Love's Last Kiss

by Duleigh

©Copyright 2024 by Duleigh

Dedication

Love's Last Kiss started out as a writer's exercise, a 750 word erotic story that had to land at exactly 750 words. It was a fairly popular May/December romance, but I wanted to say and do more with it. As I was preparing to stretch it out to about 15,000 or maybe 20,000 words, a fellow author who goes by the nom de plume MediocreAuthor challenged me to "Go Dark." With her inspiration, I started writing and ended up with a 40,000 word novella. But I still wanted to go further. With so I started again and finally ended up with a full-length novel.

This book is dedicated to MediocreAuthor an incredible author in her own right. Thank you, darling, for the inspiration and the shoulder to cry on when needed. She calls me Grandpa, which I suppose allows me to call her new baby my virtual great-grandson, or maybe Little Duleigh.

Chapter 1

If Steve Anderson had a complaint about the Treasure Coast of Florida, it would be the heat. The heat was overwhelming, and the sun was brutal. Being a transplant to Florida, Steve was told often enough, "it's not the heat, it's the humidity." He was sure it was the heat, but he let the natives taunt him because taunting newcomers is their favorite sport. How do you tell a native-born Floridian? You don't have to; they will eventually tell you.

This is a different world than anything Steve Anderson was used to; he was raised on a farm on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where the snow and the cold reigned for half of the year. Now the snow-covered forests of his youth gave way to sun blessed swampland and beaches, or should I say beach. Florida truly has only one beach. It's over one thousand three hundred miles long. It starts on the Atlantic coast of Georgia in the northeast and winds its way all around Florida. and doesn't stop until it reaches the gulf coast of Alabama.

The coastline of Florida was beautiful and seductive, and its siren song drew Steve to its pure white sands. Steve tried chasing beach bunnies for a while, but quickly gave it up. He seemed to attract vapid, self-absorbed bikini models that were all about appearances and cared little about the world outside of their little circle. They were the type of person who would spend hours every day at the beach but didn't know how to swim. Steve even learned to surf, and he liked every minute of the sport, but the search for the perfect wave took time and that interfered with work, and Steve truly loved his work.

There is something about physical therapy that has always been attractive to him. Helping injured people regain a normal life, helping to ease chronic pain, helping to fight back the ravages of time, it was all wonderful to him. Mostly because he is in chronic pain too, so he can identify with his patients.

Steve Anderson served his country as a field medic. He survived one tour in Iraq, and two tours in Afghanistan, and gained rank quickly. Before he knew it, he was a captain in a squad that lost almost all of their leadership and found that the men turned to their medic for direction. Somehow, he and his squad ended up being the only law and order in a small province, and the local warlords were grateful for Steve and his men's protection. After he nearly died in an IED explosion, Steve said, "enough." Master Sergeant Bruce McLaren, Steve's "Top Shirt" who was also injured in the blast, convinced Steve to try Florida. Steve returned to school at the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL (GO GATORS!) and completed his education. Once the nightmares of licenses and certifications were straightened out, Steve found that there was plenty of work for him there in Florida, or what is also called "God's Waiting Room."

Bruce, Steve's buddy from "the sandbox" convinced him to look for work in the Vero Beach area and Steve quickly found a job as a therapist's assistant at Mercy Hospital where his reputation for physical therapy became so good that he was asked for by name. Advancements and promotions came as his reputation with his patients was recognized by his superiors. It was not long before he was a fully accredited physical therapist and the dream of being able to work at patients' homes without direct supervision of a doctor eventually became a reality. Steve would develop a plan of therapy for a homebound patient, and when Doctor Clement approved his plan, Steve would visit the patients' home and work with them there. It was like being in business for himself, without all the paperwork and financial headaches.

Then one day she called Mercy General and said that a friend told a friend who told her that Steve Anderson was a miracle worker, and could she get an appointment with him? It's rumored that a large donation to the hospital had occurred. This woman wanted Steve, and she was making sure that he would be assigned to her case.

On the day they met, Steve was working in "The Dungeon," the name that the patients gave to the Physical Therapy gymnasium because, as everybody knows, PT really stands for Pain and Torture. (The PT therapists and nurses lived for Halloween thanks to those titles.) The RN for his group found him in his tiny closet called a "work room" where the therapists did their research and reports between appointments. She handed him a tablet and said, "Here you go Steve, Mrs. D'Amato asked for you by name. She's a sweetie, so be nice."

Steve looked at her chart and slumped, spinal damage after being run over on a Manhattan sidewalk. A car jacker lost control of the car that he killed another woman to steal and hit Mr. and Mrs. D'Amato while they were visiting Manhattan. Giuseppe D'Amato didn't make it, and neither did the carjacker. D'Amato died in the arms of the woman he loved, and the carjacker died doing something he loved most of all: heroin. A broken, shattered Annamaria Giacinta Bellini-D'Amato was left on that frigid Manhattan sidewalk to continue her life and raise her daughters alone.

But that's just the beginning. The last dozen pages of her report were merely a rehash of her chief complaint: multiple sclerosis. The poor woman ignored the warning signs of MS as merely GERD and the ravages of losing the love of her life had on her mind and body. As Steve was reviewing the doctor's recommendations for Mrs. D'Amato, a young volunteer tapped on his workroom door and said, "Mrs. D'Amato is here, I have her on bench number four."

