To catch on fire when he touched me.
I could see it so clearly in my mind and I could feel the heat when I was alone in my bed.
I wanted the fairy tale.
How can you want someone so desperately, when according to everyone else you are already living the dream?
I had a perfect man—a perfect, reliable man—but my life was empty.
My soul was dying day by day.
Like a lost sheep, I would cry myself to sleep at night, knowing what I was missing—knowing that he was waiting for me—yet hating myself for feeling this way.
I didn’t know who I was searching for, I only knew he was in London. He had to be in London because he wasn’t anywhere I had been before and London had been at the forefront of my mind for the longest time.
* * *
Then, on one fateful day, it began… and my life changed.
The day when I met him.
I didn’t exactly meet him, but I talked to him. I wrote to him, to be exact. When working at the auctioneers, my company had acquired art. We sent it over to London to be auctioned off, knowing that there were collectors over there that were interested in this particular artist. We would fetch a much higher price than here in Australia. My job description was to liaise with the art department from the auction house to ensure that the transfer ran smoothly.
He—also known as Mark White—was head of marketing for Chesters in London. We spoke by email every day for three weeks. At first our conversation was work related, slowly moving onto the weather and polite chitchat. But then one Monday, a day that I will never forget because it is burned into my damn brain, everything changed.
I had returned back to work after a particularly boring weekend with Liam; one where we didn’t go out because we were saving. Liam didn’t like to waste money so we never did much. We had fallen into routine, and whether it was laziness, complacency, or just damn stupidity on both of our parts, the cracks in our relationship had begun to show without us realizing it.
We were both responsible for the other’s boredom but we didn’t know how to pull each other out of the funk.
That was our life.
That was what we did—our routine.
How do you change something when it’s the only thing you know?
And, fuck, if I couldn’t make it work with Liam who I knew was a good man, what chance did I have with a complete stranger?
Anyway… back to the story.
That morning my email pinged and it was Mark, I smile as I remember it like yesterday.
Good Morning, Emerson.
My eyes darted guiltily around the office to see if anyone knew what I was doing, and I smiled mischievously while I typed back.
Good Morning, Mark.
An email immediately bounced back.
How was your weekend?
I replied.
Extremely dull. How was yours?
He typed back.
I nearly emailed you on the weekend to say hi.
I wish.
You should have. It would have brightened my day.
And he replied.
What are you wearing?
Four words, four stupid words, and my whole life changed. What are you wearing? I instantly became uncomfortable and nervously found a way to get offline. I knew it was wrong. I had a perfect boyfriend for Christ’s sake, even if I did find myself constantly thinking about Mark. His life was fun, vibrant, unpredictable, and here I was living the life of a sixty-year-old. A deep, sinister sadness fell over me and I realized I missed hearing about his life, his dates, and the fun he was having when I wasn’t speaking to him. Then, after two days of radio silence, I did the unthinkable. I messaged him back and told him exactly what I was wearing. The lines quickly became blurred. We started messaging each other at all hours of the day, talking about everything but art related topics. I would even hide in the bathroom at work to converse with him.
My relationship with Liam suffered as I begged him to take me out, for us to travel overseas, to do something, anything exciting.
I tried to save us, I really did.
But Liam constantly refused to break routine and barely six months later, my world crumbled before completely falling apart.
I would research London for hours, dreaming of a life that I knew existed somewhere out there in the universe.
I desperately felt I was missing out on someone very special—that my destiny was with another and not the man I was planning a future with.
But why and who?
Who was the man who was calling me and why did I have this obsession with London?
One day I found myself sitting on my lounge crying, holding my phone waiting for the only excitement in my life, Mark, to email me while Liam was in the shower. Somewhere along the way in between the online laughs and chats, I had changed.