It’s a special night. A very special night.

You’re sitting next to your wife of eight years and she is more beautiful than the day you met her. You’re in a cozy booth in a warm and romantic restaurant and the dinner was exquisite. The bottle of wine is three quarters finished and it has colored your wife’s cheeks a delicious glowing rosy hue. The candle’s flame burns in her eyes; they hold your own with such unbounded love you want to cry out with boyish joy and wonder.

Your son, the fruit of the love you tumbled so precipitately into so long ago now, is seven years old and he is on his first sleepover! But the evening—the moment—is even more special than that. For because of this and that, plans gone awry, grandparents here and there but never where you would have wished them, this is your first night in over seven years—since the cherub of your eye and heart was born—that the two of you have one another utterly and completely to yourselves!

So it is a very special night.

You’re not sure whether it’s the atmosphere, the candle’s burning flame, the wine that is awakening centers deep within you that have lain dormant for years, but the giddy intoxicating madness that first galvanized your relationship has caught you completely off guard once more. You pry your eyes from those of your wife and gaze around the room. It seems so oddly distant compared with the beguiling scent, the enchantingly magical physical warmth, the delectable intimacy of this beautiful woman who is all women and is, to your ongoing disbelief and profound gratitude, your wife.

The moment couldn’t be more perfect, more right.

Your eyes meet her’s once more. Slowly, ever so slowly, the two of you are drawn together. Her lips, redder and fuller than you have ever seen them, beckon alluringly. Your blood is churning maddeningly and you lean closer, your lips reaching out for her’s. Never have two people desired a kiss more than the two of you do now, never have two people been so utterly and completely lost! The moment is now, like a storm on the verge of a torrential explosion.

And then it happens! Out of where, you have no idea.

“I wonder what he’s up to now,” you hear coming from your throat.

“What?”

“NO! Wait! Where did that come from!” you plead, whether aloud or not you cannot be sure.

But what you are sure of is that the moment of moments has piffled away, squelched like a sneeze unsneezed. Gone.

The two of you sit there, tired, slumped and empty, the wine in your stomachs whispering ‘indigestion.’

Later, you’ll put on your warmest pajamas and burrow under the blankets to escape the chill of the house. With aching heads and exhausted bodies you’ll strain groaningly to kiss one another good night and then turning away slide easily if clumsily into a welcome night’s sleep with the promise of a morning together dancing gaily in your budding dreams.