Chance encounter

She loved him; there was no doubt.

So when they took their places around the cheap circular pine table, one soya, one full-fat latte steaming from the tray, she was shocked by the way she kept looking at him, just over her husband's shoulder.

Her husband was talking about the new bathroom while being in the third minute of stirring the brown sugar into his thick lactose fuelled drink, reiterating the need to make a final decision on the double-ended bath and pondering if the spare floor tiles were in the loft still.

The man behind him, frequently lifting his eyes over a tatty copy of Wilde's 'Dorian Gray', had either not had an umbrella or had gelled his hair because meticulous backward combed streaks adorned his mousy short hair. Perfectly balanced sunglasses sat neatly on top and it was obvious to her from this clue that it was rainwater that had been brushed through so finely and not gel.

Every time her husband looked up from the dissolving process being carried out before him, her peripheral vision snapped her back and away from the groomed gentleman, as if a jolt of electric guilt had permeated her elbows resting on the table.

She nodded and punctuated the pauses with timely ‘mmm’ and ‘yeah, I knows’ of agreement, careful not to give anything away in her tone, desperate not to have her dilating pupils read as they rapidly refocused on her husband.

She wasn’t sure if it was the gluten and dairy free diet she had been on, or the fact that her period was late, that was making her feel so attractive. While he continued in the muffled background, for the first time she found herself making the connection between her food intolerances and her late menstrual cycle. Being in their third year of trying and both approaching their forties, she suddenly felt her mood drop through the proverbial bathroom floor tiles at this unexpected piecing together of recent events in her life.

‘Dorian Gray man’, as she’d now named him, raised his glass, paused to turn a page with only one hand, and eyed her up and down, lifting his glass to her with a warm smile as he did so, this time making the whole length of her spine tingle with excitement, the sensation swelling waves to every corner of her being like an emerging tsunami.

It was then that she felt herself bobbing up and down in the currents of her wild and distant imagination, picturing his world like she had just read the book and sat through the movie: ‘Young spontaneous wayward man finds deep and meaningful life in side street coffee shops drinking soya lattes, flirting his way to love and romance and a memorable perfect ending.’

A sprinkle of reality wriggled free from her mind as she envisaged his own portrait warping menacingly above his own immaculate bedroom, locked secretly in an attic of his grand Victorian terraced house.

Her husband had finally finished talking about the home improvements. But unusually for him he looked downcast, as if the coffee was laced with a mild truth drug, because he was never one to show his emotions, especially not out in public. She questioned how he appeared and he defended with aplomb, batting away the attack with a firm monosyllabic reply. Almost immediately his expression was smoothed over like the road workers had just been in with their steamrollers to level his facial surfaces once more.

The atmosphere changed when he suddenly pushed his hands down on the table, causing the drinks to spill slightly, dragged back his chair and stood up mentioning he still hadn’t got a paper nor been to the toilet yet.

At that moment her body became rigid with fear at the very thought of the abrupt overexposure. Who was she going to hide behind now, she anxiously thought? Their eyes meeting would take this to a completely different level entirely, this time with the potential for words, a conversation, something to make it…real.

What would she say? What would he say? She squirmed like a child in her chair, twisting from side to side like it was her first day in the class at school and she’d just been asked a question.

Yes! Of course, she thought, I’ll find my phone; it’s in my bag. She fumbled inside it with both hands like she was doing a length’s breaststroke in a pool, reaching out in front of her for something to soothe away the embarrassment she had caused by looking at this man, in the manner she had done, for as long as she had done. But it wasn’t there. She remembered she’d left it still charging on the kitchen work surface, that old thing was like a dinosaur, taking an eternity to charge up.

So, here she was, alone, without a distraction, with a handsome intellectual mystery man just five feet away, who was now aware of her interest.

Up until that point her eyes had been firmly down, helping her to obsessively group equal amounts of the grains of sugar her husband had failed to dissolve some minutes before. Although, in her peripheral blurry haze, she was carefully watching him turn and sip, turn and sip, and then occasionally look up. She deliberated whether to do the same next time she caught him in the act, a multitude of scenarios running the gauntlet through her brain.  

In silence, there, she fought battles with slings and arrows against the heaving winds of her indecision. Nobody would ever know the blood that was spilled in that messy minute.

In that area of no-man’s land, between the dichotomies of her splintered self, her pulse thudded and her armpits dripped, as the war ensued with passion and fervour.

Then, book down, coffee lifting with his eyes straight out in front towards hers, she felt her mind’s gears shift, cranking and pulling her heavy, reluctant head towards her man as if being pulled by a sleepy puppeteer.

“Didn’t have the Guardian, can you believe it? It’s only just gone twelve and already sold out.”

Like a flash, he’d retaken his seat opposite, looking a bit huffy and puffy.

“You okay, you look red and hot?” He questioned, reaching out to feel her brow.

The coolness of the back of his hand was wonderful, drawing out all the tension, drama and hullaballoo from her weary looking features. Her shoulders dropped and she breathed properly again, this time deeply from her abdomen rather than shallowly from her chest. She looked at her husband of three years for what seemed like the first time that day, his concern for her clearly palpable above the half drunk, froth lined coffee cups before her.

She had danced with the devil. She leant out to hold her husband, Nick’s, hand, his cooling tender hand. When she’d added her other one on top into a pile of three, she gasped inside again at where she had travelled in the last ten minutes, unsure if she could ever recover from her guilt. She felt repulsed by her urges and desires, wanted to excuse herself by blaming it on her hormones. Maybe she was pregnant, she thought. Yeah, that was it, a jumbled cocktail of crazy hormones.

This man. Her sweetheart. How could she?

As they got up, tucked in their chairs and put on their coats, she still felt the coolness of his touch on her forehead, and with it came relief, relief for his return, saving her from her embarrassment, her clumsy stumble into a childish fantasy.

In front, her husband grabbed the heavy door for her and pulled. In doing so she caught site of a dark and distorted reflection of ‘Dorian Gray man’ in the dirty framed sunlit glass. His book was half down, his head up; the smile more of a smirk, the eyes all lost and searching.