We met at Starbucks.
We were only in line for a few minutes when I turned to him and said, “Can I be honest? My heart is pounding in my chest.”
He smiled, but only with his eyes, and said, “Mine too.”

We actually met much earlier, a few weeks ago. At holiday party that Mark and I were throwing at our apartment. Which I called a Christmas party. Which I remember saying to him when I saw him for the first time, as he walked into the apartment: “Merry Christmas!”

“Happy holidays!” he retorted, evidently eager to play along with my outlandish political incorrectness.

“I like saying Merry Christmas.” As if I needed to explain my greeting.

“Good for you,” he said, with a wink. And that was the first hint I had at his personality. That no only was he willing to go along with a whim of mine, but maybe me altogether. Immediately I started molding an image of him, in my head. Things were gelling, gaining texture and speed…

…When a woman came up behind him and said “Hello.”
The man then said, “I don’t think we met,” he extending his hand. “I’m  Brian and this is  Haley.”

Despite my deflating mind, body and soul, I manage to shake their hands, and invite them in. I managed somehow to ask for their coats. When I got back from the bedroom depositing them, there married status was so flagrant like a fast-growing flowers, petals aflame. They were sitting close together, talking to my husband, Mark.

And yet, somehow after that rocky start, we made it to Starbucks:

As we sat down with our coffees. He said, “Well.”
And I said, “Yes?”

When it was clear he wasn’t going to continue my prompt, I jumped in with, “I guess neither one of us done this sort of thing before?”

He kinda shrugged.

“Oh,” I said.

“One other time,” he said. “But it was with woman.”

“So are you gay or bisexual or…”

“Bisexual. You?”

“Gay. Pretty much.”

“Pretty much,” he repeats and takes a sip of his coffee.

*************************

I am wrong about Haley, and have suspected all this time that I was. She is a good woman. She doesn’t deserve to have a cheating husband. Neither does my husband deserve a cheating one. And Brian and I haven’t done anything yet. But we want to.

***********

The sound of a coffee brewing machine whistled and farted up through the air. I thought of the word fetid, for some reason. It wasn’t word that even remotely described what was going on between us. Brian smelled of aftershave. And I of a lime cologne I hadn’t worn in decades but found at the last minute at the bottom of a dresser drawer, deciding to wear it to our first encounter. Fetid does not refer to our personal smells but the situation we find ourselves in. The situation stinks. We are both on the verge of being unfaithful to our spouses. We need a miracle. A good-smelling one.

We need tennis. Or some otherwise outside activity. Or better still we need to leave each other alone.