Author's Note:
Before you start reading, please know that this long fantasy is, at best, a
slow
burn. There is little actual sex here--and that sex is not particularly graphic. If you want a quick spank-bank story, this one is definitely not for you. Instead, it's a story--as true-to-life as I could write it.
I think I'm gonna be sad
I think it's today, yeah
The girl that's driving me mad is going away
- "Ticket to Ride" by The Beatles
Chapter 1
I wasn't sad when Amy left the company and moved to New Mexico; I was relieved. You have no idea how relieved I was. The girl who drove me mad was moving away.
Thank God.
When I say "she drove me mad" I mean it. The unspoken thing between us was ridiculous, even though it was completely one-sided. Amy had no idea what she did to me; or so I very much hoped. It would do my career no good to have an HR complaint filed. Thus, I worked hard to keep my feelings to myself, to not make what she did to me obvious like a neon arrow pointed directly at my crotch. When we were in a meeting together, I couldn't look at her. If I so much as glanced her way, my eyes would lock onto her face. I would stare. I would
ogle
her. My heart would race. I would have trouble breathing. Yes, it was that bad.
How I felt about Amy was a problem in more than just a professional sense: I was married at the time. It wasn't a great marriage, but I was determined not to cheat. I was determined to keep my commitment, to keep my obligation. I had said "for better or worse" and, for the past few years, it was mostly for the worse. But I was going to stick it out as long as there was hope. Amy was a threat to my marriage, even though she had no idea she was a threat and I desperately wanted to keep her ignorant of how she affected me.
Amy was temptation personified.
You might not see it. She wasn't a classic beauty. Her nose was slightly too big for her face. Her butt similarly was a bit too big for her hips. She had a small tummy, as many mothers have. Some might call her petite or small--or maybe even dumpy. I didn't care about any of that. Her skin was pale white, like ivory; it was pure, as if untouched by the sun. I don't know if it was her makeup, but I couldn't detect any pores whatsoever. Her dark eyes were enhanced by heavy eyeliner she never failed to wear. The eyeliner matched her raven-dark hair and heavy eyebrows. Her porcelain face framed full, kissable lips which she covered with brilliant red lipstick. I didn't care what others might think about Amy's beauty; to me, she was Cleopatra and I was Marc Antony. One too-long look and I was hers for the taking. It was stupid to feel that way and I knew that; but I couldn't control how she made me feel. She drove me mad.
When I first met her, Amy was just about to end a difficult marriage of her own. While we collaborated together on a large project, she divorced and became a single mother, working a full-time job in a challenging environment while raising her young daughter, who was about two or three at the time we first met. Amy was roughly twenty years younger than I was. I used to tell myself, "
If only I was twenty--no ten!--years younger...."
I sat in hours-long meetings and pretended she was just another colleague when, in my heart, in my secret fantasies, she was my lover. The entire notion was ridiculous and I knew it. That didn't stop me from fantasies in which I held her tightly, kissed her, and spent the rest of my life with her--which was an utterly impossible dream.
Yes: I was ridiculous. I only hoped none of my ridiculous thoughts showed. I didn't want Amy, or anyone else, to ever guess what I was thinking--and I certainly never wanted my wife to realize she was no longer the love of my life.
Amy worked in a different department but we met about once a week to status a major initiative the company expected us to handle. It was kind of a big deal, involving complex accounting for multi-program production efforts. Every little detail needed to be perfect; the auditors were going to be scrutinizing everything we did. We had to align the business practices of multiple stakeholders, both horizontally and vertically. It was a total PITA. I worked on the project for months before Amy was assigned to help PM (project manage) the various pieces into something resembling a coherent whole. She was competent and professional. I only wish I could say the same thing about me. I saw her take a seat in our project "war room" and I was immediately smitten. I didn't even hear the VP introduce her to the rest of us; all I could hear was the pounding of my heart. It happened that fast. Each week, there were about twenty-five people in the war room, but it was Amy who caught and held my attention from the moment she first sat down.
I was married and she was married--soon to be divorced--so there was no way anything was going to happen between us. If nothing else, the ages were just too far apart. Still, I fantasized. To the extent my wife and I still had any kind of love life, it was Amy who fueled my passion at night.
We sometimes talked, as colleagues do. I forced myself to treat her as just another professional colleague. If she noticed I kept my eyes focused on anything but her, she didn't comment. I suppose that if she was at all aware of my lust, she probably thought she could do better. I'm absolutely sure she could have done better than me: I was a fat fifty-five-year-old man; she was a young, beautiful woman in her early thirties. Of course she could do better!
