Does a story have a beginning and no end?

I used to think our story did. I used to think our story had a beginning, on that wet winter’s night when we first met. The first meeting, that first time we made love, that first night I slept in your arms, sure that I’d found love, with you. For me, that was the beginning of our story. The story of you and me, and I used to think our story would never end. That you loved me. That I loved you. That we’d be together, always. I used to think all of that, and that our story would never end.

Now?

I know I was wrong.

Now I know your story had a different beginning to my story. Your beginning, and my beginning, they’re completely different stories. Different plots. Different characters, even. I know how I saw you, and I know myself, but how do you see yourself? How do you see me? I thought I knew. Those weren’t even questions in my mind, because I was so sure, so certain, but now I know the reality is so different from those certainties that weren’t certain at all.

Everything I knew about you, everything I was certain about, it was a façade, an act, and I don’t know what to think anymore. But there is one certainty in my life. I know the story that I thought would never end is ending. That our story wasn’t a story at all, but only a chapter in each of our stories. That this chapter where we’re both characters is coming to an end. That we’re on the last page of that chapter. Our stories will continue, but they’ll continue in different books.

Perhaps they were always different books.

I know now that they were always different stories.

I can’t bear that thought, that knowledge, and I hate her. I hate her, I hate her, I hate her, but I love you. I love you, I love you. I should hate you, but I don’t, and I can’t bring myself to walk away from us, from you and I, but I must. I know I must, because when this started, I didn’t know about her.

It was just you and me.

You lied to me, and I believed you.

I thought there was you and me. Only you and me. I didn’t know about her, or I would never have let this happen. You didn’t tell me. You lied to me, from the very start, from that very first day, from our very beginning, and I know that now. Only now. I only found out about her last week. You don’t know I’ve found out about her. Not yet. You don’t know that we’ve talked today, she and I. Your wife.

She didn’t believe me to start with. She was in denial, just like I was. She didn’t want to believe, just like I didn’t want to believe. Now, like me, she knows. She believes. We talked, and I know she’s pregnant. The baby’s due in another two months. Your baby.

Yours and hers, and you’re leaving. Moving. Not just houses.

You’re going to a new job, in another city. In another country.

I already knew that, before I talked to your wife. I read the letter you’d written out for me. I read it on your Google Drive, and I know it’s for me. It has my name on it. It’s so formal, as if I’m an employee you’re terminating. As if I’m someone you barely know. I took a copy. I printed it out. I showed her, and she cried. She cried with me, she told me she was so sorry. She told me she loved you, and my heart was broken, for her, as well as for me.

I’m only nineteen, and you’re my first love. My only love. The only man I’ve ever loved.

I’m in my first year at university. I’ve seen friends who’ve been dumped by their boyfriends. Boyfriends that they loved. They cried, just like I’ve cried. Their hearts were broken, just like my heart is broken, but their hearts recovered. They found a new boyfriend, they found new love, and now they’re happy again, and they don’t know why they were so sad, so heartbroken.

“He was nothing special,” they say, smiling.

I hope I’ll be able to say that in six months time. I hope I’ll be able to smile like that in six months time. That’s in six months though. Not now. Now? I cry, and she cries with me, and she’s not me. She’s twenty eight. She’s been married to you for five years. She’s having your baby, and I tell her I didn’t know. I didn’t know you were married. I didn’t know about her at all, and if I’d known, I’d never have let what happened, happen. She believes me. She asks me what I’m going to do, and I can see the pain and the fear written across her face.

Fear, that I’ll take you from her.

Pain, because she loves you.

She loves you, like I do.

I told her. I already knew what I was going to do. You lied to me, and if I’d known, this would never have happened. You’d have been just someone I met one evening, a chance encounter, a smile, a few words of thanks, and goodbye. I wish now that’s all it’d been, but it wasn’t, and now I’m sitting in that Spanish Café, waiting for you to arrive, knowing this is the last time we’ll meet. Knowing that when we leave, I’ll be leaving by myself, without you, unlike that evening we met.

