True Story

I’ve hinted at this one a couple of times, but have never written the whole thing up in one solid retelling. For the purposes of this story, let’s assume my first name is “Andrew.” Other names have been changed to protect the reader from initials and too many parenthetical reminders.

Upon my graduation from college I joined a financial institution’s training program, and upon graduation from training I interviewed and auditioned for a number of Regional Managers, Assistant Vice Presidents, and Senior Officers to attempt to land myself a plum gig in a well-heeled area.

I’m pretty sure I won my assignment over lunch with the team.

Led by the Regional Manager, with AVPs and Officers in tow, we descended fifteen strong on a fancy Italian restaurant in the heart of Ann Arbor for a break in the interview schedule. While I certainly knew that the interview spotlight was still solidly in place, I knew that this was a time where I could maybe let my hair down a little bit and have some fun with the day. These seemed like good people, and I wanted them to see I was not only well equipped to handle the job, but to handle being part of the team as well.

I didn’t even look at the menu. I was too busy talking with some of the team, offering up my good restaurant stories, and regaling them with my history with an apron and a spatula. The server caught the table before I could decide on a meal, so I just winged it. “Bring me whatever you’d order yourself, so long as there’s no mushrooms in it.”

That caught everyone off guard a little bit, but it loosened the table up. I remember catching shit from a couple of people over the next few months about that being a “calculated move,” and wondering if I had read that in an interview book somewhere. I had to laugh. I was just ill prepared, and I was pretty sure an Italian restaurant could come up with something edible for me. Anyway, sitting across the table from me at lunch was one of the Officers in this group, Carol, and she and I spent the rest of the lunch providing the jokes, the punch lines, and the running commentary that kept everyone loose until we got back into the grind of the interview.

Carol was almost old enough to be my mom. Well, maybe if we’re talking about one of those girls from the After School Specials who gets knocked up in the eighth grade. Regardless, she was a willowy blonde with a terrific body for a 40 year old, and a ballsy streak a mile wide. Were I remotely close to her neighborhood age-wise, and were she not married, I’d have been pursuing her heavily. She was friendly, funny, successful, and not at all shy.

I remember upon her return from a weekend in Toronto with her husband, she told us a story about visiting a strip club for the very first time. It happened to be “amateur night.” Upon gentle prodding from one of the dancers, she disappeared backstage, was outfitted in something slinky by a working girl, and gave her husband a lap dance onstage in front of a few dozen appreciative patrons.

No, not shy at all.

I ended up landing in her branch office, and we became fast friends and an odd couple of bad influences. A drink after work? Try eleven until eleven. A quick lunch? Let’s hit the mall and wander around for a couple hours. Too sunny and warm on a Tuesday morning at 9AM? Got your clubs in the trunk?

She was terrific. We were practically inseparable at office Christmas parties and events like weddings and barbecues, much to the delight of my girlfriend at the time (my eventual fiancée, wife, and ex-wife) and Carol’s husband Andy, who both appreciated how our friendship and ability to lighten the mood kept them entertained at the driest of functions.

One night after a spur-of-the-moment $175 dinner and bar trip that left us both giddy from the wine and gin, I walked her out to the car. She was absolutely plastered. So was I. Carol turned the hug I offered her into a quick kiss. On the lips. And she was looking at me differently, as if it was going to be my move from here.

I told her I’d see her tomorrow and walked away, not really processing the purpose of that look until the drive home. I couldn’t. There’s no way. I had a girlfriend now, and she had a husband. She’d always had a husband. Granted, it was her third, but still. Under other circumstances? Absolutely. She was definitely an attractive woman, and the more you knew her, the sexier she got.

We never talked about that kiss. I think she preferred to maintain the illusion that in her drunken stupor she had somehow forgotten about that kiss, that look.

We had to talk about the other kiss though.

Six months after that first kiss I piled three of my co-workers, all 40-something women including Carol, into my SUV for an hour plus drive to a work-mandated barbecue. I had left my girlfriend behind, but she and I were supposed to catch up after the barbecue to watch movies until late into the night.

It wasn’t until that “late into the night” that I managed to get over to her place to see her.

There were too many beers in the hot sun that day. As the driver, I had to rein it in a bit and be the rational and sober one. Not Carol. 5PM rolls around, and I’m checking my watch. 6PM. 7PM. The sun went down around 9PM, and Carol is sitting poolside with the last of the die hard drinkers left from the barbecue. “We’ve gotta go, I’m supposed to be meeting Jean.”

She looked up at me from her beer with playful eyes. “I don’t want to go just yet. Let’s swim.” And with that, she jumped – fully clothed – into the pool. She was drunk, and I was laughing.

Carol came to the surface, shook the water from her face and slicked her hair back with both hands. She looked up to me on the deck, but her eyes weren’t playful anymore. I recognized that look. I remembered that look. She parted the water with slender arms and a slow scissors kick propelled her over to the deck, where she had come to rest. “I know you want to come swimming with me, right?” I looked to the shallow end of the pool to a couple of co-workers from another region swapping stories, and over to the lounge chairs where a few more were in assorted stages of relaxation – from comfortable to full-fledged passed out. If anything beyond just flirting was going to happen, I was going to get caught.

