Can you keep a secret?

The last time I found out a former flame of mine was getting hitched, I wrote a post commemorating the pseudo-relationship I had with him. This time, for Ricky, I will do the same thing. Perhaps this will become a tradition.

Nearly 7 years ago, I was eating dessert one spring night with my sister at a popular chain restaurant – the sort of casual-dining place with red and white checkered tablecloths and old movie posters up on the walls. As I dug into my piece of chocolate cake, I remarked to my sister that the people working at this restaurant seemed pretty happy. It looked like a fun place to work. She said, “Why don’t you just apply then? I dare you.” I hardly gave this any thought. I acted on impulse. I already had a steady but depressing full-time job at an animal hospital, but I was eager for a change. As we paid our bill, I asked our server for a job application. I filled it out, and the manager-on-duty met with me 5 minutes later. We chatted briefly. I could tell he liked me. He told me to return the next day at 11:00 A.M. to speak with the general manager. I arrived early for my interview, and the G.M., Kevin, was a sweetheart. He gave me a part-time hostess job on the spot. That night, I had most of my hair cut off (in what would later become a new-job tradition for me), and I arrived for work the next day with a fresh pixie-cut and a smile on my face.


It wasn’t a difficult job to get the hang of, and the restaurant was staffed with a bunch of other young people for me to make friends with. I got along reasonably well with everybody, and I enjoyed getting to chat with the patrons. It didn’t pay well at all, but it was a lot of fun. Kevin was a laid-back hippie type, with his Grateful Dead t-shirts and jolly laughter. I found my groove very quickly. Every day when I’d arrive for my shift, I’d check the seating chart at the host stand. There would be a list of that day’s servers, and then there was a little dry-erase picture showing which tables belonged to which server. One day, about a week and a half after I started working there, I noticed a name on the chart that I hadn’t seen before – Ricky. I’d heard a little bit about him, mostly from the other girls at the restaurant. It seemed he had a bit of a reputation. I wondered if he was attractive. I was in the middle of one of my off-periods with my on-again, off-again boyfriend Alex, and I was in the mood to flirt.

Later that afternoon, during a slow period, I stood at the host stand, leaning against the wall, listening to Wilco on the satellite radio and zoning out. All of a sudden, in a loud, booming voice, I heard, “What’s up, cool cats?!” I turned around. A tall, tan fellow with sandy brown hair and a white t-shirt had come through the back door. I watched quietly as he greeted everybody around the bar and stopped to talk with Kevin. A girl, Ella, approached him with a hug. He had a big, broad smile. Fake, I thought. Loud and fake. This was supposed to be impressive? I turned around and went back to my work.

Twenty minutes or so passed by, and I was chatting with Paul and another server, Bradley, when the sandy-haired fellow approached the host stand. Paul and Bradley walked away, and Ricky stood right in front of me, staring. His eyes were some of the bluest I’ve ever seen, and they looked very gentle. His skin was flawless, his hairline receding slightly. I was not immediately captivated by his looks. He put his hands – large, rough – on the edge of the stand. I noticed he wore puka shell bracelets. Great, I thought. He thinks he’s a surfer, with his California tan and his seashells so far from any ocean. He did not smile – just stared. I broke the silence.

“You must be Ricky.”

“I might be. And who are you? I haven’t seen you here before.”

He had a remarkable voice; the sort of voice I was accustomed to hearing from newscasters or radio personalities. He had a small gap between his front teeth, too. I tried my best to look confident and uninterested.

“I just started last week. I’m Mariel.”

“Well it’s lovely to meet you, Mariel.”

He offered his hand, and I took it. He gave a firm handshake; not the limp kind I’m used to getting from men, as though my hands might break. I returned it with gusto. He came around to stand next to me, looking over my shoulder at the seating chart. He smelled delicious, like sweat and Ralph Lauren. His breath was minty.

“I have work to do, but I’ll come back. Will you wait for me?”

I tried to suppress a smile. I failed. “Maybe.”

As he walked away, he winked at me. He actually winked! “God,” I thought, “how arrogant. How smarmy. I am not susceptible to that kind of cheap shit.”

But I was wrong.