I told her what I was going to tell you. I told her that I was so sorry about what’d happened, and I cried on her shoulder. She held me, and she told me she loved you. She’d give you that chance. That second chance, and I hope you’ll take it, because she loves you so much. She loves you the way I would have loved you. She’s having your baby, and I’d dreamed of having our baby, but now I never will.

I told her I hoped it would work out, for her, and for you.

I don’t know if it will, but it’s for her sake that I hope that now, not yours.

I sit there in that Spanish Café, waiting for you to arrive, sipping on my coffee, and my thoughts are as bleak and grey as the winter’s rain outside. Inside, it’s warm, warm and comfortable, the way it was in here, the night we met.

That first night, almost a year ago now.

For me, love. For you, an affair.

I didn’t know that, then.

I know that, now.

We first met late one afternoon, in this same Spanish Café, and I remember as I sip my coffee, waiting for you to arrive. I was sitting at this same table, in the back corner, waiting for a friend, when...

“Hi, is that seat taken? Do you mind if I...”

I looked up, my eyes met yours, and it was if my breath had been taken from me. Your eyes widened, and I’m sure mine widened too. My body was jolted by an electric shock of ... I don’t know, but it was as if you’re someone I’d always been waiting for, and I hadn’t said a word. I wasn’t sure if I could speak. My heartbeat raced. My breath caught, and you’d looked at me. Into my eyes, as if I was everything to you, and you stopped speaking in mid-sentence.

I didn’t giggle. I didn’t do anything, not for a long moment, my eyes mesmerized by yours. By that perfect sky-blue, as blue as a summer sky, and I could gaze into those eyes forever.

“Please,” I managed to say.

You sat down, you placed your coffee on the table, opposite mine, and still your eyes looked into mine, and they seemed to read my soul. I couldn’t believe that I was this attracted to someone I didn’t know. A chance encounter, a stranger in the Spanish Café just down the street from the apartment building I lived in, and we haven’t talked. I didn’t know your name. You didn’t know mine. Thirty seconds, and I knew.

You were someone I could fall in love with. Seriously. You were.

My friend never showed. You and I, we talked, and the more we talked, the more attracted to you I was. You drew me out, you coaxed my words from me, and I glowed in your interest. You drew me out, and I found myself telling you about me, more than I’d ever told anyone, ever. That I was eighteen, studying here, at the university, away from home, and I told you about my family, what I was interested in, about myself. The real me, not the person everyone saw, but what’s inside me, in my head.

My hopes, my dreams, the things that interested and enthralled me, and you, you told me about you, you were in sales, you traveled for work, you were thirty five, but it was your interest in me that held me. A cup of coffee with my friend, that’s the only reason I was there, but I stayed because of you, and you told me you were in no hurry. You had nothing else to do, and that you enjoyed talking to me.

I remember everything from that evening we met. Every second, every word, every gesture, every touch, as we talked, and we talked for hours. We even danced, because that Spanish Café had a small dance floor, and you picked the music. You picked, and we danced. A slow dance, holding me in your arms, and to be held in your arms was a blissful happiness that I’d never imagined.

That happiness, that interest you had in me, and I in you, led us to stay, longer than either of us had ever intended, on and on, and we talked, we drank coffee, we ate a little, and we danced again.

Four hours after we met, we left that Spanish Café together, and I found myself inviting you to my little apartment for coffee, not wanting to part from you. Wanting to draw the evening out, and my apartment was only ten minutes’ walk. It wasn’t far at all, and you accepted. I asked you in all innocence, wanting only to keep talking with you, flattered by your interest. Intrigued by you, the older man, ruggedly handsome, completely unlike any of the guys my own age whom I knew.

Mesmerized.

I was mesmerized by you, by your attention, so unlike the interest guys I’d met at university, guys my own age or near, had in me. Those guys, they were so gauche, blatantly interested in me for what they could get, and I knew what they saw. A slender Chinese girl, smooth-skinned, silky-haired, a smiling innocent sensuality that back then, I had been completely unaware of. A sensuality you would make me aware of but back then, when I met you, I had no idea of.

