In the two months since I have quit my job, I have discovered three things about myself. One, I really can actually survive without Starbucks again. Two, that I feel more alive when my life is an adventure. Three, that being on first name basis with the local florist's delivery stud is amusing at my age.

Every time I hear that stud's rap at my door, I feel my heart flip and dive. I also know that sometime that night, my phone will ring and I will hear Terry's voice again.

Rap, rap, rap.

"Judas! Those shorts should be outlawed!"

"I put them on just for you, Betsy."

"Well, in that case, turn around and give me a thrill."

"He sent you peonies this time."

"I can see that."

"And the roses."

"He likes roses. He thinks they are classy."

"Did you get a job yet?"

"I went on an interview. Fingers crossed, eh?"

"Fingers and toes."

Interviews have entered a new phase for me, I tell Terry that night when he asks me how this one went. Now I am interviewing them more than they are interviewing me. Did they pass, he asks me.

Yes.

They passed.

I want this job.

Terry offers to have a friend of his hack into the company's computer to manipulate the HR files so that they will show that I have been awarded the job.

"Don't you dare!" I say and laugh at his cheek.

"Lie, cheat, steal ... you know my philosophy about getting ahead in life," he responds, deadpan.

"And you do it with such style. It's your only attractive feature."

"Only attractive feature? Are you trying to break my heart?"

"I think once is enough, don't you?"

I don't know why I say this. It just comes out ... this big old blurt of a stupid thing to have said to a man to whom I have been given the chance to be something other than the woman who once abused his love of me.

"That was awkward," I say when he says nothing. "Sorry."

"No worries." He says it quick, short. We have had to learn to overlook the verbal blunders we have made as the weeks have slipped by. "How's the car, love? You get it looked at yet?"

"Er ..."

"Betsy, you swore to me that you would take care of that."

"Dad, I will, I promise. Tomorrow."

He groans.

"Where are you tonight?" I ask, knowing he is not in Madrid or he'd have called me hours earlier, from his office. 

"London. Have a presentation tomorrow."

"You want to do a practice run with me now?"

He chuckles. It sounds so warm and manly. I wish I could be there to see his face, his body, when he chuckles like this. "And if you manage to stay awake through the whole thing, then I'll know it's going to be good for the potential clients, eh?"

"I like hearing your voice. Maybe I just wanted to keep you talking."

"Maybe so."

Neither one of us says anything for a little while. This is complicated enough without me sending out the mixed signals I keep doing. One minute I'm gushing about how great it is finding out what a good buddy he can be for me. The next, it seems, I'm saying something suggestive.

The truth is, I don't want him for a friend. I want him for a lover. But friendship is what he's offering. I take it and feel lucky. He is not a man who offers friendship easily but when he does, it is a rock.

Besides, there is no room in his life for me as anything but a friend. He has a lover. Her name is Miranda and she is the reason he now lives in Madrid.

Miranda.

I googled her name and found a few pictures of her. She is quite beautiful ... and younger than I thought she'd be. He says he has told her about me but I am positive he has not.

Perhaps I am reading far too much into the flowers. He says he sends them to me to make the new apartment more cheery and to keep my spirits up as I search for a new job. He remembers how I used to get all happy and gushy when he sent me flowers back when we were lovers.

Is he sending some mixed signals of his own? Terry and his sense of honor are anything but convenient.

"Let's say you get this job. When will they want you to start?" he asks and if I did not know him as well as I do, I might even think this question had just occurred to him.

"Well, I told them I could start in a couple of weeks. The sooner the better but I have just a few matters to clear up first. Of course." My bank balance is awful low. And the sooner I get this job and save some money, the sooner I can maybe swing a better place to live. Besides, I want this job. But I have something on my calendar that cannot be moved, even for a new job.

"And they probably won't give you a vacation for a year. Isn't that how American companies do it?"

"Sure." He's fishing. He wants something. He is also testing me. I decide to test him. See if I am figuring him out. "Why did you send me peonies today? They are so fresh, by the way. But still ..."

He clears his throat. I've thrown off his rhythm. I smile into the phone and picture his irritated scowl. "I'm going to be in Puerto Rico next week and ..."

"Peonies, Terrence?"

"Why don't you let me fly you down to join me? Last chance at a vacation in a year, Bets."

"What? Puerto ... Rico?"

"It's an island. You may have heard of it?"

Through it all ... through finding him again ... through living every day in the hopes I'll hear from him ... through the pleasure of knowing I have made it right with him ... through the recognition that I had to go through this life the way I have just to get to the place where I could see what I'd done to him ... and through to understanding that through it all he'd never really meant to reject me as totally as he had ... through to now when I have accepted that finding him again does not mean anything more than that we can both be at peace ... and what are we playing at?