"Thanks Grace, I'll be right there." He pulled on a work-out jacket, grabbed the tablet and headed over to therapy bench number four. Still reading her records as he walked, he was surprised to find a smiling woman who appeared to be in her mid-forties, maybe fifty, making Steve doubt the hospital records that put her age at sixty-one. Maria D'Amato appeared to be in very good shape for her age, long flowing black hair done in waves and ringlets, a pretty face with big, warm, brown eyes and a million-dollar smile, and Steve was going to have to work very hard to avoid staring at those large breasts of hers. She unzipped her own workout jacket, revealing her tight t-shirt, and Steve realized she wasn't going to make avoiding them easy. Then, looking further down, he saw those metal braces on each leg, and the wrist-cuff crutches, and he realized they had work to do.

"How ya doin'?" she asked in a barely disguised Brooklyn accent, extending a hand. They shook hands, and she had an incredibly powerful grip, which came from years of walking on crutches.

"I'm doing fine, the question is how are you doing, looking at this chart here it shows a startling recovery from what was thought as paralysis."

Maria smiled a sweet, heartwarming smile and said, "If I was paralyzed you wouldn't have seen me, so I put in a little effort so I could see the amazing Steve Anderson."

"Flattery will get you everywhere Mrs. D'Amato, including a long hour of work, can I see what you got?" the young "Yooper" asked with a grin.

"And on first date too!" said Maria with raised eyebrows. "The young man moves fast!"

"I'm just trying to keep up with you ma'am. Now looking at your…"

"Maria."

"Hmm?"

"Maria, my friends call me Maria." There was an endless pause as their eyes met and Steve's mouth went dry. Mrs. D'Amato's eyes were deep brown and beautiful. They were expressive, and they were calling to him as she continued, "I would love it if you called me Maria."

"Maria it is, and please call me Steve," and they shook hands again. A bridge was crossed and a patient-therapist bond was created in an instant. "Ok Maria let's take the metalwork off and lay back on the bench. We're going to do some range of motions."

The first appointment always goes long; the therapist needs to evaluate what the patient can do, then compare that with the doctor's expectations. In that very long first appointment while Steve put Maria "through her paces," a friendship took shape. He soon found what she could do, that's all the appointment was, a sounding out of what her body had left. Could she raise her foot from the bench unassisted? What was the range of motion of her legs? What was too painful to attempt? Sadly, they hit those pain points far too often. "I have all the numbers I need, next time we see each other I'll have a plan of therapy that we can work on together."

"You medical people, always with the numbers. You convert everything that people are into numbers."

"That's the doctor's job," said Steve. "My job is to convert those numbers into something that makes your life better, like a solid plan of therapy."

After the appointment, it took Maria a while to pull herself together. Steve was about to head back to his "mop closet" to send his findings to Maria's doctor when he realize that there wasn't an assistant or a volunteer to help her put her "iron girders" back on. "Let's get you bolted back together, shall we?" said Steve as he crouched down next to the therapy table that Maria was lying on.

"Thank you, caro," said Maria.

Steve slid the leg braces over her legs and said, "There's going to be some touching going on here."

Maria waggled an eyebrow at him and grinned. "That's the best part of having these things." She propped herself up on her elbows and watched as Steve put her "leg irons" back on. As usual, she wore a skirt with gym shorts under for her PT appointment, which left her legs bare. As he buckled her in, she noticed his hands. They were warm and strong and big! Her Giuseppe had big hands and a big cock. She wondered if there was truth to the rumor that said that big hands meant a big dick.

"Do you have a ride?" asked Steve as he helped her up to a sitting position.

"Yes, my nurse, Darlene is waiting for me in the waiting area." Steve walked her out to the waiting area where she met a middle-aged looking woman who escorted her to the elevator.

"How did the appointment go?" asked Darlene Colella.

"I'm so tired, that lad worked me out."

"Oh?" Darlene grinned, but she let Maria rest on the ride home. She found you can't press Maria for details until she's ready to talk. Darlene has been Maria's friend and nurse since she was released from the Manhattan hospital where she lived for months after she was run down on that Manhattan sidewalk a week before Christmas. Darlene was Maria's home nurse, a gift from Giancarlo Calvetta, Maria's and her late husband, Giuseppi's employer. She helped Maria with everything, including Maria's daughters Giannina (Jeannie) who was thirteen years older than the younger Natalia, who was nine-years-old at the time of her father's death.

Darlene helped not only with Maria's physical needs but was an extra pair of hands to help with Jeannie's wedding, which was put off for months due to her father's death and Maria's hospitalization, and Natalia's needs. Natalia was a daddy's girl, and she never fully recovered from her father's death. At nine years old, Natalia insisted that her father's death was not an accident, it was murder.

Finally, at home, Maria was ready to talk. "The appointment?" Maria shrugged, "it went," she said, and she tried to hide a grin as she put a pot on the stove then swung the pot filler out over it and filled the pot with water.

"We're making a dinner tonight, he must have worked up an appetite in you," grinned Darlene, then as Maria took a sip from her wine Darlene added, "and a thirst, as the kids would say."

"Oh hush, he's a very nice young man."

"… said the cougar on the prowl," grinned Darlene as she took the marinara and a block of parmesan out of the refrigerator.

"When we were done he gave me a leg and foot massage," said Maria, trying not to blush.

"Rrrroooowwww! Fffft! Ffffft!" exclaimed Darlene, clawing the air like a cat.

