In Another Life

Trust

The woman asks firsts about his family, especially his mum, whom she had always been close to, then about his brother and sister. And finally, when she can avoid the topic no more, she asks about his wife.

Yes, he says, he is married now, have been for three years come April.

The woman pauses briefly before asking whether he had any kids.

Although, she has stayed away from Facebook and Instagram for years now, she knows the answer to this question before he says yes.

//

He had never been quick to trust anyone. People change so quickly – like the clouds in a Melbourne sky. He was content before – with his friends, with his life. He liked playing by the rules, he wanted to play it safe. He yearned for the warmth of predictability, the soft touch of consistency. He didn't have extraordinary, 'crazy' dreams. He wanted familiarity, to feel content, at peace. A solid house, two or three kids, and someone to come home to, someone who understood him. He was repulsed by drama, he swerved from fights, and he never liked to do anything he might regret in five years' time.

But she crashed into his life, like a meteorite – with so much speed and intensity, that he hadn't even had time to think about what was happening, about what he was signing up to.

He should have known from the way smiled, from the way his heart dropped to his stomach, when she laughed, head thrown back, dimples forming at the side of her cheeks, as if every day was the happiest day of her life.

She had made him feel alive.

But he knew, from the start, that it was dangerous. Not her personally per say, but that connection, that space between them, the way it made him feel so light-headed, the way that she could make him do anything – the way he felt pulled towards her, as if he had some magnet inside him that only she awakened – it was fatal, and he knew this.

They were too different – and he had reassured himself by that foolish assumption that "opposites attract" – but it was a myth, some legend in a book.

He loved her, but it hadn't been enough. For her.

He should have known, from the way she made eyes, even at the men in the supermarket, from the long lists of guys she had 'loved', from the way she had a new crush every week.

She wasn't made for monogamy, for stability.

But he had thought it would be different. With him. He had thought she might have changed. For him.

But he had learnt that he couldn't change her. He doubted anyone could.

She had apologised like a madwoman and written enough texts to make a novel – but that was it, she would always say it would be different, but never follow it through – and he knew better. If a person disappointed you once, they would most likely do it again, no matter how many second chances you gave them.

After that he never spoke a word to the woman again.

It took him a long time to trust anyone again, to put his heart out.

He took every precaution, told himself that he would never take that risk again, would take foolish chances based on whims of the heart – he would commit only if he was 110 percent sure.

He only found one person who fitted the theorem – and he married her.

Grace put up with his moods and his silences, and he loved her for that.

And besides she had given him Mark and Skylar who he now loved more than anything else in this world. He couldn't complain.

If things had turned out differently, he might not have ended up with these kids, these same kids, who made him smile so easily, who warmed his heart with a simple hug and a kiss.

He couldn't live without them.

But every once in a while, he would hear a Taylor Swift song, or a Bob Dylan chorus, and his heart would do a strange turn – a cartwheel backwards in time, and he'd see her again, like it was in those early days, before the arguments and the petty remarks came in between, when the sight of her smile didn't repel him or cut at his wounds.

And he'd wonder, just for a second – how it would have turned out — in another life, in another universe, where she had kept her promises, where he had made love to her every night – but then the second was up and the song was over.

And almost as if by a sudden jolt, he was brought back to reality.

Back to this world, to this life – where she hadn't kept her word, where she had betrayed him, where she had broken him.