Day 6 – 8:30AM, New York City.

We head to Central Park, talking along the way about New York City, the places we’ve both been to and what happened when I had run out that night at 3:00AM in Manila. The conversation is open, honest, real, no pretence, no holding back, no blaming or accusing.

It surprises me how well I’m listening to him and how much he tells me. It’s almost like I’m talking to someone who isn’t my husband. I thought I knew the man I had married, but the more we talk, the less sure I am. It’s as if I knew the man he projected, rather than who he really was deep down inside. It’s jarring, thinking maybe our whole relationship was built on lies.

As we walk around the lake, he tells me about her and where it all began for him; when she became his fantasy – the one who got away. It hurts to listen to the man I love talk about another woman with such fondness and protectiveness. It’s cathartic for him. I can’t decide what it is for me. A part of me wants to listen and be supportive. Another wants to understand. The rest went into nuclear meltdown when the force of the initial impact hit  on d-day.

The other woman was a friend he’d met in school. He was friends with her brother and he would hang out at her place. Back then he was bullied and she was one of the more popular girls. They never talked when he went over, but one time he called her house to find out where her brother was. She answered and instead of just telling him she didn’t know, she ended up having a chat with him. Their chat led to flirting and him asking her why he never saw her at church. She said she would be there on Sunday just for him, and he laughed and said she wouldn’t show up.

That Sunday she did show up and he felt great about it, until she ignored him for another guy who was there, who turned out to be her boyfriend. It became confusing for him when she’d flirt with him and then ignore him. She was like a drug he knew was bad for him, but couldn’t get enough of.

One night during a youth meeting at church, they ended up alone in a room when the others had wandered out. He went to leave and she broke into tears, sobbing and accusing him of ignoring her and not taking her hints that she wanted to be with him. He told her she had a boyfriend and was ignoring him, not the other way around. Their confession of feelings for each other led to their first kiss.

They were interrupted by the others returning, but that night James went home thrilled. His first kiss with a girl. One he liked. One who was popular and every other guy wanted. It was an ego boost for a young bullied boy used to rejection. Plus she had a boyfriend. Which meant she was choosing him over the other guy.

It didn’t matter that she stopped paying attention to him after that. Inside he believed she wanted him. He couldn’t get that kiss out of his head. They met again in secret. He stole the keys to his dad’s office and organised to meet her there alone.

That night they made out and would have had sex if his dad hadn’t shown up and put an end to it.

“The memory of that night never went away. It was like a fantasy stuck in my head. I wanted to meet up with her again after to finish what we’d started, but it never happened,” James says.

Not until that night… I bite my tongue to keep it in and keep listening to his recount.

They never got the chance to rendezvous again. She stayed with her boyfriend, but eventually they broke up. James had hoped she’d get together with him, but she chose someone else. Then someone else. It was like she ended up with every other guy except him. Still, through the years, he hung around as a friend and whenever he moved on or met another girl, she’d show up, call, make him feel needed.

After he’d migrated overseas and met me, they still occasionally talked, but he’d lost interest by then. They never spoke again until he learnt her dad had been terminally ill and sent his condolences. She spoke to him a little, shared with him what was going on, and he ended the conversation there. Another year would pass with on and off attempts of greeting each other and re-establishing communication, but nothing eventuated.

One day she called and told him she’d fallen pregnant. She didn’t want to marry the guy and was unhappy with him. James was there for her, spoke to her and pitied her, and this coincided with a trip to Manila for him. He hadn’t told me he’d met up with her there, or the fact when he was leaving, she told him to dump me and be with her. She’d begged him to take her overseas with him.

“She was still messaging me when I was at the airport,” he says, “begging me to take her with me.”

He’d considered it back then. Seriously considered it. It hurts to hear him say it. To know that for almost nine years he never told me about this girl, never told me they were in contact or of this meeting, or the fact if he had told me I could have seen trouble back then and warned him. That somehow I could have protected us and he could have too. But it was too late for all that now. We could both see it. The damage had been done and their roots went deeper than just that one night.

“I wanted to help her.” This was the girl he’d wanted from school and who had never been his. Now she was pregnant with another man’s child and she was saying she wanted to be with him.

“She was just using you,” I say. He falls silent, like he can’t accept it, and I know somewhere inside his fantasy can do no wrong.

For whatever reason, James said no to her offer of being together. A few months later he proposed to me, and a year later we were married. He still kept in contact with this girl now and then during our marriage. She ended up marrying the guy who got her pregnant and contacted James months later to ask for money because it was expensive to raise a child. I don’t ask him if he sent her anything. Right now, I don’t want to know.