As Maria and Darlene prepared their 'victory dinner,' over at the VFW hall, Steve Anderson was up to something important. He set the cue ball on the "kitchen line" close to the right rail, gave it a bit of top English to drive it through the balls, then let fly with the cue stick. He hit the balls with a solid crack, but instead of aiming for the one ball in front of the formation, he sent the cue ball to hit the formation of 15 balls between the second and third rows. The top spin forced the cue ball forward, and it drove its way in, striking the 8-ball and driving it toward the pocket. The 15 balls all scattered madly, the 8 ball nearly pocketed on the break, which would have won the game for Steve. "Not this time Captain," said Bruce McLaren, as the 8-ball stopped in front of the left corner pocket. "But you probably did fuck me over," he said as he studied the table. "What's with the shit-eating grin?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," said Steve with a poorly hidden shit-eating grin.

Bruce studied the table and realized that all the best shots that he could have taken would have been toward the pocket that was guarded by the 8 ball. He took a shot at the two-ball, which was woefully weak and didn't hit a pocket. In fact, it didn't hit a rail. Bruce was a detective with the Vero Beach PD and Steve's best and, other than Steve's priest, Father Ewen, probably his only friend. They served two tours in Afghanistan together, and their last romp into bandit country was when Steve and Bruce got injured. Bruce picked up the cue ball and handed it to Steve. "Ball in hand, open table."

"There's fifteen balls on the table, I can't see how you missed all of them." Steve placed the cue ball exactly where he wanted it, then in rapid succession sank the two-ball, the five-ball, and the seven-ball, then missed an easy shot, leaving Bruce with the high balls.

"You're still grinning, and you left me with a shot. That's not like you at all," said Bruce as he sank the eleven-ball. "Who is she?" Bruce and Steve shot a game or twelve of 8 ball every Tuesday at the VFW. Neither was a member, but they both hung out there. In Afghanistan, Steve somehow ended up in charge of a small group of men, even though he was just supposed to be their field medic. Eventually, he ended up doing things that should not have been done and Bruce was his "wing man" through most of their adventures. Steve sank two more balls as Bruce said, "You found the one."

"Nah," said Steve, as Bruce chalked his cue stick. "Just an amiable lady who is a new patient."

"Nope she's the one," said Bruce. "Wanna know how I can tell?"

"How?"

"You just sank the eight ball and gave me the game."

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Chapter 2

"It's starting to get warm out there," said Maria as she arrived for their appointment, early as usual.

"My dear, I'm a Yooper, our ideas of getting warm out there are probably two different things," said Steve as he helped her out of her "iron maidens" as she called her leg braces.

"Water dripping from the icicles," said Maria. "That's what getting warm always meant to me."

"That's a good indicator, I didn't realize that it gets very cold on Long Island."

"It doesn't. It snows maybe twice a year, it's just that all the networks are in New York City so if it snows it becomes news. Imagine if the networks were all based in Minneapolis."

Getting serious for a moment, Steve sat on a roll-away stool and, looking at her chart, he said, "Maria, what is your number one goal?"

Maria's beautiful, soulful eyes softened, and she smiled gently. "I want to dance at my granddaughter's wedding."

Sudden terror overtook Steve. He will do everything he could to help a patient achieve their goals, but if her granddaughter is engaged, there's no way Steve could get this beautiful woman ready in time to stand, let alone dance without her crutches. Even if they… "Steve? Is there a problem?" Maria asked, breaking through his wall of worry.

"How old is your granddaughter?"

"She just turned six."

Relief washed over Steve as he said, "Ok, so we have a little time to prepare, let's get going," and thus began a provider/patient relationship that many healthcare professionals dream about having. They would meet twice a week, every Tuesday and Thursday. At one appointment, Steve mentioned he has rarely had Italian food other than infrequent visits to the Olive Garden or the occasional pizza parlor.

"That's not Italian!" cried Maria. "That's Italian flavored meat loaf with noodles!" She would then describe her favorite Italian dishes and how she learned to make them, which drove Steve mad with hunger. It all sounded so good.

"So where are we today?" asked Steve as Maria lay on her back, and he flexed her stiff legs.

"Pasta carbonara," grinned Maria. "I take three eggs, a cup of parmigiano reggiano, a half a pound of Pancetta…" she went on and on about her Italian recipes; simple, classic dishes that she loved to make but no longer could because there was no one there to cook for.

"Ok, ok, Maria stop, you're killing me. I'll come by and you can make a meal for me but only if I can repay the favor somehow."

"Fine. Have it your way. You come by Saturday and bring your bathing trunks…" a grin spread over her face, "I need a good pool boy."

Steve found that Maria's neighborhood wasn't far from his apartment. It was a nice quiet neighborhood built long ago in an area that was once all grapefruit groves. After a few blights and an enormous increase in the cost of farm labor, the owner of the groves went into real estate. Although pines and palms were the kings, the neighborhood was also populated with sycamore, weeping willow, southern live oak and many other types of shade trees. Riomar was a great neighborhood, close to Vero Beach, on the island side of the Indian River, which paralleled the ocean and created the barrier islands. They had beach in either direction, which Steve loved.

Nervous as a schoolboy, he stood at the door, shifting from foot to foot. Somehow, he had expected her to live in a gated community with guards, fountains, and chrome wheeled golf carts buzzing about, not in what he considered being Real America. He found himself in front of a medium size three-bedroom ranch dwelling next to a manicured, tree shaded open lot. Finally, he rang the bell and a call from within said, "Come in! The door is open!" Entering, he found an immaculate living room which, other than two curious cockatiels, looked like it had never been lived in. Then, behind that, was a kitchen and dining room, which looked like Maria's primary abode.

He stepped into the kitchen and raised his gift and Maria's heartwarming smile broke into a cry of "Two bottles of wine! Are you trying to take advantage of me?"

