Affairytale : A Memoir

by C. J. English

  The weathered picnic table of my childhood creaked as he shifted his weight, situating his guitar on one knee. I watched him from behind the flames. He was plain and gorgeous—gorgeously plain, in worn-out jeans and an unkempt tousle. His face was bronzed, his voice smooth, and his transparent eyes drew me in closer. I could almost smell his breath and feel the vibration of his words on my skin. He closed his eyes as he sang my request—a love song, of course. Every syllable sent me deeper into a lucid dream, a dream in which I imagined what a life with him might be like.

  I floated on the melody, exposing the curves of my neck, secretly inviting him in. When he opened his eyes, they met mine. He looked away, looked back, and then continued my request as if he were singing to my heart alone.

  Is he singing to me or just in my general direction?

  I analyzed further, examining his body language, where he looked, whom he looked at, and what it all might mean.

  Is it possible? Could he be feeling the way I’m feeling? Why does he keep looking at me? Is it a nervous tic or something?

  When the fire fizzled out and only the weekend warriors remained we would make our way down to the water and take a midnight ride in the new boat.

  Grant and Dylan bought that wakeboarding boat they’d talked about, and stored it right outside my bedroom window.

  That summer I found myself in a conundrum worse than any before. I was engaged, tied to Levi with a mooring rope, but I couldn’t stop thinking about someone else. All week, I would look forward to the weekend, hoping to get a glimpse of him—the man who just happened to be Dylan’s best friend, the man who I’d never seen with a girlfriend because he was so picky, the man who had been cheated on, the man I would never be able to have.

  So why not leave Levi? I asked myself dozens of times and the answer was always the same.

  I loved Levi. Levi loved me. Things weren’t great but they weren’t terrible. We had our dark moments, but everyone does. Why would I call off our engagement for a crush? For a man who is way out of my league? No, I would stay with Levi. This thing that I feel for another man is completely normal, I convinced myself, a biological desire for the opposite sex, an inborn chemical attraction that would eventually dissipate.

  It didn’t, and it seemed that nothing could uproot the seed that had been planted in my subconscious. I had a wanton desire for Grant that kept growing even under the most inhospitable conditions. For reasons I didn’t yet understand, I became inextricably bound to him.

  ***

  I will always take care

  of u always… sucks that

  I can’t completely be

  my loving, caring self

  around others.

  Chapter 4

  “HE STEPPED DOWN, TRYING NOT TO LOOK AT HER,

  AS IF SHE WERE THE SUN, YET HE SAW HER,

  LIKE THE SUN, EVEN WITHOUT LOOKING.”

  ―LEO TOLSTOY, ANNA KARENINA

  It was no surprise when Levi turned a shade of jealous green the night I walked away with Grant. Had Levi gone missing with an alluring, charming, multi-talented female—if they had wandered out of sight and couldn’t be reached—I would have dumped his ass. That’s what he should have done to me. Even if Grant had been just a friend, which technically that’s all he was—having a male friendship, especially one complicated by my secret emotional affair, was unacceptable and I knew it. I just couldn’t help myself.

  Several years had passed since that inauspicious wedding night and Dylan and Grant now shared the same fate. Dylan too was divorced. He’d since moved on to Lexi, a platinum blonde cosmetologist and model who was the sweetest girl I’d ever met, and who also made me want to hold her hand when she crossed the street.

  Every year in August a drunken horde of country music fans flocked to our otherwise peaceful lakeside town for a week of Country music, Jiffy Johns, and beer bongs. WE Fest was a rowdy adventure rain or shine with thirty thousand half-naked bodies wafting around their four-day-old stink.

  We had tickets. Grant had tickets too, VIP tickets, and he’d offered to share them with us. Dylan, Lexi, Levi, and I stood at our designated meeting spot by the French fry stand and waited for Grant.

