1. Working at GO 2. Can't win at adultery

1. Working at Grocery Outlet again for two weeks. Eager to get my paycheck.
2. I am visiting the area to gain access to some rare documents for study. The city is now home to a lover of mine from years ago. (I can't believe I still dream about him.) I happen to be studying a subject that his wife researched for her doctorate in psychology. I'm working on my master's thesis. I'm in their guest room. He steps in to check on how it's going with the book. It's a tough book.  He leans over my shoulder and reads what I have so far. I'm only taking notes, but they are displayed as if it's the first chapter of a book. He leans back in a chair, and with the casual machismo he exudes, his body posture is expansive, hands on back of head, knees out. He says "It's pretty depressing. Do you think the subject is that depressing?" It's a very science-based research project I'm doing...I say "No, it's not depressing, it's just that this is the first time I've ever examined this specific subject and I don't have any reason yet to agree with the conclusions out there. I'm starting as a skeptic, and you think that's depressing?" It's very unlike him to dislike a skeptic. He starts to chastise me for also having a Glamour and Cosmopolitan magazines under my rare research book. I'm embarrassed. We are having a sincere and easy conversation without any awkwardness or misplaced smiles. But something about it feels stuck. In the past, in conversations with him it was easy to see that we still desired each other. I feel like I have been friend-zoned, officially. His wife comes in to say hello and when I bring up something from the book she goes off on a tangent about the particulars of some dead king. They bicker about it, and I realize that maybe she's smarter than I am. Maybe she's funnier than I am. Maybe she's more beautiful than I am. I worry that his love for me is dead at the root and he's only being "nice." They had scheduled a dinner party, and I go back to working on my thesis, but I can't concentrate. I hear the clinking of glasses and their merriment. I go out to ask a question about my cab to M- and though there's no invitation to join them for the party, his eyes linger on me for longer than necessary. I realize that I do not want his sexual attention because it would be a mess with his wife, who I realize IS more beautiful then me, and smarter, and more charming, but is wife-flavored to him. I have been friend-zoned "officially", but unofficially, there's still a possibility for our lust to take off. But want him as I do, I want him as single man, not as an adulterer. I can't win in this game.