"Well… I…"

"As Virgil once wrote, beware of Yoopers bearing gifts."

"I think that was Greeks."

"Don't be silly," said Maria as she kissed his cheek, "Greeks never even heard of Yoopers. Come here, let me show you the pool," and she led him through the kitchen where she and Darlene were preparing dinner. Maria introduced Steve and Darlene to each other and showed off her kitchen. Everything was so neat and orderly as she readied herself to prepare dinner. It looked like she was going to film a cooking show. "Right through here!"

She led him outside to a nice, shaded patio with a grill and a sink built into what looked like a coral wall with a large refrigerator nearby. Wine glasses hung over the sink and there were plenty of cabinets. The pool was kidney-shaped with a seating shelf inside the pool all around the sides except for the deep end, which had a rock feature wall with some sad-looking plants growing on it.

Pointing to a storage area, Maria said, "All the equipment and chemicals are here. There are refreshments in the fridge, and I'll be right here in the kitchen if you need me." Maria crutched back into the kitchen and began to make her late husband's favorite, chicken scallopine. First came the slicing, she sliced every mushroom perfectly. She will not trust her scallopine to a machine cut mushroom. She's making dinner for a man, not warming a hot pocket for a teenager.

As she worked, she could see Steve through the window working on the pool. He disappeared while she was pounding the chicken breasts to their proper thickness, but he soon reappeared as she dipped the chicken breasts into milk, coated them with flower, and pan fried them golden brown and delicious. When finished with that, she again turned to the enormous windows and saw Steve in the pool with a scrub brush scrubbing the "bathtub ring" from the water edge tiles. She also heard water running. He was adding water to the pool.

She crutched her way out to the pool deck and said, "you're adding water?"

Steve looked up at her and said, "If we raise the water level up about three more inches it will make it easier for you to get in and out of the pool."

"Oh, I don't swim," she insisted, "this is for the girls and the grandkids," but Steve just smiled and went back to scrubbing, and Maria went back into the kitchen. She peeked out one other time, and he wasn't around. "Steve?" she called, but he was nowhere to be seen until she looked into the pool and there he was at the bottom of the deep end. Before she could scream, he rose to the surface wearing a dive mask and snorkel and bringing up a hand full of leaves that were stuck in various drains.

Seeing the look on her face, he said, "Did I scare you? I'm sorry, I should have warned you that I dive when I'm working on pools."

"You really are a pool boy?"

"Pools and gardens," he said with a nod and a smile. "It's how I worked my way through the University of Florida."

The look of relief and joy that washed over her face was priceless as Steve took a deep breath and went down to finish cleaning out the intake drain.

Later that evening, the dinner Maria served was spectacular! Steve had never had chicken scallopine, chicken cutlets on homemade linguini with a spectacular mushroom sauce. "Oh God, that was a feast!" Maria just smiled as Steve wolfed down his dinner. It was so good to cook for an appreciative audience. "Where did you get these noodles!" gushed Steve. "They are delicious!"

"I didn't get them, I made them."

"You made them?" Steve sounded shocked that she made the noodles. "You have to show me how you make noodles."

"You've never had homemade noodles?"

"Never, I've heard of noodle making machines and always wanted to try though."

"I'm sure that I can teach you," smiled Maria as dinner drew near to a close.

They cleaned up and Maria made a plate for Steve to take home, then she disappeared into her bedroom and changed into her swimsuit while Steve carried their wine and glasses out to the patio. "I can't wait to see what you did with the pool," she said as she crutched out to the patio. The sun had set, but the heat of the day was still on them. "I love this time of day," she sighed as Steve set up deck chairs near the edge of the pool. "It's nice and hot but the sun isn't blazing."

"Ok, check this out," said Steve as he went to a switch panel. The underwater lights came on, then the feature wall started gurgling, then a waterfall splashed into the pool. Lights hidden in the rock work illuminated the trickling water that splashed from one tiny pool to the next and finally into the swimming pool. There were plants, they were her favorites: orchids! There were orchids growing in the nooks and crannies of the feature wall. It had been so long since those lights worked that she forgot they were there.

"How wonderful! What did you do to it? And the plants! Where did you get them?"

"I just cleaned a few electrical connections and fixed a broken hose; the plants all came from your neighbor's garden."

"You stole plants from a neighbor's garden?" she was laughing now.

"They were growing over your fence. Stolen plants grow the best, everyone knows that, including Mrs. Weberman."

"My neighbor Mrs. Weberman?"

"Yeah, she's cool, I pretended not to watch while she grabbed some cuttings off of your plants and I returned the favor. She's from Wisconsin and she knows the golden rule about stolen plants."

Maria sagged into her chair shaking her head, "In a few hours you brought my pool back to life and made friends with the only porn star in the neighborhood."

"Missus Weberman? No!" said Steve unconvincingly. Mrs. Weberman cranks out video after video under the name Connie Bush. She does Stepmother/stepson videos with her husband Edgar who is the same age as Steve and looks like he's 16. He records under the name Darius Rutther.

I'm going to do the same for you, thought Steve. The evening was sweltering hot, the music on the stereo was intoxicating, and the wine was delicious. Against her loudest complaints, Steve eased Maria into the pool, and they sat on the underwater benches, drank wine, and talked.

"What's your favorite color?" Maria asked.

"I was thinking about that the other day," said Steve. "Up north there's a tree called the tamarack. It's a pine tree that every year sheds it's needles and every spring they come back in such a brilliant, bright green that it's almost painful to look at on a sunny day. I love that green, it's probably called neon green but I'm going to call it Tamarack Green. And you? What's your favorite color?"

