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It’s not as if he's expressly allowed himself to fantasize about her, yet the times when he was able to keep a tight rein on his wayward thoughts are gone for good. It worries him to have so little control over himself. He’s afraid he’ll start going a bit mad with every imagined encounter. (Mad, dependent, infatuated – take your pick. Some women in his life have taught him there’s little difference).
There’s a certain pattern to his fantasies, and although he didn’t invent it on purpose, he can’t deny there’s some underlying method to it.
Here’s how it goes.
When they’re in the same room, he thinks of touching her. A strand of hair tucked behind her ear, his hand on the small of her back, his finger tracing her eyebrow. Quite innocent, these flights of tactile fancy. Sweet. They make something tighten behind his breastbone, a vise of pleasure and pain.
Then, when she’s in another room, or when she pops out to the shop for a moment – in his mind, he kisses her. Her lips - that’s a given. But other interesting spots, too. The frustrating patch of skin right beneath her ear. Her forehead, if he’s feeling particularly tender. The inside of her wrist on one or two occasions. Phantom kisses that send a warm rush through his body.
In a comforting twist, he finds that when he’s tired or in pain, it’s she who kisses him. Always with a gentle smile, always with a mischievous gleam in her eye, she kisses him. These might be his favorite bits, actually.
And finally, when she’s gone and he’s alone, that’s when it turns… bold. The greater the space and time that separates them, the bolder it seems to get. Sunday evenings have been interesting of late, that’s for sure. And she’d probably be horrified to learn what his unruly mind concocted when she was in Masham over the long weekend.
Afterwards, he feels like a traitor of the first order.
He doesn’t want to feel like a traitor. He doesn’t want to be a traitor. He doesn’t want any of it.
And yet, when he’s had two or three pints too many, the one thing that really bothers him is not what the fantasies encompass, but what they lack.
Words.
In his fantasies, he doesn’t say anything, never even whispers her name.
And if the words won’t come to him even in the safe realm of his very own fantasies, how – he wonders through the haze of yet another pint - is he ever going to tell her?