I glanced to my right and I saw a woman dressed in baggy shorts and an easy, comfortable sweat shirt similar to the one Eric had worn that morning. Her demeanor was collegiate, not very womanly. Her long blonde curly hair breezed off of her shoulders and her bright face smiled with antic.i.p.ation. Eric, who had been aggressively wiping the sweat off his brow and drinking water from an upturned bottle, seemed to suddenly stop in his tracks as he caught sight of her and slowly lowered the bottle.

Two of the girls next to me said "Oh my G.o.d....", and a third said "He is SO screwed." and suddenly their attention was riveted to me. This, clearly, was Elaine, and she was walking directly towards Eric.

She smiled at him adoringly, as he inquired "What are you doing here???" He was stunned and I saw him almost peer backwards to see what I might say or do about this sudden turn of events, but stop himself so as not to call attention to a stranger among the women. Clearly it was the last thing he expected to have happen.

They spoke for several minutes. I vaguely heard him say he had plans the entire weekend and wouldn't be able to spend time with her, though I didn't hear him say anything about me specifically. I knew about her, knew where she stood in his life. Likewise, I knew where I apparently stood and where I'd rather be. True to my ideas about the gift of loving, I didn't make myself obvious to her, and didn't threaten him with exposure in any way, but it still stung.

The other women next to me said in almost gleeful antic.i.p.ation, "What are you going to do?"

I simply replied, "We live two thousand miles apart, and I don't fly home for two more days, what am I supposed to do? It just never has been my style to make a public scene, or to demand that a man give me what I want in the way that I want it. The times I've put that forth, it's always blown up in my face."

I'm not sure if it was the denial of what I basically needed from my father that kept me from aspiring to what I truly desired and deserved romantically. Whatever it was, I wanted the ultimate without having to ask for, much less demand it. It had to be a gift. My sense of what it must feel like to have this realized is stunted in some ways. I think if I had a reference, a way to have completely felt it, I'd somehow have managed to create it. But, at the time I sat there quietly while he dispatched Elaine and the girlfriends of his teammates were incredulous in some ways, understanding in others.

"Thank you for not making a scene Marissa. I guess you realize that was Elaine?" He guided me down the length of the field away from the other women. "I swear I didn't know she was going to show up like this. She came to see her brother and wanted to surprise me."

"Oh? Why, I imagine you were, indeed, quite surprised." I said sardonically.

"And you? Are you angry?" he peered over at me as we walked away from the field.

"Well, in a lot of ways, I don't have a right to be angry do I? It's not as though I own you or something. But do I wish you wanted me and only me and that you were willing to a.s.sert yourself in a way that demonstrates your desire for me? Of course I do! It makes me want to leave, go home, and I feel stuck and as though I don't want to leave you at the same time. Mostly, it just stings, like salt dumped into a wide open wound Eric."

Tears stung my eyes and the more upset I was the more p.r.o.nounced my drawl. I stopped, took in a breath and looked away refusing to cry in front of him anymore.

It bothered me that it wasn't his inclination to protect me, us, over her and them. It definitely dampened the remainder of our trip home through the vineyard filled valleys. The trip back was quiet. We still held hands, and the view was one purple mountain after another against dry golden fields. It couldn't have been lovelier. I could tell he felt conflicted. He could tell I was hurt, disappointed and I'm sure my energy reflected a certain weariness at being denied the kind of love I craved and seemed to be destined to be forever just out of my grasp. I didn't know how to be loved, not truly, and I couldn't create what I didn't understand.

Finally, I just wanted to go home and it was another day or so before it was going to be time. By the time I did get on the plane to return to my Southern roots I fully expected that to be the end of us.

Chapter 11.

Instead of the romance ending, as it naturally should have, he buffeted my distanced responses and was just simply persistent about staying in touch in the coming months. While maintaining he'd not hidden anything and couldn't help my expectations weren't met, he couldn't and wouldn't say that we might not someday evolve into what I wanted. He dangled himself like the proverbial carrot and my desire for him just wouldn't wane as a result. Hope springs eternal, like they always say.

