We should have stopped before it started. Instead, actions that led to the affair continued at an accelerated pace...
One night, I asked Nina to meet me at a neighborhood park. The meeting was under the guise of a late evening after-dinner run to the hardware store, and I was excited to see her on a weekend. Sitting close together on a weathered wood bench, enjoying the mild summer breeze beneath a starry-night sky, we mused over our lives. In the background, the sounds of the park blended with our conversation: an overlapping cadence of pulsating sprinklers amid muffled thuds of volleyed tennis balls, hit back and forth by opponents taking advantage of lighted courts. I mentioned the likelihood of only having 30 years left to live, and she responded saying, "If we had 30 years together, I would spend each day making you happy." I believed her, and although not close to true for what the future held, I know she believed her words spoken that night, and hope she would grant the same of mine.
On a Friday night, one day before Samantha and I cried together into the early morning hours, as I was intent on ending the marriage, Nina and I shared an evening together. Instruction had been canceled, and we were free from the classroom limitations. We sat close together in a restaurant booth, and I was intensely aware of the sensation of our legs touching. That simple, pleasurable feeling had sustained throughout the meal. I wanted to stay there with her, not wanting the night to end.
[It was a feeling that would soon become too familiar: a wish for the ability to stop time and shut out all else. I would hold her in the moment, and for as long as possible, I would love her.]
After we left the restaurant and reached our parked cars, I pulled her close to me and kissed her. We stood there, tightly holding each other, oblivious to our surroundings as we slowly relieved pent-up passion that had been building for months. It had been thirteen years since passionately kissing another woman, and although that fact did not earn a place for me back among the faithful, the intimacy of the moment, yearned for and long awaited, felt deceivingly blessed.
After she drove away, I sat in the dark confinement of my truck and thought about what had just happened, and I knew this time, I wasn't going back.
YOU ARE READING
Navel Gazing
Non-FictionI didn't want to be without her... Her beautiful face, infectious smile, her long, lean body, and the way she made me feel. But as time passed, and in the cruel way that familiarity and knowledge can sometimes work together against your dreams, the...
