More than you were

His lips meet mine with passionate disinterest, the kind of affection that is more habit than intent.  It’s a brief good-morning effort that seems to proclaim, “See, I’m still here.”

“Mmmm—” I moan, then, “Morning.”  I mumble behind lazy eyes not yet interested in facing the day, “Did you sleep well?”

“God, yes.”  There is that contagious smile again.  It always brightens his face and beautifully smoothes over everything in its path.  With our lips still close, he kisses me again, slower this time and with more interest, a heartfelt embrace that is more fire than form.

He pulls away only slightly.  “I wish we’d done this a long time ago.”

I absently reach up and brush the hair out of his eyes.  “Me, too.  You know you’ve always been welcome.”

“Yea, I know…”  His eyes briefly wander as a slight blush comes over him.  I’d been asking him to spend the night for a while.  I was never clear why he hadn’t before now.  It must be his work, or so I tell myself.  Even as a young doctor his hours seem excessive and abusive, so I certainly understand why he might have waited.  He continues, “You know how dumb I can be sometimes.”

This time the smirk, that sly, devilish, be-my-sex-slave smirk, the one that melts me anew each time I see it.  What a stunningly sexy man he is, and I stare at him intently as if trying to soak up his essence.

“But it’s a sexy dumb.”  And with that, I pull his head down to me and kiss him, wrapping my arms around his torso and pulling him to me.  He returns the favor.

We embrace for a minute or two before my own personal heaven is interrupted rudely: he jerks his head up and glances toward the clock.  “Oh shit!  What time is it?”

“Uh, I’m not sure…”  I, too, turn toward the clock, but he is already jostling in what seems a really clumsy attempt to get turned around in the bed.  Ah, there’s the clock.  It’s 6:40 in the morning.  Well, I certainly hope it’s morning, but I lost track of quite a bit of time since I picked him up from the hospital last night.

He tosses the covers back and rotates swiftly into a seated position, grabs his cell phone, then says to me over his shoulder, “I need to make a quick call.  It’ll just take a minute.”

“No problem.”  I am already too familiar with this.  It suddenly comes back to me why he’d taken so long to spend the night.  No longer under the spell of his smile, his gaze, his very presence, my mind seems to be working normally once again.

I know he doesn’t care if I hear the conversation.  I also know he assumes I’ll stay quiet.  I will.

“Hey, Baby…” he begins, although not being able to hear the other side of the conversation always makes me wonder if people are really speaking to someone or just putting on airs.  I listen anyway, and daydream.

“…and it’s been a long night.”

“Yea, I think I’ll be out of here soon.  Maybe in a couple of hours.”

“No, I’ll grab something for breakfast so you don’t have to wait.”

“I love you too, Honey.  See you soon.”

“G’bye.”

He hangs up the phone and places it back on the nightstand.  As he turns toward me, he says, “Sorry ’bout that.  I know that must bother you.”

He leans down and kisses me again.  As his hand moves toward my face to stroke my cheek, the glint of sunlight on his wedding ring catches my eye.

These many years later, I remember easily how often that same conversation played out between us.  Sure, the circumstances were different from time to time, but the context never changed.  The gift of hindsight, of course, gives me the answer now that I could never reach back then.  So…

I really wish I’d said this to you then, but I never told you and you never knew.

I didn’t stay quiet because I thought she was a threat to me, to what we shared, or even to you.  I didn’t even stay quiet because I was a threat to her or your marriage.  I stayed quiet because my fear was of you.

I just don’t think your wife and I were enemies.  In fact, you could say we were allies of sorts.  So many times I would listen to your side of the phone call and wonder, “If he can do that to her…  Well, what then of me?”

My first impression is that only after it was over, only after the emotions washed away in time, only now do I see my feelings were and are with her instead of you.  I think I saw her loving you more and more and suspect it was because she knew.  She was trying to stop what was happening and save what was left.

She even sticks in my mind now more than you do.  It’s odd, I know.  I still wonder precisely why that is.

Maybe it’s really simple.  Maybe her devotion and faithfulness were more memorable than you were.

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