This is a final goodbye to a man I should have put behind me a long time ago.
I am a cheater. I have cheated on my husband. I have cheated on the men who came before him. Like clockwork every year I cheat because like clockwork every year he comes to me.
My old lover and my first lover. The man I can never have and the man who consumes me. The man who I give myself to every year when he comes to town, even though he’s not the one who put a ring on my finger.
This has to be the last year. I made a promise to my husband that means I have to say goodbye to the man who means so much to me. Each year when my lover comes into town I die another little death. So this has to be the last time.
But the moment his hands are on my bare skin I remember why I do this. He touches me and wakes old fires. He makes me someone else when I’m with him and rebirths me, awakens me like a phoenix renewed.
So I’ll have one last night with him and I’ll make it a night to remember. I’ll take everything I can, memorizing each moment, and when I walk out the door it will be with the feel of him written deep into my body.
Let this be one last perfect night. Let us make it count.
Excerpt
“We need to talk first,” I say to him, “Please.”
He doesn’t say a word to me. He understands the tone in my voice brooks no disagreement. That I am deadly serious and that I have something I need to tell him and he helps me, leads me without touching to a chair in the corner of his suite while he sits perched on the edge of the bed and waits.
I take my time and I catch my breath and I stop myself from crying. I calm the part of me that is nearly in hysterics and silence the voice in me that is protesting and saying that I can put it off, that it can wait until the morning. But it can’t wait any longer.
I open my mouth. No words come. I open again and try once more but there is nothing and then he reaches for me and takes my hands in his and he squeezes them reassuringly and I look into his eyes and I fall again.
It isn’t love with my lover. It isn’t about love. I don’t know what it is, but it isn’t love.
Is there something more than that possible? Is there some connection deeper than that four-letter affection? Because it seems so hollow and so empty and so simple to call it love, as if it’s something you’d label in a note and pass in class.
It’s not love. It’s more than that.
But it has to end.
“This is our last night. This is the last time we can do this.”
It’s like he knows that it’s coming and he doesn’t react poorly. He nods, as if he’s been expecting it. Like he knows and he understands and almost as if he was about to say the same thing.
His hands move automatically and thumb and forefinger close over the empty gap on my ring finger. They rub the space as if to ask whether it’s him, whether my husband has found out and I laugh and shake and nod my head at the same time. Because it is about my husband and it isn’t. Because it would always end with him.
My lover doesn’t put up a fight. He squeezes once more and the simple act brings my eyes back up to look at him. When he speaks there is an expectancy and a hope to his voice.
“We have tonight though, right?”
He smiles, almost a little like he’s cracking a joke but it’s a morbid one. We both know that we’ll make the most of it, but tonight is the only night we’ll have anymore. We both know that we’ll mourn after this night.
“Yes,” I tell him, “We have tonight.”
He rises above me, pulling me up to my feet, “Good, then let’s make it a night to remember.”
I smile and I look him in the eye. I lean into him and I let him make good on that promise to me.