We spoke over the months and, bit by bit, she admitted to me she wasn't happy in her current position. She wanted to make a job change. I've noticed this before: people make changes in bunches. Get a divorce, change jobs, buy a new house. It's as if they want to deal with all the possible stresses at one time. Like ripping off a bandaid.
Ouch!
Amy ditched her husband and now she wanted to change jobs--at essentially the same time.
One day--at her request--we had lunch together in the company cafeteria. It was nothing special, just a public lunch. By then I had become sort of a mentor or coach to her. A mentor was something I could do, something that let me be closer to her. I coached her because I was the Senior Director of Revenue Accounting and she was a junior PM with high potential. As if that was the only reason. Still, any excuse to spend time with her was fine with me.
We quietly talked about her options. Nobody paid any attention to our whispers in the loudness of the cafeteria, with trays banging and people laughing at whatever they were laughing at. She told me she had been looking for a new job for a couple of months but nothing was happening for her--either inside or outside the company. She was getting frustrated.
I helped Amy with her resume and we talked about tailoring the resume for each job for which she was applying. I coached her to emphasize her experience in a manufacturing environment, managing complex projects with multiple cross-functional stakeholders. I know I helped her, because she landed an interview the next month, and then the job offer came three weeks after her interview. The only problem was that it was in Albuquerque, a thousand miles away. So, a divorce, a job change, and an out-of-state move. Like I said: stressful life changes come in bunches.
There was a lot of stress involved. Leaving the company was relatively easy but she had to negotiate the out-of-state move with her ex-husband because of the custody rules. From what I gathered from her cryptic comments, he was happy to see the last of them both. It turned out he was engaged to be married to his new wife, who was already pregnant. I guess he was eager to get his new life started without what he considered to be excess baggage.
As I said, I was relieved when Amy moved to New Mexico. I missed her, no doubt about that at all. But her departure meant that temptation had also departed. Nobody tempted me the way Amy did. Now I could focus on trying to save my own marriage.
Amy and I stayed in touch via LinkedIn. Every month or so I would reach out, just to see how she was doing. Every time I did, I wasn't sure what she would say. Had she found somebody else? Or was she still single? I never asked and she never volunteered any info about her personal life. All she told me was that she was enjoying the new job and that she was enjoying Albuquerque. She gave out zero personal details. I was afraid to press for anything more.
I wanted Amy to be happy but I dreaded hearing that she was with somebody else. Which was stupid, because I was still trying to make my own marriage work. But when had I ever been smart about Amy? Never.
Eighteen months after Amy moved to Albuquerque, my wife finally told me it was time for a divorce. No kids--thank God. She told me she wanted somebody who made more money and who was better in bed than I was. I understood--because our sex life had fallen to zero. Even at its best--in the first year of our marriage--it had never been what you would call amazing. We never had simultaneous orgasms. One of us would cum first, then the other. I guess she wanted more, and better. Like I said, I understood. I was never any kind of super sex stud. I thought she was okay with what we had together but, clearly, I was wrong about that. Apparently, I was wrong about most everything having to do with my twenty-one years of marriage.
Deanna was gone soon after she told me we were getting a divorce, moved into her own place and leaving me with the condo. At the time we owed more to the bank than the place was worth. She also left me with thousands of dollars of "joint" credit card debt. She left me with next to nothing in savings (though I had my retirement savings and the company's pension plan). I brought in a roommate to make ends meet. Within two months she had a roommate as well, though they shared a bedroom together. Good for her. I hoped he was everything she wanted. I hoped he made her scream with passion as she never had with me.
Meanwhile, I was now single and alone.
I was free.
Free to pursue my own dream: Amy.
*****
Chapter 2
I started with a LinkedIn message. Just another check-in.
How's life? How's the job going?
She replied the next day.
Not bad. I got promoted a couple months ago. How are you doing?
I'm doing okay. Glad to hear about the promotion. About the same time you were getting promoted, I was getting divorced. Final in five months.
I waited but there was no response. Finally, a couple of days later, I read:
Sorry to hear about your divorce. I know it's hard. I was in court for nearly a year. My ex was a total asshole, everything was a fight.
Anyway, that's all done now,
I typed.
Work is still fun and challenging. If my personal life is a shambles, at least my professional life is going strong.
