A Few Days of Peace – Part II
Ron was on a mission. He needed cold, hard facts – data he could use to prevent a fate worse than death! What's more, this mission was one that he and he alone could undertake. He left Kim sleeping, despite the relatively late morning hour. At that very moment he was envying her rest. He was actually having to 'self-medicate' due to his own lack of rest.
The triple latte he was drinking should have him wired for hours! He needed it, considering, by his estimation, he had gotten only two to three hours of actual sleep over the last two nights. Not that he was complaining. It wasn't like he had spent his normal sleeping hours fighting super-freaks!
He was still a little worried. The pace they were setting was…substantial. That's why he had slipped out of bed using every bit of his meager ninja training to be utterly silent. Of course, he needn't have bothered. Kim normally was the lightest of sleepers, able to wake up and function in mere seconds, but this morning she was in the deepest of slumbers, to the degree he could have rolled out of her arms singing The Shape of My Head at the top of his lungs.
Fortunately for him, almost everyone at the resort spoke English, to varying degrees. Almost all of his Spanish was directly related to food and even then it seemed only Ned could understand a word he was saying. Not only was almost everything there in his native language, even all the magazines in the gift shop were American.
Stage 1 of his mission was afoot: Research! He started with the most obvious of sources – the various men's health type magazines. Oh yes, there was plenty there related to what he was looking for! Too bad it was all in the ads near the back of the publication. He knew better than to believe anything he saw there any more than what used to be in his email inbox before he broke down and had Wade install some really effective SPAM filters.
Thirty minutes were burned up, wasted looking for any kind of real information. It just wasn't there. That meant digging deeper, going where no man had gone before! Well, at least where men shouldn't have gone before, at least where he was concerned.
It was worse than he could have ever imagined.
Women's magazines, it turned out, were apparently ninety-five percent advertisement, and what wasn't ad looked amazingly like some cosmetic or clothing company must have paid them to run what they were.
He also discovered that he could never really think of Kim as thin again. Compared to most of the models used by those magazines, she was full of delicious curves!
Ron was starting to despair that he would not find the answers he needed.
He was afraid of what might finally happen if he failed! He had been threatened with this before and the last thing he wanted to do was fail his beloved wife, especially now!
Just short of a year earlier both he and Kim had finally moved out of their childhood homes. Just barely twenty-one at the time they felt they were too old to live in the college dorms. Instead they found a small but comfortable two-bedroom apartment very close to the campus and signed a one-year lease. Officially they were room-mates, to the point where they furnished the bedrooms for each of them separately. He was sure that fiction never fooled anyone, especially with the looks he got from his mother and Kim's father at first. (It was rather interesting that his father seemed inordinately proud and Kim's mother inordinately happy with the arraignment.)
In practice, "Kim's" room had been used for a total of two nights while he got over a particularly nasty flu bug!
In their first couple nights in their new 'home' they set a pace that he was sure would be impossible to maintain. He even remarked on it to Kim. She simply smiled and said everything was going to be just fine, after all, anything is possible for a Possible! Then she him a smile that stiffened his resolve. Fortunately, for his sanity (and the fact he needed enough rest to perform in other areas such as his school work) things calmed down relatively quickly. He was spared the potential for "Booyah-denied!"
Though "Ron-Night" took on a whole new dimension!
The week leading up to their wedding things kicked into high gear again. Even though they had so very much to do they still managed to find a little time to be together. In fact, every waking moment they weren't tied up with guests and caterers and tux rental people and family members (there was a rather ugly incident involving cousin Shawn who had not mellowed with age and now had a little brother who was on track to make his older sibling look like Pollyanna!) they spent together, sending many a tongue wagging among the older matrons of both families.
Kim didn't care. Her dress was white and it was going to stay that way! Besides, even if they had pulled off the impossible task of waiting all the way through a four-year engagement (had it really been that long?) those same tongues would have been wagging anyway. It was the nature of the beast. He found he didn't care either. It was the Twenty-First Century anyway!
He had now wasted an hour looking through magazines without getting anywhere closer to the answers he wanted. His latte was also long gone and his stomach was starting to rumble. It looked like his mission may fail after all.
Kim sat up in the bed, clutching the soft warm sheets to her. This wasn't like her, she usually woke up ready for the day. Instead she felt like it would be really good to lie back down and close her eyes. In fact, that's exactly what she did. Still, despite her body's craving for sleep, something was just not right. Some key ingredient to her comfort just was not there.
She craned her neck slightly, surveying the room through her sleep-addled senses. She spotted her shiny purple silk camisole sitting at the foot of the bed and decided she was much more accustomed to sleeping with at least something on. She slipped it over her head and slipped back under the covers once more. There, that was much better!
No, it was better, but that wasn't all!
She grabbed Ron's pillow and pulled it against her, scrunching herself to it like it was an over-sized Pandaroo. Then it dawned on her.
Where was Ron?
It was just after ten in the morning and, considering the late hour they finally went to sleep, he should have been dead to the world. If she was still down for the count, he should have been totally KOed. Maybe one of his other needs, one of the strongest of them all had drawn him out of bed. Maybe he was just getting them breakfast, though they could have anything the resort prepared brought directly to their room.
Oh well. She let her head gently down on the pillow and closed her eyes again. If he was there, he'd probably want another go. She wasn't sure she'd even be able to walk today, not after the extended adventure of the previous night and early morning.
Kim was finding herself trying to recall some of her mother's advice about keeping up with the male drive. Ron sure had kicked into high gear over the last week. He couldn't keep his hands off of her the week leading up to their wedding, to the point she was sure his parents were going to have to bodily drag him to their house to spend the night before.
It didn't occur to her that her parents were thinking the same way about her when they took her to their house that night. Thinking quickly, her mother rounded all the bridal party up for a "Girl's Night Out" to prevent any wedding-day mishaps such as the groom seeing his bride! Mishaps such as any one of the many family members happening to walk in on the two love-sick kids.
Jim and Tim were still going on about how they were now "Scarred for life!" Well, it was technically still her room and the door was closed and anyone with a brain might suspect if her fiancé was upstairs with her…
If only they hadn't found their old bullhorn to announce a major "Cootie-Emergency" to the whole house. Maybe they did deserve lifetime scarring.
She heard the door open, admitting Ron, who was tonelessly singing to himself "Oh I didn't just roll out of bed…this is the shape of my he..ead!" (she loved him dearly but had to admit he should stick to rap!)
"So, how's my most bon-diggity newlywed this morning?" He asked brightly, casually tossing an empty grande-size Seattle-style coffee cup into the waste basket.
"Better, now." She said, smiling at him, though she couldn't get her eyes to open fully.
"Well, don't lollygag in bed all day! We've got a full day ahead of us. I've even prepared a great, carb-loaded breakfast for us to give us the energy we'll need!" He went back to the sitting room, returning with a large tray covered with pastries, with a can of high-powered energy drink on the side.
"Energy? Baby, how about some more marinating today. You know, slow down, take it easy."
"Nah, I'm too pumped now. I found some stuff about how lots of activity can improve everything about your life, so I've planned lots of activity today."
"Oh…sure." She said with a half smile. I'm going to be leaving this place in a wheelchair! How did I ever think I could keep up with Ron?
"So, here's the itinerary for the day." He held up a hands to tick off a list.
What has gotten into him? I thought he liked being spontaneous about intimacy?
"Okay, first off, I've rented some bikes and signed us up for a guided ride around the island!"
Bikes? That's the activity? That's not so bad!
Then she realized something.
Bikes have bike seats. Hard, uncomfortable seats that can be hell on certain regions.
Gulp!