Something has changed in her relationship with Scott. Jill can’t figure it out, but it seems a few weeks after her break up with Tony, she and Scott stopped being equals in their affair. She went from being Scott’s illicit lover, to simply being the other woman. While she was with Tony, she did not feel any fear about her affair with Scott ending. In fact, if he had dumped her, it would have saved her from having to make any important decisions. However, as soon as she became unattached, Jill realized that if Tony decided to no longer be with her, she would be completely alone. The last time Jill was single she wasn’t allowed to drink legally, and she does not recall that time in her life fondly. She hopes he cannot smell the desperation on her.

The night she broke up with Tony she called Scott excitedly. She thought he would be happy that at least one of them didn’t have to sneak around, and that now it would be easier to arrange their trysts. While still high from the adrenaline that formed during her break up, she told Scott, “I’m finally a single woman. We can meet several days a week. It will be so much easier to sneak in a fake business trip. Remember how we always planned on taking one.”

She waited and waited and waited for Scott to say something, but he remained quiet. Her adrenaline began to seep out of her pores, and she started to feel very sleepy. “Say something,” she pleaded.

“I hope you understand that I have not decided if I want to leave my wife,” Scott told her calmly.

“I know, this isn’t about that.”

“So you are single now; we should celebrate by going to an Italian restaurant. Perhaps the one we ate at after our first time,” Scott tells her with forced cheerfulness.

“Definitely,” she replied while fighting the urge to fall asleep.

During the weeks that followed, their phone conversations, which had always occurred on a daily basis, began to dwindle. Although they still saw each other in person the same amount of time, Jill always felt that Scott was in a rush to be somewhere else. That magical connection, which had convinced Jill to give up a stable relationship, had disappeared. Now Jill has turned into the type of woman who stares at her cell phone hoping it will ring, and as she stares at at it for the 100th time this week, she realizes that Scott and her never went back to that Italian restaurant.