The People of Dewbrook

Chapter Five

Over the course of four months, Caroline and Stephen had talked countless times. Caroline made it a habit to visit him during the late night when his wife was hardly ever around, conversing with him for hours on end. The two of them learned to appreciate each other's companionship like nothing else in the world, bonding over their rather similar interests and gradually forming a friendship that neither of them could have expected when they first met. 

She was happy to have found another friend who partially helped her when it came to forgetting the pain in her heart after the departure of her husband. However, she tried not to think about him too much, for it was not quite fitting to hang around a gambler who also had a disapproving wife at every opportunity. Her reputation was more important than anything else, after all.

Her heart, on the other hand, had different plans. The conversations began to become longer, which she barely noticed, due to them also becoming more enjoyable and free. Whenever she would see him, merriness would light itself inside her like a small flame that was turning bigger day by day, which she initially dismissed as the signs of a very close friendship, especially due to her belief that she had lost her capability for romantic attraction long ago after all the men she forgot about after dallying with them. But, as it grew, she could not believe in that anymore, well aware that she would never admire the appearance, voice and smile of a close friend as much as she did his.

Another sign of her attraction toward him was her dreams. Before, she never thought of them as anything special, but now, thanks to them showing an idyllic and beautiful garden where they would sleep together, feed each other fruit from the trees they would hide from the heat of the Sun under, dance with birds and butterflies flying around them, talk to each other and laugh without any disturbances, as well as kiss with all the passion from within their souls until they lost their breath, she was certain they were urging her to realise them. In any season and at any time, she would be with him and hold him by her side until her demise, joy engulfing her entire body.

If she were to be with him, his wife would turn into even more of a nuisance, but she would not mind it. Part of the pleasure of her licentious life was getting into the beds of married men who were obsessed with her, for taking something that was not hers awakened even more excitement in her. The fury in the eyes of jealous and desperate wives who were all her age, but plain and withered instead of wealthy and beautiful, always caused her to smirk, utterly satisfied with what she had done. Stephen was better than those utterly disposable men in every way, and that advantage, which was usually major, was minor in the face of love.

When it came to Stephen, the feelings were the same, which neither of them knew. She thought that he had got used to marriage enough for his heart not to do that, and he thought that she could never feel the things he was feeling due to her way of life. Late at night, he lay in bed, staring at the ceiling and imagining her beside him, consumed with love and lust, bearing a facial expression bereft of emotion so that his wife would not suspect anything, thoughts like those keeping him from sleeping, and when he would fall asleep at last, he would dream of her, wishing that he would not wake up, as careless as may that have been to those close to him. 

He could merely imagine a world with love that had no obstacles, where an adulteress was like any other woman, and where cheating was moral if it was done in the name of love. Alas, he could only wallow in his estrangement from morality, which was like quicksand under his feet, threatening to swallow him whole and leave everyone around him to wonder where he had gone and what caused him to end up in such a pitiful position he could never return from. Upon further thought, he decided to ignore it, his desperate heart convincing him that he knew exactly what he was doing. 

Every conversation they decided to engage in after realising their feelings was filled with artificiality, both of them smiling while their cheeks were hurting and while they were looking for any other topic to talk about, pretending that they were nothing more than friends and that it would stay that way, their hearts writhing in agony as they stood there for hours, fenced off from each other in more ways than they had previously expected.