"I seem to have some vague recollection, Terry."

I see the sands of the beach but then I am swallowed up in the jungle on the mountainside. It is cold even in the perpetual heat. It is immense and smells of peaty soil. He has led me off the trail despite my protests. I am trembling and clutching his belt as he moves through undergrowth that drips on us as we move.

When he stops, I am not ready for him to reach behind, take my hand and draw me in front of him. I do not like the way he pushes me before him. My feet do not know where to step but he keeps pushing until I suddenly slip. His hands on my hips move instantly and his arms gather me to him, keep me from falling as I feel my body drop.

My heart is banging in my chest. His mouth is at my ear. He whispers in husky words ... he has me, I am safe ... but I am not safe for he has led me off the beaten path and into an unknown world where it is slippery and trees are so tall and  when I look up, I cannot see the sky for the canopy.

"The plane leaves tonight. I'll meet you there in two days."

"No."

He asks if I hear the sound of falling water. I have turned my face to look at him. He looks so dangerous. I ask him if this reminds him of his jungle training. He looks at me. Serious. Sly. He asks if I'd like to learn a few survival tricks.

"No? You sure, love? Going once ..."

"I don't think I could go there twice with you ... if that's what you have in mind."

"What do you think I have in mind?"

"Survival."

His left hand has slid up under my shirt. It is warm. It cups my right breast and then kneads it as he looks into my eyes. Sure, I tell him, teach me something.

Say you and I are on the run from the bad guys, he begins. He grips me in tighter. My hands go behind him to find his back pockets. I slip my fingers inside them and pull him in even tighter behind me. We're on the run in this jungle, I say, agreeing to the set up. Now, he says, his breath hot on the side of my neck, when the chips are down, what's your first action in this situation?

I would follow your lead, knowing you will know what to do, I say. He kisses the side of my neck. And if I tell you to take off running, fast as you can, to follow me where I lead, then you'd do it, he asks me. The bad guys are after us, then I follow you, so yeah, I'd run after you, I answer him as his right hand wiggles its way past the snap of my shorts until I can feel his fingers searching for entry. I moan and my head falls back on his shoulder.

Then you've passed your first test, he says, because you have to decide to commit to the leader. I commit to you, I whisper. Next test is action, he says. He slowly removes his hands from my skin and steps in front of me. My knees are shaking ever so slightly. Will you follow me, no matter how it scares you, he asks. I know I am in trouble now. But I will follow him, not because I'm scared but because I want to experience whatever it is he's leading me into.

When I nod at him, he gives an evil chuckle and asks if I'm really sure. Absolutely, I say, and put my hands on my hips. He looks me up and down. One more tip, he says. And then he tells me that to keep from slipping in this damp earth that I must plant my foot heel first, set it down and be ready to spring onto the other foot before I have the chance for that foot to slip. Okay, I say, now on my toes because I know he's about ready to turn and run away. I am ready to follow him. I rub my hands together. Another tip, he says. If you see a snake, keep moving. My face probably goes stark white. He knows I am afraid of snakes.

This is when he giggles. I go to slug him for that mean joke but as I reach for him, this is when he pivots and lopes off. And so I race after him, down slippery footholds that I find the way to maneuver. It is exhilarating. I am flying. I keep my eyes on him and see him each time he looks back at me and notice each time he picks up the pace.

And so I see instantly when he simply drops from view. I hear his voice scream at me to keep running, to follow him ... but even if he had not, I am running so full out that I cannot stop.

Then I am falling.

My breath leaves me.

In my ears, the crushing sound of a waterfall. In the moments left to me, I look down and see blue brown water in turmoil. Instinct makes me hold my breath and my nose just before I am dunked into the water. As I fall underneath the surface, my hands flail out to stop my descent and I look up to where I know to follow the light and keep my orientation. Terry has taught me this and it flashes in my brain how I have learned some cool things like this from him.

And then I am kicking my feet to climb back up to the surface. I explode through, screaming in delight. He is waiting on me. He is laughing. He reaches for me and begins dragging me over toward some rocks. I am clutching onto his shoulders and I'd have a tough time swimming with the weight of my clothes but Terry would never risk me drowning. His rugged strength and sure masculinity turn me on in a way I don't ever remember any man turning me on.

Over at the rocks, he guides me to the shallows. It is muddy beneath my feet. His hands are pulling my shorts open and then down over my hips. I am dragging his soaked t-shirt up his chest and then over his head. He shrugs it down his arms and I clutch his bicep with my left hand as my right drags my shorts over each shoe and then toss them behind me in the same direction I've seen him throw his t-shirt.

