Piesporter and ...

"L" is a fun smooth operator given to surprising me with my favorite cuppa green tea, with honey and cream when I least expect it. Sometimes he makes it or Starbucks does.   He nuzzles my neck, massages my shoulders as I hunch over my laptop reviewing the latest draft of a bid proposal. We brainstorm and gather information to assist each other's work efforts and joke that we're having an "office romance".  Our inside joke because we don't work for the same entity, were not in an office, but we're working on business projects. We give each other space and enjoy the outdoors, horse back riding, fishing, tending to chores on his ranch, my house or his.

He's tender, affectionate, intelligent, accomplished with a pretty secure sense of himself. An engineer by trade who works internationally, a native Texan by birth, and a wine enthusiast. His warped sense of humor can make me laugh til I cry.  He's like his very own Marlboro Man, tall, tanned, sinewy and sexy. His sweat glistened torso is a turn on as are his wicked eye smiles. With his deep and melodious voice,  phone interludes are precursors of fun times ahead.  He dotes on his Mama and takes her shopping every week that he's in town.  He's an all around good guy except for one thing.

His heart is guarded, he'll only let me so far in, which is fine. I enjoy him and  have no desire to "own" him.  His heart and soul still belong to his high school sweetheart who died.  She broke up with him rather than tell him the grave nature of her terminal illness.  Only finding out the truth  AFTER she died.  It  cemented a deep seated anger and no relationship or belief in any god ever since.  He "lost it", blew his academic scholarship, drowned his sorrows with pub crawling drunken blackouts; three years of self-inflicted hell by his accounts.

There's an unfillable hole I tiptoe around, almost regretting having asked the question that unraveled that mystery.  His last interaction with her were angry words at the break up.  He'll never see that she in her loving way was trying to spare him. I can't/won't compete with the ghost of that love; 2 other wives have tried. I choose to enjoy our time together, it is what it is.  I can accept those terms of engagement because I too have lost my first love to brain cancer; I went to the convent to lick my wounds.  I still don't know what or how he recovered himself and got back on track.

He tells me of the Piesporter he has in the fridge, it's German origin and how well it goes with dessert. He'll thank me again for the engraved corkscrew I gave him for his birthday like always.  I enjoy being his student and his tender instruction. Now I wonder what's in the picnic baskets.  For now, I'll settle for his tender embraces, the Piesporter and chocolate covered strawberry kisses while we listen to the Corrs  and Corrinne Bailey-Rae.