There had been other girls since Gabriella, Lori, and since Annika last summer. Those three were the rare few I had imagined my future with. The kind of girl you dream about dreaming with, about tomorrows—together. Debbie was not that kind; she had been my neighbor when I lived in those crummy apartments across from campus. Because of my loneliness the night after the two Janes left for Vancouver I needed her, and she somehow needed me. Then a few weeks later she falls for a guy from Ft. Peirce who took a group of us boating on the Intracoastal Waterway on his father’s power yacht, and soon he was her new boyfriend.
![](https://rickjebb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Excerpt-from-Mexican-Sunset-150x150.jpg)
Excerpt from, Mexican Sunset
September 4, 2023![](https://rickjebb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/the-guide-by-rick-jebb-150x150.jpg)
The Guide
September 4, 2023![](https://rickjebb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Excerpt-from-A-Trail-of-Stars.jpg)
Trail of Stars – Our Fight for Sanity in an Insane World is my Next book to be released.
T Turning to pleasure, even briefly, to satisfy a thirst that is never quenched, I chose shallow alternatives to real intimacy—barbaric acts of desperation. Some form of primal violence against a higher moral order. Wild kingdom stuff that leaves me hollow and endlessly craving romantic love and instead settling for an unfulfilling counterfeit version repeatedly.
T here were always possibilities. I think about tomorrow’s party in Palm Beach, those palatial homes on the water, and the castles of Manalapan and Gulf Stream. Princes and princesses of the kingdoms and realms where I might have belonged if life had been different. And still, I imagine myself somedays living that bigger life. My fantasies sometimes go too far, only giving way to darker and disappointing versions of who I was; hope taken over by fears—when dream castles crumble into the vortex of doubt.
I remember when I was eleven, nearly drowning at the bottom of that waterfall, then being spit out by the current. I had been spared. It’s now 1:00 a.m. and a glimmer of hope appears on the horizon of my mind’s eye where I see the swirling energy from the stars, behind the shadow of the big cedar like in the painting. My pulse begins to slow. My fatigue takes over and I finally drift off to the wonder of those gigantic translucent waves leading the storm like an army taking a beach. That memory imprinted from early memories on the beach with my dad, monster waves, and the relentless and unstoppable cycles of nature.
Excerpt from, A Trail of Stars – Our Fight for Sanity in an Insane World.