From that day forward, it was a path of no return.

Every single night, Alan would wait for everyone to leave the office before coming over to finish my work with me, with our usual conversations and our small “dates”.

When the serious work had been settled, passion took over.

We knew it was wrong. I knew he was a married man. But standing right here in front of me, was a man I loved with all my heart. For the first time in my life, I found someone who genuinely cared for me and loved me for who I am. The illicit nature of our affair was an unspoken topic. I took time to focus on him instead: the scent of his cologne, his broad chest, and his kisses that made me lose all reasoning.

Unable to  be at ease on this contentious moral ground,I convinced myself to simply not think about it. After all, he genuinely loved  me too. All that happiness between us lasted for a year.

For one full year, we had our secret dates in the office, and occasionally, in small hotel rooms he got for privacy. On two separate occasions, we went for an overnight stay in the deluxe hotel located right in the city centre .

Nothing else mattered when I was with him. Everything felt so right. Nobody had to know about this, all I needed in my life was him. Yet when I saw  him picking up calls from a wife he does not love anymore, I always felt  a nagging guilt at the back of my mind, and a certain sense of sympathy  for Alan, for having to pretend to love a woman whom he had lost all feelings for years ago. Alan deserved more.

All these started to change one year into our relationship.

Our colleagues weren’t stupid. Slowly but surely, rumours begin to spread. Till this day I have no idea how the rumour came about. Perhaps it was the way we looked at each other. Maybe they saw us  at night when they returned to the office to pick up something they had forgotten?

Either way, the rumours spreads like wildfire.

The new executive who was sleeping with the Marketing Manager of the company.

Whispers were heard everywhere I went. People threw dirty looks at me, as though I was the worst person they ever met, and they never wanted to have anything to do with me. The occasional one or two girls in the office would try to pretend to be my friends then asked me indirectly about the matter. All these did not matter to me. My reputation could  be in the gutters for all I cared, as long as I had him. All these were merely rumours, and nobody had any proof on what was happening.

I was lying on his chest one night, my eyes closed and hoping this moment would last forever. Moments like this made  all the hardships in the office worth it. He shifted slightly and I looked up at him, smiling. But he was not smiling. There was a few seconds of silence, and I tried to pretend like nothing was going on. I stole a glance at the clock and knew it was almost time for him to return home to that woman. The one who rightfully has him. The one who does not deserve him.

He started, “Look Samantha… You know I love you. You know I do.”

I sat up and looked at him, almost certain of what he was going to say next, but not wanting to hear it. I always knew this moment would come.

“I cannot let these rumours reach her… You know that. I have a child.”

An argument was bubbling in my chest but I stopped myself. I had seen his eyes, and there was no room for negotiation. He had already made up his mind. This was not a discussion. It was a notice. I could not believe this man right in front of me. I loved him with all my heart and I had to take all that  shit in the office, just to be with him.

And yet here he was s, the man whom  I was convinced loved me with all his heart, pushing me aside like a used toy.

Shaking my head, I got off the bed and started to get dress as quickly as I could, holding back my tears. My hands were trembling slightly but I was determined to not let him see it. Biting my lip, I held myself together.

“Talk to me, Samantha,” he said weakly.

I did not look back.

I did not want to see his face.

I knew how I would crumble  the moment I looked at him. There was no way I would be able to ignore that  handsome profile . The face of the man I loved so much. He was not talking to me because he cared, but because he wanted me to say it was alright, so that he would feel better.

He did not want face up to the guilt of knowing he had destroyed me. For the first time since I met him, I realised how selfish he was. I was not going to give him that satisfaction being guilt-free. I wanted him to feel all the  guilt in the world. For it to eat him up from the inside.

When I walked out the room, he made no attempt to stop me. A little part of me had wished that he would, but of course I was being foolish. As I entered the familiar lift with the reflective floor and a floral scent, tears started to stream down my face.

A part of me seemed to have been torn from me. It felt as though the ground beneath me had fallen away, and I was falling into a bottomless pit. Like a bird blindly tossed into the water, that icy feeling of panic engulfed me and overwhelmed all my senses. My chest felt so tight and sour, and breathing became hard. I felt like I was going to die from the heartbreak. Thinking back to  that night … a part of me did die.

