How It Feels Like To Be The Second Woman In Your Life

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You kiss me like there’s no tomorrow. You feed me, you hate seeing me getting cold, and you tell me I’m beautiful all the time. On days that we can’t be together, you tell me you miss me. You always tell me not to be sad because you hate seeing me feeling down. We fight and make up like a couple. We hold hands, we embrace and we cuddle. You call and ask where I am or what I’m doing. You text me and make sure everything’s okay. You’re really sweet, you want me to see the things I’ve never seen and try the things I’ve never tried. Nobody has been there for me like you do. Nobody has been as utterly kind and thoughtful, romantic and adorable.

I come near your desk, you smile, hold my hand and ask me to stay for a while, we hide our faces as we mouth the words, “I love you” to each other. They don’t know it, but we do like each other very much. As I walk back to my desk, you tell me you miss me, and ask if we can have coffee together on our break. Sure. It’s just coffee. People won’t interrogate. And we do have coffee together, pretending to be arguing about something work-related as we stay in front of the coffee vending machine and look at each other lustfully whilst trying to keep our cool. You realize that you got a text message, you never tell me who that is, because it’s a different phone from the one you call or text me with, but I know it’s her. I excuse myself and tell you that I have to go back to my desk as I have a lot of paperwork to finish. You smile, not knowing the stabbing pain I feel in the depths of my chest wall, and say okay. I force a smile back and walk away. You’re really quite numb sometimes, you reply to the text message and I see happiness in your eyes. I walk heavily back to my seat and feel the wrenching pain growing inside me. I can’t believe I let myself like you as much as I do now.

A few seconds, minutes, hours later, I get a text message from you, inviting me over to your place after work tonight. Sure. It’s just dinner. Nobody will know.  Nobody will notice.

We kiss. We cuddle. We tell each other how much we love each other. And at the back of my mind, I still ask myself why. There are days when you just disappear, and I tell myself I can’t argue, because you’re not obliged to tell me everything. I tell myself that I will stop this soon, that I’m not ready for another heartache, that not being committed means it’s not real, that it’s just a sudden leap of feelings that do not exist. That we’ve both just been hurt and we need someone to hold on to, that is why we feel this way, we feel like we love each other because it’s always been just the two of us together when we remember how hurt we’ve been the past few months. We think we love each other, but we don’t.

Maybe it’s wrong for me to put up with just being an option: the person you want to spend your time with when she’s not around, the one you share your heartaches with, the one you pretend to laugh with or to care about. You promised me you’ll fix this: that you’ll let her know I exist, that I can keep you. But maybe you’ve already forgotten. You’re there, but not really there. You’re mine, but not really mine. I never really had you, so I’ll never really lose you. I guess this is how it was meant to be… I have you and you have me. But then again, not really.

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