When I got there, Pauline was already there. And how she looked immediately reignited the crush. Not only was her hair and make-up perfect, but her blouse nicely hugged her breasts, and as she stood up so I could see her, I could see she was wearing a skirt with five big buttons down the front. It kind of flared, like the skirts of her teens, when they were held out by petticoats, but it was obvious there were no petticoats under this skirt. She was a 40 year-old teenage-looking sex symbol, and she was my date. And I could see the admiring and attentive looks from several of the other male diners, and, seeing the women they were with, I could understand their jealousy.
We had a slow and pleasant meal (with no dessert), reminiscing on the days we were in Sunday school there, and later days when I played the piano for the hymns, until a little after 9, she invited me back to her house for a night-cap. Her son would be in bed asleep, but she didn’t like to leave him too late into the evening on his own. So I followed her back, even though I knew the way.
She checked on her son and then went into the kitchen to get the drinks. Entering her front room, I took off my tie and put it in my jacket pocket, then slipped off my shoes and jacket and sat in an arm chair, facing the sofa she sat down on, but a good ten or twelve feet away. Sipping slowly, we reminisced about early days — church picnics with fancy dress competitions, how she still had a picture of a 5-year-old me dressed as a cowboy and sitting on a pony, and her standing by dressed as an angel. The summers we had had at the coast bungalow, with Dad building fabulous sand castles. How, in grammar school days, she and a few of her friends talked my Mum into letting me be in the school Shakespeare play — Macbeth. I could tell, 20 years later, that I was still in love with her.
I lit a cigarette, and as casually as I could, asked if she remembered me grabbing her breast some 20 years before. There was a long pause, and I drew hard on the cigarette. Finally, a one-word answer. “Yes.”
Another long pause, then she asked “Why did you do it?” While I worked out how honest I wanted to be, or how brave, I took a draw on the cigarette, and then said “Do you really, honestly, truthfully, want to know?”
I looked across the room, right into her eyes, and after a moment, she said “Yes, but it must be honest and truthful.”
The cigarette was half gone. I looked from it to her, and said “I could say it was just a prank, that I just wanted to feel your breasts. But really, it was because I fell for you. I fell in love with you, and I was jealous of Tony, that he was getting to marry you. And there you were, a 20 year-old drop-dead gorgeous young woman, and I fell for you, and you didn’t seem to notice.”
Another draw on the cigarette. I lowered my eyes, between embarrassment, guilt, and a touch of fear. After a final puff on the cigarette, I started to stub it out in the ashtray. Then she asked “Do you still feel like that about me?”