to see you here.” Definitely the world’s worst pickup line. A guy in a sleeveless shirt choosing some dumbbells looked at Rilee and then me. Yea, keep looking buddy.
“Oh, hi. I didn’t see you,” she said. I’m not sure if that was better or worse than my line.
“So, ah, would you like to get a cup of coffee sometime?”