He pins me against the muddy bank and fucks me as I pant and tell him 'harder.' We don't even seem to be breathing. We cannot seem to fuck hard enough until he finally grits his teeth and leverages his entire body to where I feel I am swallowed inside him even as he is buried in me. And after, we laugh and swim nude under the spray of the waterfall. And then he is floating on his back, his eyes closed, his arms out. I tread water and watch him.

When he opens his eyes, he looks at me as if he's been thinking about me. I say nothing. He swims toward me. I feel shy when he looks at me with such a serious look. When he is close, he puts a hand out to me and I drift into his hold. I slide my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist. He treads water and kisses me. This is the first time he says he loves me so much. So much. I can only hold him and tell him I feel the same way.

"What if I promise no survival training maneuvers?" he asks, his voice deep and uncompromising.

"No, Terry. I'm not going to mess you up again. I'm not going to be the other woman."

"The last four times I've called you, Betsy, I have called from London."

"I ... what?"

"Did you not notice? That's not like you, Bets."

"It's not like you to play games, Terry."

"No games. I don't live in Madrid any longer. Haven't in a month."

"Oh."

"That's all you want to say?"

"Tell me you didn't do this for me. Tell me I haven't made you think I am worth that ... I'm not the girl you knew, Terry."

"Nor am I the boy you knew."

"Things are complicated here."

"I know. I can help."

"I don't want you messed up in this. It's too much to ask, even of a friend like you."

"You're not asking. I'm offering. Come to Puerto Rico with me. I'll come back with you for the trial. You could do with someone like me by your side and you know it. I am good in these situations."

I whisper his name through tears that have been held back for months through sheer willpower. He murmurs in my ear, tells me he will not let me down, that he will not let me go through this alone. Just come to Puerto Rico, he mutters, come forget the mess I'm in for a little while.

"But what about you?" I ask him when I can swallow the tears and talk again. "What if we meet there and discover there is nothing between us but the past? It isn't fair to you."

"I can take care of myself."

"I hurt you so badly once ..."

"And I hurt you."

"I never wanted you to know about this ... about the trial ... about the mess my life became. I don't want you to feel sorry for me. I can survive this. I know I can."

"I'm coming there, Elizabeth. And you know I am."

Every fear I've been living with seems to coalesce in this one moment, standing on the bottom step, looking up at a building with light grey granite columns. People stream down the wide expanse of steps toward where I stand, flat footed. I wonder what they were doing in there, up those steps, inside that building.

This is a day I knew would come. It is a day I've lived with ever since my husband ... now ex-husband ... was indicted for embezzlement.

People survive shame. I know this. I've always known it.

But in the midst of it, it can seem it will kill you.

This reminds me. I gaze around where I stand under a brutal sky. "She's a brunette. You can't miss her. Just don't trip over your tongue."

He clicks his tongue against his teeth. Then: "No promises. That was our agreement, wasn't it? Or did I remember it wrong?"

I turn to look at him and fix him with a look that is equal parts nerves and need. "That 'no promises' part was not about this. And you know it. If you are going to give me a hard time, then you should leave now."

"I believe she has arrived," he says, suddenly soft with his strength.

Turning to my right again, I see her legs coming out of the car. I remember the first time I saw her legs. Fucktwad Ben was sitting with her in a restaurant he'd invited me to. He did it to humiliate me. It wasn't ever enough that he'd been cheating on me as I turned a blind eye, trapped in a marriage I clung to because I was too proud to walk away. No, he had to begin embezzling to pay for the extramarital affairs ... and this bitch got the final largesse and diamonds while I lost my share of everything we jointly owned when the federal government clamped their mitts on our entire net worth in case it was needed to pay off any judgment against my stupid husband.

Two years later, and we are finally at the trial. I want him to be convicted even though I know that if he is, I will face years of fighting an uphill battle to get some of the marital proceeds, as they call them, back from the federal government, which will claim it is ill gotten gains from the embezzling and therefore forfeit to seizure.

Terry's hand rests on my hip. Casual. Possessive. Protective. I still cannot believe he is in my life again when I need him most. I remember him saying to me that he'd once needed me to believe in him ... back then, in our past, when we were falling away from each other after Walt's death on a mission. I look up at him and know he realizes that I do believe in him.

He gestures with his free arm. I let him guide me up the steps. At the door, I hang back. He is graceful in how he takes my hand in his and then puts it over his forearm, to give me something solid to grasp as I make the decision to enter the courthouse. Once through the metal detectors, I slip my hand over his arm again.

You spend your life thinking you can stop anytime you go wrong. You think you'll know. You never do. If you could just stop for a while, you could retrace your steps until you are able to reclaim what you'll miss your whole life.

