I watched Julie wipe the cloth over the round wooden bar table and lift away three more glasses for cleaning and as she straightened I caught her eye and smiled at her for the umpteenth time that night. She returned my smile knowingly, displaying a perfect set of pearly white teeth that never failed to dazzle me. What pleasure I took, as I watched her move behind the bar again, knowing that in less that fifteen minutes we would be copulating furiously on the floor of the bar trying not to wake the landlord slumbering above but secretly revelling in the danger of discovery. The only potential disruption an old man taking longer than we would have liked to finish his pint, I stared at him sending subliminal messages to hurry up and drink up and to then exit the bar.
Julie was, and had always been, a very beautiful woman. She was thirty now (as was I) but to me she was as attractive as when I had first met her fifteen years before when I was forced to sit next to her in Mr. Smith's English class. She had shoulder length brown hair that she seemed to colour light in the summer and dark in the winter. Whatever the season it was always impeccably framing her cute, smiling face – her hair parts like curtains to reveal her features. I was smitten from the off and still am so perhaps my description of her is biased and I could be accused of seeing her through rose-tinted spectacles. But if I do exaggerate her beauty it is only in the slightest. Her eyes were the rich green colour of emeralds and sparkled fun and interest constantly, while her button-nose set off perfectly by her pink smiling lips. Sadly, at that time, I could not accurately describe her body, but suffice to say that she looked, under her immaculate school uniform, to have curves and swellings in all the right places (at least as far as a smitten teenage boy knew).
But even with all those physical features the most striking thing about her was her personality. I have never come across someone who had a bad thing to say about her. Her enthusiasm and good humour was infectious and she seemed to have a mission in life to have a good time for everyone else to have it as well.
For all that I say about her though I never dated her in school. There were a number of reasons. Firstly, I had a pretty low self esteem at that age, in common with a lot of teenagers. I thought there was no way someone as perfect as I thought Julie was would look twice at me as a prospective boyfriend. I wasn't cool. Fair enough I was sporty and made a few friends but I wasn't in the "in crowd" at school and never would have had the confidence to ask any girl out until I was eighteen let alone Julie. The second reason was that over time I became very friendly with Julie and in class we would goof around and joke and laugh and we generally got on great. I worried that if I told her how I really felt it would change all that forever. Being friends with her was better than nothing, wasn't it? But the main reason I never told her how I felt and asked her out was because throughout high school she dated her childhood sweetheart Bill Baxter. And everyone liked Bill. Hell, even I liked Bill. He was a good guy who obviously cared for Julie a lot, even at that age and he was never anything but nice with me despite the fact Julie spent a lot of time with me over the next few years.
So that was that, I spent the next few years getting friendlier and friendlier with Julie and Bill all the while carrying a Statue of Liberty sized torch for Julie but keeping that secret guiltily under close wraps. And Bill and Julie fell further and further in love and by the time we were all twenty three they married (none of us were what you would call scholars so we all stayed in the same old town and got jobs and got on with the business of living our lives). I left town within a year of the marriage to start a new job, if I had to guess I would say that a big part of my decision to leave was the marriage. It seemed so final and drew a big line under my secret desires and I felt I either had to get away or go slowly mad.
Getting away worked for me and not seeing her every second day or so gently weaned me away from my feelings for her. I threw myself into my work and began to see Amanda, a girl from work, on a pretty regular basis. Within two years I was engaged to Amanda and life was sweet. I had grown up. Last year I got married. I had all that I ever wanted.
For Julie though, life had a cruel stroke planned and her husband, Bill, tragically was killed in a sailing accident two years ago. I never got the full details and didn't want them as I hugged Julie at the wake following his funeral (most of the town attended – everyone distraught at this tragedy). When I first hugged her it was a different girl I was hugging, that life in her eyes was gone and I felt no lust or longing for her now, only pity and sadness. Or maybe it was me that had changed, how I viewed things now altered by my time away.
Anyway that's all in the past now................
So why am I watching Julie tend bar and waiting for her to finish to grab a few minutes of frantic, illicit sex with her before I head home? To cut a long story short she moved up here, where I live, and got a job up here. She wanted to get away from all the memories, both good and bad, at home and she ended up here. Then she got a part-time evening job in this bar and not long after that I started coming down to see her late on and before too long one thing led to another and we started this little game. This is not adultery.
Back to the present and this annoying old man is really dragging his pint out, getting full value from it. Plus he is perched atop a high wooden stool at the bar and as Julie dips forward to wash and rinse out the used glasses I can imagine him trying to per down her top. Which is stupid because he must be nearly eighty years old, seems to be staring into space above the bar and Julie is wearing a pretty shapeless white shirt and jumper combo that, although it matches the olde world ambience of the bar does nothing for her stunning figure. I am jealous and paranoid because someone may be eyeing up my girl. My girl! Thinking of Julie as my girl sends shivers up my spine, not for the first time I think about how life could have been so different. Still ,live for the moment as my mum used to say (and probably still does as she sits constantly gossiping on the phone).
He moved! He definitely moved in his seat! Yes I can see him pushing his glass toward Julie and her grasping it with almost indecent haste and delivering it to the washing sink to be cleaned. He has gotten off the stool now but, damn, he's left his jacket on the coat hook by the door and is heading straight to the toilets located in the dark recess to the left of the bar (where only two night earlier I had shuffled into hurriedly with Julie still impaled on my engorged penis and my pants around my ankles as we heard footsteps descending from above). I smile a frustrated smile at her and she coquettishly blows a kiss back at me as the wooden door shuts. This is not adultery.
