It's a generous thing, calling what Carina and I had a 'relationship'. It never was - it was something else, and I would have respected her that much more if only she'd been honest with me and what she wanted from me. But as is so often the case, it was something short, wild, and intense.
And things got intense right from the get-go : not very long after we had that first kiss, I was being invited to come over to her place. While she didn't really live next to me, she lived about twenty-five minutes away by train, so I quickly made my way to where she lived. We weren't alone - she has a small child, but he was fast asleep by the time I got there.
I would be lying if I didn't say a part of me did not expect us to have sex. But that wasn't the reason why I went. I liked Carina, and she brought me a sense of peace I had not experienced in years. And now that we were just the two of us together, I felt that even more. We lay naked, entwined in one another in her sofa, our bodies pressed close to one another. I liked that. It was good.
But there was no sex that night - and that was ok. I didn't need it, neither of us did, to feel how we were feeling. And what we were feeling was something that was no more than an illusion, brought about by disenchantment, loneliness, and yes, horniness. The shadow of 'love' loomed over us, like a heavy sword dangling over our heads, poised to strike at a moment's notice. But it was never - it could never be - love.
It's strange to look back on the time we had together - it was short, and we weren't together that often or those many times, really. Maybe at first, but certainly less as time went on.
In the beginning, though, it was pushed to the max - we spent new year's eve with our kids over at some friends of hers, we had started to have really good sex, and it all but looked like we had something good going between us. Didn't it?
And yet... and yet there was a feeling that something was wrong. Something was amiss there. Now, I knew going into this that she'd been in a relationship prior to meeting me. I never enquired much about it, to be fair, I'm fine either way about knowing or not knowing what went down before. Doesn't bother me none, it wasn't me, I never cared about whoever came before. But sometimes Carina would say weird stuff.
Red flags, you might call them, though I am far too naive to spot them. But she'd tell me how she still talks to the guy. How he's still around. She even told me once that she'd been in her place. Oh, she didn't tell me what they did, and though I thought it, I couldn't put the words together. How stupid can I be? Very, as you'll soon see.
No comments:
Post a Comment