39 Meeting Your Mate

If we’re lucky, there might be one or two moments in our lives where we are thunderstruck. Like a bolt from the blue everything falls away and we are hit with such startling clarity, it can be intimidating to face it.

Meeting you is one of those moments.

The party is the same party my friends have thrown to ring in every new year for the past decade. My wife and I go, see all our friends, play a few drinking games, shout our way through a countdown, laugh, smile, kiss then go home and have very satisfactory sex. We’re happy. I’m happy. I didn’t come to this party looking for anything and so far as I could tell neither did you.

Your husband is introduced to me by my friend. I forget the connection- they started a new job together but I stop listening, because I make eye contaOntario.

With you.

Seeing you sends a surge of electricity through my spine. It’s not that either of us are so absurdly attractive- we both look good and take care of ourselves, but this is beyond that. This is something instinctual. Something primal. The chemistry in our bodies activating, pheromones firing to tell us, with alarming urgency, that we have just met our match. That we’ve met our mate.

This is obviously insane. My brain has the impulse to sweep this aside but I notice the same twinkle in your eye. An intoxicating mix of confidence and vulnerability that suggests you’re having the exact same confusing experience with your internal reproductive alarm system.

Your husband introduces you. My friend introduces me. “Hi.” Is all I manage to get out, smiling softly at you as I reach out my hand.

The spark between us at our touch seems to confirm it. I have had a lot of handshakes in my life but I’ve never had one that felt… sensual? What the fuck is this? What the fuck is happening? The slight smirk grows on my face as I sink deeper into your eyes, swimming in them, quickly getting lost.

I cough slightly as I let go of your hand, slightly flustered and downplaying the other dimension I feel like I was just teleported to.

“Lovely to meet you. Excuse me-“ is all I manage to mutter as I take a few steps away, fading into the comfort of a crowd of my friends, bumping into my friends, finding my wife, who asks if everything is alright. Of course I insist, all good, and briefly excuse myself to go find a bathroom.