Fucktwad Ben is already inside, pacing up and down the hallway outside Courtroom D, where his case will be heard. Terry and I exchange looks. I shrug my shoulders. He knows already ... knows I thought this mellow man I met was the safe bet, the soft landing after the break up with Terry. How I convinced myself that the problem in the end had been Terry's lifestyle ... as if there is any one thing that ever is the reason love disappears.

It didn't disappear, he had chided me when I said this one night last week when we were swimming in the hotel pool and sipping piña coladas. 

That was the night we finally talked about Walt. Not so much about his death but about his life and about how his loss destroyed us. It was also the night we sat up all night and I listened to Terry finally come free with me about what it did to him to suffer first the loss of Walt and then of me. How he convinced himself that I was right to blame him. About the blackness that crept over him. The coldness he sunk into when he thought he was not worth what it cost for anyone to love him. The way he could switch off compassion, the way he could be calculate exactly how much empathy he should show in order to get victim's families to cooperate, obey him, let him get on with his job. How the retrieved victims began to mean nothing to him ... just packages to retrieve ... how their faces sometimes blurred or morphed into other faces of other victims.

No, our love didn't disappear. I don't have a clue where it really went to all these years. I think maybe it doesn't matter so much.

What matters more, maybe, is that when you experience love like we had, it becomes a part of you forever.

Terry had lost other men who served under him. He just had never had to live so intimately with the grief that loss caused those who loved the dead man. Even as he was kicking me out of his life, he knew he was falling and did not know how to stop the descent. He thinks he was figuring he had to get rid of me in order to survive the guilt and stop paying for it. He was probably right. What I would give to go back and make him see then that I was just as wrong as he was.

And then the years of him feeling more and more he was running on empty. But he was running and coping ... until he no longer knew who he was underneath all the defenses. These are the years he lost Henry, putting up his walls even with his son.

He told me about the woman who cut through to him when he'd finally felt his soul was empty.

I held him for the entire night when he told me all this. Even as he buried himself deep into me, coming with a ferocity of a man reclaiming himself with a woman he was seducing the only way possible for it to work. As he slept in my arms, I kept seeing images of him, cold and alone, struggling with that silent resolve of his, wounded and too unable to reach out for help.

In truth, I went to Puerto Rico last week with many mixed feelings. We stayed in separate rooms. I was confused about why we wanted each other after all these years. He was, too. And then one day we got lost as we were driving down to Ponce. We ended up in a rough little town and he ushered me into a place with four tables and a long plank bar where he offered to spring for lunch. Big spender, I had joked with the man who'd put me up in a luxury resort the past few days.

A goat was on a spit out back. We drank Red Stripes and he got into a conversation with the owner. And I was watching him, absorbed in how he engaged this man in his own language and with respect as well as languid humor that spanned every culture, I suspected.

Then he had to go to the men's room and while he was gone, one of the other men inside this dive made a comment to me that made me blush. I am still, all these years as an adult, taken aback when any man thinks he can speak to me so crudely. As if I will respond by saying, hey, let's go hit the sack, you charmer, because I sure like it when men I don't know brag about the size of their donger and where they'd like to stick it in me.

When Terry returned, my face was red and I could barely look at him. I asked if we could go. He knew something bad had happened and what could it be that would shake me so in a matter of minutes?

There is nothing stupid about Terry. And he reads people in a way I've never known. He glanced around and with no clues from me, zeroed in on who it had been. He did nothing more than stare at the man. But I watched that other side of Terry take him over.

The side that I know is there, underneath whatever other face he shows. Under there is a man capable of taking life. A man so dangerous he can scare other men with nothing more than a look or a soft word.

It used to unnerve me to see this side to Terry. It so rarely came out around me. I only remember it in times like this ... when he was not about to let anyone threaten me or anyone else he felt responsible for. Walt used to tell me there was a side to Terry that he'd follow into hell and I think this was that man.

And usually when Walt followed him into hell, it was Terry who brought him back out. Except once. And I had believed so in Terry's abilities that I never was prepared for Walt to not come home to us.

I realized as I watched the transformation take place inside that dive near Ponce that I was not afraid of this side of Terry any longer. When he looked back at me, I put my hand on his wrist and mouthed, "Thank you."

That was when I felt myself really open to him. To the possibility this was worth exploring as something other than a one-night stand at the convention. But there were no promises made when we left. And I think maybe it's just that promises are not necessary ... and if they are, this was not meant to be.

And now, as I stand outside the courtroom and feel Terry's presence, I am okay with the fact that I have grown up to be a woman who needs a man who is a man. It is fine that his dangerous side makes me appreciate his complications and facets. It is good that he is unsafe for I now know the kind of love I want is anything but safe.

Fucktwad Ben continues to pace. He has glanced my way a few times but now Terry turns deftly to block the line of sight. Neatly done, I murmur to him. He gives me that look of his, the one that says he is in his manly man mode so leave him alone. The ADA who is trying the case wanders in and sizes the group up and down. There are actually quite a few people out here and most of us will testify for one side or the other. There are few people hanging about just to sit in the courtroom and hear the case argued.

