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After half an hour or so she arrives. She’s
wearing the blue jacket that I really like with
a long beige skirt and strappy black shoes.
Her hair is windblown. She’s cleaned off the
nail varnish that she was wearing on Friday.
"Hi." She glances at me with the faintest smile,
and takes her place at her desk, placing her
lunch in her desk drawer and her bag under her
desk. "Good morning." I reply, glancing up at
her for the briefest moment.
She switches on her PC and goes to the kitchen
for coffee.
I check my email and then open the project
document I was working on last Friday. She returns
and starts to work through the paperwork on
her desk.
I catch the smell of her perfume and remember
smelling it on her skin, in my bed.
Eighteen months ago, for six months, we were
lovers. She does not know that I can still remember
what it felt like to feel her body against mine,
as if it were yesterday. I can still taste her
in my mouth. Some days I become aroused just
being in the same room with her.
She approached me. ‘Let’s go for a drink’,
the other ‘office lesbian’ supportively welcoming
another lesbian to the office. She told me the
office gossip, the funny little stories, and
especially who was having an affair with who.
I couldn’t believe half her claims about who
was doing it with who. Then, another evening
she told how dead her relationship with Stephanie
was. They slept in separate rooms, lived separate
lives, that her partner was dating someone else.
Four weeks after I moved to the office came
the evening when she asked me how I felt about
her.
I’d grown to like her. Like me she didn’t bother
with the gay scene. I’d given up on ever meeting
Ms right and was surprised to meet such a nice
gay woman. Behind the cheeky personality which
she showed the world, I detected a warm, compassionate,
passionate woman who’d been hurt and abused
by her unappreciative partner. I wanted to be
her Ms right, I wanted to make up for the bad
experience she’d had with Ms wrong, I wanted
this to be the ‘real thing’. I was still cautious,
she hardly knew me. I was scared that if I let
her get close to me, really get to know me,
she’d find I wasn’t really attractive and reject
me. My caution upset her, she assured me that
that relationship was over.
I persuaded her to come back to my apartment,
so we could talk privately. That way I could
get behind her facade. I wanted to know better
the warm person I’d only so far glimpsed. I
wanted to let down some of my barriers, let
her get a little closer, give her the opportunity
to reject me before I started to hope…
A request to be kissed led to more. That night
was the first time I’d made love. It was more
beautiful than I’d dreamed. Though she was experienced,
I was more daring, creative. She told me it
was like nothing she’d experienced before.
She wouldn’t stay the night. Although her relationship
was over, her partner would be suspicious, upset,
even violent if she didn’t come home.
She got a taxi, I lay awake.
Next day I had to go see my aunt Judith who
lived out of town, about forty miles away. Before
I left ‘she’ rang me. We were both exhilarated
by what we’d experienced together. Despite eating
and cleaning my teeth I could still taste her
body on my lips, could still smell her perfume
on my body.
I didn’t dare say anything to my old aunt who
wanted to know why I wasn’t married with kids
yet. It was just about impossible to hide my
elation, but either I managed it, or maybe she
was just too wrapped up in herself to notice.
At the beginning we were swept along by emotion
and by desire. Life was a roller coaster ride
of meetings outside of the office, of passionate
love-making in my bed. But it gradually became
apparent that though the relationship with her
ex-partner was in shreds, both were still emotionally
enmeshed, neither could bear to let the other
move on. My lover could not cope with her ex-partner
having a boyfriend, I was a big secret kept
from the partner. I was having an affair not
in a relationship.
I became as much friend and confidant as lover.
In time as her unhappy domestic situation made
our love making more and more strained, I became
friend rather than lover. She wouldn’t leave
the situation, her home, to live with me. She
was determined that if someone had to move out
it would be her ex-partner.
One day we met in a bar after work, the one
we usually met in. She said it had to end, we
could be friends, but no more than that. I agreed,
because I cared more about her than about myself.
I agreed because the affair was hurting us both.
But I hoped that in time she’d want to start
over again. We left the bar that evening and
went our separate ways, her to her house of
pain, me to my lonely apartment. I feel a part
of me never completed that journey home.
In time, she got her house and her freedom.
Her partner moved out around a year ago. But
she hasn’t shown any desire to re-start our
relationship. She knows how I feel about her.
She says she feels guilty about what happened
between us, and how she treated me, that she
should have ended her relationship with Stephanie
before she started something with me. And that
after the bad relationship with Stephanie she’s
not ready to trust someone else.
I know I’ll leave work before her today. I’ll
go back to my apartment, and when I close that
door behind me I’ll cry.
Tonight though I long for her I’ll tell myself
to get over it. In the morning I’ll wake up
and find I’m still in love with her.
Tomorrow I’ll get to work before her, and I’ll
sit and wait. My day begins when she walks in…
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