Eli was so close when she awoke that she could feel his breath against her neck, and she let out a long and luxuriant sigh at the feeling of it. It had been so long. There was another moment's foggy cogitation before she realized the sweet warmth she felt on her left hip was his hand, and ... she nearly screamed when she discerned something large and hard pressed up against her butt.

For a solid thirty seconds, Kate was torn between sordid delight and shocked mortification. It had been such a very long time. Rather than ease away gracefully when her mortification finally won out, she instead threw an elbow into the man behind her. The tepid blow struck the solid muscle of his abdomen with a faint smack, after which the realization of what lay beneath her friend's t-shirt sent an additional shiver of electricity coursing through her body.

Another confused and paralyzing moment followed.

"Gee ... gah, gyeh, get that thing away from me!" she finally managed to sputter aloud as she flopped frantically, legs and arms churning and flailing, to the far side of the bed. In a quick stab at salvaging her dignity, she sat up hurriedly against the headboard with a hastily acquired pillow as an improvised shield between her and the lecher in her bed ... rather, in his bed.

By that point, Eli already had rolled from the far side of the bed and was walking past the foot of the bed to the shower. "Sorry about that," he had the nerve to smile boyishly. "I'll save you some hot water."

Kate's embarrassment vanished in an instant, and she slouched down in the bed to await her turn in the bathroom. I used to have such poise, she thought, but it had been a very, very long time since she'd felt something like that. Her mind was fixated not on Eli's plumbing, but on the flat, solid slab of muscle that was his midsection.

It had been several years since last she'd engaged in coitus with Otto, and that session had ended in total disaster. Over the years, as his girth had increased, she'd attempted to coax him into more feasible and, for her, more comfortable sexual positions. But Otto was one of those guys who needed to be in the dominant spot.

The great bulk of him on top of her had not quite been unbearable, but on the occasion of their final, calamitous tryst, she'd noticed that her huffing and wheezing spouse at one point had gone totally silent. It'd taken nearly a minute for her to realize he'd merely fallen asleep on top of her, mid-act. Another minute of his dead weight pressed upon her trim form had left her feeling weak and had made breathing difficult. Her gentle attempts to rouse him having failed, it had taken an additional five minutes of wiggling, pushing, and gasping for the mortified and breathless Kate to extricate herself from beneath her by-then snoring and thoroughly insensate husband.

Eli was nearly the age Otto had been when she and her spouse first had courted. Would her friend allow himself to go to shit in the same fashion? A glance around the room told her otherwise. Eli, as sweet and easygoing as he was, was disciplined and orderly to the point of being anal. His truck was the same way, as well-ordered and spotless as the day it had left the showroom.

After Eli emerged and fed her breakfast—she opted to shower at home—they were out the door and on their way. Twenty-five minutes later, her friend deposited her at her front door. He was supportive as she stood chattering away and shifting nervously outside his truck, but this was something she needed to do, and he had meetings he needed to attend. After another few minutes, she finally braced herself, said a grateful goodbye, and entered her home.

The day was not as difficult as she'd thought it would be. During the first hour, there were a great many anxious glances outdoors, but as the day's schedule unfolded and filled with this, that, and the other, she found things were soon back to normal, or nearly so.

The day's critical hurdle was going outside, which she eased into first by standing at the doorway leading to the deck and then by taking short turns out onto the deck and back again. By noon, an anxious but piqued Kate said fuck it, changed into her swimsuit, and, with bated breath, went out to the pool. It was a brief and tremulous swim, during which she had a hard time looking skyward, but as she dried herself in the sunroom afterward, she was proud.

By early afternoon, her efforts had found her a competent realtor to sell her homes in LA and had even conjured forth the elusive Leona Munson, who, to her surprise, was a woman rather than a man. Leona's assessment of the property near Lompoc and the current real estate market there had been glowing, yet she wasn't prepared to give Kate an estimate on what it might fetch on the market until she'd done more research. The woman was only prepared to state that the property's value was significantly greater than Otto had suggested.

Kate tried to temper her excitement over Munson's information, but found herself skipping and dancing around the house. Rosy estimates were nothing new, and things might not pan out, but it was nice to have something about which to be optimistic. She would find out more when she met Leona at the property in five days.

She decided on a few minor things, made some inquiries by phone, and scheduled two appointments, but most of the rest of the day was spent online reading. She needed to get on with her life, but had to know about what had transpired at her home two days earlier. Thoughts of Flying Guys and a world beyond the mundane reality in which she'd always lived wouldn't leave her be.

After several hours of such study, the only thing clear was how voluminous was the rubbish on the Internet. Nothing that she found made sense, there were apparently more theories about everything supernatural and superhuman than there were people to propound them, and most native speakers of English didn't have the slightest clue about the difference between there, their, and they're.

But it was a start. Perhaps there was something to what Eli had said about disinformation on the Internet, but it was also he who'd taught her that disentangling falsehoods from what was real required knowing something about the subject matter in question. She would keep plugging away.

Kate very much wanted to invite Eli back that evening for dinner. The man deserved some sort of reward for his trouble and his kindness. And who was she kidding? She liked having him there, Flying Guy or no. After much handwringing, she called him and invited him to spend the day at the beach house two days hence. It was a lovely place, and she realized she should make the best of it as long she could.

The rest of the evening was research and planning on all the projects she had going. By the time her eyes began to droop, it was close on midnight. She went to bed right after. It was not the most pleasant night she'd ever spent, full of shadows, shades, and every manner of unknown, but she made it through until morning without once reaching for the phone.