I did the math in my head in an instant. I’m 23. She’s 40. She’s the attractive one. She’s got the party girl reputation. I’ve got no reputation to spoil.

In an instant I had stripped down to my shorts and dove over her head to a far corner of the pool. She pushed off the side wall in pursuit, only coming up for breath after she had caught two handfuls of my ass underwater. We weren’t just flirting anymore.

“Can I tell you how long I’ve wanted to do this?” That was the last thing one of us said before I kissed her. Or she kissed me. I don’t even really remember who said it, but for that moment it could and should have been either of us taking charge.

Fully clothed, utterly drenched, and completely horny, Carol was shameless. So was I. We were absolutely making out like tenth graders in front of a dozen or so drunk co-workers. Including the two from my office for whom I was the only way home.

I didn’t care. We were groping each other in the pool for at least half an hour, breaking only to remind each other how long we’d been sharing this mutual attraction, but never bringing the reality of girlfriends, husbands, or Monday at work’s uncomfortable tension into the mix.

Never in my life have the forces of shamelessness and self-consciousness done such vicious battle with shamelessness prevailing. I knew I was insulated from criticism here. I was single. I was seduced. I’m just a guy. Would you expect any less?

After kissing and groping madly in front of people we knew for about a half an hour, she and I went out to the car to get toweled off. I sat her on the tailgate and was mussing her hair dry with a damp rag, kissing her gently in the process. I think that’s when she said it the first time.

“Andrew, I think I’ve been falling in love with you for a long time.”

I was completely dumbfounded. Shocked. Startled. However you can explain that feeling of being broadsided by a bus, that was me. I wasn’t sure where this was going when it started an hour ago, but I damn sure didn’t think it’d end up here. As is the innate ability with all men, I managed to deflect that weighty statement into something that certainly sated my drunken would-be concubine.

We got back into the car, and Carol took the front seat. The two 40-something women who I was driving home were wearing knowing smirks on their faces. Carol wasn’t fazed. Frankly, neither was I. I think having worked with Carol for years, they knew this was something of which she was capable, but maybe they never believed they’d see it with their own eyes.

Or hear it with their own ears. Carol grabbed my hand off of the steering wheel and held it steadily in her own over the drive back to where we had all parked. We weren’t two miles away from the party when Carol mused aloud to no one in particular, “I married an Andy, but I’m falling for an Andrew.”

I’m never going to forget that line. That’s going to stay parked in my memory banks forever as one of the most warm, complimentary, confusing, trapping, and frustrating things ever said to me in one breath. The emotion that took over for me in that moment was confusion. I had dove headfirst into that water knowing full well that it could end in a kiss or better. I was confident though that there was little chance the worst-case scenario would arise.

Sorry kid, snake eyes.

It was the right girl, ten years too early. It was the right time, if not for some loyalty I felt to give my girlfriend the chance she and I deserved. It was the right kiss, if for no other reason than I thought it was destined to be captured in a time capsule existing in that night and in that drunken bliss alone.

I don’t know where Carol expected this to go, but I couldn’t and wouldn’t follow her there. If I was going to get through this evening, I had to help her understand that this was a one night stand and wasn’t going to work as a factor of anything more than lust.

We drove mostly in silence, our traveling companions too shockingly chagrined to say much of anything to what they had seen. I was quietly mustering up all the resolve I had to have the conversation with Carol we needed to have to get things straight, just as soon as I could get these other two out of the car.

We got back to the parking lot at work, and said our uncomfortable chuckling goodbyes to our co-workers. As soon as they had pulled away in their cars, I looked over to Carol and started in. “Look, I…”

She stopped me gently with a smile. “Don’t. Let’s not worry about anything right now. This is all I want tonight.” She leaned over and kissed me. That kiss said so many things – “I love you,” “Thank you,” “I needed this,” and “I’ll miss you,” all at the same time. She pulled away, still damp from the pool but positively glowing in the moonlight. “Before I go, there’s something I’ve always wanted to do…”

“What’s that?”

“This.” And with that, her head disappeared into my lap for the next half hour.

“Thank you,” was the last thing she whispered to me as she climbed out of the truck and headed over to her car. I buckled back up and headed home to take a quick shower before finally catching up to Jean at her place, asleep on the couch at 3AM.

“Where were you?” were her first words to me as she cleared the fog from her eyes at that ungodly hour.

“I’m so sorry. I couldn’t get Carol out of the pool.” At least I wasn’t lying.

To Carol’s credit, we had lunch on Monday and spent all of five minutes talking about what had happened on Friday night. She never minimized anything, but we both acknowledged that we enjoyed each other too much to wreak that kind of havoc on our own lives. She and I handled it superbly.

We definitely remained close, but we never got close to this happening again.