The Man of Her Dreams

Iris had always thought of herself as a happy woman. Not deliriously happy, perhaps, or the sort of person who woke up every morning convinced that life was a magical adventure, but content. She had a good husband, three healthy children, a comfortable home, and enough time to take care of herself. Yoga kept her fit, the book club gave her something to look forward to, and the ordinary rhythms of family life had a reassuring familiarity. She knew what needed doing and, for the most part, she did it well.

The past couple days, though, even the things she usually enjoyed had begun to feel like obligations dressed up as hobbies.

That morning, after getting the children off to school and tidying the kitchen, Iris had found herself standing in the living room with absolutely nothing to do. The silence should have been welcome. Alexander was at school, Sophia and Zoe were safely deposited in their classrooms, and George was out working. Nobody needed a packed lunch, help with homework, a ride somewhere, or an answer to a question that could easily have been answered by looking it up themselves.

She had the whole house to herself.

Wonderful.

So why did she feel like she was waiting for something?

Iris wandered to the window and looked out at the neatly kept yards of the neighbouring houses. A woman across the street was loading groceries into her car. Somewhere nearby, a lawn mower droned. The world was carrying on, everybody apparently occupied with some small purpose, while Iris stood in her own living room wondering what on earth she was supposed to do with the next several hours.

It wasn't just boredom with the routine. She'd been doing the same things for years, and until very recently, the familiarity had felt comforting. This was something deeper, something that had crept up on her over the past couple of days and then refused to leave. She'd tried to ignore it, to blame it on a poor night's sleep or the dreary weather or perhaps the fact that she'd read three disappointing books in a row. None of those explanations held up.

Iris was bored with her life.

The thought was so blunt that she almost laughed. It sounded like something a woman in a television drama would say just before buying a convertible and running away to Tuscany. She wasn't that woman. She was about to turn forty, married, and the mother of three children who depended on her. She had responsibilities. She had commitments. She had a husband who loved her.

George.

Thinking of him brought an unexpected frown to her face.

George was forty-two, handsome in that polished, real-estate-agent sort of way. Tall, broad-shouldered, strong, with a square jaw and carefully maintained hair, he looked as though he'd been designed to sell expensive houses to people who wanted to imagine themselves living better lives. His suits fit him perfectly, his smile was warm and convincing, and he knew exactly how to make people feel that he was listening to them. He could walk into any room and look entirely at home in it.

For seventeen years, Iris had found those qualities attractive.

Now, the thought of spending another seventeen years married to him made her want to groan.

Seventeen more years of the same conversations, the same dinners, the same familiar jokes. Seventeen more years of knowing precisely what he would say when she told him about something that had happened at book club, or how he would react when one of the children did something ridiculous. Seventeen more years of being a good wife to a good man.

Ugh.

Even another month seemed like a daunting prospect.

The realization left Iris standing very still, one hand resting on the back of the sofa. She wasn't angry with George. That would have been easier. He hadn't been cruel to her, hadn't belittled her or made her feel small. He wasn't a husband she needed to escape from, a man whose behaviour could be itemized and presented as evidence in some imaginary trial. George had been supportive, dependable, and, in his own way, affectionate.

He was a good man.

He just wasn't her type anymore.

The certainty of that thought was startling. It didn't feel like a passing irritation or one of those fleeting moments when a perfectly ordinary spouse became annoying simply by chewing too loudly. George had somehow become a different sort of man in her eyes, and not a more attractive one. The qualities that had once appealed to her now seemed almost aggressively wrong.

Iris still loved him. That was the strange part. Or, at least, she loved the life they'd built together and the man she'd known for so long. Their shared history was woven through her memories: the early dates, the wedding, the excitement of buying their first home, the nights spent soothing babies who refused to sleep, the holidays and family celebrations, the little private jokes that nobody else understood. There was real affection in all of it.

But that love, she'd realized that morning, was rooted in history. It belonged to experiences they'd shared and feelings she'd once had. It wasn't physical. Not anymore.

In fact, the idea of getting into bed with George and being intimate with him had become distinctly unpleasant.

Iris pressed her lips together, unsettled by her own reaction. She could remember wanting him. She could remember the attraction, the excitement of being newly married, the pleasure of his hands on her and the warmth of lying beside him afterward. Those memories were perfectly real. Yet when she tried to summon that feeling now, all she could picture was his broad shoulders, his firm chest, his strong jaw, and the rest of that handsome, athletic package.

