Taking the Wrong Fork in the Road

Have you ever driven down a road that you didn't know and come to an un-signposted fork in that road, made a snap decision and realised some distance down that road that you had made the wrong decision?

Life is sometimes like that, you are forced by circumstances to make an instant decision and realise, down the track, that decision was wrong. This is exactly how I feel right about now. I look at the way ahead and know instinctively that I am on the wrong road. I had a choice between two women and I now regret the choice that I made.

On the one hand, there was Wendy. I had sort of grown up with Wendy, we lived next door and in hindsight that was the reason that I did not choose her. She was reliable and because we knew each other so well, a life with her would have had no surprises.

Then there is Sylvie, she was 'new' in every way. She was exciting to be with, tending to be spontaneous and compulsive, and gorgeous. She took to me with her usual lack of preparedness, of sudden changes in direction and me not expecting to know which way to jump next.

Sylvie worked in an office on the same floor of the same building as I did and we met one day in the cafe downstairs where we both went for lunch. We walked back to our building and rode up in the lift together. When it reached our floor and before the door opened, Sylvie kissed me. We were not alone and I was embarrassed by her spontaneous demonstration of affection. "What brought that on?"

"I don't know, I just felt like it, that's all. Now don't tell me that you didn't enjoy being kissed by the best looking girl in this entire building."

"I won't tell you that. It took me by surprise that's all. No-one has ever done that before."

"Bullshit! A good looking bloke like you has never been kissed like that before, pull the other one."

"It's true, at least part of it is true, you see I don't consider myself to be good looking."

"Bullshit again! You're just looking for compliments. Believe me, if I didn't think that you were good looking I wouldn't be talking to you, let alone kissing you. You are good looking because I say that you are and I'm an impeccable judge of these things."

"If you say so." Not even deep down did I agree with her.

We had reached her office. "See you at five lover." She kissed me again and joined another girl going into her office

I stood there for several seconds watching their backs as they were walking, chatting, further into the office.

What was I to make of this? Sure I was flattered, who wouldn't be?

I found it difficult to concentrate for the rest of the day, just managing to finish, what should have taken not long, in time to pack up and leave.

There she was, right outside the door waiting for me. There were some incredulous comments from my work friends when she threw her arms around my neck and planted the most passionate kiss I have ever received on my unprepared lips. One of the guys yelled, "Go for it stud!" as he walked past.

"Where are you taking me for dinner, Stud?" Her face was a mere centimetre from mine and she expected me to come up with an answer.

There was nothing left for me but to repay her compliment and kiss her. "Until I get to know a girl I usually leave that decision up to her." In hindsight not my smartest move.

The dinner cost me a fortune. But then the reward was worth it. Sylvie made love the way that she approached life, she was spontaneous, she was creative, she was tireless and I was exhausted by the time we had finished. I spent the night with Sylvie and it was everything that I'd dreamed of, so much better than the borderline platonic night I had spent with Wendy when her family and mine spent a vacation together when we were in our late teens. That consisted of a lot of touching and caressing, some kissing and genital manipulation but no penetration, we were saving that for later.

We were almost late for work, a hurried shower, no breakfast and a sprint for the train. My standing on the stud metre rose considerably when she kissed me when we reached my office, a point not lost on Smartarse, one of my fellow workers. "Guess who got some last night."

"You're just jealous." I replied.

"Been there, done that." He was trying to tell me something.

"Am there, doing that." I said with all the bravado I could manage, a new experience for me.

"What was she like, still the same old Sylvie I would guess?"

"And you'd know, wouldn't you?"

"As it happens, I would." Given his track record for jumping everything in a skirt, I'm surprised he could remember.

I filed his response away among the questions that I planned to ask her this evening.

The funny thing was that I didn't get to ask that question, or any other question for that matter. We went to an equally expensive restaurant to that of last night, and spent the night together, this time at my apartment. I had to wear different clothes to work in the morning or I'd get teased big time by the guys at work. Sylvie didn't seem to mind that she would be wearing the same clothes twice.

