A Dream I Didn't Have

She was a dream I didn't have. She was the one that was the perfect fit for me.

In my head. In my future path that I was not to take.

I was involved in my first wife, the way married men are involved in them... after she has fallen out of love with you, or you suspect that you have fallen out of love with her. Life continues unabated, and the details become routine, typical, predicted and comfortable.

She had the perfect ass, and a smile that curved in little commas at the corners of her mouth. She knew I was married soon after we met, and yet there was a liquid electricity between us.

She had a boyfriend as well, and I didn't ask about those details, because I didn't want to be the one to give her love advice, or be the shoulder in which she would cry onto. I didn't want to be sympathetic to her plight.

I wanted to fuck her. I thought about it in a way I had not thought about such things since I was single and less attached. She laughed at my jokes, and seemed so goddamned comfortable with me. There was no sexual tension or awkwardness, which made the idea of being naked with her so absolutely powerful and all consuming.

I think I could have lived with her forever.

Her ass was the kind of ass you would kill another man for, and throw it all away. In jeans, not too large, perfectly shaped at the crease that disappeared between her legs. Her tits weren't very big, but they were there, hanging lower than a 30-something woman might have expected to enjoy. I thought about enjoying them, her smiling down at me as I caressed them, in the sunlight, talking about music, or Tom Wolfe, or Christopher Nolan.

I imagined making coffee for her. Spilling it on her and licking it off. I imagined helping her shave her pussy. Her licking my cock. Shopping for jewelry and me trying it on for her. Getting sloppy drunk on home-made margaritas on Oscar night.

I found myself making every excuse and opportunity to be with her, always in social situations, at block parties for July 4th, at the school parade during Spring Break. We even went out with them and one other couple to a late-night club in San Francisco, and I tried to end up sitting next to her in the cramped booths, and getting as many drinks into her as possible.

What would she do when drunk? When I bumped into her in the hallway to the bathrooms?

All the harmless flirting came to nothing. While she was a breath of dreamy fresh air, a blast of cool sunlight from another planet every week or 2, my life rolled along daily and minute by minute, slowly distracting and demanding my time, my energy, and my responsibility.

She was the dream I had over and continuously. She was the open door that was never close enough to walk through. She was the one who smiled upon my heart and never gave me the opportunity to act on something that she awoke in me. I had the key in my hand, and I would have offered to open her heart,...

...and she knew it. I think she knew it. Her hand moved up to her collar more than once, and her fingers considered the touch, physically and emotionally.

A dream I never had and one that never quite died.