Damn the Consequences: Falling in love

 “It lies not in our power to love or hate,
For will in us is overruled by fate…”
Marlowe
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I felt flushed and weak. We laughed about it, in between those kisses that we craved, oblivious to everything else in the world. I knew I’d never forget that kiss for the rest of my life never knowing how many more were to come.

You started the car and we drove randomly for miles. You held my hand the entire time and every now and then, you would pull my hand up to your lips for a soft kiss and then glance in my direction with a huge smile on your face. We even pulled over to kiss for a while. I stopped to breathe deep the smell of your throat and closed my eyes to imprint the scent into my memory.

“What happens if you have an accident in the car?  I shouldn’t be in here,” I whispered half-jokingly into your neck.

You squeezed my hand and laughed.  “You’d have to get out,” you said.

You said you didn’t want to go home, you wanted to just keep driving and never turn back. It was very hard to let go of each other’s hands. At my house, I got out of the car on legs so shaky; it took me a moment to steady myself.  walked away from the car in a dream.

We were both quiet at work on Monday.  I think a few days went by before we could even talk about it.  What were we doing?  Were we finished?  How could we be finished when I only lived to kiss you again?

You’re married. It was horrible of us. What was I doing?  How could I have done something so wrong and yet love every millisecond of it?

My emotions flipped back and forth, and I would wonder how could I let myself get so upset? Then I would think, it was just a kiss. It wasn’t like we had made raging, impassioned love.  But now that all this time has passed, I know it wasn’t just a kiss.  It was so much more.

We tried to pretend that nothing happened but each time you walked into the room, all space would fill with the electricity between us, crowding everyone out and squeezing us together. I could barely concentrate whenever you were near because I was fighting off that magnetic pull that was tugging so forcibly at me. I wanted to just touch you. It was what I needed.

We couldn’t pass in the halls without smiling shyly. The electricity was more charged than ever, I wondered if anyone else in the room could feel it.  Whenever we were close, we made sure an arm, hand or foot would touch.

All of my emotions were building up and I was ready to scream by the time you asked me to lunch again. Yes, I was scared and yes, I knew I was stupid, but how could I not go?

We decided that if we were going to do this, we would have to have rules. Was it absolutely ridiculous? Yes, definitely, but we didn’t have the foggiest idea what the hell we were doing.

You said the number one rule should be to never fall in love. You thought women were more emotional and more likely to fall in love during an affair. I remember you saying, “No matter what happens, we take this to our grave because I will die married to her.” That was number two.

You spelled it out. It was perfectly clear. But could I live with these rules?  Should I get out while I could? Did I even want to?  Could I? How could I be so weak as to except you on those terms?  I had always thought I was a strong woman and there I was wishing I didn’t have to hear you actually make rules on how to do this without getting yourself into trouble. How could I lower myself any further by accepting those terms?

The bottom line was that I wanted you and apparently, I would take what little of you I could get. My only request in the rules was for absolute truth, no matter how much it hurt. Rule number three.

After a horribly sleepless night, I arrived at the office to find a note on my desk asking if I would like to go to lunch with you again. Your directions were to a small, quiet park not too far from the office.

We took separate cars and when I pulled up you looked unquestionably good leaning against your car holding a deli lunch bag and a blanket. It was so sweet. We walked side by side, nervously, to a great spot beneath a big tree. We talked more than ate. Eventually, we pushed the uneaten food aside and kissed. We lay side-by-side looking into each other’s face and eyes, neither of us able to say a word. A hundred things were going through our brains and yet nothing. It was a good silence.

“What are we doing?” I whispered searching your beautiful blue eyes while breathless moments went slowly by.

“I don’t know. Can you stop?” you asked me quietly looking into my eyes and then I watched your lashes lower when you watched my lips anticipating an answer.

“No …”

Our little grass-covered spot under the tree on those idyllic days were a time that will bring me sentimental memories for the rest of my life. The sunlight would stream gently down and the shadows of leaves would be spread across your face. Some days would have a soft breeze. Were there ever days of bad weather?  I can’t remember any. We shared our hopes and dreams. We wished we had met first. Our mothers were pregnant with us at the same time never knowing each other or that their children would have a passionate forbidden love affair many years later.

I loved looking into your beautiful eyes; I wanted to dive right in or even just fall in. I believed that I could read your thoughts and see your feelings. They say our eyes are the windows to our soul. Once, I closed my eyes to relish the moment. When I opened them, it was to intense blue, not the sky peeking through the leaves of our tree, but your eyes. They were looking at me so fiercely that I knew you were feeling the same. It allowed me to let those feelings of incredible joy bubble up from my heart were I had buried them weeks before.

That beautiful, life-giving tree became our tree, our spot for love. We may not have voiced it, but it was love.

This is the time when dating couples would be getting to know each other. But we had to hide. I wanted to believe that what we were doing was wrong, but in my heart I knew this was who I was meant to be with and how could that be wrong? For some reason fate had kept us apart until now.

We stole hours to be together as often as we could. Yes, stolen because someday I knew that we would pay for what we were doing and I preferred to put that off and not think about it until I had to.

The next few weeks were spent taking lunches where we could kiss, kiss, and kiss. It got to where it was, forget the food, and let’s just kiss. We weren’t hungry anyway. All of this kissing was building up an incredible amount of passion. It was all we talked about. Kissing was bad enough but actually making love? That would be the ultimate adultery. Could we do it?

Somehow taking our relationship there made me think about being the other woman. About being lonely for the rest of my life. We had to stop before it got that far!

You said you were scared. Well, damn it so was I. We were both afraid of taking that final step.

Mornings often gave me nice surprises with a flower, my favorite donut, a heart shaped leaf, or a sweet little note. But one day, you gave me a letter hand written on beautiful stationary. It was very sweet telling me how you couldn’t eat or sleep because of me. You said you were excited about us possibly … finally making love. I must have read it five hundred times. I remember the pages were starting to fall apart at the folded creases. It was my very first love letter. I wanted to show everyone! But I couldn’t. I wished there was someone I could talk to about us.

You were almost the perfect guy: cute, loving, romantic, passionate, sweet and sensitive. You wrote that I was beautiful and that you wanted to meet me at a hotel where you would dim the lights with candles and soft music would be playing. You planned on bringing a bottle of wine that we could sip staring into each other’s eyes. We would slow dance with you singing softly in my ear. You promised hours of foreplay and described in detail what you would do to every inch of my body, from my head to my toes.

It was the most erotic thing I had ever read. I read that part over and over, flushing with excitement. How I wanted to experience that! Just once so I could have the memory to store in my heart and bring out to cherish when needed.

The letter was beautiful and what every woman would like to hear from a man. I just melted. In my foolish heart, I was thinking that after that, you would never go back to your wife again.

We set a date to do it. NMW