Girlfriend

It's happened so gradually I didn't even notice it at first: I think I'm the CEO's girlfriend.

I guess the first inkling was in DC, when he kept making remarks to Gwen about how great he thought I was, "Dude," she said, "he's so into you."

Yeah, but this was also the first time we'd gone away together, you know? And it was exciting and fun and thrilling and a risk. So I'd basically chalked up his fawning to enthusiasm. We'd had great sex, seen not much of each other for most of the trip, and sat as far apart on the return flight as we could: him with his CFO in the rear of the plane and me with my Blackberry in the front.

I was glad we'd done it--glad that I'd been able to share my friend with him, glad to have slept between them in that big bed, and surprised at how nice it felt to turn and see him beside me.

A month later we took another trip together, arriving at our destination in the evening and seeing very much of each other until his meeting the next afternoon when a car picked him up and another drove me to the airport. A few days before this trip he mentioned to me that he'd been re-reading our first emails to each other and remarking that this was so great; that we were each exactly as we'd made ourselves out to be.

"Uh-oh," I thought, "that is what people do when they are in love: they read old emails."

Still, the time we had together was great, and very, very sweet. There was a moment when we were fucking that I could almost sense those words on his tongue: those words that make things complicated. He didn't say them, and I was mostly glad. Mostly, because it's always nice to hear how besotted someone is with you, especially when you already have a hunch. He played a song on his iPod which he said always made him think of me. So now I have a song. Fortunately, it's a good song.

Unfortunately, I like him very much and I'm well aware that arrangements like ours don't last forever and that someday he'll decide that it needs to end and there I'll be, sad and missing him whenever I hear it.

Last week we were traveling together again, on a short overnight trip. He was leaving for Europe, and handed me some cash for when I checked out the next day so I could pay for the room service charges and the bottle of champagne we'd drunk, leaving the suite charges on his company card, "Tell them your boyfriend already left, but you want to remove those charges from the bill."

I don't think he even realized he'd said it: boyfriend.

But I did.