Sometimes, I stay up late at night, yearning. I look at him lying peacefully next to me, and I know he deserves better, but I can’t help but think that it should have been you. It should have been you lying here in bed next to me as I watch the rise and fall of your chest, listening to you snore softly against the pillow. But he found me first, and I found you too late through him. But damn it, Jay, it should have been you.
“It would have been me,” you had told me the only time we allowed ourselves to discuss the brewing feelings that were boiling deep within us like a volcano readying to erupt. Those feelings that began the first time we looked across the room at each other and felt that first inappropriate spark.
“I was originally the one who was supposed to pick up our grandmother’s 80th birthday gift from your store, but something came up at work and I had to let Dan go in my stead,” you had added.
But I already knew that, of course. I had been eager to meet Dan’s cousin, Jay, whom he admired so much and who was instrumental in us meeting. You left the country to pursue your Master’s Degree in the UK the next day, and five years after you returned, Dan and I were married, as were you.
Is it not ironic that we met at your grandmother’s 85th birthday party, 5 years after we might have met? Do you lie in bed sometimes, hopelessly wondering what would have happened if you had come instead that day? Do you keep thinking that it should have been you? Do the words ring insistently in your head like they do in mine?
That moment we first met keeps replaying in my head. I remember laughing with some of your younger cousins about something mundane that I can’t even recall. But I had looked across the room at the new arrival and lost my mirth. It had felt like being. I felt as if I was punched in the heart by harmless but potent electrical energy. That was when I realised that I had lied to myself by settling for comfort and security, believing that I would never feel passion and that sparks were fictitious and overrated. Because I felt them, Jay, and I was as afraid as I was intrigued. I had never felt this intensely about any man I dated, and here I was, feeling it for my husband’s cousin.
I knew immediately that you felt the same. You felt that shocking connection and the magnet that pulled us together. Everybody kept making comments on how similar we were and how we liked the same things, unaware of the turmoil we were experiencing as we tried to hide our instant attraction to each other. The comments were innocent and jovial, but those five words rang in my head for the first time: It should have been you.
The more fate brought us together in other ways through a season of family functions, the more the feelings cemented. We both quickly noticed how much more easily we understood each other’s quirks than our spouses did. We got each other’s jokes and could communicate non-verbally. We had similar unconventional values and the same ridiculous hot takes. We followed the same people online and listened to the same podcasts. We even had the same favourite series.
“You two are like siblings,” our families would comment when we did something quirky. We smiled in agreement, but we knew we felt something deeper—something fiery and unplatonic.
We both ignored the feelings, thinking they would go away if they weren’t nurtured. We rarely interacted without someone else present. But the feelings between us didn’t go away, Jay. They got worse each time we saw each other. Then it got to a point where we were looking forward to each torturous moment we got to see each other. It has been four years, and we each have two kids now, but we’ve only fallen deeper in love. If we weren’t meant to be, why do we feel so strongly for each other? Why do feelings that aren’t being nurtured grow? Why are the dreams of you becoming more frequent? Is fate trying to punish us for some wrongs we have done in the past? Because it should have been you that first day, Jay. Fuck, it should have been you.
He knows how I feel and can see the desire and longing in my eyes when I look at you. I try every time to hide it, but the emotion spills out of me unchecked occasionally. I have tried to confess my inappropriate feelings to him and to apologise for feeling this way about someone so close to him. Sometimes, he quickly changes the subject and avoids my gaze. Other times, he gives me a pleading look that compels me to suck in the words – a look that begs me not to say the damning words that would shatter the foundation of the fantasy of a perfect life he has built for us. And each time I try to apologise and fail, it would be followed by a flood of affirmations and gifts. It hurts me to see him trying so hard to do the impossible task of filling the hole another man created in my heart by stealing a chunk. He doesn’t deserve it, and neither does she.
Do you think it’s better that we love each other’s partners? Sometimes I think it is easier to accept that I can’t be with you because I know you’re in wonderful hands and being loved by a sweet woman; other times, I wish our partners weren’t such good people so that it would make it easier for us to indulge in our desire for each other. Does she know about me? Does she know how you feel? I hope she never finds out. I hope she remains oblivious for everyone’s sake.
We avoid touching each other in any way because we don’t want to open that Pandora’s box. We both understand the consequences of even the slightest hint of touch. In four years of guilty yearning, we only spoke of it once, and that was enough. We have an understanding and compatibility that most people pray for, but we can’t be together because we’re trapped in matrimonial cages with people we love but are not in love with. Would fate have given us another chance to meet if we had not settled? —if we had waited for sparks and passion? Do you think of the life we could have had if we had waited to meet? Hell, Jay, it should have been you.
You and I are stuck in an endless cycle of yearning, guilt and regret. I won’t leave him, and you can’t leave her either. Our love is undeniably strong, but perhaps it’s better this way; raw, unfulfilled, and untested against the weight of disappointment and judgement we would face if we ever had the courage to take the leap.
It may be a sad way to live, but we have to settle for stolen looks and naughty fantasies of what making love to each other would be like—we have to settle for cumming to the phantom touch of each other when we indulge in guilty self-pleasure. It is still cheating, but we have to release some of the passion that fills us somehow before it consumes us.
Everything within me screams that it should have been you. Why didn’t you come to the shop that day? Did we fail fate’s test when you didn’t come? Is this a punishment for failing the test? Can the world reset to that day so that we can do it over?
It should have been you, Jay. It should have been you. But that’s not possible now. So maybe in the next life. In our next life, it will be you