You weren’t unaware at all. You were very aware of that, and then, I’d been aware of your interest, but you weren’t gauche. You weren’t blatant. Your interest didn’t scare me or threaten me, because it was me you were interested in. Not my looks, not my body. Me, and I responded to that interest. I asked you to come to my apartment for coffee, and I was so happy when you said yes.

Almost ecstatic, almost skipping down the road, down that tree-lined boulevard that led to my apartment building, turning to talk to you, and it seemed only natural that your hand found mine. It was as if my hand was already yours to hold, and you were still holding my hand when I opened my apartment door, and led you inside, took your coat and hung it beside mine, made us both coffee, sat on the couch, beside you.

My apartment was small. The entrance, a galley kitchen to the right, a small den to the left with my desk, and my bookcases. A single room with a small table near the kitchen, and a single couch against one wall, and my bed. It was that couch that we sat on that first evening, together, and as I sat, you drew me close to you, your arm around me, and you nuzzled the back of my neck lightly.

I remember that I giggled, and I shook my head, but I didn’t move away. I moved closer, into your arms, half-knowing what you intended, half-anticipating, half-turning towards you, and then, out of nowhere, we were kissing. Your lips on mine, gentle, but demanding, and I gave up all control to you in the eternity of that first, wide-eyed parting of my lips, that heart-stopping surrender of my mouth to yours as you turned further, taking me into your arms.

By then, by the time your tongue had slipped so delicately into my mouth, I wanted you to take me in your arms, and I turned towards you, moved with you as you guided me around, and back, until I was lying on my couch and you were lying beside me, close to me. So close, looking down at me, one arm under my neck, your hand on my shoulder, your other hand on my hip, your lips sealed to mine, and by then, your tongue was exploring my mouth, teasing my tongue, dancing with my tongue as I tentatively explored, my tongue followed yours, and I could hear myself.

Soft, excited little noises as you kissed me.

I’m sure that by then, you already knew I was yours, but you took your time, careful not to scare me. You already knew me better than I knew myself, and there was no sudden attempt to take what you were doing any further. Only your mouth on mine, eyes half closed as you tasted me, sipped at me, explored with your tongue, a delicate dance where your tongue slid into my mouth, danced with my tongue, tasted me, teased me, drew my tongue into your mouth, and I’d kissed before. I’d been kissed, but never like this. Never with such exquisite skill, never so gently, and my excitement, my arousal, my desire, grew slowly as you continued to caress my lips with yours, on and on and on.

Without thought, my body responded as a woman’s body responded, and that response was new to me. It crept up on me, through me, silently, unknowingly, and I didn’t realize what was happening to me. Only that your kisses weren’t enough, that I needed more. More of you, and my eyes looked into yours as you kissed me, my fingers brushed your face as yours brushed mine. Brushed mine, brushed my hair away, and when at least you broke that kiss, my lips blindly sought yours.

“You’re beautiful, Estelle,” you breathed, and then your lips met mine once more, and that brief absence left me craving more.

Those three words from you, they were sunlight on a flower, and my heart opened to you, as the petals of a flower open to the sun, welcoming. Back then, on that first evening, those first kisses, I’d had no idea of the pleasure my own body could give me. I truly was innocent, wrinkling my nose at those girls I knew who had crushes, who talked about their boyfriends with such excitement. Such desire. I’d had no idea that I, too, could experience such desire, and even then, there was no real awareness. Only the urging of my body, an urging that I succumbed to willingly, without resistance, wanting only your renewed kisses.

Your body against mine, and your body was close to mine as we lay together on my couch, you pressed against me as you held me in your arms, not crushing me, but holding me close, and never before had I wanted to be held like this, a man pressing himself against me so closely, so tightly. In the growing passion of that kiss, I turned a little more towards you, wanting that closeness, wanting you to hold me tight, wanting my breasts crushed against your chest as you held me, wanting your hands on me, so strong and assured.

I was aware of every nuance of your body against mine, of mine against yours. How soft I was, how giving, how I reveled in being held so tightly, how I welcomed that crushing of my body against yours, my breasts now crushed against your chest, and I’d never been so aware of my breasts before. How good it felt, how swollen and engorged my nipples were. How they ached, and that aching only grew as my arms vined around your neck, as your mouth sipped at mine, as a bee sips at the nectar of a flower it has taken for its own.

