Tryst

         Sarah stared deeply into her coffee, swirling the last swallow around and around the bottom of the cup. Glancing furtively around the small café, she asked herself again what she was doing there. Nearly thirty-year-old mothers did not meet tall, dark men in the middle of the week. They didn’t leave their children with babysitters to sneak off, and they certainly didn’t contemplate what she was now considering. Suddenly, she stood, determined to be gone before he arrived.

         There he was, it was too late. Six feet tall, with thick waves of black hair falling into deep chocolate colored eyes, he took her breath away. Broad shoulders eased gracefully through the crowd as he glided toward her, a smile stretching his full lips in welcome. For better or worse, it was too late now for her escape.

         Engulfing the wrought-iron chair with his oversized frame, he settled into the seat across from her. Silently, he waived the waitress away and concentrated only on the beautiful, nervous woman before him. Absorbing the thick chestnut hair and sea-green eyes, along with the slight tremble of her hand, he rose and held his own out to her, waiting for the agreement he knew would come, the agreement she would be unable to withhold.

         Wordlessly, they strolled together down the sidewalk, nearly invisible to the throngs of workers on lunch rushing back to their jobs. Her heart drummed within her chest, overcome with the nervousness she refused to allow to consume her. He didn’t look at her, didn’t speak, gave her no opportunity to give into her fear and run. Gave her no opportunity to remember who she was, what was expected of her, and maybe that was for the best. There was no one to notice, no one to care, as they slipped into the lobby of the hotel.

         Anyone paying attention would have noted they stayed only two hours. That same observer would have seen the flush on Sarah’s cheeks, the slightly hazy quality to her smile that told its own story. They would have taken in the proprietary way her companion now held his arm around her waist, guiding her expertly down the cracked concrete. Maybe they would have smiled for the lovers. Maybe they would have sighed and remembered their own youth.

         As he kissed her softly on the hair, the tall man prepared to take his leave of her, refreshed for the world he must now enter, the pressures of work and home they had both been so desperate to escape, if only for a short time. She clung to him, greedily wanting more. Ambition and stress had no place here. No right to enter the world they had so carefully built for two. She wanted, needed, just one more hour to bask in there, to not care. There was no room for anyone, anything, to intrude upon the idyll they’d worked so hard to create. Neither one noticed the angelic little girl in pigtails, escaped from her babysitter, now hurtling toward them.

         “Momma! What are you doing here?”

         Bending down to gather her daughter close, Sarah beamed up into the grinning face of her husband.

         “Whoops.” she beamed. “Busted.”