Fairy Tale

Five years into their affair and she's no longer the naive little girl who fell in love with him. She's thirty-one now and experienced in the ways of conducting a clandestine affair. She knows now that he's not her Prince Charming and he's not going to whisk her off her feet and carry her off into the sunset. She knows that they are not going to have a happy ending.

But she loves him, the one element of a fairy tale that has not passed her by. She never believed that she'd find love but she has.

And when he is with her she feels like the most wonderful woman in the world and life is vibrant and actually has meaning. When he leaves her life is dull, shades of grey.

She hates waiting for him – she has nothing to do with her life, it seems, but bide her time and wait for him. She hates it, hates it, hates it – but not enough to end their relationship.

She teaches herself to knit because it is simple and something to do and she likes making things. In two months she has become proficient enough to finish a sweater. (She doesn't have anything else to do, after all.)

Then she tries reading but finds too many similarities in her situation when reading modern literature. She turns to the tales of King Arthur but even that's like her life, with the roles reversed. Always, she returns to the fairy tales, the dream of what her relationship with Ralph could be. And when he's away from her she longs for her life to follow the neat lines laid out in the small rows of print.

But when she's with him she can't bring herself to care that they won't have a happy ending. She has him now – that's enough. It has to be enough.