When Ben's case is called, we stand back and wait for most others to enter the courtroom. Terry runs his hand down the back of my hair and then we walk inside. I am holding my head high but inside I am reliving the morning a few days after Ben's arrest when the story broke in the papers about the embezzlement. I went in the coffee shop, the place I'd been going for years on my way into work, the place where friends from our toney neighborhood frequented, people I went to church with, saw at the athletic club, knew from the homeowners association. And the moment I went in, every eye was on me and a rush of whispers raced through and followed me as I stood at the register, blushing and waiting on my café au lait. Not a single person smiled at me. No one said anything directly to me, but if I looked in their direction, they looked away as if afraid others might think they were my friends.

In a matter of days, just like that, I'd gone from an upstanding member of the community to a pariah. And when salacious details appeared in the paper as the DA announced the charges would be tried in federal court, it got worse. The DA explained to the world at large that Ben had embezzled to finance his secret life ... his mistresses, drugs and gambling.

There were a lot of things in that article I had not known about. Once it was out, I was not just a criminal by association with Ben but now I was the wife who wanted people to believe she had no idea her husband of many years was financing their lifestyle not through just his job as the head accountant for the largest real estate firm but also by skimming from escrow accounts. The fact I didn't know was not proof of innocence but of idiocy.

And the thing was, the skimming harmed a lot of people as, at the end there, Ben's musical chairs act with stealing from one escrow account to repay another simply caved in. And some people lost a lot of money thanks to him. Guilt by association stole the life I thought I'd had ... I lost friends and much of the professional network I'd built over the years.

For a while, I was subjected to repeated "interviews" by the DA's staff. They were sure I knew the location of off shore accounts or safe deposit boxes. Of course, this was played up in the local media. Clearing my own reputation seemed impossible.

To add insult on top of insult, after the Feds froze all our accounts and moved in to place liens on the house and cars, then the Mistress Du Jour decided to turn state's evidence.

Then I lost my job. I found another finally by convincing a competitor to my old employer that I could be of value by bringing some of our techniques to them. It was less money, a lower level position, but it was something to put food on the table and pay the attorney's fees.

It seems to me that there have been few weeks in the meantime in which some other humiliating detail has not come out or that someone involved has not done something ridiculous. Like Fucktwad Ben's personal ad to Mistress Du Jour, forgiving her and asking her to come see him. It was all written in silly code ... some form of pigeon English that any fool could see through and that only attracted attention to the stupid message.

So the DA added a charge of attempted witness tampering against Fucktwad Ben.

And then I filed for divorce. That was about six months after the arrest. What I had hoped would be greeted with a yawn but was aware could be treated as one of those "at last!" pieces of news, was instead the source of new revilements thrown my way.

I told all this to Terry the first day he arrived in Puerto Rico. I had been drinking steadily in the hours before he arrived, a day and a half after me. By the time he got there, I was happy half-drunk. Liquid courage, I stage whispered to him when he tracked me down at the poolside lounge where I chugged the remains of my rum punch the moment I saw him walking toward me.

He waved off the next rum punch on my behalf and then smoothly slid me off the barstool, talked to me about his meeting in London with some oil exploration firm, and before I knew it, he was unlocking the door to my room and deftly maneuvering me inside.

Where he kissed me.

Long and soft and deep.

And I started crying and telling him I was scared to be there with him, alone. That I was afraid I had forgotten what to do with a man like him. That whoever he thought I was, I was not. Not anymore.

So he kissed me again. I remember the feel of his thumbs when he slipped them under the back edge of my suit. I remember asking him what had happened to my sarong; he'd raised his eyebrows and pointed to the ground where it lay puddled at my feet.

"I keep forgetting how good you are at getting my clothes off me," I whispered and slid my hands over the sides of his neck, drawing him in for another kiss.

"About to give you another demonstration," he replied.

"Jesus. You're good," I sighed as his thumbs worked their way under the fabric of my suit's bottom.

"I've been a very good boy indeed."

"You're trying to have your way with me, aren't you, Terrence?"

"Shall I stop? Dunno I can ... not with all that wiggling you're doing, Elizabeth."

"You stop and I'll kill you dead where you stand."

"You keep up with what your hands are doing, love, and things are going to get very nasty, very quickly."

"Big words ..."

"Now you've done it ..."

Whatever initial fright I'd felt, I told him later, he had a great way of simply shoving past it. He had looked at me as we lay, facing each other, sweaty and spent. He has the most amazing eyes. He searches you with them and finds out things that you may wish he could not see.