Half-turned towards you, my skirt rode up as in that desire to be closer to you, one of my legs lifted, to rest on yours, and yours slid between mine, the soft linen of your trousers rough against the skin of my inner thighs. Your hand, the hand that wasn’t beneath me, rain over my waist, my hips, my arm, sliding upwards to brush my hair back from my face as we kissed, on and on and on, and whenever your lips lifted from mine, mine sought yours again, blindly following as a flower follows the sun.

“Estelle,” you murmured, and your hand eased me away a little, a distancing that I half-resisted until you hand gently cupped one breast through the thin material of my top, and my camisole, resting there, sending a sudden rush of unexpected sensations surging through me. I hadn’t worn a bra that day. I didn’t really need a bra, and today was one of those days where I’d enjoyed not wearing one.

Now, I found another reason to enjoy not wearing one.

Your hand on my breast, cupping me, gentle and firm, all at one and the same time. A masculine possession of me that was as welcome on my body as your lips were on mine, and your hand on me left me limp, limp and wanting more. Your lips lifted from mine, and now I watched you. Watching you looking at my breasts, I was breathing hard, wanting more, but not knowing what it was I wanted, because I’d never felt like this before.

My swollen nipples suddenly and unbelievably seemed to swell even more, almost in an instant becoming painfully large and rubbery hard, the mere cupping of your hand on me no longer enough. Your hand began, very gently, to explore my breast, your fingers running over me, tracing the contours, sending ripples and shivers of pleasure and renewed excitement surging through me. I remember feeling my nipples swelling even more, so swollen and rubbery hard that the aching sensation was actually painful.

It was a weirdly exciting sensation, to feel my body reacting like that, out of my control, responding to you. I could hear myself involuntarily making quiet little breathy noises as your fingers continued to stroke me there, very gently, very slowly. Nobody except me had ever touched my breasts, and I lay there focusing on the sensations created by your fingers running across and around my breast and over my nipple, and I had no strength, nor the willpower to stop you, even if I’d wanted to.

I didn’t want to.

Somehow, under your fingertips, my breasts seemed larger, firmer, swollen in size, achingly full, unbelievably sensitive, with my nipples even larger and more swollen than they had been. Even more sensitive, if that was possible. Looking down at your hand on me, I could see my nipples pushing outwards against the thin material of my camisole and the top I was wearing, and I’d never seen my nipples like that before. Never felt them like that, and it excited me to look at myself.

I knew it excited you. You were a man, after all.

That thought brought another, seamlessly. That hardness that was pressed against me, and I knew what that was. Your arousal, and my body shivered hotly, my legs suddenly weak, all of me weak, and hot, and sensitive. Your fingers brushed across my nipple, lightly, as I watched and a surging sensation of excitement and pleasure emanated from that light touch, rippling through my body, bringing an involuntary gasp from me.

Your mouth nuzzled at my neck, across my cheek, finding my lips again, and my mouth opened blindly to yours once more. Your hand moved on me. Your fingers found my swollen nipple, stroked it lightly. You took it between your thumb and finger and, very lightly, you squeezed, then tugged at it through the thin material that covered me.

“Ohhhhhh.” A sudden involuntary reaction as a surging rush of pleasure overwhelmed my senses, my moan absorbed by your mouth as my back half-arched, pressing my breast against your hand, welcomed your hand having its way with me, as it explored and caressed and squeezed and tugged at my nipple again and again. It was so easy to let you do what you wanted. I didn’t need to do anything. All I needed to do was lie there, and accept the pleasure that your caresses were bringing me, and that pleasure held me enthralled.

“Estelle,” you murmured, between kisses. “Estelle,” and your lips breathing my name were a magical incantation before which any thought of stopping what we were doing, what you were doing, melted away, ice melting under the sun, and there was no resistance in me, none whatsoever.