The next six months of my life was a total head-spin, Sylvie and I tore through life that quickly and that compulsively that I didn't have time to think. Within weeks she had moved in with me and we spent what little time that we weren't at work or partying in bed. In bed was not a time for contemplation, it was either sex or sleep.

You can imagine my surprise when, immediately following our usual passionate sex, she announced that she would be moving out.

"Why would you want to do that?" I asked her. "Am I that bad a lover?" I was hoping for a compliment, but this would mean that she would have to explain her reasoning, not something that I was looking forward to, my insecurities having kicked in

"God no Darling, that's the problem, you're too good. The thing is, I got called into the boss' office and was told that my work had been slipping. 'You are half asleep all the time, and it has been brought to my attention that the quality of your work is also slipping.' He looked at me, 'aren't you getting enough sleep?' I have to face the situation that you are bad for me. To save us, I'm having to pullback and limit the time we are together."

"Surely we could simply not have sex as often, we could try just being together without the sex. Please, can't we try it?"

"But Darling, I love you too much, I know that I cannot be with you in bed and not be having sex, at least until the exhaustion kicks in."

"I know, and that's what I love about you, about us, we are made for each other and I can't imagine life without you. It's hard enough when you are at work and I'm at work just down the corridor, I'm tempted to stop work and go down and be with you."

"Don't you think I feel the same way?"

"But it's going to be worse if we aren't together."

"I have to do this to save our relationship. Please don't make it any harder for me."

"So, when are you planning to move out?"

"On Sunday, we'll have the weekend together before I leave. We can see each other on weekends, that should take the edge off our frustrations."

"I guess that I can't change your mind. I'll just have to get used to crying myself to sleep."

"Don't you think that I'm not going to miss you, please Darling, let's forget about it for the time being." She was stroking him into life. What could I do? I'll tell you what I couldn't do, that was to concentrate on the job at hand, try as she could, he did not want to cooperate.

"I'm sorry, I can't do this." I kissed her softly on the lips "Forgive me."

"I'm sorry too," she drew me to her, her arms around me holding me tight, "You can cry if you want, I won't blame you, in fact I might join you."

I did and she did. I kissed the tears from her cheeks and she returned the favour until we both drifted off into sleep.

I arrived at work on Monday morning feeling like crap. Smartarse was all over me. "So, she's given you the flick. What happened, couldn't you keep up with her?"

"If you must know, I was too much for her." That should shut him up.

I managed to get through the day without thinking of Sylvie too much, but then too much could be a relative term, several times is a lot in relation to not at all but not much in relation to all the time.

When I got home to my lonely apartment that still smelled of Sylvie i was desperately lonely so called her, only to get her answering machine. Strange. I called her mobile and that went straight to her voice mail. Even stranger I thought. I didn't feel hungry and, as there was bugger all on TV I grabbed a book and read for a couple of hours until I was almost asleep. I then climbed into my bed that still smelled of us God I missed her.

I tried calling her when I got out of bed, only to suffer the same fate as last night, nothing but recorded messages.

I wasn't looking forward to the weekend. I know that she said that we would have the weekends together, but my insecurities were kicking in and I was beginning to doubt if she would show up.

Friday night, and I had just finished my meagre meal of something or other, when I heard the front door open. I poked my head around the corner to see her charging at me. "Come on Darling, don't just stand there with your mouth open, we've got some catching up to do." With one hand she grabbed me, while her other hand was divesting herself of clothes as we ran down the passage to the bedroom. She paused for a micro second to finish the job of disrobing before jumping on the bed with her arms and legs open in an invitation for me to get my gear off and join her. I managed to shave one and a half seconds of the old, getting my gear off, record before joining her in both senses of the word.

It was the Sylvie of old, not the one that dropped the bombshell last weekend. She was spontaneous, she was creative and she was compulsive. I wasn't focussing all that well when I got out of bed to go to the toilet, but I swear the clock said 3:15 in the morning and we hadn't stopped until just now.

