You assholes could say that I get what I deserve. Don't fuck with a married man. Bad karma. All that jazz.

He wasn't married when I met him. He had the girlfriend and in January of 2006, he kissed me.

"I've got to leave her. I have feelings for you."

"Yes, I have feelings for you, too. You've got to leave her."

He never really did. Oh, he moved out a couple of times. Slept on some couches. Told me he wanted to be with me. Always went back to her, though. My life moved on. I dated around, but never found anyone special. Never found anyone who made me feel the way he did. I missed him. We reconnected.

Fast forward three years and now he's married and he's still never going to leave her.

He's never going to leave her.

He's never going to leave her.

Like Carrie Fisher in "When Harry Met Sally..."

Marie: The point is, he just spent $120 on a new nightgown for his wife. I don't think he's ever gonna leave her.

Sally: No one thinks he's ever gonna leave her.

Marie: You're right, you're right, I know you're right.

Except instead of $120 lingerie, he's spending $300 on tennis lessons for her and she's spending $300 on football tickets for him. He was supposed to move out in five weeks and he's buying her tennis lessons? And they're going to a pro football game together? And she has no idea that he's supposed to leave her? You know what? Two words.

Escape hatch.

If he doesn't tell her he's going to leave, he doesn't really ever have to leave. I will continue to keep his secret (oh, all of those phone calls when he was over here, on my couch, watching my television, making love to my body, telling me he loved me, looking into my eyes, lying to her when she thought he was home playing video games).

This is sick, sick, sick.

And the sickest part?

I will take scraps from him.

I do it because when I look at him, I attach myself to him. Because I am afraid that nobody will ever love me as much as he does, even if his love only goes so far. Because it's a challenge: if I can finally get him to come around and leave her, he will have righted my wrongs and won! I will have won! I will have been patient and kind and martyred myself but it will all be okay because he will be in my bed and under my tree and holding my children and making me laugh when my skin has sagged and my hair has turned gray.

But, I worry.

If he does leave her, he will regret it. I will live the rest of my life worrying that he felt he made the wrong decision. Every time he is out of town -- though I try to believe this is not true -- there will be a part of me that will wonder if she (or someone else!) is sitting beside him at the sports bar with their hand on his knee and watching him make the call to me. Lies, lies, lies.

He says he loves me. He says this is painful. He says I have no idea what he's going through.

He also says he loves her. He says she's his best friend. He says he cares about her immensely and doesn't want to hurt her.

I could call her right now and end it all. The nuclear option, I called it. She has no idea.

And tonight, all I wanted, after he drove me home, was for him to kiss me. He had to run home to his wife. He barely parted his lips. "I'm paranoid," he said.

"Will 2009 be our year?"

"I don't know," he replied. It was the first time in a long time (ever?) that I had heard him express doubt. It came on the heels of me telling him -- after he asked me point-blank -- if I had been "talking" to guys online.

"Yes," I admitted.

What did he want me to do? I've been sitting around waiting for the keys to...

(He still has keys to my apartment. When do I ask for those back? Let's just get through the holidays. No more drama until the New Year. New Year, New Drama.)

I've been sitting around waiting for the keys to jingle in my lock. For him to walk through and drop down his stuff and cry into my shoulder and say, "I'm here, I love you, I did it, I'm strong." He's married. I'm allowed to date. I hadn't even thought of going on a date with someone else until Monday, when he told me, "I just don't know when it will happen. I want it to happen; I just can't give you a time frame."

What was I doing? Wasting my time? Wasting my youth? Shouldn't I be out having fun?

The reality: we have plans to have drinks after work tomorrow and then part ways for the weekend. No talking on Mondays. Tuesday, I have bought tickets to the planetarium and we'll exchange gifts (a calendar, coffee, framed photo of us, video game rentals -- just small things, because really, all I can think about giving him is more of myself for Christmas and besides, nothing will compare to what she buys him, anyway). We'll part ways on Wednesday for four days, not talk on Monday, and soon it will be a New Year and we will be Just Friends. Or Just Exes. Or some hybrid. We will have to mourn the relationship we never had.

Like mourning a stillborn baby: sadly packing away both the memories and the dreams unrealized.

It has been almost six months since we were feverish in that bathroom. It was only two and a half months after his wedding. It has been three months since he told her, "I am in love with her and I want to leave this marriage."

He couldn't do it then and he can't do it now. He can't do it. He's never going to leave her.

This is karma. I fuck with the universe and the universe will fuck me right back.

It won't happen. It's a pipe dream. It's something he only wishes he had the balls to do. It's just not fair. It's just not fair that I could have suffered for all this time and for what? For what? What do I have to show for it? For nothing. I have nothing to show for it.

Ah, but that's karma, my love. Don't fuck with it because it's motherfucking real.

So I enjoy tomorrow's drinks and Tuesday's trip, knowing that that is that. I move on. I have to.

I have to bury that baby.