Page 71 of Trying Sophie

He shrugged his shoulder as if to say, “Yeah, but what are you gonna do?” and I wondered what it would be like to be so utterly confident in my sex appeal.

Objectively, I knew I was an attractive woman and I had a number of qualities that would make me a good catch. Someday, eventually. But basically, like most women, I was filled with a lot of self-doubt. I wished I could borrow a bit of his swagger for just a little while.

“What’s it like?” I asked. “Knowing that no matter what room you walk into, you’re the most wanted person there? Knowing, without a doubt, you have the power to bring women to their knees?”

Had I not been watching him so closely, I might have missed it when his jaw tightened. He didn’t like the question, but I didn’t know why. He’d been strangely forthcoming about women throwing themselves at him, so why was he holding back now?

“As to that that … it’s sometimes … well, I guess you could say it’s both good and bad,” he answered, gripping his coffee mug tight.

“How so?”

“It’s just that I don’t have to try very hard, you know?”

“I don’t,” I smiled, ruefully. “But go on.”

His eyes sought mine before he continued. “When you spend so much of your life focused on one thing, spending all your waking hours training for it and pursuing it, it can be nice when other things come easy to you. There are nights I like knowing that if I want … company, let’s call it … it’s there for the taking. I can walk into a room and take my pick. I don’t have to work for it. That can be easy, but …” His voice tailed off and he gripped the back of his neck.

“But?” I asked quietly, both wanting to hear the rest of it and wishing we’d never gone down this track.

On the one hand, I was genuinely curious to know what it was like being Declan O’Shaughnessy, Famous Rugby Star. And the “but” he’d spoken had me eager to learn the hidden depths of him. My grandfather didn’t suffer fools gladly so there had to be more to Declan than meets the eye.

“But it can be lonely too.”

“How so?” I asked.

I couldn’t imagine someone like him ever being lonely, but his admission also struck a chord since I’d come to the same conclusion about my own life just that morning. But it was easy to understand how I’d become isolated after years wandering the globe solo. The notion that someone like Declan, with such strong roots and a foundation in the community, would feel the same was depressing.

“How can I say this in a way that’ll make sense?” he asked.

I could see he was working through how to share the realities of his life with someone who had never been in his shoes. Since I’d had to do the same many times myself, I remained quiet and let him process his thoughts.

Finally, he said, “I’m never alone so maybe ‘lonely’ isn’t the right word, but the thing is, none of them know me.”

I didn’t know who the ‘them’ in this scenario was and that troubled me. Was he talking about the people I assumed were his friends, or the women he spent his nights with?

“Sometimes I’m not even sure I know myself,” he added on a near whisper.

When he realized he’d spoken aloud, his eyes flashed with distress and he studied my face, assessing my reaction.

“I spend a lot of time alone,” I confessed, wanting to make him feel less awkward, “so I have a hard time forming attachments with others.”

I tore at the napkin in my hands. “And when you spend so much time in your own head, the noise the rest of the world makes can be overwhelming. And because my life is so transitory, I find connecting with people—even those who’ve had similar experiences—not always worth the effort.”

“Noise …” he echoed, testing it out. “Yeah, it’s all just noise sometimes.”

He shook his head slowly, as if he was absorbing this new fact and molding it to his own experiences.

“Most of the time,” he continued, “they only want a piece of the person they think I am, not who I actually am. Or the person I want to be.”

Was it weird to have gone from an uneasy silence to such a deep and revealing conversation in a matter of minutes? Probably. Especially since I never expected to be sharing my innermost thoughts with him. Maybe it was because I never thought he’d be the person I opened up to, that I could.

“I can understand that, but obviously to a much smaller degree,” I agreed. “I mean, I don’t have men clamoring after me—” he smirked, and I chuckled awkwardly at the look of disbelief on his face “—but because of my blog people can develop a pre-conceived notion of who I am. When I meet readers, or even other bloggers, they’ve already formed an opinion about who I am.”

I took another drink of my cooling coffee, self-conscious over what I’d revealed. In wanting to make Declan more comfortable about opening up to me, I’d given voice to something I’d struggled with for the last several months … almost to the point where I’d thought about closing down the blog completely.

We fell quiet for a spell, lost in our own thoughts.

“Do you want to get out here, maybe just go for a walk?”

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