When the Time Is Right

*Author's Note: The idea for this story comes from a reader who sent me a link to a story about a couple whose first 'kiss' came during the CPR the woman performed on him after he collapsed on the beach. She happened to be a medical doctor, so it seemed reasonable to make the female main character in this story an MD, too.

I was amazed at how much the photo of this doctor looks like a former blonde White House Press Secretary, but there's also a resemblance to the actress, Julie Benz. She played a character named Rita in the TV show Dexter, the name of the male character in my last story, Eye Exam. So it only seemed fitting to call her Rita in this one.

*****

Late August, 2018

"Brian? Will Ellison."

"Will. Must be getting close to September 11th."

"Yeah. I'm afraid it is."

"I'm glad you called, but I wish there was some other reason."

"I almost didn't. I know you don't mind talking about it, but you'd prefer to forget it happened, and I understand that. I really do. But there's something about us both having lost a parent within minutes of the other I can't shake."

"It's okay. Really. It's a part of our lives, right?"

"Yes. Yes, it is," his friend said. "So anyway, I walked by your old office today, and I knew I had to give you a call."

Brian laughed and asked who was in it now.

"I'm surprised you care," Will told him.

"I really don't. I guess it's just idle curiosity."

"Some new hotshot. He's good, too, but not as good as you were."

"You know most of that is just a matter of luck and timing," Brian tried telling his old friend.

"No, a small part of it involves luck, and yes, timing is important, but you either have a knack for this stuff or you don't. And you have it."

"Had it," Brian reminded him.

"Okay. Sure. Fine. I know you walked away, but something tells me you could step back in here tomorrow and be making money hand over fist again in a week."

"You got the main part of that right, Will. I walked away. The money part no longer interests me."

This time Will laughed.

"That's easy to say when you made a shit load of it. Hell, I've been here for fifteen years now, and you made ten times what I've earned in all that time in just five."

"Luck and timing," Brian said again.

"You still doin' the Kidd Rock thing?" Will asked to get off the subject of money.

"The what?"

"You know, the Kidd Rock song—Picture. With Sheryl Crow."

"I'm still not following," Brian told him.

"Geez. Okay. I'll give it to you. The line in the song that goes 'different girl every night at the hotel'. That was you. Work your ass off all day then screw some piece of ass all night long. I hope you know I had a serious man-crush on you, dude."

Brian finally laughed when the light came on.

"Sorry. Good song, I just haven't thought about it in years. But I'll tell you, I was completely burned out on that, too. The 'different girl every night' thing."

"Yeah. Poor Brian. Making millions and fucking gorgeous women by the bushel basket. Sucks to be you."

Brian sighed as he thought back to his days on Wall Street. He'd gotten a break just three months out of college and taken advantage of it in a big way. He really had made a sh...ton of money. And yes, there had also been a ton of beautiful women. But at some point none of it made sense anymore. None of it brought him an ounce of satisfaction. Money became numbers on a computer screen whenever he bothered to look at his bank account which, by then, he was paying an accountant to do for him. And the endless parade of women left him ever colder and more alone.

So two years ago, at the age of 27, he closed up shop and left and never looked back. Except when Will called on or near the anniversary of the day he lost his father and Brian lost his mother during the 9-11 attacks.

He'd been just 10 years old the day he learned his mom was among those missing. Her older brother, his Uncle Mickey, had taken him in while they waited. Three days after the towers fell they had their answer. She was killed as was the father of a 17-year old boy who lived just two city blocks away he didn't yet know.

They'd worked together for five years. Initially, Will had been his all-knowing mentor. But within a year, Brian had forged his own path and had a client list no one could explain. The money started rolling in, and by the end of the third year, Will was working for him while Brian set up shop in a corner office in a high rise from which he could see 'Ground Zero'.

From the day he left the City, he never once looked back or missed it or anything about it.

He'd been to Aspen once on a three-day mini vacation, and fell in love with the town. It was expensive as all get out, but when you had the kind of money Brian Erickson had, terms like 'cost of living' were meaningless.