Over the next few weeks, I learned more about my new tan friend as we spent more and more time schmoozing at the host stand. He was older, and had recently moved to Chicago from sunny Florida with his girlfriend of five years, Dee. Turned out he really had done some surfing in his old hometown, and he wore the shells to remind him of home. He seemed wistful when he’d talk of “back home,” like he hadn’t really settled into Midwestern life yet. Ricky had a lot of dreams. He wanted to be a stand-up comic, he wanted to be a lawyer, he wanted to open a restaurant of his own, he wanted to go into broadcasting. He thought any or all of these things might be easy to do in a big city like Chicago, so he’d come up here to “find himself.” I quickly found myself interested in the stories he’d tell me in that confident, deep voice of his. I watched the way he interacted with our customers and co-workers, almost like he was flirting with everybody he met. Almost invariably, people responded to it. He seemed to attract women effortlessly. Several of our female co-workers (and a few of the males) clamored for his attention, and a handful of women from local businesses would stop into the bar during their lunch breaks just to let him serve up hamburgers and flirtatious platitudes. From the moment I met him and decided he was arrogant and not worthwhile, I was determined not to “fall for” that routine. Now, though, my resolve was beginning to fail me. I liked this cocky guy. Shit.

Our conversations slowly became more intimate. We talked about his relationship, my ex, our goals in life. We found ourselves arriving a few minutes earlier, and a few minutes earlier still, to chat before shifts. We talked extensively about movies and music, and he told me about his favorite band, Counting Crows. I had remembered that band from the early 90s when “Mr. Jones” was a big hit, but didn’t know anything more about them until Ricky wrote down the names of some songs for me to download. I listened and loved them, and they quickly made up the soundtrack to this blossoming friendship. Somewhere around this time, I quit my animal hospital job and began waiting tables full time, and Ricky was promoted. He was now officially my boss. That didn’t bother either of us too much at the time, since we were “just friends.” But he began to work longer days, and I found myself picking up extra shifts in order to spend time with him. Ricky wrote me notes on the backs of napkins, quoting some of our mutual favorite songs, giving me little reasons to smile to myself throughout the day. Gradually, that overbearing, arrogant charm I had witnessed in the beginning began to fade away. He spoke more quietly, became more humble, and began to trust me with little bits of personal information here and there. He was more melancholy than I originally took him for, it seemed. He began to hug me whenever we greeted one another, and we had fun, too. We danced, we sang. Somewhere along the line we began to have wrestling matches in the restaurant after closing, and he taught me how to do his favorite bar trick – spinning a drink tray on the tips of his fingers, throwing it up in the air and catching it. It took me a while to pick up that skill, but soon I was almost as good as he was. Before long, Ricky was giving me rides home from work, and people started noticing. Girls from the restaurant grew jealous. One in particular, Ella, was especially offended. She asked me to join her outside one day for a cigarette. I didn’t smoke, but I followed her out anyway.

“He’s not going to fuck you. And even if he does, you’ll regret it.”

“What?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about. Ricky. He’s just a slut. He just fucks around with everybody to stroke his ego. He doesn’t like you. Besides, you’re jailbait, and, I mean, if anybody told someone what was going on, he would get in trouble. You don’t want that.”

Ella was over 30. She was not a catty teenager, and this sort of immature, threatening talk sounded silly coming from the mouth of an adult woman. I drew my own conclusions, of course – that Ella and Ricky had at least slept together at one point, and she’d gotten hurt.

“There’s no reason to be rude. Nothing’s happening.”

“Whatever, I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

I could tell from the tone of her voice that was not the truth.

“Thanks, but this is none of your business one way or the other.”