The image made something inside her recoil.

How could that be? George hadn't changed. He was still the same attractive man he'd been last week, last month, last year. If anything, he took better care of himself than most men his age. He exercised, dressed well, and had the sort of physique that other women might appreciate with a lingering glance.

Iris simply didn't want it. No. She needed something different. Someone different. The thought was both alarming and strangely exciting.

Was she thinking about cheating?

The question arrived with enough force that Iris straightened, as though someone had caught her doing something improper. Absolutely not. She wasn't a cheater. She had spent seventeen years building a marriage, raising children, and creating a family. Whatever was happening in her head, she wasn't about to sneak around behind George's back and start an affair. That would be dishonest, cruel, and an excellent way to make an already complicated situation much worse.

Still, there was no reason she couldn't dream. A fantasy wasn't a betrayal. Thinking about something didn't mean she had to do it. And if a little daydreaming helped her understand what had suddenly gone wrong with her perfectly respectable life, who was being hurt?

Nobody.

Besides, the fantasy itself was becoming surprisingly specific.

Short.

Yes. That was what she wanted. The word popped into her mind with such clarity that Iris blinked. Short? Really? She'd always liked tall men. George was tall, and she'd certainly appreciated that once. The broad shoulders, the height, the feeling of being wrapped up in someone strong and capable. It had all been part of the appeal. Now, however, the very idea of a man who towered over her seemed tiring.

A shorter man would be nice. Someone closer to her own height, perhaps even shorter. Someone she didn't have to crane her neck to kiss. Someone whose presence didn't fill a doorway or make him look as though he belonged on the cover of a men's fitness magazine.

And stout.

Oh, yes. Stout was good.

Iris's mouth softened into a smile as she considered it. A little extra weight around the middle wouldn't hurt at all. In fact, a pot belly might be rather lovely. The thought was so unexpected that she glanced around the empty room, half-expecting someone to have heard her.

A pot belly. Since when had that sounded appealing?

Apparently, since now.

She imagined a man with a soft middle beneath an ordinary shirt, the fabric pulling ever so slightly over his stomach when he sat down. There was something comforting about the image, something unpretentious. No sculpted abs, no gym-honed torso, no implication that she ought to be equally polished and perpetually ready for a photo shoot. Just a normal man with a normal body.

Mmm.

Iris shifted against the sofa, feeling a warm little flutter of interest that was entirely new. She'd never spent any time wondering what sort of body might appeal to her in quite this way. The men she'd found attractive before had been easy to describe: handsome, fit, confident, well dressed. George had checked every box.

Her new imaginary man would be lucky to check half of them.

He didn't need to be stylish. In fact, she rather hoped he wasn't. A tailored suit and expensive watch suddenly seemed like unnecessary decoration, the male equivalent of putting a bow tie on a cat. She wanted someone plain. Normal. Easy. A man who could wear an ordinary pair of trousers and a slightly rumpled shirt without looking as though he'd made a conscious decision to cultivate an image.

Someone she could relax around.

Someone who didn't make her feel as though she ought to be impressed.

The image in her mind gradually acquired a face. Not a particularly handsome one, at least not by the standards she'd applied to men in the past. His hair was thinning, with a receding hairline that made his forehead seem a little larger than average. His features were soft rather than sharply defined, and his smile was kind. There was something unassuming about him, something that made him seem approachable before he'd even opened his mouth.

He was in his early forties, perhaps a little older. Shorter than Iris, or at least not much taller. Overweight, with a noticeable belly and no apparent interest in disguising it. He looked like a man who might work in an office, enjoy a quiet evening at home, and occasionally make a joke that was funnier than he'd intended.

Oh.

Oh, that was nice.

Iris felt her heart begin to race. She hadn't meant to build such a detailed picture, but now that it was there, she couldn't seem to stop. The man smiled at her from the comfortable little theatre of her imagination, and she found herself smiling back.

Yes. That was exactly the man of her dreams.

Her fantasies, she corrected herself.

Her new fantasies.

The distinction mattered. Iris wasn't so naive that she couldn't recognize a change in herself when it was happening. George was the same man he'd been yesterday. The house hadn't moved, the children hadn't changed, and seventeen years of memories hadn't suddenly become someone else's life. Whatever had shifted, it was inside her.

