Landis, Corrine
JOURNAL ENTRY 01

I met Frank while Jonathan was at work. It's terribly cliché, I know, but I suppose certain stereotypes exist for a reason. Frank was a glaring opposite of Jonathan, both outside and in, and I suppose that's what got my attention, not necessarily attraction, but interest if nothing else.

Leaving a boutique without buying anything, just boredom propelling me in aimless locomotion. I stepped outside, and there was Frank, all tall and broad-shouldered, five o'clock shadow and unkempt dark hair. He looked like an Old Spice commercial, and it's all so terribly ordinary in retrospect. Pinching a cigarette between his thumb and index finger, he gave me one of those macho gestures with his chin and asked me for a light.

"I don't smoke," I told him.

He eyed me for a moment, gave me a smile that was half sneer, and then, without looking, tossed the cigarette away and said, "Me neither, where you going?"

"Where am I going?" I echoed incredulously.

"Where you going?" He reiterated, taking a step forward.

I suppose I should have left then, or maybe before he asked for the light. His confidence was alien to me, so much the opposite of Jonathan, who had been my closest friend and only love for the last decade. So I told him lunch. I was going to lunch. And he said: "Me too. Where we going?" I gave him the obligatory female look that says, "Are you kidding?" but it felt reflexive, something my body was doing for me because I wasn't sure how to react. And I told him where I was eating, telling myself that I was doing so out of panic or puzzlement when all along I had every idea that this man would pursue me. Not wanting to tempt fate, I finally walked to my car before driving directly to the destination I had mentioned to the brawny deodorant model. Only moments after being seated, in he walked, and in the distance I could overhear him tell the maitre d' that he was joining "the lovely lady" with a casual gesture in my direction.

I don't recall any depth to my thoughts at this point. Not the ones at the forefront of my consciousness. I was vaguely aware of a warm, hazy level of lust and a kind of guilty longing connected to my fear that I had settled by marrying my high school sweetheart. What never occurred to me for a moment was that I would ruin my entire marriage that afternoon and that the next day the whole world would start to change.