Ok, readers...here's Chapter 3 of Journey Onward. I know it has been awhile since I've added a chapter, but hopefully the wait for Chapter 4 will be nowhere near as long. Speaking of Chapter 4, it will likely be the last chapter in this tale. As always I welcome your feedback and comments. Hope you enjoy!
*****
Jake stepped behind the woman pouring wine in the kitchen and placed his hands on her bare arms. She was startled for a moment, but after Jake gently kissed her exposed neck, she relaxed and continued to pour. He whispered, "do you have any idea how magnificent you look from behind?"
Sandra blushed as she finished pouring and turned around to face him. She reached up and pulled Jake's face down to meet hers and placed a kiss gently on his lips.
"You smooth talker. Keep that up, and we will see what happens."
*****
It had been an interesting few days for Jake leading up to that moment. He had created a profile on a dating website, and hadn't received very many responses. The free trial period had nearly come to an end, and he was considering scrapping the whole thing and going in a different direction to try to meet someone.
He'd been in his new surroundings for about 6 months, and was getting settled in nicely. Work was going well, he loved where he was living, and had acclimated to the weather. The one downside was a lack of a social life. Jake had always been a bit shy and reserved, so meeting new people, expanding his social circle, and more critically, dating was always a challenge. Once he got to know someone, he was sociable, but getting to that point was difficult.
During that time, he felt the grief and sadness over Kate's death begin to lift and heeding her wishes, began to think about exploring who might be out there for him. He had taken notice of some women at work, but was hesitant to pursue that avenue for a couple of reasons. One was that getting involved with someone you work with could backfire if things went south and the other was that he was considerably older than most of the people he worked with.
Jake had primarily dated and been with women older than him. He had no issue dating someone a few years younger, but most of the women at work were 15 to 20 years younger than him. He was old enough to be their father or uncle. While he would check out and admire these younger women, he chose for them to remain off limits to any potential advances from him.
There were some women closer to his age, only in fewer numbers. It did seem like most of them had wedding bands, though. He didn't want to go down that route, either. It usually was nothing but trouble that ended badly for everyone involved.
With those obstacles in place, he decided to cross work off of his list of potential places to meet someone. That didn't stop him from turning his flirtatious side on from time to time if he sensed that he was being flirted with. He chose, though, not to take things beyond that.
With work, then, being off limits, his other avenues were limited. He could frequent the bars, but he isn't much of a drinker and didn't want to spend the time or money. He thought about finding some social gathering or church or something on meetup.com to pass the time, but his shyness kept him from taking that leap.
That left online dating. It was how he met Kate, so it wasn't a foreign concept to him. It would allow him to screen potential dates from the safety of home, and perhaps eliminate some of the small talk that is common on first dates. He found a site that was running a special trial period and started to create his profile. He cringed at some of the questions, but filled it out anyway figuring the more info that was there, the less sifting through of random messages he'd have to do.
It took him awhile to go through it all and find a suitable picture to post. Once it was up and to his liking, he started to poke around the site to see what he might find. He quickly realized the pickings were slim. There seemed to be many more profiles of men than women, and those women on there were generally about the same age of those women at work. There were a handful of women that were his age, but none of them really stood out.
He stood up, sighed, and closed out of the site. He figured he had the free 30 day trial period to see what might pop up before he had to make any decision about whether or not to continue on. He wasn't feeling too optimistic based on what he had seen so far, but who knew what would happen.
A week had gone by, and Jake had almost forgotten about the dating site when he received an email saying that he had new matches. He logged in, and there indeed had been some new people who had created accounts. He read through them, and one or two of them caught his interest. He fired off a couple of emails to them to see what might happen.
The first woman was 42, blonde and recently divorced. It seemed like she and Jake had quite a bit in common, so he thought he would test the waters and see what happened.
The other woman was 48, brunette, and not so recently divorced. Her name was Sandra, and the more he read her profile, the more he was intrigued. She was into some similar things as he, such reading and writing as well as being a sports fan. The care with which she filled her profile out really interested him. Then, there was her picture. She was full figured, with an attractive round face, a great smile and dark brown hair. He felt an instant attraction to her. She seemed elegant. Combined with the text in the ad, he was very interested. He took the time to craft a heartfelt message to her and hit send with hopes that he'd hear back from her soon.
A day or so went by, and he heard from the blonde, Kelly. She thanked him for his email, but told him that she had already gotten back into a relationship with someone from another dating site so she was closing this account. Jake shrugged and decided it was not meant to be. He checked his outbox and saw that the email he sent to Sandra had been read, but he hadn't received a response yet. He was guessing that she had read it, and decided she wasn't interested so he moved on to looking through other profiles. Nothing grabbed his attention, and he decided to go do something more productive.
Two weeks had passed by, and he had loosened up a bit a work. He had been flirting some with another employee who had started at the same time as him. She was quite a bit younger, but there was an attraction there. They had talked about grabbing coffee sometime, but it hadn't happened yet primarily thanks to her busy schedule. Occasionally, they would see each other in the halls and talk for a minute or two, but that had been the extent of it. He stopped worrying about that and decided that if it happened, great, and if it didn't, he had someone at work he could be friendly with when they passed each other.
It was getting near the end of that 30-day trial period, and Jake made a note to go in and cancel the membership a day or two before. On a whim, he decided to log in and see if there was a way to cancel early. He was poking around the site to see if he could find any info, when he saw a message notification pop up saying he had new mail. He navigated over to the mail, and when he opened it, he saw a message from Sandra.
He perked up a little, and opened the message. She opened by apologizing profusely for not getting back to him sooner. She, like him, had only planned on being around for the free 30 days, and then completely forgot about it until she had logged in to see about cancelling it. She said that she had received a few messages, but that Jake's really caught her eye and she wanted to make sure she responded. He read through it, and a smile grew on his face. She seemed like someone he really wanted to meet and get to know. Plus, she was very attractive.
She closed the message by giving Jake her personal email address since she was closing the account down and wouldn't have access to the site anymore. Jake quickly copied that info down, and jumped over to his personal email and started typing a message to Sandra.