I don't stay angry that long and I tend to make excuses when I should set definite and firm boundaries. I forgave him, reduced my expectations ultimately and while we saw each other several more times that year, I dated other people too. But whenever there was sadness or a hurt and I needed someone to truly understand me, Eric was always the one I turned to.

There was never a time in our affection for one another where we lived in the same city or were exclusive with one another. With the raw honesty of that second week together, all the things that led to our strong affinity and my acceptance of him warts and all, the necessity to hide our allegiances or our feelings or what either of us wanted or was doing with our time never took hold like it seems to in most relationships. He wouldn't dare be jealous of other attentions I had at home after the incident with Elaine, but somehow he didn't make me feel less than an honorable woman for them, or that he cared any less for me because of them.

I credit this more than anything to the lasting nature of our friendship and affection. He never had to be anyone but himself, and neither did I. He knew how I felt. He never lied about how he felt. He has been one of the few people I have ever been connected to in my life that I was completely, truly authentic with.

While later I avoided this sort of resonance and intimacy with other men it was truly enduring and almost impossible for me not to want to hold on to. Letting go of Eric, meant in some ways letting go of that authentic measure of self I had in our relational mirror. The company of his enduring acceptance and the humor and grace with which he reflected what he saw in me genuinely was invaluable to me. I loathed letting it go, and missed it when he was unavailable to me. We knew, understood and discussed our personal dynamics. For some reason I never really appreciated it then like I grew to later on. I found great comfort in knowing he understood certain aspects of me that no one else would without a lot of explanation. The emotional shorthand between us resonated and comforted us both in the face of whatever difficulties our past or present lives afforded us. There were no secrets about who I was or how I behaved or what I wanted or how I was affected by the events around me.

Even the man who fathered my children never knew and accepted me wholeheartedly the way that Eric did. I don't think our ability to be so completely self revealing with one another had the same singularity for Eric that it had for me. I don't think he struggled with this kind of revelation as I did. When the chips were down and I felt like I was drowning he had the capacity to be my emotional lifeline, that golden silky thread back to my true and centered self. I didn't have to care if he knew me; I risked nothing in the exposure of myself. It wasn't until so much later that I realized withholding it meant I risked never having all I dreamed of creating.

Beyond the emotional and experiential realm, we were both willing to pursue our dreams, work hard and realize our ambitions. I was and am proud of his success. For a long while I thought he would have made a much stronger partner to my own successes and I longed for the strength he displayed in his work. He knew as much about computers as I did. Our religious and spiritual orientations were closely aligned if not identical, and I always liked his willingness to look within and find his strengths and weaknesses and to be honest about what he found. I could tell him anything that was going on in my life without reservation, and then about how I felt and what I wanted and needed in relationship to those events. But the limit was always that I knew that he was not physically available to meet all of my needs, nor was he likely to make himself available in the way I'd like him to be.

I felt destined to be cheated out of a greatness of love and acceptance from Eric, and helpless to do anything to make him see what it was I so desperately wanted to share with him. He never really wanted what I could envision between us, he never saw the same thing that I could practically taste as if it were the salty spray on the beach in Carmel. Over time, his limitation, his lack of recognition of the depth of my feeling for him, beyond being disappointing, had a way of making me discount the significance of my self revelation and connection to Eric. Surely it meant that I'd love another man more completely, that I'd be better suited to another man, that the my ultimate capacity to connect and love in a lasting way had not casually been conceived, given birth to and lived out its existence without any kind of permanency or significance. I always wondered what might have happened between us had we been in the same city, or been willing to be exclusive.

Chapter 12.