Maybe it was age. Maybe hormones. Perhaps she'd reached some invisible point in her life where the things she'd once wanted no longer suited her. Women talked about changing priorities, about rediscovering themselves after years of putting everyone else first. Maybe this was her version of that.

Or maybe she was simply tired of the same old thing.

Whatever the explanation, her desire felt real. More than real, in fact. It felt as though a door had opened inside her, revealing a room she'd never known was there. And now that she'd seen it, she had no interest in closing it again.

Seventeen years.

A long time to be married to one man.

Seventeen good years. Seventeen loving years. Years filled with birthdays, Christmas mornings, family holidays, and the small moments that made a marriage more than a legal arrangement. She and George had built something together, and Iris wasn't about to pretend otherwise. They'd weathered sleepless nights with newborns, worries about money, arguments over the children's rules, and all the ordinary frustrations of sharing a life with another person. There was a great deal to be grateful for.

Seventeen long years.

So very long.

The longer she considered it, the more her memories seemed to take on an unfamiliar quality. The old attraction she'd once felt for George became difficult to understand. Had she really wanted that body? Had she really looked forward to their nights together? Had she really enjoyed being held by a man with those broad shoulders and that hard, athletic chest?

Of course she had. She remembered it.

But the memories now felt like scenes from a film she'd watched years ago, one she'd enjoyed at the time but couldn't imagine sitting through again. The woman in those scenes was unmistakably Iris, yet her desires belonged to someone else. Someone younger, perhaps, or simply someone who hadn't discovered what she really wanted.

How had she put up with it for so long?

The question was unfair, and some sensible part of her knew it. George hadn't become less worthy of love because her tastes had changed. Their marriage hadn't been a mistake just because she could no longer imagine wanting him in the same way. She could acknowledge all of that.

And still, she couldn't shake the feeling that she was done.

There was no way she could keep up the charade. Pretending to be a happy wife while quietly dreading the thought of another month, another year, another decade with George would only make her resent him. It wouldn't be fair to either of them. He deserved a wife who wanted to be with him, and Iris deserved a life that didn't feel like an endless repetition of a story she'd already finished reading.

No, she wasn't going to cheat.

Cheating wouldn't be enough.

What she needed was a clean break.

The thought should have frightened her more than it did. A divorce would be difficult, messy, and painful. There were three children to consider, a house to think about, finances to sort out, and a thousand practical details that would turn the end of a marriage into a long series of exhausting conversations. Iris wasn't about to pack a suitcase and vanish without warning. She was a grown woman, not a character in a romantic comedy who could abandon her responsibilities and expect everything to work out by the final scene.

She would have to speak to George. Properly. Honestly. She would explain that something had changed, that she couldn't continue pretending everything was fine, and that she no longer believed their marriage was right for her.

He would be hurt. Of course he would. He'd probably ask what he'd done wrong, and she would have to tell him that it wasn't a question of something he'd done. That might be the hardest part. How could she explain that the man she'd loved for seventeen years had somehow stopped being the man she wanted, even though he'd done nothing to deserve it?

And then, inevitably, he'd ask if there was someone else.

Iris already knew what she'd say.

"No," she'd tell him, truthfully. There wasn't another man. Not yet.

The little qualification made her smile.

Not yet.

Because she hoped there would be someone. She wanted there to be someone. The thought of ending her marriage and stepping into an empty future should have seemed lonely, but the future she'd been imagining didn't feel empty at all. It was populated by a kind smile, a receding hairline, an ordinary shirt, and a pleasantly rounded belly. By a man who didn't look like George, didn't dress like George, and didn't make her feel as though she were trying to keep up with some ideal of masculine perfection.

A man who might sit beside her on the sofa and ask about her day because he genuinely wanted to know. A man who might laugh at her jokes, enjoy her company, and make her feel excited about the simple prospect of spending time together. Someone she could be comfortable with, physically and otherwise. Someone who would make her look forward to tomorrow.

The details were ridiculous. She knew that. She didn't even have a name for him, let alone any reason to believe he existed. She was building a fantasy around a handful of physical traits and a vague impression of kindness, and there was no guarantee that the real man would resemble the one she'd invented.

But the idea had taken root, and Iris found that she didn't want to pull it out.

Her heart told her that the right man was out there.

And soon, she hoped, she'd find him.