The next day at the office, I was at the pantry filling up my cup with coffee. As usual a couple of colleagues were in the pantry with their usual gossip. Looking at my puffy eyes, they were whispering to each other. I could hear certain words like “Alan” and “A fight” and “Whore”.

At that moment, I genuinely did not care what they say about me. Nothing really mattered anymore. I lifted the cup to my lips and took a sip. The hot coffee scalded me a little, but it did not matter either. Nothing mattered. At that moment, I heard one of the women said a little too loudly, “I wonder what her mother would say about this.”

I spun  around, I threw my cup across the pantry at her.

She leaped out from her chair in shock, but there was no need to. My aim was way off and the cup smashed against the wall to her right, splattering the wall with a brown stain.

“DO YOU HONESTLY THINK I GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOU, JESSIE? YOU’RE A JUDGEMENTAL PIECE OF SHIT AND YOU NEED TO GET THE FUCK OUTOF MY SIGHT BEFORE I FORCE THE COFFEE MACHINE DOWN YOUR THROAT ”

Shocked by the outburst from the normally quiet girl, Jessie and the group of gossip queens rushed out from the pantry, still whispering furiously to each other, muttering “Crazy bitch.”

Leaving me alone in the pantry.

I grabbed my own hands to stop them from trembling, and wiped my tears away angrily. Crossing the pantry in three big strides, I started to pick up the broken pieces of the cup, clearing up my own mess.

Someone walked into the pantry behind me and I turned, starting to yell again, “GET THE HELL…”

It was Alan standing in the pantry, looking ever so handsome in his nicely ironed shirt and his straight tie, his smooth black hair combed back neatly.

While a small part of me felt happy to see him, the other half wanted to smack him in the face so bad. And I settled for turning back to my cup and picking up the pieces. He walked over and squatted down beside me, and my hand in his. I tried to shake his hand away, but his grip was too strong.

“Get away from me.” I managed to mutter, without looking at him.

“No. I will not let you go again. I was thinking all night. And I cannot live without you.”

For the first time since he entered the pantry, I looked up into his eyes. Losing all reasoning, I leaned in to kiss him. This man had broken my heart. This man had put me through hell. This man is married. But I knew the reason why I could not stop myself from leaning in to kiss him. The feel of his soft lips on mine. Because this man is the man I love.

That moment was shattered with yet another set of footsteps into  the pantry. A woman was standing at the door. She stood there proudly, a woman in her late twenties. There was no other word for it. She was beautiful.

A tall imposing woman, her beautiful features framed by her long black hair and accompanied with big piercing eyes that would have melted any man. She was one of the most beautiful women I had ever met, and at that moment, the look on her face made her one of the scariest too.

I had never met her before, and despite Alan always describing her to be an ugly woman, I knew instinctively who she was.

“Ruth…” Alan stood up and walked toward her.

But that Ruth simply walked off. Alan hesitated and turned around to look at me sitting on the floor, as I looked up at him. At that moment, we looked at each other, and I knew. I knew this was never going to happen. Just as I arrived at this conclusion, he seemed to be the same. Because he turned and ran off after Ruth. That day when I finally left the pantry, the entire office was staring at me. I took my things and left the office, and I never went back there. I never saw him again. And I never heard from him again.

That was eight years ago.

It took me years to finally let go of that relationship. I sometimes wonder what happened to him and Ruth, or what would happen if he was not married when I knew him.

Either way, it doesn’t matter. A  new company, new friends, a good boss and a loving husband  makes me more than content with what I have now.

I believe that in our lives, there will be several individuals who appear to be “The One”. This idea of “The One” that many young girls seem to be intoxicated by.

A love that sweeps them off their feet? It exists.

But there’s going to be more than one person who can make them feel like way. For the girls that are looking for their Prince Charming, for those girls who have been hurt by a “third party”, this is my story. This is the story of how I fell for the wrong one. I pray that if you are reading my story, you will learn from it.

—–<The End>—–