  I dressed subtly sexy that night, wanting Grant to desire me. At the same time I clung to Levi’s arm, wanting Grant to know I was taken, untouchable. I peeked out from under a tattered cowboy hat and scanned the crowd looking for him. When he emerged, his stellar blue shirt illuminated his eyes. They were a color so completely opposite from my own blackish-brown eyes that it was hard not to stare.

  I was an instant cosmonaut.

  I knew he would look hot, but really?

  A pair of VIP passes hung from around his neck as he walked through the crowd with an air of confidence. I looked away uninterested, trying to hide my star-struck expression and curb the growing smile that threatened to give away my sinful attraction. If I let on even in the slightest amount that I found Grant to be funny, charming, or in any small way superior to Levi I would be forbidden to go to the cabin forevermore.

  Grant looked our way, but he looked past me, not making eye contact. He never made eye contact when Levi was around. He barely even looked in my direction. Although when we were alone his behavior was quite different. He was his normal polite, charming, engaging self.

  “Hi, everybody. I have two passes,” Grant said as he slipped one off and held it toward us. “I can take one of you back at a time, who wants to go first?”

  My heart arrested.

  ME! ME! ME!

  Inside I squirmed, jumping up and down with my hand raised high.

  But why could he only take one of us? Why couldn’t he just give up the two passes and let each couple go?

  My hopeful mind instantly made the leap: the reason only one of us could go at a time was because he wanted to be alone with me—right?

  I noticed a brood of girls walking by that were staring at Grant—their radar picking up that he was the only single person in our group. He ignored them, he didn’t even look in their direction, but I stared them down with an evil sneer only women understand. Mine or not, I was claiming him.

  Grant took Lexi first. They were gone for half an hour before they emerged from a crowd of bare torsos scribbled with Sharpies. Dylan and Levi had forfeit their turns, so I was up next. My mouth was dry and the muscles in my thighs twinged with anxiety.

  “Ready to go?” Grant asked.

  I waved and smiled at Levi as we walked away, “I’ll be right back!”

  Levi was inflamed, his face was red with anger. He despised that I was going, but he couldn’t tell me not to. I turned back toward the crowd, popped in an Altoid, circled my lips with peppermint lip balm and didn’t look back. It was a rare occurrence when I got to be alone with Grant for more than a quick minute and I wasn’t about to pass it up now. Grant was the type of person who when you were alone with him, made you feel like you were the only woman in the universe. He didn’t look at anyone else and gave me his full attention.

  “Thanks for sharing your tickets,” I said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  He flashed me a charming smile.

  “I’m glad you could come.”

  I nudged him playfully, “Me too.”

  I huddled close as we walked, my body naturally magnetized to him. I imagined what it would be like if I was his girl, if he was my guy. What it would feel like to have his masculine hands holding my face as he kissed me, or how it would feel to have the strength of his body hovering over mine as we made love in the dim candlelight.

  We stopped under a large white canopy filled with free food, drinks, and belligerent rich, old, white men sipping Crown on the rocks.

  Good, no one will know me here.

  We toasted, clinking our plastic cups.

  “To VIP,” he said then glanced over my shoulder at the walkway. Then glanced again a few minutes later I knew who he was looking for.

  “I’m sure he can’t get back here.” I said. I was s
everal drinks in and my threshold for inhabitations was decreasing rapidly. “Aren’t these tickets really hard to come by? And security seemed pretty tight at the gate.”

  My words seemed to make him fidget. He shifted from side to side, took a sip from his plastic cup then looked at me with a gorgeous smile.

  The mood changed between us. I’d called forth the elephant in the room and it acted like an ice breaker. From then on our conversation flowed without him glancing over my shoulder and without inhibitions.

  “I’d love to hear you sing sometime, Dylan told me all about your time in Georgia Summer.”

  “You have heard me sing, around the bonfire. That’s as much as I’m willing to do anymore. I’d rather listen, I love concerts. Especially in VIP, this is my first time.”

  “Really? Then I’m so glad it was with me,” he smirked.

  My heart raced. “I guess you can consider yourself lucky then,” I said with the utmost confidence.

  “I am lucky.”

