I flung open the door wearing my sexiest silk robe when the doctor arrived. My mind was swirling with a mix of emotions. I was relieved to see him but also had a pit in my stomach. He put the bouquet of roses he brought on my entry table, grabbed my waist and pulled me in tightly for a kiss. For the first time, I was very nervous to be with him. What the hell was I doing?
I was grateful that he had made the journey to my apartment straight from JFK. So I decided to keep my mouth shut and show him just how happy I was that he had come to pay me a visit.
It didn’t fly. As soon as he kissed me, he pulled back and asked what was wrong. I smiled and insisted everything was fine, but it was as if he could read my mind.
I led him into my bedroom where I had lit candles. He sat me down at the end of the bed and asked me again.
“Bianca, what is wrong? You’re different tonight.”
How did he know?
I sighed and began to cry. I was suddenly regretting everything. Why had I let things get this far with a married man? It had only been a week, I could end things now. But I felt paralyzed for some reason. I looked up at him. I wanted the entire situation to just disappear. I wished I had never met him. But at the same time I didn’t want to lose him. It was an unexplainable tug of war inside me.
I told him about my fears of getting hurt. I confessed what Fillip had warned me about.
“Fine, then we can just end things, Bianca. No big deal.” His ability to cooly brush things off made me more conflicted.
“No, no. I want to see where things go. This is special what we have.” I replied. Who was I? I found myself fighting for a relationship that didn’t even exist a week before.
We spent the next hour together, mostly with me trying to get back to that space where I had justified the affair in my mind. It was all becoming a bit too much for me. But if I didn’t bury my feelings of doubt, I’d never get the chance of seeing where things went with him. I put on a happy face and we fooled around, but it was a bit awkward. We didn’t have sex. I just couldn’t connect fully to him that night.
He got dressed and as he slipped on his jacket and shoes, he encouraged me to think long and hard if this was what I wanted. He was so cavalier as he shrugged and suggested we could just end things right then and there. This wasn’t the Mark I knew. I was frozen. I gave him a lukewarm kiss goodbye and closed the door softly behind him.
I had some thinking to do.