"Gold," said Maria, showing off the golden necklace she was wearing. "Any woman that doesn't say gold is thinking of diamonds or just isn't thinking." She sipped her wine and said, "Favorite pet?"

"I had an orange cat named Morris when I was a kid. For a cat, Morris was my dog. He didn't fetch, and he wasn't a hunter, at least not like a dog, but he was by my side for years and he would fight or fuck anything… uh sorry."

"Don't apologize for using New York adjectives," said Maria with a grin. "I'll bet you'd blush if you heard a pair of Long Islanders chatting. Do you still have Morris?"

"No. One day I came home from school, and he wasn't there anymore. Mom said she saw him heading off to the woods like he always did, maybe he found himself something too big to fight. What was yours?"

"When I was little we lived on a farm and I had dozens of chickens that I considered pets. However one day we sold the farm and the next thing I knew I was living in Brooklyn…" she started.

"Like Captain America?"

Maria looked over at Steve, who was grinning gleefully. "Just like Captain America," she muttered, "pour the wine. So, we couldn't have any big pets like a cat or a dog, but for years we had a blue parakeet named Budgie and he could talk. He could say "Son of a bitch" and he could say "Fucking Mets" because when my uncles stopped by to watch a game with my dad, that was all you could hear from them."

"Do your cockatiels talk?" asked Steve.

"Spot and Rover? No, but they whistle and sing along with my Frank Sinatra music," said Maria. "Ok, who was your first crush?"

"Denice O'Reilly, we were in the same grade, and she lived maybe two miles from me. After the school bus dropped us off, we'd grab our .22 rifles, hop on our bikes, meet up at the old grain elevator and shoot rats until it was dark. In the winter we went sledding down the side of the Buckeye Ravine and in the summer, we rode our bikes all day long. How about you?"

"Anthony Leone," smiled Maria. "He was a bad boy, went to juvie for something when he was twelve. He was so cool, like the Fonz."

"Like the… what?"

"The Fonz… Fonzie, from Happy Days," but Steve still looked confused. "Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli… Fonzie was the epitome of fifties Italian cool, he was played by the most uncool person you would ever know, Henry Winkler. If you don't know Fonzie you'll never get it. I always thought that Anthony was at the bottom of the class because he was too cool to listen to the nuns. It turned out that he was just stupid. Don't laugh! He was cool and at that age cool covered a lot of sins." Maria took a deep breath and sighed. "Who was your first real kiss?"

Steve nodded, letting her know he understood by what she meant. A "real kiss" eliminated mom kisses and kisses from aunts at family parties. It ruled out quick smooches of all kinds. A "real kiss" signified a kiss from a girlfriend or some other lover that caused time to stand still. "It was Claudia Holtz, we kissed from the eighth grade to graduation. Then I marched off to basic training and found that she had slipped a Dear John letter in my jacket pocket for my reading entertainment on the flight to Fort Benning."

"Oh my god, that was horrible!"

Steve shrugged. "It kinda helped, she gave me the urge to kill. That came in handy in Afghanistan."

"Were you infantry? Armor?" she asked.

With a chuckle, he said, "I went to Fort Benning for Officers Training School, I was a field medic, a physician's assistant so I got lieutenant's bars." Then, sipping some wine, he asked, "Who was your first kiss, was it that Fonzie guy? Did ya kiss him?" He punctuated his question with a wag of his eyebrows.

"No, my first kiss was Giuseppe D'Amato, he took me to the prom, and we were inseparable after that. We weren't blessed with many children, so we gave all of our love to each other… I'm the one to give him his first and his last kisses."

"Oh lord, I'm sorry," said Steve, "if I had known I wouldn't have brought it up…"

"It's ok, it was a long time ago. I miss him dearly, but we've gone our separate ways, maybe we'll meet again. Stop frowning! I have had more fun tonight than I have had since I lost Giuseppe… I forgot how great it is to laugh."

"Yeah, but still," groaned Steve, "I should have asked what your favorite kink or something is."

"That's horrible! You nasty man… like I would ever admit that I enjoy spanking to you!" She looked at him, waiting for the laugh that never came. "You look nervous Steve, what's wrong?"

He paused for a while playing with his wine glass then said, "We have a session Tuesday and Thursday at the hospital and I'm going to be therapist Anderson, and you are going to be client Mrs. D'Amato, and we're going to work hard and you're going to go home in pain, but that goes away soon, but…"

"But what?" asked Maria, but in her heart, she was begging, "Don't say it, don't say it, please don't say it!"

"I'm going to miss Maria who sings when she cooks and laughs at my jokes, and I'm going to miss being Steve the handyman/gardener/pool boy until the next time Mrs. D'Amato lets me come and visit my friend Maria. It seems like that may be a long time away."

"Steve, darling," Maria turned her face to him and said sadly, "You should be looking for girls your own age, not some broken down old woman. We can be friends on occasion."

"You're right, women my age are girls, and I don't want a girl whose idea of cooking is ordering take-out. I want a woman that can laugh and cook and love doing both. And you… don't call yourself broken down until I say you are. I can have you walking here tonight, without crutches or braces, in a matter of minutes."

Her melodious laughter rang through the night. "Walk?

"I guarantee it. Would a Yooper lie?"

"I don't even know what a Yooper is," Maria called in that cheerful laugh of hers. "I just call you that because that's what you say you are."

"A Yooper is someone who is from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the You Pee becomes Yooper."

She chuckled at the nickname, then sighed, "and you're going to make me walk again."

"If you don't walk, I promise to weed that entire garden on the south side of your yard next weekend," said Steve bravely.

