Word Count: 397
It’s taking three hours to get there, constantly upsetting the GPS lady who knew of a dozen different ways.
I took her along in case I got lost on the way, but mainly just for some company on the long lonely drive up. Her “Turn left in .7 miles” and annoyed “Recalculating” when I didn’t follow her lead gave a strange sense of validation to the trip. A source of comfort but more, welcome station stops to my runaway train of thinking. I didn’t want to keep doubleguessing my own decisions. Didn’t want to hear the tearing in half of my mind.
It wasn’t a good thing, this journey I’m taking. As myself, I’d say it’s out and out wrong. He’s married. So am I. We meet whenever we can or can no longer not.
We met at a company party, he works with my husband at Tompkins Aerospace though on different floors. It’s barely a nodding acquaintance as my lover has assured me. I don’t think I could do this at all if it weren’t. His wife has some sort of progressive disease which I try not to think about because it can be used to justify as well as repulse the whole idea of this affair. It does not make me feel better.
We’re careful. We don’t meet locally. We don’t take headless risks. In the back of our minds there’s always that bridge that grounds us to our separate realities. Instead, together we are the river that flows on its own beneath our loftier lives.
I shouldn’t need this, this extra excitement, this surplus man.
We’re not still in the heat of first passion. This overnight get-away–that’s why the three-hour drive–was to reignite what smolders to ashes if not kicked back to life. Funny how that works.
Maybe I need a new man.
“Turn right on Route 77 in 2 miles,” she says. This time I’ll trust her. It’s the same route that Mapquest suggested so maybe she’s right.
My husband and I married young; college sweethearts through all four years.
“Turn right on Route 77 in 1 mile.”
“I’ve never cheated before,” I tell her.
“Turn right on Route 77 in .3 miles,” she insists and I do. Then I pull into a parking lot and upset her again when I stop.
“Recalculating,” she says.
“Me too,” I reply.