As that first year pa.s.sed, David came back into my life again and Eric's limited availability and his lack of meaningful pursuit meant that it wasn't realistic to measure the two against one another. Men have revolved in and out of my life like they rode on a carousel, and my close girl-friends comment about how men don't seem to ever completely leave me behind. I am a memorable lover, uninhibited and intense, so have been told "I've never forgotten you. I still dream of you at night" by almost every lover I've ever taken. If it weren't for the terminal sense of separation or the confusion over being valued so s.e.xually all my life, I might feel flattered, but often it just makes me feel alone. So, at the time, I didn't ask Eric for more than we had, and I don't think he expected me to either.

I did see him "one last time" before I promised to be faithful to David in our round two of romance. Funny how many times I've a.s.sumed the last visit with Eric was indeed the last. One day something, someone I love more completely, or eventually death may separate us once and for all. I'm not convinced that even the veil of death has done that in the past. I felt connected to him in some otherworldly sense as though I must have loved him before. We spent that stolen night together in my garden bath in Charlotte with the phone ringing incessantly.

Here I was ignoring David, who was asking me to promise to love him forever, who I thought I would love forever. Just after I gifted myself a farewell to

Eric, to say good bye to the pa.s.sion I couldn't quell with Eric.

My actions were telling at the time, but I didn't see it as ripples flowing across still water. I didn't see it for what it was; I didn't know I couldn't expose myself to David like I did to Eric, or that it would take me more than a decade to know I needed to learn how.

David and I spent another tortured year playing push me pull you, and I'd periodically update Eric with our progress or lack thereof. He remained unimpressed with my romance with David, and seemed always to be saying the same things. "He's never going to make you happy. This will never change."

I left my corporate job, spent all my savings and followed David around the world. Once I came home, when it was over with David yet again, I cried on Eric's shoulder for probably the tenth, twentieth or thirtieth time.

He was always magnanimous, always my friend first. But shortly after I'd abandon hope that David and I would ever clean up our mess and when the occasion inevitably arose, I'd welcome Eric back into my bed with unadulterated glee and he seemed equally happy to be there.

In March some two years now after we first met and after my second December break up with David, Eric came to visit me, comfort me, and make love to me.

Before he could rest I was all over him again, very happy to see him, to have him comfort me, and build me up. I sensed he felt a little overwhelmed by my enthusiasm.

That weekend, we made love in the afternoon, the light streaming through gauzy windows. It had been so long, I missed him. In the bath I teased him again and again and then we hurried back into my bedroom, I felt wonderful with him.

Excited, he leaned me over at the edge of the bed and aggressively entered into me fully and moaned out, "Oh my G.o.d, that is some sweeeeeet p.u.s.s.y......" What he said shocked me and thrilled me in its unadulterated pa.s.sion and desire all at the same time. Shivers ran up and down my spine and my toes literally curled, and he felt divinely perfect inside of me. I always felt like his body was custom made to fit within my own and I was filled with pa.s.sion and desire, and flooded with the pleasure of him. Less than a thirty second pa.s.sage through time seared into my brain with such intensity, the ripple across the pond was more like a tsunami across my heart and the pa.s.sion exploded within me and rushed through me.

It must have represented sheer contentment and pleasure to me because I thought of that instant, what he said, and how I felt those few seconds almost every time I had a discontented moment within the ten years of my marriage. Every time I longed for pa.s.sion, for a sense of unbroken connection, a sense of completion his voice echoed like waves within my very soul.

Eventually that recollection was the only thing that could summon physical pleasure in my marital bed, and I felt horribly guilty at the betrayal of my husband and his "rightful place" with the blessed memory of Eric filling my heart, my soul and my body that late winter afternoon.

After a few months of hoping Eric would reveal his feelings for me were growing the way my feelings for him had grown, I took a Judaism cla.s.s that talked about the significance of marriage from a Judaic perspective.

