Run, Daddy, Run
How a 20-something examines the relics of his affair with an older man
On the day he left, I spent the afternoon smoking my feelings away in the cafe where we first drank coffee together. That time, he told me he had a wife, though she was away, and that on each night we’d spend talking about the peculiarities of each other’s life, he had a kid waiting for him at home.
When everything started, I thought I had it all figured out. I made a note to myself: It always begins with detachment, that I am distinct from him, and I only look at him from a distance. That he is here for the now, and that he shall disappear and I will be fine, for he is a mere blip in my downtrodden life.
He understood this when we decided to push through with our charade. We would not ask about each other’s day through text. We would not expect each other to be there just because we asked each other to, because we sort of wanted to be together. The whole idea seemed to be most appropriate for him, another addition to the rituals that had defined his married life: a phone book studded with many suspect names, a photo album almost empty save for receipt screenshots, a car tidy and washed every week and always smelling like the same thing: pine, hand sanitizer, sweet white musk.
We do not add each other on…