I walked inside, stressed. I didn’t tell Ricky about that little discussion. Ella did have a point. I was jailbait. Ricky was well aware of that fact, too. More than once, phrases like “if only you were a few years older” would work their way into our conversations. I had, and still have, little patience for that sort of talk. My age was not something I could change, and it was glaringly obvious that we were becoming attracted to one another despite the gap. We had plenty in common, and whether we planned it or not, we were developing a relationship. His girlfriend was another obstacle, of course. Apparently, they’d been having problems for quite some time, and were more like roommates than lovers, but neither was prepared financially to strike out on their own, so they were both minding their own business in the meantime. Of course, I took all of this with a grain of salt, but I figured it was not my business to judge one way or the other and focused only on what was going on between the two of us. There was also the work issue, as my normally very relaxed general manager began to catch wind of what was going on between Ricky and I. I became very honest with Ricky. I told him that I was developing feelings for him, and that while I understood the (very good) reasons for his hesitancy to pursue me, I wasn’t going to wait around in limbo forever. Neither of us were sure how to proceed, what was the right thing to do, and we began to grow frustrated. We began to squabble a bit over nothing important. One slow evening after such a tiff, Ricky approached me at the host stand. He walked fast, and had an angry look on his face. He was obviously upset. When he spoke, his voice was low and hushed.

“What are we doing, Mariel?”

“You’re asking me? You’re the one who can’t make up your mind.”

“We’re just friends, right? We have to be. It’s completely platonic.”

“Oh, is it now? Well, that’s fine. No big deal.”

“Fuck you.”

He walked away. I was angry, hurt. What did he want? He knew how I felt, but yes, it was risky. I wasn’t about to offer him false reassurance or try to force him to do anything he didn’t want to do.

The following day’s lunch shift was busy. I had several tables full of annoying patrons to deal with, and I was making peanuts in tips. The previous night’s argument had left me feeling sour, and the day wasn’t going well. When I stepped into the kitchen and heard Ricky call me into the office, I was irritated. Everybody in the kitchen had heard him call me, and he sounded angry. Presumably, he was going to give me a hard time about something, call me out on some mistake, take out his frustration on me professionally. I set down the pitcher I was holding and walked over to the office. He stood up, looking angry, and told me to close the door. My stomach dropped a little. I wondered if he was going to fire me in order to remove me as a distraction. That would be humiliating. I closed the door behind me, and he approached. The office was stiflingly hot. He whispered, “Can you keep a secret?” I nodded.

Within a heartbeat, I was slammed roughly up against the wall. His hands ran through my hair and his tongue pushed its way into my mouth with a force and passion that literally took my breath away. Months and months of pent-up energy released themselves through his fingertips and his mouth and his hard cock pressing through his khakis. My hands teased his dress shirt out of his pants, finding the small beads of sweat on his back, his smooth chest, his belly and below, learning his anatomy as my tongue danced and my mind raced. He reached below my shirt and expertly released me from my bra, brushing my already achingly hard nipples with his fingertips. I closed my eyes and sighed over and over again as he pressed his body against mine and I attempted to grind my pussy against his leg. Though I am normally shy when naked, at that moment I had no capacity for self-consciousness. I felt lustful, primal, and I was acting on instinct. All I wanted was my naked flesh up against his, to feel him inside of me, and I was so wet, I was sure he’d feel it through my clothes. He licked and bit at my neck as he blindly explored my body with his hands, pressing here, pinching there, and we communicated our passion in sighs and monosyllables. I was absolutely in heaven, tracing the outline of his cock through his pants, willing the barrier gone. I wanted us to devour one another, right then and there. Instead, though, he pulled away.

“You have to get back out there, or this is going to look suspicious.”

He was right. We put ourselves back together and I straightened my hair and tried to will away the flush from my cheeks as I opened the door and went back into the kitchen, exhilarated. I had only been gone a matter of minutes, but it felt like a lifetime. People glanced at me suspiciously, and I tried my best to look as though I’d just been reprimanded instead of aroused. I did a pretty good job at that charade, apparently. When people asked what had happened, and I told them I’d rather not discuss it, I got comforting responses like “Yeah, I figured, Ricky looked pretty pissed off. But don’t take it personally, and hey, at least you didn’t get fired." I visited his office frequently in the following weeks to be “reprimanded.”

