MIND AT CROSSROAD Part 1

Jackson sat in his office on a Thursday afternoon. Everyone had gone to have their lunch; to their surprise he was not so eager to join them. On any other day he would push everyone in the department to gather for meals, and being a Thursday, they had created a tradition of having lunch at a well-known restaurant. He could not tell them what was wrong. He could only say he had to finish prepping for the presentation and thankfully, they believed him and off they left. His being alone was punctuated by languorous thoughts slamming the back of his head.

Jackson had once met a lovely girl while he was at campus, Samantha. He had liked her. But she was already involved with another person and from the way Samantha talked about her boyfriend Robert, there was no room to try and change anything. So Jackson respected her relationship with Robert. But he made sure she was aware how much he liked her, liking was an understatement. Through their stay at university, Samantha fell pregnant for her boyfriend Robert and they had a baby.

Jackson and Samantha met again, this time working in the same company. She was more grown; she had matured into a fine woman. Her eyes looked whiter and sharp, her complexion was that of a brown ant hill and her figure was curvier. She was an intelligent thinker, she always had been. His liking for her had never vanished; she had become more of the person he had always adored.

He enjoyed working with her and being around her. But he didn’t bother to ask how her marriage was, or maybe his liking for her had masked all the important questions he needed to ask. He had hoped this would never haunt him. Jackson and Samantha didn’t work together for a long time as both of them found employment in different organizations.

However, it is this working in different organization that sparked their friendship to a new level. The easy in the way she spoke about her life, her profession and the distant look into the things she wanted to achieve often amused him, it made him long for her even more. He wanted more time, more of her presence, long talks and long walks. Robert was almost never mentioned.

Everything was falling in place for Jackson with little effort. They had their first sex after a night out. They drunk a few glasses of wine, danced on the dance floor as though no one was around. But she danced more as Jackson sat back and enjoyed admiring her, moving her figure to the rhythm of every song like she was a dancing queen, she loved dancing. He was mistaken if he thought her dance moves will end on the dance floor, both of them aware of what was happening, they had become thirsty for each other, with rains smashing the roof of his apartment, she flew on top of him smooching him like a lion that had caught rare and delicate meal and had not eaten in days if not weeks, and when he was on her, it was as if he had a smattering knowledge of her whole body, of her whole system, with no particular sequence, pouncing and pounding, screaming and moaning, moaning with pleasure, sweat gashing from every pore of each other’s skin. She had longed for such a feeling; she had not felt like this in a long time. She looked at him and smiled and kissed him goodnight.

Jackson was tired but yet could not sleep. “Why isn’t she at her home? Isn’t her husband looking for her”? He wondered. He wanted to wake her up and ask her but looking at her lying next to him made him feel accomplished. He wanted her to stay for another day or two or even every day. He had never imagined this moment although this is what he had always wanted.

Three days had passed without hearing from Samantha, he had sent a dozen of texts, and her phone went unanswered. Until the fourth day, he got something, "everything was great and all I needed was to let out the stress I was feeling but it was a complete mistake because I'm still married," She wrote. Jackson did not write back immediately. He considered this as a precarious situation and he needed to approach it in a more subtle way and not be drawn in his melancholy. He needed to find a balance between his feelings and emotions and that of not having Samantha completely.

Three weeks had passed without talking. Then Samantha called him asking him if they could meet. And so he obliged, they met over a meal and talked. They started hanging out often, she started to get fond of him and more intimate, and she was now more open about her relationship with Robert, and in one of their conservations, not without sobs, she managed to tell him her marriage had broken down. Her relationship with Robert had become a shell of its former self. For two years they had never lived together. Jackson could sense the heartbreak in her eyes. It was not that they never lived together, they could be. He could not press for more at this point, he did not want stretch what she was willing to share. He chose his words carefully. The guilt that had befallen him for dating a married woman suddenly crept away. He felt sorry that she had been alone for such a long time. But he felt more disappointed with himself for not knowing all this time and for not keeping in touch. He felt things would have been different.

In eight months, he had learnt a lot about her. It was exciting. But one morning a cold arm of fate struck him, he got an unexpected text that left him dismayed, all his feelings dismembered. “After all she had told and made him believe, that things between her and Robert would never work, “this must not go on I need to repair the relationship with my husband.” It read.

And there he was sitting hazily and pensively in the office that was well conditioned, but in his state the room was cold and hot at the same time. He had to complete his preparation for the presentation later in the day. He wished he had a particular dementia, not to remember anything about her at least until he was done with his work. She could have sent this text on another day, how could she be so cruel? He thought, she was aware of the presentation, it involved international donors, government agencies and mostly he was representing his boss who had travelled abroad. His nostalgia for her could not overshadow everything that everyone had been looking forward to, the presentation.

Disclaimer: This is totally fiction. Names and characters in the story do not exist.