FebulousFebruary 2025: Lost and Found

The thing I feel most guilty about is that I ate his pasta. I accepted his hospitality, ate his pasta and a day later slept with his wife.

Wait.

I can be honest with you right?

I know what you’re thinking.

Why don’t I apologise for the affair?

But, how could anyone not have fallen for Her, listened to her honeyed words and devoured each sweet lie she told? I wasn’t naive, it was worse, I was headstrong and she fed my ego, transformed my dull greying world by Midas-touching it all, without bringing any of the consequences.

We planned time together and I’d almost forgotten she was married, because for that time in London, she’d been only mine.

I didn’t know till I got to Vancouver that his flight was delayed and this meant I arrived before he left…the “friend” from out of town that I was, a lupine judas in a sheeplined coat.

How do you do?

Yeah, awesome y’all flew over.  I made you my special Italian Farfalle…you must be famished, plane food sucks. Anyways, s’nice out here this time of year and ****** would only get bored with me away on business.

No, no she won’t … I thought as I filled my fork shamelessly

Yet, seasoned with experience, now I would cough a little deeper than I should, were I to smell the savoury tang of salty capers, the sizzling of pungent garlic and rosemary leaves releasing their fragrant oil. (And now I know why you were a coward to shoot your rivals in the back rather than look them in the eyes…but I was 19 then and had no time for wisdom as I knew it all ) Yet, to break bread with him, and really see him, this real person, made what we’d secretly planned a more explicit betrayal.  Because I knew what I was going to do was wrong for him but right for me and that being with Her was more vital than morals or self respect or denying myself supper…

I cooked that meal once long after she  was a memory, and I choked a little on the stalks of guilt I’d folded in, guilt that I could have been a better person and declined his hospitality or hers, but I needed to feast on both.

Serena Gilbert, 36 , Maidstone