Shortly after his arrival, he bought a nice, but relatively modest new home, and after calling in a couple of favors from former investors, found himself able to do the two things he loved the most: teaching skiing during the winter and golf during the summer.

He wasn't the best at either sport, but he had an uncanny ability to teach the finer points to others. He was pretty good at both, but wouldn't have made the Olympic Team in skiing or the Ryder Cup Team in golf—or anything close to it for that matter. But he was a scratch golfer, and that was more than good enough to give him the bona fides needed to teach the sport.

So for the last 18 months or so, he'd done both, building a new reputation for himself while charging a nominal fee for his services. That was something he knew was important to make the customer think they were, well, getting their money's worth. He'd have done it for free, but people always thought something was wrong when they didn't have to pay, so he let them.

The only exceptions were kids who couldn't afford to pay, and he held free clinics in both sports as often as he could to give them the opportunity to learn and have some fun.

Over the course of the two years he'd lived there, he'd met a lot of people, but couldn't claim a single close friend, and as odd as it seemed, that suited him just fine.

Being the final week of August, he was getting ready to start his last week of golf lessons before taking some time off waiting for enough snow to accumulate to let him switch over to skiing. All in all, it was about as good as it could get with one small-but-rapidly-growing exception.

At 29, he was at the point where the one thing he wanted more than anything else was neither money nor fame but someone to love. Not a friend. Not a pal. Not someone with whom he could make love but someone who looked at life and love the way he did; someone who was ready to give love as much as receive it; the kind of love he'd often dreamed of but never had.

Since leaving New York, he'd tried dating (as opposed to hooking up), and while it was much more satisfying, the problem that inevitably surfaced was when any girl he got close to learned about his past.

His endless string of 'conquests' wasn't normally the issue, although a couple of girls found it too much to even imagine being number 101, or whatever number she pictured herself on his 'list', even though he had no such thing. The trouble was almost always money. It immediately changed the way these young women saw him, and did so in a way that was so off-putting he had no choice but to end things.

So until he found someone who didn't see him as a 'bank' or a 'wallet', he'd continue enjoying the things that made him happy while staying hopefully optimistic about finally meeting someone.

Those and many other thoughts ran through his mind in seconds as Will droned on about his friend's past successes until Brian found a convenient moment to jump back into the conversation.

"So how about you? Have you had any luck meeting the woman of your dreams?" Brian asked him.

"Me? Oh, hell no! Most of the women of my dreams ended up in your bed, good buddy."

Brian laughed politely then told Will he needed to get a move on.

"Hot date?" Will asked almost too hopefully.

"Nah. No date—hot or otherwise. Just getting ready to teach my last group of wannabe golfers before it gets too cold to be outside."

"You must run into a lot of hot chicks, huh?" Will again asked hopefully.

"No, not really. The younger, cuter girls tend to be snow bunnies who show up in the winter. The summer clientele tends to be a little older and uh...not quite so hot."

"Well, I'm still envious of you, man. I'd give anything to be living your life instead of mine."

Brian had no idea how to respond to a statement like that for several reasons, not the least of which was his knowledge that each of us had one life and one life only to live with no option to live anyone else's.

"Then pull chocks and join me out here in God's country," Brian told him, knowing his former friend was bluffing.

"No. Not yet. I still need to make a little more money. Give me another five years and who knows?" Will said.

Brian knew Will would never have enough money, and would probably keel over dead on the trading floor one day in his early 40s from all the stress. And he could have it.

"You take care then, okay?" Brian told him.

"I will, and you do the same."

His phone went dead, and after several seconds of reviewing the call in his mind, he picked up the list of names of new clients who'd be taking his 'intro' course and quickly scanned it. Seeing nothing that caught his attention, he put it in a manilla folder then jumped in his car and headed for the links.

*****

Four months earlier, Aspen Valley Hospital

"I hope you know what you're doing, Rita."

"Me, too," she told the chief of internal medicine.

"You can always come back or go into research, you know."

"That's true. And who knows? Maybe I'll do that. But for now, I need to get away."

