Infidelity Ch. 01

Their hands had been almost touching his shoulder and her face -- right between them. He releases her hand to put both arms around her waist, and she puts both of hers around his neck, so that as they rock slowly together on the deck their bodies touch all the way down. She makes a tiny grunt, scarcely a high-pitched whisper, that she hopes he doesn't hear. She makes it because she wants him and she is afraid to want him.

Good Lord, I'm thirty-five, almost middle-aged. Why am I acting like a fourteen year old?

She's skidding on her straight and narrow. Does this make her guilt more pleasurable? Or a greater barrier? She wants to stop everything; she can do everything except make it stop. No, she might yet break away.

What is he doing? He is leaning his head to her. He kisses her hair, making her shiver, beginning a little frisson that sweeps all the way down her back from her scalp to her ass and brings a catch to her breathing.

The next thing isn't a single thing. It is two, more than two, some number, something kaleidoscopic. There is no order that she can recall later. She smells him again, with her cheek feels a muscle move in his chest, feels herself pull him closer, for the first time feels his penis as a hard shape against her belly. She holds her breath again, memorizes the outline of his cock on her body.

She can feel herself growing wetter, hotter. The feel of wetness seeping is obvious now, so beautiful a sensation, so perfect a mark of longing if he would touch her there. He kisses her hair again and inhales her. She can feel his breath. His penis. His face. A hand at her chin, lifting her face. He is erect against her. They begin a kiss.

Only then does she step back, all at once, gasping out her regrets.

"No. Please. I'm sorry." What can she say? "What are we doing?"

*****

Almost everyone knows that passion in the night can be frightening with its power to push aside all daytime considerations and lead people to a world in which there's no wrong or right, only hunger. How many know its other characteristic, its fragility, how a word can stop it dead, break it like a light bulb, leaving only useless remains?

He lets her stand apart from him but he doesn't let her go. She could walk away but it would have to be her choice. She wants him to talk, because she has run out of things to say that wouldn't make this worse. Maybe he can end it gracefully, in a way that will salvage their friendship. Perhaps, so she waits, but he doesn't answer for a moment.

What he does is take an enormous breath that comes back out as a slow breeze, like exhaling cigarette smoke, and only then does she realize how deeply he is affected.

Finally, hoarsely:

"I'm sorry." He looks away from her, then back, as though unsure what to say.

"No, I'm not." Another stop.

"I am and I'm not. Oh damn. I *am* sorry I did something your weren't ready for."

He pauses.

"But I wasn't alone in it, was I?"

She decides, without deciding, to be flippant in her defense, and a little cruel: "Do you always come on this fast with other women?"

He drops his hands and jerks away.

No, no, no, no. I didn't say that! Say I didn't!

There is no place to hide out here. One hand rises to cover her mouth before she knows she is doing it. He starts to say something in an angry tone, then stops himself and turns toward the railing. She thinks he might just walk away, which she won't be able to stand, but instead he stands almost perfectly still for a moment, then turns around slowly toward her, takes another large breath and finally starts talking in a very quiet voice, so softly that it is not at all accusing, so long that it is almost a monologue.

"How long have I known you? A decade? More? Have I ever come on to you before? Do you think I never wanted to?" He laughs a little self-deprecating laugh, though there's no amusement on his face.

"I've wanted to for years. Well, some things you know are never going to happen. I knew I wasn't ever going to try to seduce you."

He pauses for an instant.

"Anyway, before tonight I knew it. So I decided I had to stop thinking about it. I thought maybe I could just enjoy being with you for a bit, and let it go."

He leans against the deck railing and looks out to the lawn, while she pulls her wrap around herself more tightly and looks at the floor, knowing she has ruined everything. Her mind flicks back to the fantasy of the kiss; the hostess interrupts as an omen, the munchies are symbols of dread. He is talking.

"It didn't work. After awhile I realized that, yes, I'm sure there are people who can do that. Mother Teresa came to mind." He makes that little laugh again.

"Not me, though. I couldn't keep from looking at you. You must have noticed."

She is about to say something but can't bring herself to talk. She stares at a post of the deck rail, as though it is the unmovable center of all creation. He continues.

"Last fall I think you were upset with me. I guessed I was being too obvious, so I tried to stay across the floor from you as much as I could. Anyway, it was actually a relief when 'The Nutcracker' ended, because I didn't have to see you all the time."

He takes yet another enormous breath, exhales, goes on:

"Then tonight, you were different. I ... I don't know how exactly. Willing. There was something in how you looked at me. Hell, I probably imagined it. I'm sorry I put you on the spot. Anyway. You can say I'm inappropriate, wrong, whatever. Just don't say I'm fast."

She listened quietly during most of it, not moving, not even taking her hand from her mouth. Only her eyes changed, growing wider and sadder and then wet. The exception came when he got to the part about her being upset with him. Then she squeezed her eyes shut and wiped them with her fingers. Now that he has finished, she has to say something:

"I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to say that. Please believe me. I've just been ... I mean I was ... I'm afraid. I am. I was afraid of where we were heading. I can't do that. We had to stop."

She wipes her eyes again and looks at the ground so that he won't be able to see her face. Her voice becomes so quiet that it scarcely rises above the music filtering through the closed door:

"And, no, you weren't in it alone."

It is done. So why, as they stand on the deck looking at each other, each reluctant to go back to the party, each knowing they need to, does she hope that he will stall a little longer?

Jumbled lines from some poem steal upon her like ground mist, telling her that her whole world has rolled up in a ball, moving her toward an overwhelming question, and that because she was afraid she couldn't give the answer that might make her happy. For one brief moment she had almost been happy. But now it is time to go home.

Continued