glance

There are so many years between them that I can tell she speaks in just a glance. I recognize her angry face, because I've felt it come on mine so many times for the love of my lifetime. She has nothing to worry about, despite how it looks between her husband and me, he loves her, he loves her, he loves her undyingly.

So I steal the moments I can, without guilt, with pleasure, delicious giggles waiting at my throat, delighted smiles, furtive glances in his direction, I give him my whole undiluted self, and he gives me himself in return, even in her presence, with her leering eyes projecting such admonishment, because it is too much fun to rile me up and too much fun to stop.

She punishes me with pasta, my least liked food and it twists my stomach into knots and cramps and she knows it.

and I wonder why she has him so completely, and what it might have been like if he and I had happened across each other in another life, in another way, before they cemented themselves in children, but I know that there are just not enough things that line up, that even though we enjoy each other's company to the point of lack of oxygen from sharing the same hiccupy giggle, that is not enough to build with.

I linger over thoughts about his lack of a brother, just one would be enough for me, or the bad timing, which is really a lot of years to explain away, and finally, how she avoids my curses, or perhaps bus drivers are driving better these last few years.

I sense her feelings as if she were shouting them at me: she is left out of the fun, she never meant to be a boring house mum, she was supposed to be the "cool" one, what the hell is happening?!

Try as she might, I can never muster up the sympathy for her litany of complaints or the enthusiasm for her jilted attempts at humor. It is simply too late and I am completely smitten by her husband.

My attempts at downgrading this enchantment continuously fail. All is well until I see him again and all my mental blockades come away; like a skilled hurdle runner, he expertly handles me and it is over before I am aware that the race has begun.

I have spent some months resisting him with some success, when I realized his playful banter was present with all the other women in his life, but there was no enjoyment between us. Also, I spent those months hating that he had chosen a woman who took no more pleasure in what he so obviously enjoyed, and I wished the both of them a happy life in hell. And, as he escorted me home so many many times, it only served as a painful reminder of just how awful the other important relationships in my life were.

He wins me with compliments, both deserved and flattering, his attention, which is a combination of precise observation and referential jokes (my favorite type of humor), and his playful demeanor.

He was supposed to be gone today, and I felt the surprise and joy in myself rise when I saw his smile and I knew he was smiling for me. It felt like an awkward moment in a Jane Austen novel, his wife staring at me, me staring at him, him staring at me. I tried to suppress my glee, but I don't feel bad any longer for enjoying his company.

He is hers and she is his. And I know I am just a peripheral part of their lives.