Page 24 of Reclaiming Love

Chapter 12

He felt more than awful for what he’d done to her.

The one chance he finally had to spend more than a passing moment with this girl, and he’d gone and reduced her to tears. How could he have been so careless?

She’d reassured him that she was going through things and that it wasn’t his fault. But the truth remained: he’d had the luck of meeting her unexpectedly again this morning, and instead of using that time to connect, he’d ended up making her cry. He’d sensed something was up from the moment he set eyes on her. After that he’d tried to steer the conversation to safer waters—they’d talked about their places of work, what she did and what he did.

Their offices were a fifteen-minute walk apart. He didn’t need to tell her that he could have stayed on the bus for another stop that would have taken him right outside his workplace. That ever since he’d started running into her, he always walked the extra stop.

She had no idea. The air of vulnerability and a kind of fragility she exuded, whatever the cause of it, turned her into the kind of girl nobody would notice only because she didn’t stand out in a crowd. Until one noticed her understated, quiet glam—as he had—and then it was impossible to forget that face.

At least that was how it had been for Noah—meeting Melissa. He looked over his shoulder and saw her walk toward the crossing, gave her one last parting glance, waited to see if she’d look back at him when she stopped at the crossing.

She didn’t.

He looked ahead and continued walking. Bit by bit, these little glimpses of her, stolen moments now and then, all these things gave him something to look forward to. They helped him forget and made him instead look ahead. To dare to dream of newer things. To bury the past.

He didn’t like sharing his past with anyone. His parents worried about him. Bree’s parents could see there was more that hid under his strong, fabricated exterior. But he still didn’t want to talk about it. The moments with Melissa helped him forget.

He’d dressed smartly and she’d noticed. He was still trying to gauge if she liked him or not, or was making polite talk. He no longer knew how to tell whether there was a “vibe” or not. He’d spent so long buried in his wall of misery, preferring to cut himself off from the need to interact with others, especially if there was a danger of it leading to anything. But now he’d met a girl he liked, and he no longer knew how to tell whether the feeling was reciprocated.

Melissa worked out, and she counted calories.

Bree had over-exercised and starved herself. He was better trained now and more alert to the signs to the extent that he was always on the lookout. Was he falling for the same kind of girl twice? Was he hardwired to attract a certain type of partner?

Was he mistaking Melissa for Bree?

He frowned, so deep in thought, trying to reason with himself. Melissa was no Bree. They were different and yet the same.

He wasn’t attracted to Melissa because she reminded him of Bree. And he knew nothing about Melissa except her sadness. The always pervasive sense of something being not right had been more visible this morning than ever before. He’d probed a little too deeply and touched a real nerve somewhere.

But what was her truth? Her story?

He shook his head. He had a meeting with Rory first thing. And it wouldn’t do to be inattentive when having a meeting with the Chief Security Officer of Black Diamond, a company that created and offered industry-leading security to companies that needed to defend their networks and infrastructure. Rory had high hopes for him, and with the chance to lead a growing team of security specialists, Noah’s star was now on the rise.

Rory had told him to recruit two new people, because the amount of work this San Francisco based startup had begun to attract indicated a busy year ahead.

Hence the smart suit. He’d shortlisted a couple of candidates and interviews were due to be held after the start of January, but he needed to go through the burgeoning list of applications they’d already received, even in the five days that the new positions had been advertised.

Noah walked into Black Diamond offices, trying to turn his attention to work. But his mind was still full of Melissa. Now, more than ever, he was intrigued by the cause of her upset. Something she didn’t want to talk about—and he understood that perfectly. Nor would he ask her.

Just because they were starting to talk more, and he felt some kind of connection to her, it still didn’t yet give him any right to her innermost world or her thoughts.

He’d been a part of Bree’s world and she’d kept it all hidden from him too. He hadn’t even known of her sickness until the final months, and when he found out, he wondered how he could have failed to see it. The guilt, believing he could have saved her if he’d looked harder, listened more, read between the lines, never left him. Almost a year after and he still blamed himself. Her parents told him it wasn’t his fault, that she hid it so well, it was only towards the end that they had started to notice—and they lived with her. It still didn’t help assuage his feelings.

As he walked out of the elevator, weighed down by guilt, his cell rang. He answered it quickly. “The room’s available from next week. Let me know if you want it. You’ll have to move in over Christmas.”

“Thanks Paul, let me think about it.” He tucked the cell phone away. His well-meaning friend was subtly trying to get him to move out and move on.

He and Bree had talked about moving in together, long before she had pushed him away. Theirs had been pie-in-the-sky dreams with nothing concrete underpinning them; they hadn’t even looked for places to rent. This had been before her sickness became known to him, but she had ditched him before then.

Then she’d gone. And his plans had stopped. Life stopped. He was still living but not going anywhere. Not moving on.

Maybe now it was time to start healing and to forgive himself.

Moving into that shared accommodation with Paul would be a step in the right direction.

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