Forever Lasts Only Seconds

The command was a sudden vibration against the wood of the coffee table, a digital tether pulling me back into his orbit: “Meet me now.”

​In the world of online dating, people usually drag things out for weeks. They hide behind curated personas and polite small talk, but Jameson wasn’t "people." He was a gravity well. He was a dom, and I was submissive and compliant, so perhaps that helped the slide into his world, but the truth was simpler: he said go, and I went. I didn’t feel the need to say no. I just showed up.

​We met in Averly Ally, the sun hitting the Estuary like a glare off a knife. The date started with a massive name fail—a mishap that should have ended the whole thing before the coffee was even poured. I called him Zack. Just moments before, I’d been blowing off another potential match named Zack, telling him I was stepping into a meeting and had to go, and my brain was still caught on the wrong page. But Jameson didn't flinch. Even with the slip, he was Thee Choice. He was the only one I truly spoke to, the only one I saw.

​We moved through the Averly circuit—drinks, lunch, a stroll along the water where the dolphins broke the surface like silver needles. Then came the trip in his car. He drove me deep into the bush, a journey that felt like a test of my trust. He wanted to see if I’d snap in the isolation, but the joke was on him. I was his match, his wild card. As the trees crowded the windows, I looked at him and said, "Look, if you are a serial killer, it’s fine. I have three requests, which I think is fair."

​He looked at me with a mix of worry and intrigue, his grip tightening slightly on the steering wheel. I leaned back, my dark humour surfacing like a shark in still water. "One of those requests, by the way, is multiple orgasms. I feel like it would be bad manners to kill someone and not at least give them a good time first. I mean, why does she have to scream in pain? Let her scream for a better reason." He didn't laugh, but the air in the car changed; it was that specific brand of madness that brought us together. "Unless you want an apprentice or a consultant?" I added. "Like a walking life-checklist." He looked at me then—half-worried, half-intrigued. He’d tried to rattle me, and I’d offered him a job.

​He stopped the car. The bush was silent, heavy with the heat of the afternoon. He leaned in to kiss me, but I put a hand up. "No," I whispered. "Coffee breath." He didn't move an inch. "I’ve had coffee, too," he said, and then his mouth found mine.

​It wasn't a soft kiss. It was an upheaval. It rolled everywhere. Within seconds, the geography of the car changed. Feet were on the roof, bodies were shifting in a frantic, desperate dance, and seatbelts were twisting and snapping against us as we scrambled into the back seat. The windows fogged instantly, the glass becoming a wall of white. The handprints we left had nothing on Titanic. Beneath my clothes, the sensation was a defrosted avalanche—a sudden, overwhelming rush of heat and wetness that was so close to sex it made my head spin. It was a passion I knew I wanted forever. But when the movement stopped, and the air in the car turned still, he looked at me and delivered the truth: "Forever lasts only seconds. It’s all but a fleeting moment." Then he drove me back to my car, and that was the end of our date.

​The years that followed became a waltz of deception. We were trapped in a dark labyrinth, plagued by thorns that cut deep—half-truths and unspoken sorrows. I was the Wendy to his Peter Pan, ready to grow up while he stayed locked in a state of adolescence. I held onto the crumbs of his effort like they were a feast. I remembered the scent of roasted duck—the first and only time he’d actually celebrated my birthday, a sharp contrast to the year before when he’d let the day pass in silence despite his own birthday falling just eight days after mine. I clung to the taste of our Tuesday Scottish dinners at the pub; me, buying the haggis and feeling a swell of pride as I shared a piece of my heritage with him. In those moments, I thought we were building a foundation. I didn't realise I was just decorating a room in a house he never intended to live in.

​The joy faded. He loved me to death, and I was drowning in it—a toxic devotion forged on the shattered remnants of my soul. I sat in a café and overheard him bragging to a friend: “She’s a nice girl, plus, as he sipped his beer, with a smirk he continued "I can do what I want.” The words pierced me like shards of glass. My prince was just an emotionally lost child who couldn't commit.

​It was September when we met for the last time. The winter chill was biting at the coast of Slayder Sands beach, the ocean air whipping the sand, hair dancing with the wind. He had moved on to Molly, yet he stood there on the beach and gloated about cheating on her the night before with a nineteen-year-old. He said it with that smug arrogance, like it was a badge of honour. We spoke, we embraced, and the tears fell side by side. We showed each other our new walls, the armour we’d built to keep the pain at bay—a moat to protect the other from the agony we brought to each other’s feet. I saw the toxic cycle for what it was. I saw that I’d never be the one.

​"I have to go," I said, turning toward my car.

​As I went to leave, he grabbed me. He pulled me into that dominating embrace—the charm, the pull, the hold I had missed for so long. It was the embrace I was prepared to mourn for the rest of my life. To forever dance in the wonders of "what if..."

​He leaned in for a passionate kiss, wanting to claim me one last time, to prove the fire still burned, to see if he still held power over me. But as his lips got close, the memory of the defrosted avalanche died. I saw the knots and the lies he’d built. Unburdened by his falsehoods, I finally found peace in the storm.

​I pulled away.

​"No," I said. "I promised I’d let you be happy."

​Even though every part of me wanted that last kiss, I had to let it go. Those lips weren't mine to kiss anymore. That body wasn't mine to hold. I got into my car and closed the door on the man who thought forever only lasted seconds. As I drove away from the shore, I felt a rush of self-worth I’d never felt before. The sun shone brighter, and the path ahead was finally free from the shadows of his deceit.

​I was his, no more.