It's a warm night in Florida. Of course. Ricardo stares up at the night sky, waiting, waiting, waiting. Stars are twinkling overhead and he thinks he almost doesn't need fireworks, but the woman squirming around in his arms looks on impatiently as minutes tick slowly by. Alicia sighs, arches up and kisses him slowly, fingernails biting gently into his jaw as she angles his mouth just right, teasing him with soft, easy licks against his lips until he parts them and they sigh into each other, his fingers tensing against her hips.

They'd found a secluded spot, no one else is really around, so when his hand eases a little lower, and her body presses a bit closer, neither worry too much about what prying eyes are seeing. He laughs as she turns and straddles him, brushing her hair out of her eyes while her skirt pools around them. "You're going to miss the fireworks," he tells her softly and she shakes her head, leaning in to kiss him.

"No, I won't," she breathes out, the warm, sleak curves of her body resting just right against him. He closes his eyes and takes it in, the soft sounds of nature, how good she feels in his arms, and then the sudden, deep bursts of color against his eyes, the echoing explosions of fireworks in the distance. Her fingers are interlaced with his and he realizes she's watching the show in the reflection of the windshield, her kisses timing just right with the flashes of light in the night sky, the shifts of her hips affecting him more than each blast overhead. He groans into her, mouthing at her jaw and throat as she inches away, then rocks forward again.

As more and more fireworks fill the horizon, growing towards the big finale, she bites her lip and stares into his eyes, observing how the colors bleed down around them, greens and golds and blues and reds making him look serene and ethereal as he watches her, hands shifting in the folds of her skirt, guiding her, giving her traction and speed when she needs it. Her nails bite into his hands and she whimpers, her body still shifting, her lips still kissing him, but her movements less coordinated, not bothering to time with the fireworks overhead anymore. She presses a kiss to the shell of his ear and whispers, "I love you, Ricardo."

As the last of the fireworks fade into the night sky, he hisses out a strained, tense breath, and relaxes into the warm glow of her, of this. Of them. "I love you too," he breathes out as she smiles tenderly down at him, stroking his hair out of her eyes and kissing his forehead.

They're getting ready for bed an hour later, his hands still snaking around her waist at times, making her giggle when she's trying to brush her hair, or use mouthwash, and eventually she turns and wraps her arms around his neck, resting her forehead against his. "I'm sorry we can't spend the holiday together."

He nods. Strokes her thighs, lingering possessively where her injury had been. "I'm just glad rehab worked quickly and you're feeling better," he tells her. "I will miss you though. And Dar had better take good care of you." She presses soft kisses to his mouth, nose, and cheek before he leans in, kisses her back.

"He will, don't worry. Cedric won't know what's coming." She laughs, a tinkling little sound, and he tries to ignore the dread coiling deep in his stomach over her continued obsession with her ex.

Trying to quiet his doubts, he guides her into the bedroom and sits her down on the edge of the mattress, staring into her eyes as he rubs lowly at her leg, massaging out the last of the tension in her hamstring before leaning in to kiss the area gently. She sighs softly and cards her fingers through Ricardo's hair, shivering when he lightly nibbles at her, grazing her flesh with his tongue. "Tease," she exhales, her fingers tensing against his scalp when he proves her wrong with a quick, smooth movement to the right that makes her gasp out his name as she arches up into him.

His weekend goes from bad to worse, however. Not long after Alicia flies out, he starts up the TNA Slammiversary and watches as Alberto becomes heavyweight champion. It sitngs, he won't lie. All of Alberto's successes post-WWE are without him, Alberto proving time and again that he doesn't need Ricardo to be champion, and he probably never has. It's dumb, he thinks, there are a number of people in TNA he can't stand, but he turns to Twitter anyway to congratulate Alberto. They're still a long way from ever being friends even a portion as close as he was to Alberto in years past, but even so, seeing Alberto lift a belt high above his head makes Ricardo yearn for simpler times, when things didn't hurt and he'd have someone to turn to about this Alicia thing. Someone who would listen and not judge, and...

But it is what it is, and Ricardo stares at his tweets, at things people are saying in response to him. He doubts it'll go anywhere, it's just his luck that even Alberto won't have enough sway in TNA to get them to give him a chance (especially with things not going so well when he worked for AAA that one time), but even though he's retired as a wrestler, he's not completely useless. He can still go, he just chooses not to. If the right place had made the right offer...

He finds an old picture of he and Alberto, one of the few times they were both happy in the WWE, and closes his eyes, trying not to get his hopes up but unable to completely stop himself from doing just that. "Ricardo," he tells himself, "you are an idiot for repeatedly doing this to yourself."

But he can't stop it. Hope springs eternal and all that.