Chapter 57

I'm not proud to admit how things went from then on out. It just seemed like the easiest way to handle them at the time. Alex and I continued our work, analyzing the samples Georgie and Tim retrieved from the water sources and plants around us, acting as ever like two colleagues well-suited to working together. Breakfasts, lunches, dinners - all passed in companionable camaraderie, and sometimes at the end of the night we would all sit around listening to Tim fiddle away at his guitar or Georgie's stories about her time in the Peace Corps. And then, at the end of the night, Alex and I would tumble into our makeshift bed together to make love and then drift to sleep, our limbs still entangled in the muggy air of night. Nothing was said, no outward sign given that this was how things were, and yet we both seemed to embrace it as normal that we were lovers, at least for now.

Only occasionally did I allow myself a few moments to consider the situation, what was happening now and what would have to happen on our return. Not a single scenario was to my liking. I couldn't be her boss while this continued - hell, it was worse than what Keith had done as this time I was her direct superior. I couldn't really expect things to return to 'normal' between us - and after all, normal had been becoming less and less maintainable anyway with my growing attachment to her. I couldn't fire her without almost inevitably losing my own job as the school fell over itself to avoid a sexual harrasment suit that would ruin both them and me - and I knew that in good conscience I wouldn't ever fire her anyway. And the fantasy that she would want to be with me when we were no longer in an exotic locale and I turned back from an exciting seasoned adventurer into the middle-aged mother of a teenaged son was ridiculous enough that it didn't even make it out of the realms of fantasy.

The only option, I decided, would be to end our 'affair', hopefully by unspoken mutual agreement, when we got home and hope that, if not comfortable, things would return to being tolerable, and our working relationship would be, well, not much different on the surface. And what I felt beneath that, I would just have to ignore, and hope that it went away in time.

Contrary to the way time normally moved in the jungle it now seemed to fly past, gathering the happy moments and whisking them away as the time we were due to leave loomed ahead. As it approached I found it even harder to deny how I felt, and sometimes I would force myself to stay awake just so I could stroke Alex's hair as she slept and delude myself for just a little bit that this wasn't some torrid affair I ought to be ashamed of. Perhaps she began to sense how I felt, or perhaps she was having regrets herself, because Alex seemed to become more withdrawn and solitary as the last few days of the trip drew near - no less affectionate or passionate when we were alone but spending more and more time by herself, reading or scribbling in one of her notebooks. I would dearly have liked to know what she was writing in that diary, but I would never have betrayed her by looking.

I knew I should start preparing myself as well, begin pulling away for the inevitable separation, but I found it almost impossible to. Save for the time I spent worrying about Alex and what she was thinking, the past few weeks had been some of the happiest of my life, and I soaked the experience up greedily, savouring every morsel I could before the famine began.

 

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