"Do you miss her?"

I'm helping her make dinner.
I have wine bottle in my hand and I consider taking a sip but I don't. I can feel the slow call and subtle whisper to take a sip as I like the smoky taste on my girl's lips.

We finish prepping dinner and her tiny hands wrap around my waist. She scratches my neck and I turn to kiss her and she pounces on me, kissing me like we'll never kiss again or we haven't kissed in days. She tugs at my belt and her small hands slip down inside and she's tugging at them like a small child frustrated by packaging preventing them from reaching a brand new toy.
She gets down on her knees and she's moaning and I carry her to bed and pull her clothes off and we take our time and we lay exhausted on the bed, hot, spent and time passes.

"Do you miss your ex-wife?"
The beat drops.

We talk about it for a bit and her eyes well up in tears and I decide it's time to share some feelings. I parcel them out as though their weight is measured in gold, because, a real man, remains borderline inscrutable and impossible to decipher. His woman can only briefly make sojourns into the wall he has built to separate him from the world. Like an illusionist, the secret is the allure, to show her the how and why....she'll find another show.

It's like cutting off my arm to say what comes next.
She sits in my lap and we both acknowledge that this has turned into far more than we both anticipated.

I tell her the truth.
That I feel very strongly about her and that this has become far more than I anticipated.
That I had considered cutting it short to prevent this....but that I missed the window of opportunity where that still seemed feasible.

We air out our fears in the light of the candles in my bedroom. Cool night air blows and the candles flicker and we take solace in the mutual acknowledgment by the other as to how we feel. The boogeyman seems less daunting now that he's been outed. Rather than hoping, suspecting we were on the same page, we breathe a collective sigh of relief in at least hearing that we are reading from the same script.
She climbs into my arms, and presses her face close to mine, her hair tickling my face, and we sleep.