* * *
When I woke the next day, I did feel guilty about what I’d done. My hangover, mixed with my guilt, made me doubly nauseous. I decided to give it a day or two, to let my head clear before deciding what, if anything, I should say or do.
But then I got a call from Cheryl the following day at work.
“David, I want to talk to you. Can I see you?”
The emotions of that night came rushing back to me. Her voice in my ear summoned memories of her smell, her touch. I tried to feel guilty; I truly wanted to, but the carnal sensations coursing through my body left little room for guilt.
“I could leave work early,” I said. “Say four-thirty? I could meet you somewhere.”
“Can I come to your office?”
“Where are you?”
“I’m downtown. Just tell me where it is; I could be there in five minutes.”
“101 Federal Street, nineteenth floor. Give me fifteen.”
She walked into my office just over ten minutes later wearing a dark skirt and white blouse. She looked unassuming—her business attire flattened her better features—but good. Seeing her in the flesh, my heartbeat quickened.
After we greeted each other, she said, “I hope I’m not bothering you. Were you busy?” She looked briefly into my eyes, then coyly to the ground.
I felt like a schoolboy in the midst of his first crush. It was invigorating.
“Busy? That’s what I hire other people for. I’ll say you’re a potential client and no one will be the wiser.”
She smiled warmly, then became more serious. “The other night… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come on to you.”
“I’m as responsible as you are. It was my decision, too.”
“I know, but I should never have followed you downstairs. But I couldn’t help it. I’d thought about you over the years, and, I don’t know, I just couldn’t help it.”
I nodded my head. “I’ve thought about you, too.”
We gazed at each other for a moment in silence. This silence wasn’t at all uncomfortable. I calmly walked to the door, closed it, and locked it. I returned to Cheryl and laid my hands on her shoulders. I kissed her gently at first, feeling the soft ridgeline of her lips, the moist hollow of her mouth. We kissed passionately as I unbuttoned her shirt, my shirt, grabbed her breast through her bra, then under it, her bare skin in my grasp filling me with energy, with life. Soon she was sitting on my desk, her skirt up, my pants down, and I was inside her, the workings of the office outside my door a world away.
“Is this how you pitch all your clients?” she said afterwards while buttoning her blouse.
“First time, actually. How do you think it went? From a marketing standpoint?”
“You definitely sold me.”
She appeared more serious, and I held her in my arms.
“Should we really do this?” she said.
“Probably not.” I bent my head and kissed her. “But I don’t know if that will stop us.”
We met a half dozen times over the next month, usually at a hotel during lunch or immediately after work, as long as we could explain the absences to our spouses. At first I was consumed by the visceral thrill. I’d been married for 16 years. Things weren’t bad at home, but they’d sort of leveled off. Seeing Cheryl—not only for sex, but to learn about someone new in an intimate way—lifted the drudgery that had accumulated in my routine over the years. I suddenly felt like I was gliding around on roller skates. I didn’t stop to consider what the long-term result would be, how it would affect us emotionally, or how it would end.
The initial thrill began to subside after the first month, but it didn’t disappear completely. Instead, it evolved into something more stable, more meaningful. We were no longer meeting for just sex. We would get together for drinks or dinner or walks in the park. We took afternoons off from work for trips to museums or boat rides on the harbor. Tickets to a game with coworkers was really time spent with her. We did everything we could to see each other. The hooks that had initially lured me in had dug deeper and taken root.
* * *
Phil looked from the ballgame to me, then back to the ballgame.
I drank my beer and nodded my head. “Yeah, I guess it had gotten pretty serious.”
He looked at me again.
“I mean, at first it was…I won’t lie to you…it was exciting, having an affair, making love in secret, a new woman after all those years. But then, I think I might have fallen in love.”