Affair To Remember

She marches through the neon tunnels of the shopping centre, the footsteps of shoppers echoing off the walls and into her head. She ignores the many storefronts, with their bright displays enticing customers through their open doors; instead her eyes stay straight ahead and focused. She takes a sharp left and finds the shop she’s looking for. She pauses for just a moment, and looks around her. Stupid to think anyone would recognise her here, but still she feels guilty and doesn’t want to be caught out, or have to make any unwanted small talk.
She crosses the threshold into the alluring pink and purple decorated space. Thankfully the shop is empty at such an early hour; she doesn’t think she could handle the laughing couples arm in arm, choosing risqué lingerie in lace and silk.
The lighting in this place is dimmed, soft and flattering, in contrast to the rest of the shopping centre. She wanders through the store, weaving her way through the rails of lingerie - reaching out and touching the fabrics, feeling the silkiness between her fingers. Tucking a strand of blonde hair back behind her ear, she rifles through the clothes rail trying to find her size. She glances around her before she grabs different hangers and drapes them over her arm, ready to make her way to the fitting room at the back of the store. As she swings back past the door she gets too close to the security gate and the quiet of the store is pierced with the frantic electronic beeping of the alarm. Feeling her cheeks prickle with red, she holds the hangers high and waves at the shop assistant who looks up from the till with a frown, and nods in the direction of the changing room.
She pulls the heavy blue velvet curtain across and hangs her outfits up on the brass hook protruding from the wall. She is grateful for the soft lighting as she pulls off her clothes and lets them fall into a pile on the floor. Stood naked in front of the mirror, she looks at her body, lit orange by the lights, and tries to imagine it through his eyes. She makes herself look at her stomach; flat, but with skin puckered and etched with silvery stretch marks, the scars born of the brutality of pregnancy. She can feel familiar feelings of self-loathing bubble to the surface and she tries to swallow them down. She knows deep down this affair is just another way of her acting out, of trying to beat down her low self-esteem that has been with her since her childhood. This decision to meet up with him will only end in more pain. Her head is filled with reasons to cancel their meeting, but she knows that she won’t bring herself to make that call. This is everything she has been hoping for since their days as housemates at university; and her heart beats faster when she thinks about it. As she stands in the small cubicle pulling on silky corsets and fastening suspender belts, she lets her mind wander back to the summer, to the heady long weekend spent in the dried grass fields of a boutique music festival where they had rekindled their romance.
She thought that seeing him again after all that time would be different, that she wouldn’t feel those things for him that she had before. With so much time passed she hoped she would finally have closure. They met again around a table in a corner of the dance tent, hugging and holding each other, and she knew instantly that nothing had changed. The D.J. had started up and their group had moved as one to the crowded dance-floor. She remembered the darkened dance tent had been red and glowing like a womb and the thumping bass line had beat along with her heart. They were crushed together in the crowd of friends and strangers and she had inhaled the air, thick with sweat and smoke and heat. So many people had surrounded them, the space buzzing with voices and laughing and music, but she had noticed no one else but him. Her whole body was alert and shaking, completely aware of his body wedged behind her; could feel his heat spreading into her.
Her view of the stage had been obscured as she was squashed tight into the stranger in front of her. The smell of their sweat was making her feel dizzy and she had wobbled, panting as she struggled to take in cleaner air. Suddenly she had felt his arms around her waist and with a flurry of movement she was up above the crowd, precarious atop his warm shoulders. His hair was sandy blonde and pushed up from his forehead in clumps by a red headband, and she had reached out to touch it, to feel it between her fingers. Her other arm was outstretched, bare and pale white, waving in time to the music. On the stage ahead of them the chords of her favourite song had begun and she had stretched open her mouth so wide it creased up her cheeks, and sang along. Her legs were wrapped tight around his neck and he ran a thumb along the naked flesh of her thigh and goose bumps had prickled all over her body as the music and blood crashed in her head.
She opens her eyes back in the reality of the changing room, shivering at the memory of the deliciousness of his hand against her skin. She brushes out a crease in her jumper, picks up her bag and swishes out of the changing room towards the till; hanger in hand and determination on her face.