I lowered my eyes and looked at his hand, cupping my breast gently. And then I told him my version of the past four years of my life. Of how my safe husband had been the illusion all such safe expectations are. People aren't safe, he said to me, because when you love, you are vulnerable.

It was the strangest post coital conversation I've ever had. But then again, Terry is a man who lets the physical release the emotional. 

As I sit in this courtroom next to him and think back on this moment in Puerto Rico, I now believe that the physicality of the sex was his way of moving beyond the walls he knew I still thought were standing between us.

So, he listened as I told him of all this public sensation, of Fucktwad Ben's tyranny at home and how I'd known he had other women. Of how this felt to me, to know he was having affairs. And that this is why I never wanted to be Terry's "other woman."

And I admitted something to him I'd never admitted to anyone else - that I'd sold my soul for that new job I got. That I divulged corporate secrets to the new company out of fear I'd lose the only source of income I had during a time when I had not a penny to my own name and couldn't access any of the joint accounts thanks to the Feds.

Yet I was good at my job, I told Terry. I had value to them and eventually, slowly, they began to give me some higher level responsibility. However, any recommendations for improvement or innovation that I made had to go through my boss to ever get a fair hearing. And then, of course, he got all the credit. Which was fine except that also meant he got the financial rewards while I got to go to conventions to scout out for new products or opportunities that I seemed to be able to recognize and bring back for him to implement.

At that company, I will always be known as "that woman married to the embezzler," I told Terry that day. And that's why I quit after we saw each other at the convention. And it's why I'm taking the job I'm taking ... because I will be known differently, it will be a fresh start for me that I am determined to make count.

So here we are, together, at the trial. Leave it to Fucktwad Ben to fight the charges. He couldn't just take a plea bargain so life could go on. No, not him. I sit here watching the back of his neck and wish I'd never met him.

Terry's hand rests on my knee. My hand rests atop the cuff of his white shirt where it emerges from his jacket.

When I picked him up at the airport early this morning, he was dressed so sharp. Dark suit, crisp white shirt, shined shoes, dark emerald tie. His hair is prim and exact. He dressed this way on purpose. He wants to give the proper impression. He is determined to stand with me through a day of testimony that will test me.

When the opening arguments are done, we listen to the prosecution build its case. It is dry and almost rote the way the evidence is presented. Every time I look at Terry, he is studying the room and its occupants. Ben turns in between witnesses to scan the benches behind where he sits flanked by his attorneys. I watch his face as he stares at Mistress Du Jour and wonder if he ever really thought it was love.

And when he finally looks at me, studying me and who I am with, I see no regret on his face. Did I think he'd feel some? Perhaps I hoped he would at last recognize what he'd sacrificed. I turn to look at Terry when he squeezes down on my knee. He crooks an eyebrow up. I shake my head. I don't know what we are telling each other ... maybe nothing more than to distract each other from Ben's gazing at us.

I could hunt forever in Ben's gaze and never again see the safety I had thought I found when I met him. 

This is when I hear a voice from the past ... Walt saying to me, "Love should never be safe. It should be wild and feral and mad and everything that will force you to keep running forever. It should explode your world. That's the kind of love I want, Betsy. I want it to destroy me if it has to but I want to know I've been in it up to my eyeballs and then some."

Just then, my name is called as witness for the prosecution. Terry's hand slides off my knee. I do not look at him as I rise and walk to where I must open a small gate between that separates the spectator area from where the legal teams and the judge are. The floor beyond the gate is marbleized tile and I hear the clacks of my heels as they strike it and then I am stepping up into the witness box. I swear to tell the truth, etc., and then I sit with my hands in my lap. Terry has given me tips about this ... sit back in the seat with my shoulder blades pressed into the seat back. Chin up. Think through every answer. Remember the only person passing judgment is the judge in this trial without jury. Look him in the eye at least once. Watch Ben's attorneys and when they seem too casual or confused, expect that they are trying to trap me. Shut down your personal connections to your answers; avoid emotion.

First the ADA walks me tenderly through testimony he has gone over with me at least three times. He claimed he was not coaching me but there were plenty of times he would say something like, "Perhaps you meant to say ..." or "Wouldn't it be more fair to say it this way ..." or "There is no need to volunteer information so just strictly answer the question as it is posed."

When the ADA sits down, Ben's lead attorney spends long moments pretending to be looking through notes and I know he means to make me believe I've just said something he is about to pounce on. I glance at Terry. His face is impassive. I wish I was closer to him so I could see his eyes and know how I am doing. In all this courtroom, it is only Terry who is looking out for me.

It hurts, the next set of questions. There is no use pretending otherwise. I hear Terry's voice like a mantra ... shut down, shut down, shut down. I still feel the beginning of tears well up at in my eyes. This is when I choose to turn and look at the judge. In his eyes. Until he blinks. And then I look back at Ben's attorney. I still my hands in my lap where they have been playing with my skirt's hem.

