She would never know how it happened. One minute they were in his car, the radio playing muffledly…”Taking Chances” by Celine Dion, that was something that she would remember forever. And he pulled up in front of her apartment building, and there was silence for several seconds. She looked over at him, he smiled, and she leaned in closer. “You’ve got something in your hair,” she said in a voice that didn’t exactly sound like hers. She brushed a speck of paper out of a tuft of his brown waves and he caught her hand.
His lips smashed into hers.
And so began the inevitable course.
Their affair was something that they never publicized or even spoke about. It was an unspoken pact between the two. At the end of the day, he would go home to his wife. Both of them knew that she was the one person he loved in the world more than anyone else.
“She’s gone for a week,” he said conversationally one day. “Conference.”
“Really?” she asked. “So what’re you up to?”
“Do you feel like Mongolian?”
She grinned. “Sure do.”
That night was the first night she stayed with him. She’d always left directly after, or scrambled for their clothes so they wouldn't tie up the supply room for too long. But this…this was luxurious. They stayed in a guest bedroom and when she woke up to the light sound of rain, with him next to her, she felt whole.
This went on for six months. She knew it would end. They both did, but they never discussed it. Then one day, he dropped the bomb that she knew would eventually explode.
“She’s pregnant.”
All she could do was nod. She couldn’t fake a smile or a word of congratulations. He knew her too well to buy a thinly veiled emotional lie.
“And that means…” He trailed off. “We can’t do this anymore. We never should have started.”
“Why did we?” she asked.
“Because I love you.”
“You’re still talking about it in the present tense.”
“But I love her more.” He sat down next to her. “If I had met you somewhere else…some
time else…we could have worked. But we didn’t.”
“Will you ever tell her?”
He shook his head. “She doesn’t need to know.”
“I would want to.”
“Then you tell her.”
She bit her lip, wishing valiantly to reappear in some alternate universe where he had met her first. “I’m sorry,” she said simply.
And she left the room, the building, and his life. She transferred, unable to bear the pain of watching the man she loved and the woman she wished to be build up a new life. She’d monitor their Facebook profiles through her cousin’s easily hackable account and one night, he’d popped online at the same time she was. A bing indicated a new chat message, and she bit her thumb as she read it.
Long time no talk! How's it going with you?She could almost hear his voice speaking to her. And not wanting to, she typed an answer.
I’m okay. What about you?It took what seemed like forever for him to respond.
I’m good. We’ve got a third member of the household now, so it’s pretty crazy.She swore inaudibly.
Really?
Yep. A girl. She was born about a month ago. You’ve should come visit us sometime.
She couldn’t handle it anymore. She closed the window, laid her head on the keyboard, and wept. He'd cheated on his wife and gotten a family out of the deal.
She channeled the pain into her work. She beat her heels down auditioning--literally. And when she landed a minor role in Wicked, she threw herself into it. Becoming someone else was a way to get out of thinking about the crappiness of her life.
And for the next four years, that’s how she dealt with what had happened. She’d lost the one man that she’d ever loved to his wife. Thinking about it made her truly realize how screwed up her life had been.
One night, after a performance of The Producers, after she’d gotten out of her Ulla persona and back into herself, she traipsed out of the theatre into the grimy snow of the city streets. Before she’d gotten ten feet away, a voice stopped her dead in her tracks.
“I knew you’d make it here.”
She turned around to see the man she’d wanted to get out of her head forever. “You came?” she asked, and that was not the snappy opening she’d been planning on starting their first post-breakup conversation with.
“Believe it or not, I’ve heard of you,” he said. “You’re good.”
“It’s thanks to you,” she replied.
A look of shock crossed his face. “Really?”
“More or less.”
“I…” He trailed off. “I feel so guilty for what I did to you. We never should have gotten started with what we did in the first place--”
“No,” she agreed. “We shouldn’t have.”
“She found out,” he said. “She said she always knew but she couldn’t ignore it anymore.”
“Why?”
“She grew a spine.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Her words, not mine.”
“So…” Her mind struggled to grasp what she’d been told. “You two are over?”
He nodded. “You know how I said that if I’d met you someplace else? Well, here we are.” He spread his arms to indicate the sprawling street.
Her naïveté leapt. But another part of her, the part with the decent memory, flared with anger. “You forgot one part of that equation,” she corrected him. “We would have worked somewhere else in another time, yes. But only if I was another person.” She put her hands on her hips. “Sweetheart, I’m not who I was. Now get your ass out of my city.”
Without a look back, she walked away.
That night, for the first time in four and a half years, he didn’t invade her dreams.
And that made her slightly sad.
So this is what happens when I decide to invent some fictional problems. Quite entertaining.I am going to go to sleep now. Finally.
