A draft for a story I am writing

I had been carrying my secret for five years. It hovered behind me in the shadows. Sometimes, with an old friend who knew all my secrets, it came out and sat with us over dinner. It was an awkward relative. It was an unwanted child. It was the albatross of my experience. With lovers who were curious to know my history, I embellished or concealed the details using an artful sequence of words I had come to repeat instinctually when presented with casual questions surrounding that period of my life.

My secret was innocuous. To a stranger peering into my world, my secret would have no impact. It would be a box to be checked in a survey. Were I to be his subject, an observer of my life would take notice of my travels, my writings, my dancing, but never my secret. This recondite burden only bore any weight to me. The players on the stage of my existence adeptly made their way around it, simultaneously mollifying and heightening my sensitivity to the topic.

One day I went to a bar in the city with a friend who shared my secret. It was then that he casually introduced himself to me. We quickly found that we shared a love of opera and the classics. Like me, he had tried goulash in Vienna, and developed the view that the Mona Lisa was significantly overrated. Our conversation took me to the places I loved the most and our shared passion entranced me. Commitments made earlier that day forced me away from our encounter, but he called me the next day and a cautious romance blossomed.

He loved to talk about his work at the government. He spent time explaining to me the submissions that companies made to his agency, and the carefully sculpted questions he posed to them. His home was neat and orderly. His music was classic, conspicuously devoid of any album produced in the last decade. His life was open and structured. On our nights together, I curled up naked beside him in his bed with my head resting perfectly into the curves of his shoulder. He had no secrets.

After a few long days apart while I was on a trip, we met for dinner in a cafe at the train station when I came back into the city. Just like all new lovers, we completely enraptured each other with the mundane details of our lives. Afterwards, he took my hands and led me outside to a shimmering fountain. We spoke softly and talked about our histories, our passions, our families.

It was then that the secret burst out of me.

"I was married before." I said. "It was just a month, and I had grounds for an annulment, so I am technically not divorced. I just wanted you to know that. If it is a deal-breaker, I understand."

He was silent. He held me close to his chest and kissed my cheek. He whispered his secret - the secret I could never imagine that he had. He had made a woman pregnant, and helped her when she decided to end her pregnancy.

I kissed him on his cheek, and then on his lips. We had shared our secrets. We knew the worst of each other before we tasted the best. In one sentence we conveyed fear and sadness bound for years and unleashed to uncertain tempers of unknown consequences. In return, we received acceptance and a redemption of sorts. We were new lovers, but in that moment, we became deeper lovers.