"Come here," she mumbled as I got back into bed, "I need you."

"I need sleep. What say we save ourselves until morning?"

"It is morning, come here." I came to her but managed to convince her that if we kept going at this rate we'd be dead by morning, at least getting out of bed time.

We managed to cram a week's supply of sex into two days, and I was feeling somewhat worse for wear when I got to work on Monday morning. Smartarse must have been psyching himself up for my arrival but, as soon as he saw me he realised that his rehearsed comment was wasted, almost as wasted as I felt. "Nothing you say will hurt me this morning, what's good for a chaffed dick? Oh wait, that's right, you don't get enough to need that."

"Bastard."

A new relationship schedule was established, weekdays nothing, weekends everything.

The first piece of information, that was to have a dramatic affect on my life, came about three months after our change in schedule. "Darling," she had her head rested on my shoulder and was stroking him in an effort to coax him back into action, "I found out today that I'm pregnant."

"What? I mean, that's great. How far along are you?"

"Three months. Are you happy with the news?"

"Yes, of course I am, why wouldn't I be?"

"I just thought, you know how you like to plan things, that this would mean a change in plan."

"Well, there is that. But, if you're happy being pregnant, that's all that matters. Do you think that we should, you know, get married?"

"Are you asking me or telling me?"

"If you want it formal then, Sylvie, Darling, will you marry me?"

"Let me think about that, two, three, four, yes of course I will." She threw herself on me and we consummated our new relationship.

Over a late breakfast, early brunch, on Sunday I broached the subject of our living arrangements. "I've been thinking,"

Oh, oh."

"That we should sell both our apartments and buy us a house where we can play happy families for the rest of our lives."

"We don't need to think about that just yet. I think that we should stay the way that we are for the time being."

But I want to be a part of this pregnancy, I want to be with you for the first ultrasound, for the first time he kicks you, your antenatal classes, I want to be your husband for all of this."

"You are, you will be, just not officially, not yet."

"Why wait? On past experience I would have thought that you would embrace this with your usual enthusiasm."

"This is a big, totally unexpected, change for me, for us, I need to get my head around this."

"What's there to get your head around? You are pregnant, you are having our baby. We made this together and should go through this together." In the back of my mind I couldn't understand her reticence.

The rest of the day was almost situation normal. Close but no cigar, she didn't attack our sexual encounter with her usual enthusiasm. Don't get me wrong, it was still great, just not as great.

I bumped into her friend Roz when I went downstairs to get my lunch. "I was wondering, I don't know if you are aware of the arrangement I have with Sylvie to not contact her during the week, but today is her birthday so i thought that I would drop in to see her and invite her to dinner tonight."

"Didn't you know? Sylvie's in Melbourne this week. She and the boss have gone down there for a series of meetings, they won't be back until Friday."

"She hasn't mentioned that, but then what she does during the week is her business. Is this a once off thing or has it happened before?"

"It's a regular thing, once a month they go to the Melbourne office for board meetings and client meetings."

"Oh." I left it at that, but my mind was racing, how long had this been going on?"

It was my turn to lack enthusiasm for sex. "What's the matter Darling?" Sylvie was stroking him but he wasn't taking much interest in the proceedings. "Are you worried that I don't want to be with you all the time? I'm afraid that if I'm here all of the time we'll maybe hurt our child."

"it's not that. I've been given a new level of responsibility. Our company has taken over another company and I have been made Manager of this other company, and it was my job to go through the company books to rationalise its operation, to bring it into line with ours." That much was true, but it wasn't the reason for my lack of enthusiasm. My insecurities had kicked in and I was imagining all kinds of scenarios that would impinge on our relationship, few of them positive.

By Saturday afternoon, I had regained some enthusiasm, much to her relief. Sunday was better, I would give it a 9 out of 10. After she had left my insecurities returned; why hadn't she told me about her trips with her boss? Was there more to it than that?

