And So It Continues

The next day he sent me a text message, telling me the exact time he would call, so that I could prepare myself. The fifteen minutes leading up to 6pm were some of the longest in my life; I'll never forget the sick feeling in my stomach.
When my phone rang I gripped the receiver in terror, half wanting to throw it across the room in an attempt to make the whole situation go away, and half wanting to hear his voice in my ear, secretly hoping he would tell me I'd imagined this whole thing, and that everything was still okay.
In actuality I let it ring 3 times, pressed the talk button, and squeezed my eyes shut before I squeaked out a pathetic hello.

Kate? Hi you. How are you?
I'm okay.
Are you sure? Oh my god, I am so sorry for all this, I've been going crazy not being able to get hold of you...did you have your phone off?
Yeah. I just couldn't deal with this.
I'm so sorry! I never, ever wanted it to come to this, you know that right?!?
I need you to tell me what happened.
Okay, okay, well...
No wait! I don't think I can handle hearing it!
I know Katiecat, I know...are you sure you don't want to know?
(me, thinking for a long moment)
Okay, tell me quickly.

And then he proceeded to tell me about her walking upstairs one night after he was in bed, and her just flat out saying she was leaving him. She had explained how she found out, and since there was no denying it, he decided to confess instead.
After she listened to him spill his guts about most of it, she said she was leaving anyways. He told her that she needed to stay, that they needed to work it out for their child.
He said she wanted to know how long it had been going on, and all the places we had sex (he omitted several from the list), how we had managed to be so cool and collected when we had all run into each other in the past, and the worst part - she wanted to know if he loved me. He told her no. He said it had been just about the sex.

It was about then that the tears started rolling down my face, but I kept silent, letting him talk. He said that he told her he didn't love me, because she said if he had been in love with me it would have been too much for her to take.

Then he said to me "Kate, I just couldn't tell her the truth, I have already hurt her so much. But that email...you know I would never say those things to you...(this is where he started crying), you know that. But she was standing there when I wrote it, and I was trying to keep calm, like it didn't hurt me to write to you that way. Oh god Kate, I love you so much, I know you'll never forgive me for this, but you have to know the way I feel, you know I wish you were mine."

And then he was gulping, and telling me how sorry he was, and how much he loved me. And he said that she was monitoring everything he did - checking his cell phone records, the calls coming in at home, every email account, calling him every 5 minutes to find out where he was. Apparently the only way she had agreed that they could work it out was if I was completely cut from his life (which obviously is what I expected), and never tried to contact him.

As a side note here, because I asked him about it, she felt that him having this affair was far worse than anything she had ever done, because we had actually had sex. Someone, please, please explain to me how her carrying on an affair for months that included everything but the particular act of intercourse, was any better. And she had cheated with more than one person! Fuck.

Sorry, bit of a tangent there.

Anyways, after that initial phone call he would text me or ask me to call him every day that he could get out for 5 minutes. We would email each other little updates of our lives, trying to sound upbeat, but petering off at the end of each message with "I miss you - I hate not seeing you."

Those kinds of messages and quick phone calls went on like that for about a month. It was almost like we were just getting to know each other again - feeling each other out to see where things were going to go. What do you do when neither one of you actually wants out of the affair? Do you let it go because of other circumstances, or do you keep it going - seeing each other less, thus torturing yourselves more?

But then one day I had my answer. It just happened to work out that I was heading somewhere that happened to be in his neighbourhood. He somehow managed to sneak into his bathroom to text me to find out exactly when I would be near his house, then he told me to stop on a certain side street and wait.

A few minutes after I stopped he actually came running down the road, after telling his wife he was going to get the mail. When I saw him coming towards me I almost collapsed on the road beside my car. My knees were weak, and it was all I could do not to run and throw myself at him. Instead though, I stayed leaning against my car, one leg bent with my foot pushed up behind me, my arms crossed and sunglasses on, trying not to show how emotional I was. But that was all over when he was about 20 feet away and I saw the smile break across his face...he actually yelled "Kate!!!!" and ran over and scooped me up and swung me around on that street.

"Oh fuck! You look so beautiful - I have missed your beautiful face so much." Then he put me down and stood back and stared at me. I stumbled back towards my car and said "Whoa, hi!"

I took my sunglasses off and looked up at him smiling down at me, and I knew. Seeing each other was the answer that we had both been pussyfooting around since we had been found out - this affair was going to continue. And 5 minutes later, when he told me he had to get back home before she started wondering, he bent down and wrapped his arms around me, buried his face in my neck, pressed his lips up against me and said "I love you Kate."

And though I knew at that moment that it was never going to be as easy as it had seemed before, he still wanted me like I wanted him, and if 5 minute meetings every week were all we were going to get for now, it was worth it.