"And if I do?" Maria suspected Steve was up to something.

"What more do you want lady? Ok, if you do walk, I'll thin out those bamboo clumps, maybe we can build a Gilligan's Island hut with all that bamboo, that would be cool." Her bamboo clumps were getting huge, and they needed cutting back.

"Deal! I need the bamboo cleared. What do I have to do?"

Steve stood and started walking around the pool. The pool was designed for adults to sit around and talk and drink and maybe swim a few lengths, there's a seat built into the side of the pool that goes around the pool at 16 inches below the edge of the pool while the floor of the pool changes depth. Steve found the right depth, memorized where he was, then he walked over to Maria. "Are you ready?" She nodded nervously, and he scooped her up and carried her to the spot he found and said, "stand here." She looked nervously into those blue eyes of his and he said, "You can do it, you've proven to me that you can do this, now prove it to Maria."

Slowly she unfolded, her legs straightening out and reaching for the pool floor, her glittering brown eyes locked onto his and soon her feet touched the bottom, and she was standing. Steve moved away carefully; he didn't want to make a current that threw her off balance. "You're standing, it's all you!"

"And a swimming pool!"

"Use the buoyancy as a tool like you used the braces and crutches and walk toward me."

And to her immense surprise, she did. Her body was supported by the water she spent years avoiding, and she was able to walk toward Steve with a huge grin of accomplishment.

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Chapter 3

Since she became his patient, life has never been better for Steve. Every Tuesday and Thursday, Mrs. D'Amato comes to the hospital for her physical therapy from Mr. Anderson. Every Wednesday when Maria was volunteering at the Humane Society, her pool boy and gardener came by to maintain the pool, gardens, and lawn, and every Saturday when Darlene had the evening off, Maria's best friend Steve comes over for dinner and they talk and drink wine long into the night, often playing in the pool.

She never knows what to expect when Steve gets an idea in his head. She came home one evening and her pool shower was finally completed. Steve got a friend at the VFW to plumb the simple cold water shower head on a post holding the patio roof up. Then he split a piece of bamboo and hid the water pipe behind the bamboo ala Gilligan's Island. He used the rest of the bamboo to make a low bamboo privacy wall around the shower.

One weekend, at Steve's request, Maria made a picnic dinner and packed it up like they were going out for a picnic, and brought it out to the picnic table by the pool. The patio has become their oasis ever since Steve installed a ceiling fan in the patio roof over her table and outdoor kitchen. "This looks awesome!" said Steve as he looked at the feast of cold fried chicken, potato salad, fruit salad, and Steve's favorite, roasted cherry tomato and goat cheese bruschetta. "Darling, this is perfect!" and instead of helping her sit down as usual, he started packing up dinner in a picnic hamper.

"What's happening?" asked Maria. "I thought you liked the dinner I made."

"It looks awesome!" said Steve. "I'm starving and I can't wait to try it. Let's go!"

"I don't understand," she said, but she followed him around the house to his pickup in the driveway and he placed the hamper in the back of the truck and helped her in the cab. "Where are we going?" she asked.

He climbed in the driver's seat, started the truck, smiled and said, "On a picnic!"

"Wha…?"

"It's a beautiful park, you're going to love it."

Maria inspected Steve's truck, a glossy black Ford F-150. "This is quite a truck," she noticed a plaque affixed to the dashboard with Arabic writing and asked, "A gift from an oil sheik?"

"There was a tiny province in Afghanistan that was overrun with every bad guy you could imagine, so the local law enforcement asked for my help, and I had a few spare bullets, and I found this waiting for me when I got home."

"It sounds like there's more to both of us than what meets the eye," said Maria.

They drove up to Sebastian where at the north edge of town on Roseland Road there was a campground. Steve pulled into the campground and found the site that he had selected. The individual campsites were private, trees and bushes between the sites were thick and tall, separating the campsites insuring privacy. Rather than gravel, the floor of the campsites was a thick, soft bed of sand and Steve was tempted to set up his small tent, but Maria would never be able to sleep on the ground and get up in the morning.

Steve set up a four-pole canopy over the picnic table and set her chair at the end of the table. Sitting on the bench of a wooden picnic table was an arduous task for the raven-haired beauty, and Steve's job was to make life as simple and as easy as possible for her. As she sat in her chair at the end of the table, they enjoyed dinner while a campfire snapped and cracked in the fire ring next to the table. Campers out for their evening stroll would stop by to chat as Steve and Maria ate dinner.

"Are all campers this friendly?" asked Maria.

"In my experience they are," said Steve. "Somewhere in my collection I have a flag that says, "Coffee's On." My folks would hang that in front of our trailer in the morning when we were camping and folks out for their morning stroll would stop in for a cup of coffee."

As the sun set, Steve got another folding chair for him out of the truck and he and Maria sat by the fire, inviting campers to join them. Eventually a dozen people from all over the United States brought a chair over and sat around Steve and Maria's campfire swapping stories of campouts long gone by. Steve told stories of camping in the woods up in the "Yoo Pee" while others talked about South Dakota and Mount Rushmore, Arizona and the Grand Canyon, or Northern California and Yosemite.

Finally, someone asked Maria if she had any camping stories. "Just one," she said. "A friend stopped by for dinner one afternoon and asked me to make a picnic dinner, as I made the picnic dinner, he set out the paper plates and cups on my patio table. When dinner was ready, he packed everything up including me and here we are."

The laughter was contagious, and eventually someone asked Steve, "what are you going to do when they want to rent out this site?"