  “Quit it,” I said, “unless you really mean it.”

  “I do mean it,” He said. “These are great seats and I’m lucky to get to share them with you. I’m surprised Levi let you go.”

  “What choice did he have? What would be his reason I couldn’t share second row seats for half a concert with a friend?”

  “He hates me,” Grant suggested.

  “I think you’re right about that. He does seem to hate you, doesn’t he?” We laughed and I nudged him with my shoulder. “Of course he hates you, you’re hot. All guys should hate you. Funny they don’t, it seems like exactly the opposite, except for Levi everyone loves you.”

  “No they don’t, quit it.” He smiled shyly.

  I was crunching on the last bit of ice from a watered down wine cooler when he grabbed my empty cup and tossed it into the trash.

  “Follow me,” he said, then set his hand on my bare lower back prompting me to move forward. I happily did what he asked. I had a feeling he was a man who got whatever he asked for.

  We shimmied in between rows of pickup trucks and music trailers, making our way deep behind the stage. There were no lights and no people, only extra-large tour busses with their engines running.

  I shivered from the midnight breeze.

  “Are you cold?”

  If I was, would you put your arms around me?

  “I’m fine,” I said smoothing the goose bumps on my arms, wishing I could have said, yes please hold me and keep me warm. Instead I huddled close enough to feel his warmth and be tortured by his scent. A masculine scent, probably just his deodorant but it didn’t matter, I wanted to bury my face in his chest and breathe him in all night long.

  A stalky figure in a cowboy hat stepped out of a bus and was instantly surrounded by an entourage of bodyguards.

  “Come here, quick,” Grant said as he pulled me in front of him, his body pressed close behind mine. “I think that’s Kenny Chesney,” he pointed over my shoulder, then rested his arm down on it.

  I didn’t care about Kenny Chesney. I cared about the electricity that pulsed between our bodies.

  Holy shit, what is this? Does he feel it too?

  Long after Kenny disappeared, our bodies still lingered close as we stared into the empty darkness. The silence was deafening. I quivered with anticipation, I wanted him to turn me around and kiss me, it felt natural—right even. I turned to face him, brushing against his chest so closely that my nose swept across his divine smelling shirt. Time seemed to slow and I fantasized that he would wrap me up in his arms and kiss me like I needed to be kissed. I was giving him a chance, making a moment. I paused for a flash of a second waiting for it. But instead of being enveloped and devoured by passion my whole body seized in terror and my heart pounded like thunder in my chest when a voice yelled:

  “You can’t be back there!”

  “We’re leaving!” Grant yelled into the dark night and we trotted away laughing. “Come on, let’s go to our seats.”

  As we approached our seats, we found they were overrun by a mob of cowboy hats and sweaty, tan bodies. Without looking at me or saying a word Grant reached for my hand. He pulled me close behind him and led me through the rowdy crowd like I was his woman to lead. The roar of thirty thousand people fell silent in my ears and nothing else existed except his warm hand encircling mine. Long after he could have, he still hadn’t let go. We stood with our hands interlaced for what seemed like hours, not moving, as if we both knew that once we moved, whatever this was would end.

  “We should get back,” he said after an hour of Kenny Chesney songs. I hoped that back to meant back to his place where we could explore each other until morning, talking and kissing, and bring my secret desires to life. Instead he let my warm hand slide away and back into the lonesome cold. I felt hollow inside as he let me go, I felt alone again.

  Levi was going to kill me, he’d be waiting with a plume of red smoke funneling out his ears. On our way back we got trapped by the crowd, squished together in gridlock—the best gridlock ever and I gasped when he reached and wrapped his hand around mine again. The soft strength of his touch on my skin, knowing he wanted to touch me even in that small way, meant something. A spark ignited inside of me that night which could never be extinguished.

  He let my hand fall away just before we reached the exit where Levi was standing in the same spot I’d left him, still waiting for me.

  ***

  Ur gunna get it!

  And I’m gunna give it to u :D

  Chapter 5

  “I MAY HAVE LOST MY HEART, BUT NOT MY SELF-CONTROL.”

