“Well, what do you think fellas?" Phil asked.
“Cool, eh?” Chris said, obviously pleased with the result.
It’s rubbish, I hate it, don’t ever want to see it again. Ever.
“The effects are really cool, it looks like a film, it’s really well done,” I limited to say, deliberately not commenting on her or their interaction.
Will and Guy agreed and pointed out a few technical things, edition things mainly they were not sure about. I honestly couldn’t care less, I mean, I loved being involved in every tiny detail of our job, to supervise every aspect, but my mind was elsewhere today.
“Let’s watch it again,” Will suggested.
Ugh, do we really have to?
The first few seconds of it were worth all the torture, he was a sexy mother fucker and he knew it. Walking like that, that hoodie, those trousers. I had started blushing with all the things running through my mind, but then there they were again, kneeling in front of each other, foreheads slightly touching, her fucking hand on him, touching, stroking, it made my stomach churn.
The worst were his eyes, his look. I knew he wasn’t acting and an agonising pain shot in my chest at the thought.
It wasn’t a secret that many, if not most, married people occasionally get crushes on someone else that is not their spouse. I wasn’t naïve and knew this, but we loved each other and I had always been confident when this happened to us we would deal with it respectfully. I knew it was illogical to expect Chris not to fancy anyone else, I could not control that, he could not control that, but what we could control was our reaction, what we did with it.
I also found the girl at the coffee shop next to the cinema quite cute and sexy, and I had to admit, had I been single, I would have probably tried to ask her out, but the fact of the matter was I was not single, I was married, or well, the legal equivalent for that and I was very much in love with Chris. I did find her attractive but I would never dare to openly flirt with her; especially not in front of other people, but most of all, not in front of Chris. I just wouldn’t dare to do it, at all. It would be irrefutably disrespectful to Chris and that’s how I felt while watching those scenes. I felt hurt and wounded, as if he’d done a disservice to our relationship.
Maybe I was just over-reacting and it was all part of “acting” on the video, I tried to reason. Not real, just acting. My heart was not convinced. In spite of all the times I had tried to ignore it, I knew almost for a fact that Chris found her attractive. Maybe he was not actually trying to pursue anything else, but the knot my stomach had become would not leave though. Not even after the topic changed and we moved on to discuss our agenda for the next couple of months and the sick feeling was still there when we had a coffee break about an hour later. Despite I tried, I could not shake those images away. Chris and her, foreheads touching, mouths just inches away, exchanging lascivious looks.
"Jon?" Will brought me back from my torturous thoughts. He was looking at me expectantly, I suddenly realised I had sort of shut out what was going on around me.
"Yeah?" I said.
"I said I'm making some tea, do you want a cuppa?"
"Oh, sorry, didn't hear. Yes, please, that'd be lovely," I told him with a small smile.
I focused on the conversation around me, Guy and Chris discussing some cars Guy had seen last weekend. I tried to follow it, to ask questions but soon, my mind would remind me of those images, of the video. Everybody would see it, they would see Chris being so close to her. I did not want to, but I couldn’t say I hated it to the guys now, could I? With what argument? I think they would all flick me off if I said “You know what? Fuck the millions spent on it, change it, make another one because I’m a jealous bastard.” They would probably sympathise with me but the video would remain like that. Fortunately, I did not have to watch it if I did not want to. I could ignore its existence. The images still assaulted me, though.
