FLIRTING TIME

Once the interest was blatantly expressed, there was no longer doubt to what was going on. We started spending time together, just lunch time, and not always, maybe three out of five weekdays. It was three out of four persons who regularly met, the odd one out was him. We tried different places around the office. Small restaurants, stands, the market, different kinds of Mexican street food - tacos, tortas, sopes, quesadillas, fast food, nothing romantic or extraordinary. Different ways of cooking the same by different vendors. After that, we would return to the office to chat in one of the meeting lounges in the floor. It was fun, he loved telling stories, personal anecdotes that let one learn about him a lot, his likes, dislikes, way of being, education, values, family life, many things. He was very much like a teen ager, a weird mixture of innocence and malice. He couldn't get my sarcasm and often I thought if he really didn't get it or if he was stupid. He is a very simple man, no pretense nor ambitions. One day he asked what the ideal couple was for each. I couldn't answer. It had been so long ago I was just focused on work that I had forgotten that. I started searching. After long, many days, I remembered. The question had vanished into thin air, no longer important for him. But he posed these sort of questions which made me think many things. I started questioning what I wanted from life, from him. I was in a relationship before it was acknowledged. I started preparing myself for the moment.
His smiles were more open day after day.
He  would fire questions at me on the office chat.
He would go to my place and ask me directly questions he had no patience dealing with on the chat.
He would go to my place to chat with me. Period.
I grew embarrassed. I was not used to receiving such attention. I started to act reserved. But I was delighted. I needed the attention. I so much needed it.

THE INVITATION

So, days went by and he was there, day after day watching me walking by, always smiling, maybe gathering courage to speak, or just calculating his best time and approach, like a prowler approximating its prey. One day I found myself thinking, "Gosh! When are you going to invite me out?" and it was like magic, not long after that thought he did.
I went out with a work mate with whom I always went to have lunch and he was there, with his friend waiting for us. He approached me and asked, directly, "Where are you going? Having lunch? Can we join you?" Kind of cute, kind of teen-ager like.
I always laugh and make fun of when I'm kind of scared, so I replied, "No, we're not having lunch, we were just walking by. Of course we are having lunch! We still don't know where."
They suggested a taco place and we went. He interviewed me quite directly. He asked if I had a boyfriend, if I was married, how long ago I had been in a relationship, etc. He talked to me while his friend talked to my friend, suddenly we were two couples, not four friends. It felt nice, it had been a long time since someone had been interested in me, his eyes, his words, his intentions, were flattering. But I remembered, I had been warned. Of course he said he was married and that he had two grown up children; like a good married man he said he loved his wife, BUT that they didn't get along anymore, that she was troublesome, that she never listened, that she was always nagging at him, that she was always in a bad mood and that they had married just to give his mother a grandchild, which I considered quite a stupid reason and of course a lie. I knew everything was a lie, I knew he was trouble. I had been the wife, my ex had said the same things about me, to many other women and to me. I knew what he wanted long before he told me. I knew what would happen long before he asked me. I just needed a reason, I was not in love, as I said before, I didn't even find him attractive. But, I'm a writer and I needed the experience, that's how I convinced my decent self to be indecent for this time.

THE WARNING

Just a few days after I entered the new job I was warned, so I cannot claim I was caught unaware or an innocent prey to the mean wolf. However, as my habit is to blame others, I'll blame Hollywood chick flicks. They always show adultery as sexy, incredibly romantic and the real pinnacle of love (what is pinnacle anyway? ) as in The Bridges of Madison County, something to keep to yourself, written in a diary until your daughter is old enough to read or until you die and she discovers it. Whatever, I'm rambling. I was warned. I was told, "Be careful of that man, he loves to seduce women, but he's married and he loves pornography." Being used as I am to be ignored olimpically by men I shrugged my shoulders and threw the warning to the wastebasket.
But I was not ignored. The first Christmas party of the office I went to, he invited me to dance twice and he was drunk as a sailor... or a musician. Since that day he used to smile at me each time I walked by his place, which was often because he's on the way to the drinking fountain. He started saying good morning and I replied.
We happened to be invited to a couple of gatherings with work mates and we would exchange a few laughs. Nothing really important. I started looking back. I started noting he checked me out each time I walked by. Each time. I didn't really like him. His face seemed like that of a little blackish bat. All pushed-like with hardly a nose sticking out of it. But I was intrigued. I wanted to know what would happen next.