Monday evening I was waiting just up the road from her apartment in the hope of speaking with her to assure her that I wasn't feeling as bad as i had been over the weekend. She wasn't alone. The man with her would have been at least ten years older than she was and had the bearing of someone who had power. My immediate thoughts were that he was her boss seeing her home from work. He didn't leave, and the two of them got on the train the next morning. No I wasn't stalking her, this was my normal train. They separated before they got to the building and he waited until she had gone up in the lift, the same one that I took. "Hi, how are you?" I asked her.

"I'm okay, and you?"

"I've been better."

"You'll get over it, I know you will."

"We'll see." The lift reached our floor and we got off and walked to her office where I said good-bye. Somewhat awkward I thought.

I was almost about to ring her on Friday afternoon to tell, her not to bother coming over tonight, but she got in first. "Hi Darling something's cropped up and i can't make it tonight. I'll come over in the morning."

I was almost going to tell her not to bother but, what the hell, I have needs too, and when you're on a sure thing you shouldn't waste the opportunity.

I now wished I'd told her not to bother. I knew that something was wrong when she didn't drag me down to the bedroom as soon as she got here. "Darling, we need to talk."

From this I gathered that it would be she that would be doing all of the talking.

"I've been seeing someone else."

"I know."

"You know, how?"

"He's your boss, isn't he?"

"Yes."

"How long has this been going on? No, let me guess, it has been going on for a few months now. And now you're going to tell me that you are going to marry him as soon as his divorce has been finalised, and then you're going to tell me that he's the father."

She sat in silence for some time before whispering, "How long have you known?"

"A couple of minutes, I have had my suspicions for some time and you've confirmed these. I don't know about you, but I'm not feeling much like sex just now, so I suggest that you leave now and let me suffer in peace."

"I don't want to leave you like this." She moved closer and bent to kiss me. I turned my head. She left, defeated and deflated.

I managed to survive the week and wasn't expecting her to arrive n Friday evening, but she did, and she was in a state.

"Simon, Darling, I need you so bad. I don't know what to do."

"Don't tell me, he is not leaving his wife and he's claiming that he's not the father. His wife hads found out about your affair and given him the option of you or his job and to be taken to the cleaners into the bargain, and he chose the job. He doesn't know what he has let himself in for. His wife is going to make his life pure purgatory."

"What am I going to do?"

"I don't know, I, on one hand I feel some sort of responsibility to you, I let you drive our relationship instead of guiding you, while on the other hand, am not going to marry you, I will offer to contribute to child support. I will however offer you this advice; use this as a learning experience, realise that you just cannot rush through life without giving some thought to the consequences of your actions. While we were brilliant in the beginning, I had come to realise that I was incapable of keeping up that pace any longer, you must have noticed the change, surely."

"I think deep down I knew something was coming between us, and you're probably right, I need to take stock of my life, I need to change. You were a steadying influence in my life, and I think that we can get back to where we were before this happened, will you help me?"

"I will have to say no. I'll be there for you if you feel that you can't cope, but you're going to have to make it under your own steam."

"So a farewell fuck is out of the question?"

"Tempting as the offer is, I'll have to decline."

She left, walking slowly as if waiting for me to call her back. I didn't.

Sunday evening and I was sitting in deep contemplation. What had I done to deserve this? My life was in freefall and i had no control over my destiny.

The doorbell rang. Two police officers were standing outside. "Can I help you?" I asked.

"Are you Simon Jacobsen?"

"Yes."

"Do you know a . . ." He consulted his notebook "Sylvie Sherwood?"

"Yes, she's my fiancé, or at least she was. Is there a problem?"

"There's been an accident, I'm afraid that she didn't survive."

"What, where, when?"

"Tell us, how were things between you lately?"

"Not good, we'd broken up and there were other things in her life that I'd only recently become aware of. Are you thinking that this accident wasn't an accident, that she took her own life?"

"We are exploring all possibilities at this time. These other things, what were they?"

"I found out that she had been having an affair with her boss and that he was the father of her child. He had promised that he would marry her when his divorce comes through. But that was a lie. He had no intention of divorcing his wife. She had made sure of that."