"I believe you, Rita. I'm just having a hard time understanding the timing. Jake passed away a little over two years ago. I would have understood if you'd done this back then. But now? I really don't get it."

"I don't expect you to," she told him respectfully. "In a nutshell, work was my relief. It was solace for me. Internal medicine isn't as intense as surgery, but it still requires all of our attention, and I needed that level of distraction to keep myself from wallowing in sadness and heartache. Beyond that, I don't really have an explanation."

"That makes sense," her boss said. "But why leave? Why not just cut back on your case load?"

"Because after doing this day in and day out for all these years, I find myself asking what the purpose of life is, you know? When my husband was alive, it made sense. And Rik is 12 years old now, and I feel guilty—as hell—for not being there for him these last two years. Remember, I'm not the only one who lost someone they loved."

"Okay. If I can't talk you out of it, then I...I wish you all the best."

"Thank you. I appreciate that so much."

She got ready to leave when her boss said, "Um...listen. Since you and I won't be working together anymore, and since I've not said anything out of respect for Jake...oh, and assuming you at least have some small amount of interest, would you maybe like to do something together one of these days?"

She smiled then said, "That is so nice of you to ask, but I really need time to try and...decompress. I want to spend time with Rik and do some of the things I've never had time to do. I'm not opposed to trying the dating thing, I'm just not quite ready for that yet."

He'd always been kind to her, and Rita often wondered if he felt this way. The disappointment in his face was obvious, but he forced a smile and asked her to keep him in mind whenever she might be.

"I will," she said, even though both of them knew that was never going to happen.

Yes, he was the head of internal medicine and a decent-looking guy, but Dr. Rita Gordon was downright beautiful. But she, too, was a doctor, so that didn't impress her. His credentials aside, he was pretty sure he didn't have a snowball's chance, but he felt he owed it to himself to at least ask.

Two weeks later, she left the hospital and headed home to start her life; a life she hadn't really yet defined although it would center on her son and doing things she hoped would help fill the deep void she'd lived with every day since the death of her husband when she was just 40 years old.

She hadn't been completely truthful with her former boss, but it was more to protect his feelings than an outright lie. She actually was ready to try dating again. The problem was finding the kind of man who could capture her interest and her heart; someone who was smart and funny and optimistic. Someone who didn't make her feel like she was the parent out with a kind of man-child who was uncomfortable with her success.

She came from near poverty and had worked very hard to put herself through college and medical school, and Rita had never considered herself better than anyone. But too many men either wanted a 'sugar momma' or found her success intimidating, both of those were a huge turn off.

The 'sugar momma' thing was almost funny to her, because, while she had a fair amount of money put away, she'd only recently paid off all of her student loans and still had a hefty mortgage and a car payment along with her other bills. So while she was currently 'comfortable' she was by no means rich.

That said, she couldn't help but think wanting to find a guy who was neither of those things while having the kind of qualities she found appealing didn't seem unreasonable. But when she added her need for him to be at least attractive enough to hold her attention, it often seemed like too much to ask.

For now, she was intent on finding things she and her son could do together that would hopefully allow them to re-bond over the summer. The bond they shared had never been broken, but it had most definitely weakened, and Rita knew the fault for that lied squarely on her shoulders, and she fully determined to remedy the situation.

*****

Late August, 2018 (9:45am) Maroon Creek Golf Club, Aspen Colorado

"Rik, come on. It's time to go!"

"Hold on. I'm almost ready!" her son called downstairs.

Rita looked at her watch and knew they were running late. But when she looked back up, and saw her son, she tried as hard as she could not to laugh, but lost the battle.

"What is that?" she asked.

"It's my golf look," he told her.

Her son was wearing a paperboy hat which was all well and good, but it was orange while the suspenders he'd put on were red while the...thing he was wearing under it was white. All white. And then there were the Argyle socks and the black glasses.

"Are you sure?" his mom asked.

"Uh-huh," he told her.

Rik was very smart but socially awkward. Since his father died, she'd given him a lot of latitude to try and express himself as he searched for his own identity while dealing with the grief of having lost his best friend, but this was really pushing it.