Why we marry, what we are supposed to get out of it, the purpose of a spouse and how we are to aspire to be our best possible selves through the mirror we provide to one another. Here, I already had this perfect mirror naturally instilled in my relationship with Eric. Yet there were the things about Eric that left me uncertain. His ability to be faithful, I doubted, more than my own; his desire to be a father, and his readiness for both; how much he loved me as opposed to anyone else, how our mutual childhood experiences and addictions might cause us to falter...were all things I was uncertain about.

But most of all, his experiences as a child and with Gerald, his roommate in California left a dark shadow of uncertainty. I was afraid to ask him about its significance now several years later, I didn't want to imply anything, but I knew he'd had adult experiences with other men. I didn't know how our mutual experience of being s.e.xually abused would play out as parents and I was too afraid to ask him that question. The sad truth too was that Eric was not pursuing me in any kind of a permanent way, and I didn't think I should hold on to the hope, I didn't think I should continue to suspend expectations of him, and I wanted and needed him to claim my heart for his very own....and he didn't and wouldn't.

I wrote him a long letter telling him what I learned and that turning 30, I really wanted to find a mate and have a family. I remember taking more than four hours to write that letter, editing it and rewriting it a number of times. It was very important to me, not just in what I was saying to him, but in the affirmation of the kind of marriage and growth experience I wanted to create. For that time, David was completely absent in my life and I didn't write what I wanted in marriage specifically for Eric, or any other man. But I wanted Eric to know what I wanted clearly as an aspiration just for myself, before I walked away from him. Being a time long before email it took a while for my letter to reach him across thousands of miles.

As the phone rang I absent mindedly picked it up as I sat at my new computer writing something for a new customer. "h.e.l.lo?"

"Marissa, it's Eric, I just got your letter today. It's beautiful, what you've said." He was touched, and I knew he meant it from the sound of his voice. "I love you in many ways, and I value our friendship very much. But, I'm not prepared to commit to you or to anyone else. I'm not saying that I never will want that with you, but I'm not willing to give you that now."

"Eric, I know this, that's why I said that I thought we should not stay in touch anymore. As long as I have you in my life I can't really let anyone else be significant to me."

"Marissa, do you have to be so hasty about ending what we have between us?"

"Eric... aren't I just prolonging the inevitable?"

"Look, I'll be there in three short weeks. I have a business trip with a client to the Merchandise Mart. Wait for me to come and visit and we'll talk through the whole thing, ok?"

I sat there for a moment considering everything he had to say. It was a perfectly reasonable request though I worried a little my strength might falter. I was very attracted to him after all, despite the futility of it. I wanted to see him again, even if it were just one last time.

"Ok Eric. You know I want to see you, you know I'm crazy for you. I'll wait for you."

I was working on Peachtree Street in a temporary position. I met him in Midtown as he easily strolled off the train. I was wearing an aqua dress with a slit up to my hip that was lightly concealed by a panel. The dress flashed long leg as I crossed Peachtree Street in Midtown from the Museum to the train station. He stepped out of the station from beneath a beautiful office building on to dark marble steps, with black gla.s.s gleaming behind his tall, lean and handsome frame. He stopped when he saw me, c.o.c.ked his head and appraised me appreciatively.

I saw his attraction for me all over again, and it always made me think there was somehow a real chance he'd "get it" this time, that his resistance would finally melt and that he'd be mine once and for all.

I kept my pace across the street and let the flap of the dress reveal the flesh of my thigh freely, and sidled into his big strong arms and got the kiss I'd been dreaming of for the better part of a month.

Chapter 13.

I saw him as if it were the first time. I never could control my pa.s.sion for him and I've since then thought if I'd only been a little cooler towards him he probably would have come around, but I remained too eager.

When we got back to my place he sort of put me off, said something about "Give me a chance to get something to drink woman!" and laughed easily.

His remark hurt me in a way, but I didn't say anything about it. He was distracted. He was stressed. He had a lot to do on this trip. These were things that should not matter when it came to me of course, and I was wounded at the echo of being denied what I wanted from him... I remembered Elaine. I remembered it all.

"What have you got in the kitchen?" he said as he swung through the door towards the antiquated refrigerator.