We only expanded our repertoire slightly over the next few months. Rides home to my house frequently included detours to local forest preserves so that he could kiss me hard and finger me harder in the backseat of his Honda. It felt sneaky and cheap, but we made the best of it. On nights that he was scheduled to close the restaurant, I’d stay late, sometimes until the wee hours of the morning. It usually began the same way – after everybody else left, I’d creep into the office as he worked, scratching his back gently, breathing lightly on his neck, whispering in his ear. He’d complain about being unable to concentrate on his work, and I’d apologize by undoing his belt and stroking his dick. Sometimes, I’d sneak into the dark, frigid cold of the walk-in freezer and call him from there, waiting on my knees for him to come feed me his cock so that I could keep it warm with my mouth. I never waited long. His cock was magnificent, too. Its proportions seemed built just for me and I had little trouble swallowing him whole as he pulled my hair and I watched his eyes roll toward the ceiling. He’d fuck my face roughly until he came in shudders and gasps, with my one had grasping his smooth-shaven balls and the other digging into the flesh of his ass. I enjoyed his taste, and I told him so as I swallowed everything he had to give me, smiling up at him from the floor.

He never reciprocated, but that didn’t matter to me at the time. I thoroughly enjoyed being able to please him. All the reciprocation in the world would not have equaled the pride I felt in being able to service him and offer him pleasure. I would have happily stayed on my knees forever if he’d wanted it.

At the end of these late nights, we often sat outside in the dark to talk. He sang to me in his beautiful voice and fashioned a bouquet of roses out of sheets of wax paper. I giggled and clapped and told him he was appreciated. He kissed me tenderly, and that was enough for both of us.

Time passed, and things remained good. Our arrangement wasn’t getting anybody into trouble, and we were both reasonably satisfied. Then, we received bad news – Ricky was being transferred temporarily to a different restaurant, several hours away. He claimed he would need to stay at a hotel to avoid the commute, but I suspected things were going downhill at home with Dee as well. I didn’t ask. It was a good career move for him, so he could not refuse, and we learned he would only need to be away for 3 months. “I can be patient,” I told him, and he kissed me on the cheeks as he told me he’d keep in touch with me regularly. The following week, he left. I did not hear from him for several weeks. When I asked Kevin if he’d heard from Ricky, Kevin told me, “Well, I think he should be the one to talk to you about that.” How can somebody say something cryptic like that and not follow it up with any information, especially knowing that Ricky and I were close and that I’d be worried? I had no way to contact him, though, so I waited. When he finally did get in touch, I was relieved, but only momentarily, for the conversation quickly turned to his having gone AWOL. I learned that Ricky’s depression had gotten the better of him and he’d found himself in the hospital after a particularly bad night. I was distraught and worried sick, and I convinced him to let me visit. The next night, I drove out to his hotel, and we spent the whole time naked in bed, holding and cuddling one another, whispering softly in the dark. We got high and talked frankly. He had left Dee, and as such, had left his home and his dog and most of his belongings behind. It had not ended well, so there was little chance of recovering most of it. Ricky told me that he felt he needed to move back to Florida for his own well-being. There were a few tears, but mostly kisses. I was heartsick. The next morning, I woke early and got dressed, and we embraced, kissing softly at the door as I left for home. That would be the last kiss we’d have. He never fucked me.

Over the following weeks, as Ricky prepared to move back to Florida, we distanced ourselves from one another. Though he came back from the other restaurant, the contact became less and less frequent. I no longer made an effort to sync our work schedules, reasoning that there was no point in trying to hang on to someone who was leaving. I was angry at him for taking off at the very moment that he and I actually had a shot at pursuing something together, but I was not about to beg him to stay. Furthermore, if he felt he could not be happy here, I didn’t want him to stay in a situation that might cause him to be dangerous to himself. So I withdrew and kept my hurt to myself. Sensing this, he didn’t press me for attention. On his last day of work, he once again called me into the office. When I sat down next to him, he looked at me, pained, and said, “Do you want to come with me? Would you? Please?” I blinked and bit my lip. “No, you know I can’t do that.” He sighed and looked down at the desk, rubbing his neck. “I had to try.”

Later that afternoon, he said his goodbyes to everyone. I was the last in line. He gave me a big hug and whispered in my ear, “Be good.” I didn’t respond, for fear of crying in front of everybody.

Ricky went back to Florida, and he and I didn’t speak for 6 years. Last week, I found him online. He’s a restaurant manager again, back in his element, and he is hoping to finally go to law school. He got a new dog, a nice house, and found himself a very beautiful woman, and they’ve been traveling the world together for years. Now, they’re engaged. He seems genuinely happy. Good for him.