The tangent

He was supposed to be a tangent. A marginal recreation. A thing on the side. A good lay.

Her friends, her job, her family--this was her reality. This was the thing around which the tangent flitted meaninglessly. He was supposed to be meaningless.

But somehow, he crept into the corner of her mind, slowly and carefully, crossing that boundry line between tangent and real. And somehow, this most flagrant violation of her rules of geometry became a welcomed wrong. Her reality inverted and he became the thing that seemed most real to her. It was the white pressed shirt that fit over his shoulders. The way his forearms pressed against her back when he held her. The way she felt when he kissed her. And everything else became marginal, her real life became a formless mass that surrounded him.

Friends asked her to dinner, and she wondered if he would be free then. Mother would call on the phone and she would click over the moment he called. She stayed late at work just to make up for the time she spent daydreaming about him. And as she watched her life revolve around him, she remembered to herself, He was supposed to be meaningless. He was supposed to be a tangent to my real life. But her real life had become a tangent to him.