#104: To be

The realisation gives Grace whiplash. This man is flirting with her. She sits up a little straighter and feels as if she has raised above the choppy waters of her drunkenness. The air she inhales sobers her for a moment.

He is attentive to her and asks if she's okay. She smiles and nods. The thought of this man, a fellow teacher at a conference one state away from her home, from her husband, from her children, fills her with desire.

To feel his hands caress her skin, the sensations tingles just at the thought.

He leans in with a grin and says he really wants to kiss her.

Should she just leave and take the simple fact that another man desires her, wants her? She could hold those words he whispered into her sexless marriage to keep her loneliness at bay. She imagines herself lying awake as Peter snores beside her and she'd replay this moment over and over again until the memory wears out.

She smiles and is about to answer when she thinks of Hamlet. To be or not to be the adulterer. That is the question.

Whether it is nobler to be the faithful partner or suffer the pangs and arrows of guilt.

Yes, she is lonely, but she loves her family. She loves Peter with all her heart and she knows he loves her. They have just gotten bored with the repetition of touching each other. Of the routine of how each of them orgasms.

She has read of couples who go through the same thing and at some point come out the other side stronger and more passionate. Trust, she believes, is the key to a marriage surviving. Peter trusts her.

She leans in and kisses him.