Two People – Part 2

They walked to her house after her tentative invitation back at the duck pond. They spoke of their lives in roundabout ways, tacitly avoiding anything even resembled real life. They walked and felt young again. Like the first time they met that other one. With that wonderful, glowing feeling in their belly, growing steadily, to reach its full maturity in her bedroom.

They reached her two-storey mini-mansion, with a modern style that suggested it was a recent development. Nerves and anticipation made it hard to think (or breathe).

“Come on, let’s not waste time. We don’t have much of it.”

She led him and Bailey through the pale double doors, the ceiling suddenly disappearing into the void above their heads with the winding staircase twisting behind an ornate chandelier. He couldn’t figure out if his breathlessness was due to the woman beside him or the unexpected beauty of her place. The place she shared with her husband. He tried blocking this thought from his mind but the house felt cloyingly close; it felt alive with the shared history of a family. His own moral boundaries began to shift and tear away from his consciousness like a bandage torn away from tender burned flesh.

Desire remained steadfast, strong and impervious to any good sense.

She led him up this staircase, the soft luminescent sconces creating a stairway to heaven of sorts. She felt that adolescent heady rush of being bad. There was something about the shut-in marital life that had brought her to this terrible cross roads. On the verge of something irreversible, something that used to only exist within the safe confines of her mind’s eye. Those innumerable fantasies she enjoyed by herself, mostly in the bathtub were now coming true…well, one of them at least.

“Here we are. We can’t back out now.” She looked at him intently, those smoky eyes transmitting a silent challenge. All he could do was nod his head in tacit understanding. Nothing needed to be said.

He stepped into her bedroom and was immediately confronted with a more overpowering version of her scent. A scent he only picked up as tiny sparks to the nervous system on the walk from the duck pond. Of course he was tentative and so was she. As time slowed, their breathing quickened. Their movements languid, floating through a form of space of their own making. The layers of social inhibition slowly being stripped away as the primal instinct takes over. Life begins to occur in flashes. A river of spasmodic electric shocks. The fumbling becomes smoother, more in tune. The walls of consciousness are broken down. As one in darkness, enveloped by the light of their desire.

They lay side-by-side in meditative contemplation.

“You want something to eat? To drink?”

“Sure. Coke?”

“Yup. Coming right up,” she breathed as she leaned over to kiss his dry lips.

Their voices were raspy and cracked. Their lips dry yet their skin wet and soft to the touch. He couldn’t remember ever feeling a softer surface his entire life as the small of her back where his hand rested. He was rough and hairy, but manly. Maybe that’s what she missed about the trysts from her past. That unbridled masculinity of youth. Sure, they were numbskulls but the testosterone was completely overwhelming and addictive. She carefully leaned out of the bed, and he watched her go.

He considered briefly the possibility that they may be caught. Him sitting up in her husband’s bed with a Coke in his hand and her resting her head on his chest, slowly drifting off to sleep. It was only a fleeting thought because in his current state of bliss, nothing bad could happen. EVER.

She padded softly to the kitchen. The cool marble flooring sending pricks of ice through the soles of her feet. This felt good contrasted with the warm closeness of the bedroom. The bedroom she shared with her husband. The bedroom that will never be the same again. She new that every time she walked into that room she would smell HIM. She would see HIM, resting casually on the bed. All her sense would instantly remind her of this day, this auspicious afternoon. Some inconsequential afternoon in some inconsequential week in some inconsequential month in the year 2015. She woke up this morning not thinking that this would ever happen. But then no one really does. That’s what makes life worth living. You never know when you have the opportunity to ruin your life and marriage because of some pithy sexual desires.

Ding Dong.

The doorbell sent a high-pitched alarum throughout the house and a stab of shock through its inhabitants. It couldn’t be anyone living in this mini suburban palace, but it could be one of her neighbours; those nosy vultures always probing where they have no business. She bolted back to the bedroom leaving the 2 litre bottle of Coke to drip on the marble counter top. Instead of her silk robe she threw on some sweat pants and a t-shirt then made her way downstairs.

He just sat there, bolt upright in the bed afraid to even twitch, breath or think. His heart seemed to be jumping around twice as fast as before, beads of moisture popping out on his shiny forehead and his mouth turned to sand. He couldn’t run, jump out the window or pretend to be the plumber. That stuff only happened in ridiculous romantic comedies.

She slowly composed herself, straightened her unkempt hair and walked quickly down the winding staircase to the ground floor. Scenarios intruded upon her mind from the inconsequential to the disastrous. The walk to the door seemed to occur in slow motion; she saw her hand reach up to the peephole and move aside the cover. A young man. Seemed to be wearing some sort of uniform. A package. Phew. Just a courier. Relief overtook her. A deep breath found its way into her lungs as she unlocked the door.

“Sign here ma’am.”