Her name was Theresa M, but I called her Tish. I met her about 6 months before she was supposed to get married. We worked together and had always been cordial and polite to one another, but there was really nothing between us until one day after work my car wouldn't start and she was the only one left in the parking lot and she offered me a ride home, which was about a 30 minute ride.
During that 30 minutes the conversation was so easy and free that it startled both of us, and by the time we reached my apartment we were already slighly flirting with each other, though I am sure neither one of us would have admitted it.
Over the next several weeks we began spending more and more time together, finding excuses to be together both during and after work. Nothing physical happened during this time, just hours of conversations that neither one of us wanted to bring to an end.
Finally, one night after a few drinks too many we went beyond talking and just spent hours kissing, caressing, and exploring, without actually making love. She left at around four in the morning, and my insides just wouldn't keep still. I felt as if she had reached down inside of me and took every breath I had.
Time continued to pass and we would steal moments together whenever we could, never actually going over the "Sex" line, but coming closer and closer. These moments got to be all I lived for, but at the same time a melancholy started to drift into the moods and the conversations. The fact that she had an actual wedding date, with a guy who was fundamentally decent, was like a permanent shadow that started to loom larger over each encounter. I think that both of us were trying to convince ourselves that as long as we didn't make love, we were really just enjoying ourselves without any real consequences.
Finally, several weeks before she was to marry, she just came out and said that she was in a panic as to what she was doing. She loved the man she was supposed to marry, but she also was afraid of what it said about their relationship that she was so drawn to me. We would speak of this for a short period of time, and then hold and kiss each other for a while, and then talk again. This continued through the night, getting closer and closer to where each of us wanted to go. Finally, just when I was sure that I could hold off no longer, right on the verge of just ignoring everything and diving into her with every ounce of passion I had, a single tear worked it's way down her cheek.
It seemed like it took an eternity for that tear to go from her eye to her cheekbone, and in one of those rare, blazing moments of clarity that I have experienced in my lifetime, I reached out and gently wiped it away, kissed her cheek, laid back, and just pulled her down and held her against me for what seemed like hours, but was really only minutes. When I finally spoke I said the things I thought needed to be said, I told her that everything was going to be all right, that we just let things get a little too far out of hand, that we needed to put the past 6 months behind us, and focus on the things that attracted us to begin with, and use that as a foundation for the deepest friendship. She cried a while, snuggled with me, and then thanked me for not letting things get out of hand.
After a while, she got up, got dressed, and I walked her to her car. We held each other again, kissed, and I told her that we probably shouldn't see each other again until after the wedding, and she agreed. Before she left she told me that she loved me, and I believed her.
I never saw her again. She had quit work the previous week to prepare for the wedding and her new life. I received an invitation to the wedding, and heard through a 3rd party that she was asking about me, but I never made an attempt to get a hold of her again. Every word I spoke to her that night was a lie. I would have given anything to tell her to ditch the guy and spend every night and moment with me, that I would do anything and everything to keep her happy, but even then I knew that it wouldn't have been right for her.
I remember everything: her scent, the way she looked backlit in the doorway in a sheer dress, the curve of her breasts, the soft sounds she made, the way her back would arch when I touched the small of her back, and especially her eyes. They were the darkest brown and they kind of sparkled when she smiled, and they deepened and widened when she was sad, and I spent hours looking into them, saying the kind of things you can only believe when you don't know any better.
Her name was Theresa M, but I called her Tish, and not a week has gone by where I haven't thought of her, and hurt inside.
God I am an idiot.
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