By mid-morning the next day, the kids were exploring Riverboat Island. Alan and I relaxed beneath a shade tree, our hands mingling in the cool grass, out of sight of the kids frolicking on the playground.
"I can't believe it was so easy," he said.
I cast him a look. Apparently he had forgotten how broken hearted he was earlier.
"What?" He looked at me quizzically, but I knew he understood. "Well, regardless, how should we spend our remaining time together?"
"By sorting this mess out?" I ventured, "I don't mean to be a nag, but…"
"I know, I know." Alan shook his head. "But we are both at the same place. Right?"
I turned around to face him. "True, but four days from now I don't want to find that we are begging for four more days just because we don't know what to do."
"Will talking this out even help?"
Why was I getting the impression that he didn't want a resolution?
"Is this just some kind of weird vacation fling for you?" I jabbed him in the ribs. "Maybe you're a serial adulterer—each year a different woman at a different theme park…"
Alan laughed heartily. "No, you are my first." He reached up to brush a curl from my eyes, "We only have two options, but they both have extreme consequences."
I nodded, "Well, on the one hand, we leave our families and hurt a lot of people in an attempt to be together. On the other hand, we only hurt ourselves."
"So it's just a matter of who gets hurt."
"Shouldn't it be a matter of how we feel instead?" Our eyes locked as I spoke. "It isn't just the lesser of two evils, you know?"
Alan looked away. It occurred to me that he hadn't thought of it quite that way. Which was more important? The damage to others or to ourselves? And what about the kids? Granted, they would be happy if we stayed with our spouses. Although they had become close on this trip.
"I have no answer for you, I'm afraid," Alan's voice broke into my thoughts. "I know how I feel about you. And part of me wants so badly to run off with you that it hurts."
His hand slid into mine and I squeezed. "I just don't know if the consequences are more important to me than my feelings." I shook my head slowly. "I don't want to overanalyze this but I don't know how I feel."
"How could you not know how you feel?" A look of alarm crossed his face. "Don't you know how you feel about me?"
I held up my hands in protest. "It's not that. I want you. But are we just caught up in the romance of the moment and maybe just a little lonely because we were abandoned by them?"
Alan's forehead crinkled.
"I guess I just want to make sure that I love you and not this…" I waved my hand in the air. "This moment."
A butterfly flew between us, circled our heads, then flew away. In the distance, we could hear our children laughing, but for us, time had stood still.
"Alan, why do you think you love me?"
"Jesus, Laura, I wish I knew." He ran his long, sensual fingers through his hair. "All I know is, my heart stops when I see you for the first time each morning. Every moment we aren't talking, I'm thinking about you. And when that goddamned door closes between our rooms each night, I feel completely lost."
Those beautiful green eyes began to water and my heart sank. Had I caused this pain? Either I would hurt him or Mike and Susan. In the end, was that what the decision would come down to?
I didn't think his eyes could get any lovelier than that moment. "My God, Alan. What the hell are we going to do?"
He reached out his hand to touch my hair. "This." With one swift movement he pulled my face to him, very gently kissing me. My heart beat madly realizing that the kids and other people were around us. Had he lost his mind? The soft caresses of his lips were making me dizzy. As he pulled away, my eyes remained closed. That single kiss was a very intimate act, even more intimate than our lovemaking. It was as if a part of his soul slipped from his lips to mine. I was afraid to open my eyes to find it had all been a dream.
"Mommy?" Rory's voice interrupted, "Why are you sitting like that with your eyes closed?"
"She's listening to something, Silly!" Alice laughed.
I opened my eyes to see the kids around us. Alan's expression told me they hadn't seen us kiss. Perspiration trickled down the side of my face. The kids let out a "whoop!" and ran back to the playground.
"You were saying?" I squeezed Alan's knee, and he laughed.
"Don't worry, they didn't see anything."
"Thank God. What were you thinking?"
"I wasn't thinking, just reacting." He began to rise to his feet. "I'll run over to the restaurant and pick up a picnic lunch for us."
Before I could protest, he was gone. Reacting. That's all we have been doing up until this point. Just reacting to shared experiences. I was responding to his eyes and the way they made me shiver. To his warm, soft kisses and the fierce, hungry ones. Animals react. People act, usually with some thought behind it. At least, that's the idea.
Clara and Rory raced around a tree. I looked for signs of their father in their faces but found none. They didn't look like either of us. They looked like each other. Please don't let them be like Mike, taking their families for granted.
Leaning back against the tree trunk, I tried to put this into perspective. I knew I loved Alan. There simply was no question. But did I love my husband? And which was more important?
Logic would dictate that I remain with Mike. Aside from splitting up the family and leaving a wake of devastation, I'd been with him for thirteen years. We knew each other. I knew Alan for two years a long, long time ago. I wasn't entirely sure what kind of man he was now.
My heart, on the other hand, felt differently. Mike and I had been growing apart, our lives and priorities taking us down separate paths. While family was becoming more important to me, his career (and its benefits) was more important to Mike. For the last two years the kids and I had been treated like secondary characters in his life. To me, that was unforgivable.
Alan faced the same dilemma. And yet our decisions could end up being completely different. I didn't want to influence him. The decision had to be his. But what if I decided to leave Mike and he decided to stay with Susan? What then?
Yesterday, I would have given anything to spare him the pain of his wife's dismissal. Did that mean I loved him enough to start a new life with him? But that didn't seem like enough to sway the jury. And they looked mean enough to call for the death penalty.
I'd been so still for so long that a cricket landed on my leg. Within seconds he was gone. I didn't need any more metaphors. I needed help. There wasn't a single person I could call. My family would be horrified. My friends, while understanding that we were having problems, would think I had lost it. My eyes searched the park as they always did—looking for a conspiracy. For one fleeting moment, I thought I saw Terry's face. Right. Like that wouldn't complicate things. I really was paranoid. No. It's up to me. That really sucks.
"Hey, kids! Want lunch?" I heard Alan's voice calling from far away, followed by shouts of glee from the kids. Soon we were all sitting, eating fried chicken, French fries, and biscuits. I looked for clues in my children's eyes but found little. They adored Alan and his kids. That was clear. Mike had been a distant dad for a while now. It was eerie how easily they replaced him with Alan. No, I couldn't rely on them—it wouldn't be fair. I could just see myself ten years from now: "Now kids, it was your fault we moved out of daddy's house and into Alan's house. You liked him too much."
It was only then that I noticed that Alan had been quietly observing me. "We don't have to decide right now, you know," he said.
Four heads perked up. "Decide what?" Rory yelled.
Alan's eyes locked onto mine before he turned away with a smile. "Why, what we are going to do this afternoon, of course! And don't forget, Martha is coming back tonight."
Shit. I forgot we hired the sitter for another date night. The kids ran off, and we began to clean up. "Where are we going tonight?"
Alan paused. "How about just a quiet dinner out?"
"Sounds good, but you're bound to be disappointed." I threw the paper plates into a bin. "They really frown on public groping there."
Alan laughed, and after looking around for a second, planted his lips firmly on mine. As he pulled away I knew I had that drowsy, lust-drunk look on my face. But the tingling came in all the wrong places. My stomach flipped and sank, and the hair on my arms stood on end. It was as if someone was watching us. Looking around I saw the kids unaffected by the scene and realized they hadn't seen us. Had someone seen us?
My heart pounded beneath my ribcage. Something was definitely wrong. I began to feel dizzy, losing my balance. Was I going to faint? The ground raced upward to meet me, and everything went black.