"I rented this site for the evening; they'll have to wait for checkout before they can kick us out."

"You rented a camp site to take me on a picnic?" asked Maria, startled to hear his admission.

"Well… yes. The picnic shelters at the state parks get so crowded and I didn't want to be interrupted," said Steve, causing their new friends around the campfire to chuckle and nod in agreement. As they laughed, Steve leaned over and gave Maria a gentle kiss on the lips. She wasn't aware of the kiss until after it happened, it was so sweet, so automatic, she just responded naturally and returned his kiss like she did a thousand times with Giuseppi, and when it was over she sat gazing in the fire, feeling the caress of his lips on hers.

It was a couple of hours later when some of the folks started heading back to their own campsites that Maria realized that she and Steve were holding hands, and they had been all evening long. "Do you like camping with me?" he asked softly.

She lifted his hand to her lips and kissed the back of his hand softly. 'I love camping with you."

"If I bought a pop-up camper, would you go camping with me?"

Maria thought about it for a few moments, then squeezed his hand and smiled. "Anywhere you want to go, I'll follow along."

Taking a huge, nervous breath he kissed her cheek softly and whispered, "I would love to continue camping with you except…" he cleared his throat softly again and he looked sad then said, "Annamaria Giacinta Bellini-D'Amato, I don't think I can see you as a patient any longer."

Maria was horrified and with a quivering chin she sputtered, "Why not? Did I…"

"No, it's not what you did, it's what I did."

"Why? What did you do?" she asked softly.

Steve took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. "I think I fell in love with you."

Maria was completely taken aback by this statement from this young boy. He's just a youngster, about half her age. How can he possibly know what falling in love is all about? Then, a few moments later, she heard a familiar voice, a voice from her past asking, "How can he not know?" It was her Giuseppi, pointing out the obvious. Maria looked at Steve, now he had a face that clearly said he was in the middle of a heartbreak. "I think we should go home and think about it," she whispered. She watched him pack up the remainders of their dinner, then fold up the awning over their table. He was so sad looking. "What's the matter?" she finally asked.

"Something is over," he said sadly. When she looked at him, confused, he continued, "I love treating you. Your condition is a challenge, and I truly love the challenge of treating you…"

When he dropped off the statement, she asked, "What else? Is there more?"

"I love touching you, but it's clearly obvious that you don't love being touched as much as I love doing the touching… you…" His words were now catching in his throat, he just made an absolute fool of himself in front of the woman that he fell in love with. He fought back the tears and finished cleaning up. "I'm so sorry… I'm not being fair to you; I'll take you home and stop bothering you. I will have Doctor Albertson find a replacement and I'll see if there's an opening for me elsewhere."

"Wait," she grabbed his sleeve as he walked by and said, "what do you mean "find a replacement?" I don't understand."

"I guess I can't make it any worse," muttered Steve, and he knelt down in front of her and made painful eye contact with the woman he realized that he loved. "Darling, I don't know how or why but I fell in love with you… I love you, which means that I can no longer treat you. When we get too close we find that we can't treat our patients properly. I wish I could explain it better, but my words aren't coming right now."

He tried to get up so he could finish cleaning up, but Maria grabbed the collar of his T-shirt and pulled him back down. "You're saying that you can't treat me because I don't love you in return?"

"No." He gently took her hand and kissed the back of it. "I can't officially treat you. Being in love with the patient messes up our judgement, so we avoid working on the people we love." He started to get up again, but she pulled him back down.

"So, if I loved you, you could treat me?"

"No. But it would make the whole medical breakup go so much easier. We would have something to look forward to." And he started to get up, but again she pulled him back down to his knees.

"What breakup? Can't we still be friends?"

Steve's eyes filled with tears as he said softly, "Have you ever poured your heart out to someone only to have your feelings rejected? It's not…" He wanted to explain how painful the rejection was, how humiliated he felt. She never felt this because she found the love of her life when she was young, and he returned her love. Maria would never understand because she's never been rejected. He clenched his jaw when he saw the hurt look in Maria's eyes. "It's not your fault, it's mine, this is all on me." He started to get up again, and again she yanked him back to his knees.

"What do you mean is it all on you? I don't understand."

"No, you wouldn't. Darling, you're a beautiful, wonderful woman. You never had to go through life pulling yourself back from someone that you found yourself falling in love with because you're just a dirt poor dirt farmer. You are an incredible, beautiful, sexy, successful businesswoman, and I'm just a busted up ol' Army medic that is so in love with you… let me be noble and thank you for the wonderful time we've had." He tried to get up, but her grip on his shirt collar was too strong.

"No," she said forcefully.

"No?"

"No," she demanded. "Tuesday morning you're going to meet me on table number four like usual. You have to give me time to think about all of this. I don't get people throwing themselves at my feet very often, I need time to think it over." He looked like he was ready to continue calling everything off when she demanded, "promise me!"

Steve kissed a tear away from her cheek and said, "I'm sorry, I didn't want tonight to end up like this. I never realized how much I cared for you until I saw your eyes in the firelight." He helped her up out of her chair and she moved out of the way and sat by the fire as she pondered everything that had happened tonight. As she considered everything that he said, another person sat down next to her. Maria glanced over and she realized it was their new friend Sally Anne, a camper from North Carolina. Sally Anne was about the same age as Maria and was traveling with her son, Kent.

"Don't throw it away," said Sally Anne.

"Hmm?" Maria was not sure how much Sally Anne heard or understood from the conversations, but it was probably more than Maria hoped.

