I can’t say it started innocently. She’s attractive. And we were both married.
How many times had we done this? Dinner, drinks, fascinating conversation, her smile.
I can’t say it started innocently. She’s attractive. And we were both married. And our marriages, the slow, cancerous deterioration, and poisonous spouses were common ground.
And the margaritas, and the conversation, and the laughs. Isn’t that how they say it should happen? After you’ve wasted the first years of youth pursuing storybook love, and you take your measure, isn’t that how they say it should happen?
When I was younger I never believed in love.
We still meet monthly. A cocktail has loosened our inhibitions. We’re relaxed. The conversation comes comfortably. A smile, or a gesture, her eyes will catch my attention, and the restaurant noise, the neighbouring guests, even the story she’s telling falls away, and I am filled with the position of lovers, no. 4: An urge wells up to burst the lovers chest, an instinct to kiss the other.
Soon it passes.
A thousand reasons why and why not. Justified by strategies for later, when I walk her to her car, meet her at her house. But these do not matter.
As with all early positions of lovers, it is the hesitation that is of import. As if the bellows of the heart suddenly quiet, and the fire retreats back into the coals where it consumes them from within.