I Was A Happily Married Mother Of 4. Then I Met A Woman At Pilates.

I remember the moment it happened — the single spark that set my body aflame.

Cecelia stood behind me on the Pilates reformer and pressed her legs into my back, her hands into my shoulders. The strength of her long, lean limbs drove me into submission. Her perfectly-highlighted blonde hair tickled the back of my neck.

“Connect your pubic bone to your sternum. Hold it.”

Her voice was deep, throaty.

“Even while I’m pushing you — hold it. And breathe.”

But I could not breathe. There was no oxygen left in the room. It had been consumed by her touch, her fire.

Spontaneous combustion.

My chest heaved with the weight of this recognition. It felt simultaneously familiar and forbidden, known and mysterious, natural and foreign. I searched for air as every nerve in my body shouted, This! This is who you are. This is who you’ve always been.

Out of nowhere, in an instant, she burned me to the ground, along with all of the preconceived notions I had about attraction and desire.

***

I had married my husband, Charles, 25 years earlier, after seven years of dating. We’d attended the same high school, and had been cast opposite each other in our spring production of ″Fiddler on the Roof.” On one of our first dates, he told me about a reoccurring dream he’d had since he was young.

“It happens almost every night,” he said. “I dream about this woman in a rocking chair in a dark, quiet room. Her back is to me, it’s the middle of the night, and she is holding a baby. I take the baby from her and send her back to bed. I never saw the woman’s face until I met you. But it’s you, Katrina. You’re the one.”

That’s how Charles convinced me we were supposed to be together. I was unsure that we were the right match, but he made it seem like our