"I said don't throw it away. Loving Steve and traveling with him can be the most wonderful thing you'll ever experience, don't throw it all away. Live it, experience it." Sally Anne tossed a tiny twig into the campfire and said softly, "Many people assume that Kent is my son because we have the same last name, but my son has a different last name than we have."

"Kent is your husband?"

Sally Anne smiled and nodded affirmatively. And as the realization swept over Maria, Sally Anne whispered, "there's a lot of women our age who take another look at the young lover in our lives after the man of our dreams left us."

"Mine was murdered," whispered Maria.

"My Albert worked himself to death for me," said Sally Anne. "he died of a heart attack at forty seven." She then leaned over and said softly, "loneliness is a curse, we can die from that affliction you know. Ask your husband if he sent Steve to help cure your loneliness."

The conversation was interrupted by Steve, who packed and said he was going to the outhouse and wanted to know if Maria needed to go. He would supply help. "No thank you," said Maria and she returned to her conversation with Sally Anne, but Sally Anne was folding up her chair and getting ready to go. Her young husband, Kent, was waiting at the entrance to the campsite, talking with Steve.

"How do I ask him?" asked Maria as she struggled to her feet with her crutches.

"You talk to him every night, don't you?" asked Sally Anne. "We'll be here most of the summer, let me know how you come out!"

They rode home in silence, both feeling worse and worse about how the evening turned out, finally when they turned into her driveway, Steve said, "Please don't hate me for embarrassing you in front of those people."

"Darling no, don't blame yourself for what happened this evening, if I were more receptive, I would have handled it better… give me until Tuesday… please?"

"What is going to happen on Tuesday?" he asked sourly.

"You gave me the most prized possession a man could ever give a woman, and I wasn't expecting it, and I didn't handle it well… please let me do better?"

"You need three days to do better?" he asked. He wasn't mean, he was trying to be humorous.

"I'm getting better," she said sadly. "I demanded three weeks out of Guiseppe."

"I suppose I should consider myself blessed," said Steve, but he didn't sound blessed. He sounded defeated. He came around to her side of the truck and helped her down, then grabbed the picnic stuff out of the back.

"You can pull a pop-up with this little thing?" she asked as she crutched past the back side of his pickup. She had seen the large pickups that were hauling the huge fifth wheel campers. She thought fifth wheel campers were pop-ups because the trailer "popped up" in the front.

Steve pointed to the hitch under the bumper and said, "that's what that two inch chrome ball is for." He carried the food into her house, then without his usual hug and reassuring smile, he left without a word. Maria crutched her way into the living room and looked out the front window and saw that her driveway was empty and the immensity of what happened struck.

Darlene heard Maria return home, and he heard Steve's truck leave almost immediately. She stepped out of her room into the living room and saw Maria looking sadly out the window and asked, "What happened?"

Maria remembered her confusion as a child back when they lived on a farm, when she hugged the baby chicks too tightly and they died, so she distanced herself and they grew up without her help, but they grew up without caring who she was, like they cared for her sister Fabrizia. One day, young Maria was preparing to feed the chicks, but when Fabbi approached, the chicks ran to her, ignoring Maria and her little bucket of feed. The loneliness, sorrow, and betrayal she felt that day overwhelmed her little five-year-old heart, and she ran off crying… now that entire scene came back to her. "I think I broke something very precious…"

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Chapter 4

Maria wandered the boardwalk alone, navigating her way through the motionless crowd. The boardwalk was filled with summer revelers escaping the crushing heat of the summer city, but here they were motionless and faded. She's had this dream before, and years ago the dream was terrifying, now it's merely annoying, but at least she now knew what to look for. He's here somewhere. He's in a different location every time she has this dream, but she can always find him because he's the only animated one. Everyone else is immobile and their color is washed out. It's like the creator of her dream always wants her to know that he's there for her. This time she found Giuseppe D'Amato sitting at the edge of the water, enjoying the feeling of the waves as they roll over his feet.

"I wish I could do that," she called from the edge of the boardwalk.

"Come on down and do it," called Guiseppi.

"I can't walk in the sand with crutches."

"How do you know? You've never tried," called Guiseppi, but it wasn't his voice. It was Steve's voice that said those exact words to her during their therapy sessions.

"Come get your Egg Cream before it goes flat," Maria called and sat in the shade of the gaudily colored steel umbrella over her table at the boardwalk candy shop they love so much. Giuseppe was there in moments; he hates a flat Egg Cream. Maria sat and watched Giuseppe enjoy his treat, but soon he wanted to discuss something she was avoiding.

"Are you enjoying Florida?" he asked.

Maria frowned. In the past, they both laughed about New Yorkers flocking to Florida as they approached their "golden years" then later they made plans to join the southward migration. Then their plans were shattered when Giuseppe was killed by a junkie, and Maria went to Florida with their daughters, Jeannie and Natalia. Now Maria and Giuseppe were separated by time, space and worse. "It's warm, the house is nice, the pool is great, but you can't get an Egg Cream."

"You will find one, or maybe one will find you, it's going to happen." An egg cream is a favorite from New York City made from milk, seltzer water, and a little bit of chocolate syrup stirred up until a foam rises at the top of the glass. It has no egg and no cream, and she liked them, but not nearly as much as her Giuseppe loved them. There's a theory that the name Egg Cream came from the Yiddish words echt krim which means real cream, which is unlikely because there's no cream in it, or it came from the Yiddish words echt keem which means genuine sweetness which is more likely. Her murdered husband took a long drink and sighed, "Oh yeah, that's the real thing. How about you? I tried to find you the real thing. How is it working out?"