Shut down.

No, Ben was not physically abusive.

Shut down.

No, I had no affairs during the marriage.

Shut down.

Yes, I knew about the boat.

Shut down.

Yes, I did sign all the income tax forms.

Shut down.

No, I never asked any questions about them because, yes, I trusted Ben.

Shut down.

And before much longer, after we've gone over all the financial matters that now define our marriage before this court, then I am done.

Hell, yes. I feel like a total idiot, I do. My face is flaming hot. I know the impression I've just made is that I was too stupid to question Ben about any of our finances but for God's sake, the man's an accountant. What's worse is that I've bolstered Ben's character thanks to his attorney getting me to say I had trusted him ... and that bit about the physical abuse I suppose is meant to show he was a loving husband. Give me a break. I feel the shock of the testimony flash over me as I am dismissed.

I cannot walk away.

I am embarrassed as hell that I ever loved this man who sits smug and guilty. I hate that I did not do something about him earlier. I feel as if I have no moral integrity.

And then I am walking ... click clack ... over the marbleized tile ... and as my cold fingers touch the gate to leave this area and return to the benches where other witnesses study me in open curiosity and not a little contempt, my eyes latch onto Terry's eyes. And now I am closer, close enough to read him. In those eyes, I read acceptance.

He does not expect nor does he want perfection.

He knew me back when ... back when life was an adventure and he was my willing companion. I have changed. Life has a way of doing that to you. He has changed as well. But at our core, we are still us.

I put my hand out to him and he rises to grasp it. This is how we walk from that courtroom. Together. Hands clasped.

No promises.

I don't want promises. They are wasted on me.

People come down the escalator toward where I stand. I gaze up as they move toward me. It dawns on me how I stood in a similar place many months ago in another city. I had been unsure where I was supposed to be.

I smile and look down at my feet. Shake my head at my own silly sense of déjà vu. And then I walk determined toward the up escalator. If you let yourself, you can always find a reason to not think as well of yourself. So I have a bad sense of direction and a tendency to get lost? Well, at least I eventually seem to find the way I'm meant to be going.

That is some comfort.

Truth is, I tired of the straight life. But that does not mean that I have really escaped it. I am at another convention and I am heading for another check in booth. This time, rather than attending to go to educational sessions, I am going to be working in one of the trade show booths.

Here I am. Lost in a new adventure.

By dinner time, we have set up the booth. I have been walking about in bare feet for at least three hours. My boss took her shoes off before I did. We head off together when the work is done. We meet up in the bar an hour later so we can head off to a place we have heard about from another person in the office. We have ditched the two married guys in the team who have come with us. They are going out cruising for chicks. We think this makes them dicks.

The outside deck of the restaurant is bathed in neon blue light. We drink pinot grigio with the meal and I think about the first person who introduced me to this wine as a summer cocktail.

My boss is one of those women who always seems to know just what she wants done. She is frighteningly intense in the office and there are times when she can make me jump as if I am still an intern in my first stint in the work force. But she is also generous with the spotlight and would be in your corner until the last bloody blow is leveled if it's what it takes to stand in there with you when the chips are down.

She has red hair and a short fuse. She tells dirty jokes when the door to her office is closed. She thinks on her feet. She has a tongue so sharp and creative that some men get scared just being in the same room with her.

We are both worn out from the day but still hate to end the evening. I tell her I am beginning to feel like an old lady if I cannot stay up any later than this without yawning. She says a real woman would not be ashamed to admit when she is pooped.

We catch a taxi back to the hotel. I am leaning back in the seat, watching street lights as we pass. My mind is a million miles away and I miss him more than I could say.

Such is life.

Inside my room, I check for messages and there are none. I watch the late night news and wonder where he might be at this moment. My mind drifts and I remember a young man once ...

... who would call and tell me to go stay at his apartment until he returned from his mission. When will you be back, I would ask. Tonight, tomorrow, few nights, he'd always answer. I always did as he asked. I always wanted to be sleeping in his bed when he returned.

Most of the time this is what happened. I would have a hard time falling asleep but then I would snuggle a little deeper into his big bed and imagine him there with me. My hand would play with his pillow and I would visualize his head there. He would be asleep when I imagined him this way and I would imagine myself sitting up, gazing down, watching over him as he slept. I could touch his hair as he slumbered; smooth a fingertip over the soft lashes that fringed his eyes. Bend near him to sniff the left-over remnants of cologne.

This is about the time I would drift off to sleep. 

And then would come the night he returned.