“Estelle,” you breathed, and your hand on me, your squeezes and tugs and brushing caresses, seemed to feed and assuage that ache at one and the same time, every caress giving me pleasure, sending ripples of excitement that were ever more exquisite through me, feeding that desire for more that grew within me.

“Ohhhhh,” I moaned, between kisses. “Ohhhhh.”

Vaguely, I wondered how I could let someone touch me like this, so intimately, handling my body so freely, but that thought merely added to the rising tide of excitement I was feeling as your hand continued to roam freely over my breast, periodically squeezing and lightly tugging at my nipples, and every tug or squeeze brought a gasp or a moan from me. What would it be like to actually feel your hands touch my breasts, touch my naked skin, caress me even more intimately, and my cheeks flushed with a mix of excitement and shame at my own willingness to contemplate that particular thought.

Shame, yes, but when your hand lifted from my breast and began to unbutton my top, slowly, button by button, working downward, I didn’t stop you. I lay there, watching your face, knowing what your fingers were doing, and there wasn’t any shame. There was fear and excitement, combined with a brand new mix of anticipation and trepidation, my body overwhelmed with a helpless liquid heat that seemed to permeate outwards from my center, leaving me physically unable to move.

“Ohhhhh.” I gasped as you drew my top open, exposing the thin near-transparent black lace of my camisole, looking down and seeing my own clearly visible and painfully swollen nipples pushing the thin material outwards.

Your hand returned to my breasts, both my breasts now, because I was on my back, limp and hot and helpless as your hand ran over them gently, cupped them through the lace camisole and then, slowly, very gently, your eyes holding mine, you worked the camisole upwards, and I knew what you were doing.

“Ohhhhh.” That shuddering little gasp emerged involuntarily as you guided the thin lace upwards, exposing my breasts to your eyes, the first time a man had seen them. I knew this would be the first time a man would touch them, because why would you expose them if you didn’t want to caress them, to do with them what a man wished to do, and I lay there, before you, knowing I wouldn’t stop you.

Knowing I wasn’t even thinking of stopping you.

Your hand moved to cup and hold one breast, your palm and your fingers warm on my naked skin, touching my naked and exposed nipples, strange and exciting, sending another hot wave of excitement washing through me, delicious weakness as your hand slid over my skin, teasing my achingly swollen nipple again and again, every touch sending little ripples of pleasure and excitement washing through my body.

“Your breasts are so beautiful.” I could almost taste the excitement and enjoyment and desire in your words.

“I want to kiss them,” you added, your eyes searching mine, and I wanted you to kiss them too.

From your tone, it was a statement. You weren’t asking me, it was something you were going to do, and so I said nothing. I merely waited. Waiting was all I had to do. You’d do what you wanted to do, and I’d let you, or I’d stop you, but I didn’t want to stop you. I wanted you to kiss my breasts. Would it be as exciting as your hands? Would it be different? I didn’t know then, and I wanted to know so much.

Your hand continued to caress my breasts, both of them, now, and I found my back arching a little as I pushed them at your hand, offering them to your hand, biting my bottom lip to prevent myself moaning out loud as you played and teased and tugged gently at my all too painfully aching nipples. They felt so swollen that they might burst, so swollen that they did hurt, and I wanted you to tug and squeeze them again, hard.

I looked up at you, at your face above mine, looking down at me. Your hand continued playing with one breast as you pressed yourself against the length of my body, half-beside me, one of your legs half-over mine, almost between mine, pushing between mine. I was acutely conscious of your weight, and of the hard masculine presence pushing against my thigh in a long bulge. Even though I’d never felt that before, I know what that bulge was, and I shivered with excitement, my body reacting with a slippery heat that pooled inside me, at my center.

You looked back, you looked into my eyes, your hand moved on my breast, caressing me gently for what seemed to be an eternity, and your face drew closer. Closer still, until your lips once more touched mine. And as you kissed me, your hand squeezed my breast lightly, squeezed my nipple not quite as lightly, and your leg that was between mine pushed inwards, pushed higher, and my legs parted for you, without thought.

Pressure. Your leg solid and muscular between mine.

My thighs parting, that pressure slid high.

Bulging hardness against my thigh.