"Mmmmm, some juice, milk, maybe some Sprite?" I said trying to regroup in the living room, adjusting my dress and straightening up a bit.

"Hey." He said as he came back into the dining area. "You know I think you're s.e.xy, I'm just a little tired from the trip, and I get a little grumpy when I'm too hungry. Let's go get some dinner."

"Sure." I said as I stepped into the bath to touch up my lipstick and brush my hair.

Dinner wasn't terribly eventful. He told me about his customer, Dana, who was high maintenance and difficult and very demanding, and frankly I don't know that I even knew that she was going to be so much of a focus during the time he and I spent together on that visit.

Dana was more or less as cuddly as your standard triple blade razor. She'd developed a novelty gift sold in local Spencer stores as a wild and crazy aphrodisiac among the Yuppie crowd and they were at the Atlanta Merchandise Mart to promote her budding product in the Southeast.

Finally we went back to my place and as we opened the front door, I pushed him through the threshold, shut the door with my foot, and pushed him up against the wall.

"Come here, you, I've waited long enough. You know what I want." I smiled into his eyes and he smiled back at me. He was so incredibly hot, and I just melted into him as my tongue traced his lips and then twirled around his tongue and my hands slid down his chest, his stomach and caressed him from outside of his pants. He moaned into my mouth and I kissed him hard, full on, and his hand ran across my body in a flurry.

"You. Here, you're coming with me." Eric said and took my hand and led me to my bedroom. We fell into the rumpled bed and he expertly unfastened the front of my dress to reveal nothing but a pair of lacy bikini panties, and slid his hand underneath the surface and into the heat of my pa.s.sion. My hands shook as I embraced his face and kissed him pa.s.sionately, desperately, and he climbed onto my body and slid inside of me as I threw my legs around him and arched my back in delight.

Moving, slowly, deliberately in and out of me, "Uh huh, mmmmm, uhhhh huhhhh." He was staring into my eyes and the pa.s.sion was intense as it always was.

Before long he threw his head back, yelled out and collapsed upon me, heaving. I held him, tears streaming down my face.

"Marissa, Marissa. Don't cry. Don't."

But I cried anyway.

Chapter 14.

I wasn't very happy that Dana was monopolizing so much of Eric's time. Every day was hectic and I was transporting him to and from downtown early in the morning and again late in the evening. They were consumed with meetings and dinners and lunches and floor shows, and none of it included the romantically inclined.

Eric was exhausted, and his attention for me was not completely there, and most of all we are decidedly not talking, not just about us, but much of anything at all.

I suppose I could, should, would have been more understanding, it was a business trip, and she was his client. By Thursday there was finally a break in their schedule and I thought Eric might broach the subject of why I'd delayed breaking it off with him in the first place.

Eric says, "Marissa, I am so worn out with Dana. She's just been on my a.s.s continually, totally a b.i.t.c.h on wheels. Can I ask you to do me a huge favor this afternoon?"

"Sure, what do you need?" I ask.

"Would you PLEASE take Dana shopping? She's got some kind of cruise to go on next week and she's got to have a bathing suit. I've had enough of her demanding ways, and the last thing I want to do is take her shopping. Would you mind terribly, taking her so I can have some down time?"

"Sure. There's a really good shop up in Buckhead that lets you mix and match tops and bottoms according to size. It's a little pricey though, can she swing it?"

"Sure. She can swing it. She's loaded." So, I take her shopping, disappointed that his down time isn't our down time together.

She is not so tall, incredibly thin, long brown hair, a tan, nothing particularly distinctive about her face, but she is pretty in a generic rich girl way. She carried the "I'm a f.u.c.king b.i.t.c.h and so proud of it" demeanor that certain men just can't seem to get enough of and that I never even attempted mastering. She's calculating and her strategies are self serving, and while I see her as a sharp business woman and I admire her ambition and her success, I can't say I was enjoying her company.