Interconnected Lives

Travis Bevins

Natasha and I met at the coffee shop I own about eight months ago. Her office building was next door, so she stopped in some mornings for coffee before work. At first we only exchanged pleasantries, talked about the weather, shared little stories about our lives while I made her coffee. We developed a little friendship from there. She started coming for lunch in the cafe once a week, then two, until eventually she had lunch there most days. We were enjoying each others' company greatly.

It was apparent that we were extremely compatible, clicking on so many levels that my mind was blown. Never had I met a woman who seemed to just know what I meant even before I could get the idea out.

I knew she was married. I respected that annoying fact and kept our conversations friendly, even though I knew within days that I had already fallen. I wanted her.

What lead to my current predicament was when, a few weeks into our friendship, she brought up wanting kids. I've always wanted a family, but without meeting the right woman I'd never had the opportunity. Natasha had married a man whose infertility made her lifelong dream of becoming a mother impossible.

From what I always understood, beyond doubt she loved her husband. He was loving, understanding, without a violent outburst to his credit, but he couldn't give her the kids she wanted so desperately. He literally couldn't provide for the most prevalent aspiration she had, and although she had gone into the marriage knowing this information, it had still wormed itself into an angry knot.

Natasha's need to have kids outweighed the dedication she had pledged to her marriage. She said her relationship felt like an eternal honeymoon. At some point in the six year marriage she had even considered getting pregnant by another man but knew she couldn't get away with it. Instead, she wanted to divorce him and start over with a man who could give her the only thing she thought she wanted. From what she said she was only still playing the marriage game because she had nowhere else to go.

Logically I understood that a woman with such an attitude was fickle and a bad idea to get involved with. For all I knew she may have been using me as a means to get pregnant and somehow convince her husband that it was his. I had never met the man, so he could have been gullible enough to believe it was some sort of miracle conception and never question it further.

Unfortunately, even though I was a smart man, I was also a young man, and like most young men I thought with my dick in this type of situation instead of my brain.

We started dating not long after Natasha confessed that to me. For months now she'd been repeating to me that she was just about to break it off with him to come live with me. We were going to start a whole new life together. She kept saying she was just waiting for the right time, and I was beginning to realize that I was just a fling when her husband found out on his own. I don't know how he managed, but I now wish I had never gotten involved with his wife.

He accosted me on the way to my car last night after closing the shop. I can only remember seeing him walking up to me with a jovial wave and a big toothy smile on his doughy, tanned, stereotypical middle class face. Seeing him for the first time in person drove home to me how worlds apart we truly were, as if we weren't even from the same planet. Next thing I knew I was waking up in absolute darkness.

I was horrified. The left side of my head throbbed so hard my empty vision pulsed red with every heartbeat. My blood pressure must have been through the roof, nearing panic attack, if not fainting, levels. My wrists hurt as if I'd been dragged by them for a long distance, and I could feel the burning of scrapes on my bare feet.

My shoes were gone, but I was still in my coat and pants. It was stifling in my dark new domain, and I began struggling to get out of my coat only to discover how confining the environment was. There was only a little more space than what an average double bed would provide. In my struggle to escape my coat I accidentally jabbed my elbow into a small mass to my left. I heard a groan that I recognized and felt the bottom drop out of my stomach.