He would slide into bed over me, turning my body face up if need be so he could creep between my thighs. As I woke to the feel of his body pressing down over mine and his mouth on my breast, I would feel the thrill of shockwaves rush over me like cold drops of water. It's always scary to be woken up, even when it is for a reason you long for ... and in my case, I always longed for him to be there when I woke up.

My arms would reach for him and my thighs would spread wider to accommodate him closer. His mouth would kiss my shoulder ... neck ... temple ... lips again and again. He would rub his hardness over me until I was gasping in the kiss. We would roll on the bed until the sheet would come loose from a corner and more than once we rolled onto the floor. Never once did he speak in more than monosyllables, guttural responses to the physicality of his return home and return to me.

This is what takes my breath away now, all these years later. It was not animalistic. It was instinct. We wanted each other in the same way. What on earth becomes of you when you know another person that way? When you are that free with them?

When he would enter me, I remember it always felt like he'd conquered me. And I needed him to do that. I needed him to fight his way inside me. I needed to feel consumed, roughly, as if we'd driven each other to this consummation. I liked the way it felt for a man like that to come at me exactly like that.

All these years later ... it still turns me on to remember it. I lie in the bed of this hotel room with aching feet and a tired smile. I am on my side, stroking the pillow next to me.

Love marks you. If you cannot manage the pain that comes with love, you are not strong enough to last with a man like Terry. Even so, I've learned from loving him that I don't want the bliss of foolish love. I want the ember hot lasting love that gets you through life with an internal fire that never leaves you.

My eyes shut and I will myself to sleep. But sleep eludes me. I get up and am just touching a bottle of spring water in the mini-bar when I hear a slight 'thrip' at the hotel room door. I am standing, nude, before the opening when the door silently opens and a dark form enters.

The door closes and the darkness comes nearer. I take an involuntary step back before he drops the bags he is carrying and sweeps into my body. His hands run up my sides and then down my back until he grips my rear, lifts me to my toes and pulls me right into his fully clothed body.

My hands smooth over his face and I murmur his name before he kisses behind my ear, suckling gently and then lightly nipping me there. He has me wrapped up in his arms now; his jacket is rough against my skin. He picks me up and maneuvers me atop the low rise of the bureau next to the mini-bar.

"Miss me?" he mutters against my throat.

"So much," I murmur as I tug at his belt. "What are you doing here? You said you were going to be gone until the end of the week. I cannot believe this ... I've missed you so."

"Got anything to drink?"

"There's some milk in the fridge ..."

"To hell with it then."

I told him once, a few months back, how I remembered how he used to never speak to me when he first came home and reclaimed my body. He had blushed and told me surely I remembered it wrong. Even when I said how sexy it was, he refused to believe it was true. So now when he comes to me in between work trips and missions, I think he struggles to say something to me ... just to prove he was never that way when he was younger.

He lifts me in his arms and walks over to the bed. He lowers me in and I cling to him, my legs wrapped around his waist and my arms around his neck. I am kissing his neck, hard. He groans and pretends he's going to drop me. But he is intent on this so I know he will not lose control that easily.

His hands and his mouth begin to explore my bare skin. He pauses every so often to remove some of his clothes and I entice him with talk of where I want him to taste me next. Then, he is stripped of everything but his shirt ... it is unbuttoned over his chest but I climb in his lap before he has the chance to finish.

He never offers to use a condom. I never ask him to. I make note of that before slipping down to take him in my mouth. He leans back on his arms and his chin drops. His shirt is mostly off but there is something sexier about him with it looking like this ... caught in the act of trying to get nude but then getting swept into the passion.

When I climb back up, he stays as he was, leaning back on his hands. Watching me. Danger in his eyes. His lips parted. He says my name. I nudge his head inside me. He takes my hand and rubs over my nub, his thumb pressing my thumb down and around and ... and ... and I gasp out his name. He takes my hips and pulls me down atop him. We wiggle against each other and our mouths hover inches apart until at last, they meet.

God, he tastes so good. Every taste of him seems to mingle on my tongue until the kiss sears.

I never could get enough of him. His strong arms flex around me and we are rolling over until I am on my back.

"Please ... for god's sake ... Terry ..."

"Please what?"

"Oh god ... just ..."

"Shhh."

"Shhh."

How many years will go by before I will not hear the danger in his voice when he is deep in a moment of passion with me? I won't mind if it is many, many years.

His hand on my heart makes me open my eyes and bite down on my bottom lip.

"Elizabeth ... Bets ..."

He is whispering in husky words into my ear, and I am crying even as he is buried deep inside me, barely moving. "I'm not going anywhere," I say in response to his whispers.

Here we are. The dark years we have both managed to survive. Memories of him that are alive again each time I look deep in his eyes. A future unwritten ... a clean slate on which to write it. We are learning to love again ... one step at a time.