Your thigh moved higher between my legs, pushing firmly against that slippery wet heat at the juncture of my thighs. The pressure there sent a surging rush of pleasure through my body, jolting me almost as if it had been an electric shock, forcing a moan from me just as I opened my mouth wide to you, and my back arched, I pushed my breast hard into your hand, moaning again as you hand crushed my nipple, assuaging that ache that needed so much to be assuaged.

“Ohhhhhh.” Your lips lifted from mine, my head arched back, and I clung to you as your thigh moved against me, friction and pressure through my panties, just where I was most sensitive, drawing that helpless moan from me as I drew one knee back, parting myself wider for your leg to move freely. Your leg did, bringing another moan from somewhere deep within me, and then another as your movements elicited waves of pleasure that surged through my body with a heart-stopping intensity that demanded more and more. I could feel my own flooding wetness at the point where your leg pushed against me, a flooding slippery heat that was new to me; a hot clenching excitement that made its own demands.

Demands that my body pleaded to have met.

Your mouth lifted from mine at last, both of us breathing heavily as we gazed into each other’s eyes, and I knew I loved you already. Someone I’d only met a few hours before, but I loved you, and in that moment, I knew I was meant for you. That you were everything I’d ever wanted, and already I knew so much about you, and you about me. I wanted to know everything about you. Everything, and I wanted you to know everything about me, and I knew what I wanted as your hand slid from my breast downwards, down over my waist to my thigh, easing my skirt upwards to expose that point where your thigh pushed against me.

Exposing my little white panties, the ones with Hello Kitty embroidered on them, and you looked. You saw, and I knew you saw. you smiled and I lay there, breathing hard, embarrassed, excited, not quite moaning as you slowly, so very slowly and deliberately, ran your eyes over me, looking at my naked breasts, my stomach, my panties. The way your eyes ran over me brought a hot flush to my cheeks that spread outwards, from my face to my neck, and from there to my shoulders, and, slowly, downwards to my breasts. Not just that slow burn. My sex seemed to pulse with a wet, liquid heat that held me helpless, a black hole inside me.

Very deliberately, yours eyes looking down into mine, your hand now held my hip, held me firmly, with a firmness that said I was yours, and you urged me slightly towards you, your leg moving slowly and methodically between mine, rubbing against me so that there was no mistake about what you were doing.

“Ohhhhh ... ohhhhhh.” I couldn’t help it, those moans. Those sensations you created in me were so intense that I moaned out loud with each movement of your leg despite the embarrassment I felt.

“You’re beautiful,” you breathed, through those moans, smiling down at me, running your hand across my face, tracing my chin, stroking my cheeks, brushing my hair back from my forehead before sliding your fingers down my neck, and tracing them over my shoulders.

“You’re beautiful, I want to see you,” you murmured, and I didn’t even think about stopping you as you worked my top off me, and then my camisole. Naked. I was naked from my skirt upwards, exposed to you as I’d never been exposed to any man, and your eyes devoured me. I lay before you, helplessly in thrall to the excitement I felt, the sensations created within me by that slow frictioning of your leg between mine, the aching firmness of my breasts and my painfully engorged nipples amazed and surprised by how large they were. How swollen. How much they ached. Slowly, very slowly, unsure of what I was doing, I lifted my arms, moved them, moved until my hands rested on the couch above my head, surrendering myself to your eyes and your hands.

Surrendering myself to your desires.

Your hand explored my body, my breasts, my ribs, down over the taut flatness of my stomach, caressing every inch of my skin that was exposed, running down over my hips to the hem of my skirt, already eased upwards far enough to expose my little white Hello Kitty panties. Your eyes held mine as you brushed the hem of my skirt higher still, slowly raising it to expose my panties completely. I lay still before you, arms above my head, unmoving, my heart pounding wildly as you raised my skirt all the way to my waist.

You smiled as your eyes looked down, and your finger traced across the base of my stomach, tracing that white cotton that hid the most intimate part of me from your eyes, and your touch. My entire body trembled under the touch of your fingertips, and my sex pulsed with that slippery wet heat, a heat that held me enthralled. Enslaved. Captive.