"Okay. If that's what you want to wear, I'm fine with it. But we need to leave right now."

August 27th, 2018, (10am) Maroon Creek Golf Club, Aspen Colorado

Rik was the only child in the introductory golf course, so there wasn't anyone there to give him a hard time about being a 'geek' or a 'nerd'. In fact, Rita was probably the youngest adult out of the dozen or so who'd gathered around their instructor who looked to be in his mid-to-late 20s.

While she wasn't overly impressed, she had to admit he was a very good-looking young man. But good looking guys were a dime a dozen, and she wasn't there to date. She was there to finally learn how to golf. And hopefully, she and her son would both enjoy it and be able to play together when the weather turned nice the following spring. She'd have taken an earlier class, but they'd been busy doing other new things all summer, and this was the only one left with two spots open. So she signed them up for it and would worry about the weather and when they might play again somewhere down the line.

"Good morning! I'm Brian Erickson, and I am your humble teacher," he said with a smile and a slight bow which drew some polite laughter.

"Once we introduce ourselves, we'll go ahead and get started. My hope is the weather will hold out one more week for us so we can get you through all the basics from teeing off to chipping to putting."

He looked around then said, "If you don't mind, could we start over here on my left and have each person tell the group who you are and anything you think might be of interest?"

Brian listened carefully as he heard each person give their name, and more importantly, share whatever they felt mattered about themselves.

Work, or former work, was the one thing every man there shared, while the women tended to focus on family or volunteering with one exception—a female doctor who'd recently left her practice to spend more time with her son; a very attractive female doctor with long, blonde hair, blue eyes, and a very pretty face.

"All right. Thank you, everyone," Brian said. "The first thing we want to do is make sure you have clubs that fit. So when I come around, I'll have you pull out your driver and your putting iron, and we'll see how the fit is and go from there."

Brian chatted politely with each person, getting to know them and sharing snippets about himself while making sure to avoid saying anything about Wall Street, investment banking, or...money. That, however, didn't stop two of the men from tooting their own horns about their financial successes, and Brian dutifully told them how great that was while trying to sound sincere and impressed. The sincerity came easily. Feigning being impressed—wasn't so simple.

When he got to the doctor whose name was Rita Gordon, he addressed her as doctor, but she immediately corrected him.

"No. Please call me Rita, okay?" she said very cheerfully.

"All right. I'm happy to do that," he told her as he checked her clubs.

"Wow. New Pings. Very nice," he told her. "And they're the right size. Let me guess. You had a golf pro help you, didn't you?"

She laughed and admitted she had.

"They look new but they're used. And I know when I need professional help," she told him. "Which is why I'm here."

Brian couldn't help but notice her beautiful smile, but didn't mention it, mostly because she had a huge diamond ring on her left hand, and a...very unusually-dressed son...on her right.

Brian shook hands with him and asked if he knew who Payne Stewart was.

"Um...no," the boy said rather shyly.

"He would have loved your style," Brian told him without explaining how the late golfer dressed for the game.

He winked at the boy's mother who smiled very warmly at him then called for everyone's attention to let them know what they'd be doing next, and continued that routine until it was time to break for lunch.

Everyone ate in the clubhouse, and Brian spent a few minutes with each of his clients without unduly interrupting them.

"May I join you?" he asked Rita and Rik after chatting with three older couples.

"Yes, please," she told him, that beautiful smile on full display.

Rik had his phone out, and turned it around to show Brian something.

"Oh. You found Payne Stewart, I see," Brian told him.

"May I?" Rita asked.

Brian handed her the phone, and she covered her hand to hide her laughter.

"How appropriate!" she said to Brian as she looked at her goofy son.

"Rik is...charting his own course," she explained.

"Well, I like it. I admire a man who knows what he wants," Brian said to her as he, too, looked at Rik.

"My dad said everyone needs to chart their own course," Rik told Brian.

"He's right. Your father is a very smart man."

He noticed Rita's smile fade then wondered what he'd said.