  —JANE AUSTEN, EMMA

  It was the epitome of a perfect summer day at the cabin. The sun was directly overhead warming our skin. The breeze was almost imperceptible, moving just enough to keep us cool so we could stay outside all day.

  Grant stood in the shallows, waves washing over him as he fumbled with the water ski. He hopped on one foot while trying to stuff the other into the boot and whining about not having gloves.

  “Suck it up! You don’t need gloves.” I yelled, “Let’s go!” I strained to see over the windshield of the oversized wake boarding boat, I sat up as tall as I could on the top of the white vinyl driver’s seat.

  “I like gloves, it’s easier to hold the rope. Please look for them,” he begged.

  “I did. They’re not in the boat.” I looked over my shoulder at him. “You’re fine without them, big baby. Come on, I’m hot let’s move and get some air.”

  That summer we’d developed a mutual fondness, a flirtatious banter that hadn’t been there before.

  There was so much I wanted to tell him.

  I think about you all the time, how you held my hand. Don’t you think about me? I need you in my life. I dread another winter without you.

  “Hit it!” he yelled, from the shore.

  I thrust the throttle forward, the Moomba growled and dug in. The bow lifted into the air and the tower tilted backward. The cherry red and patriotic white reflection of the boat wobbled across the water as we skimmed along the shore. Grant flew back and forth across the wake with ease, slicing sideways through the liquid glass. Dylan sat lazily in the passenger seat, happy to relinquish the captain’s chair for a short while. Besides Dylan and Grant, I was the only person allowed to play captain and I was proud of my elite status.

  When Grant was done I beached the boat in the shallows and watched as the usual gang of svelte, oiled bodies trickled toward the water. One-by-one bright colored beach towels floated into place and claimed their spot on the now-crowded dock. A blue cooler filled with Mexican beer sat permanently perched in the corner.

  They were Dylan’s friends, my acquaintances. I didn’t have many friends. I had a child, a dog, a rising career, and a stressful relationship. I didn’t have the time to keep meaningful friendships. Instead, I had a hundred acquaintanceships. I knew people, people knew me; we could do lunch, send flowers to the hospital, but I couldn’t tell them my secrets.

 
Grant stood in the water next to the boat dripping wet, tan, and ridiculously handsome. I held up a half empty jug of V8 and two Coronas. No words were necessary, he nodded and grinned, and mixed us drinks as I flipped on the music. Bob Marley’s Greatest Hits, the only music allowed in the boat. It was a pact we’d made earlier that summer and thus far, it had been strictly enforced.

  The tone was set for an indulgent and memorable day as we clinked our frothy crimson bottles together.

  “It’s our thing, right?” he asked.

  “You mean the music or the bloody beers?”

  “Both,” He said with a smile.

  “Yes. Our thing.”

  Everyone trusted Grant. He was the one you wanted behind the wheel of the car, boat, or plane, the one you could trust to get you home safely, the one everyone looked to in a time of crisis. He was the alpha leader of our pack who could make a calm and rational decision midst total chaos.

  I was happy when he was around, unusually happy. A fact that illuminated just how wrong I felt staying with Levi, and how different I was with each of them. Grant felt right; he was someone I could laugh with and laugh at, and someone who wasn’t scared to laugh at me. He was extraordinarily intelligent, and would engage me in conversations about the origins of the earth and how humans came to have opposable thumbs. We had an infinite number of things to talk about. He was never boring, and I concluded that like me, he was someone who lived life on purpose. With Grant, not even the ocean was deep enough to fit all of the things we had to talk about. With Levi, the shallow hull of a shot glass would have sufficed.

  I wondered, would every day with Grant be exciting? Or would a life with him eventually become monotonous and dull in a year or two?

  My experience was that the excitement and deep well of conversation wouldn’t last. I’d slowly lose respect, become uninterested, and not want to have sex. I’d complain about his shortcomings and eventually land in the exact place I was in with Levi.