Summer Loving

by Spicer, Rivka

  Taylor’s jaw dropped. “What?” Elise was just as stunned.

  Anton kicked the door closed. “Taylor you sounded infatuated, like a teenager with a crush. But she’s not of our world. Look at her.” He waved a dismissive hand in her general direction and she shrank inwards with shame. “You need to be courting someone from your own class who would fit in with the social circles we move in. You can’t go dating some nobody from the sticks. And God forbid you ever married her.” He said it with such disgust that Elise felt nauseous.

  “Some nobody from the sticks?” The words had hit Taylor hard. “How dare you? Have you even looked at the figures for the last fortnight? Hits on the site have increased by more than tenfold.”

  “It’s not about figures!” Anton threw his hands up. “You cannot date this woman. Look at her. Look at her!” His lip curled in a sneer. “She probably buys her clothes at the supermarket and this is who you want to be seen with in the society pages?”

  None of them knew who was surprised more when Taylor landed a punch that sent Anton sprawling across the floor.

  “Fuck!” Anton touched a trembling hand to his face and gaped at the blood on his fingers. “You broke my nose.”

  “This woman is worth more than ten of you.” Taylor was so angry he was actually shaking with fury. “Get out of my office. Get out!”

  “You wait until I tell father about this!” Anton staggered to his feet and left the office, stumbling slightly as he reeled from the hit.

  “Are you okay?” Elise ventured cautiously as Taylor stared at the door with mixed emotions visibly warring on his face.

  “No. I’m not.” The fight seemed to go out of him and he slumped in his chair. “I’m sorry Elise but could you give me some time alone?”

  “Of course.” She instantly got up and set her coffee mug by the machine. “Um...I’m sorry.” She walked behind the desk and hugged him briefly.

  “Don’t be. It’s not your fault.” He squeezed her quickly before letting her go. “And don’t pay any attention to those awful things he said. It’s not about what’s on the outside, it’s about what’s on the inside. You’re one of the most amazing people I know.”

  “Thanks.” Embarrassed now, she left the office quickly. Ella was staring wide-eyed down the hall after Anton but she looked contrite when Elise emerged.

  “I really am sorry.” She apologised. “I didn’t realise you guys liked each other and I was so worried.”

  “It’s okay.” Elise paused by her desk. “It’s not like that – we’re just friends but we’ll work it out. There’s no harm done.”

  “Good.” The secretary smiled shyly. “I read your blog. It’s funny.”

  “Thanks.” Elise managed to smile. “You’re the first person apart from my boyfriend I know that actually reads it.”

  “We all do.” Feeling more comfortable now Ella leaned back from her desk. “Those poor guys...they’re so clueless. We love the feature.” Suddenly she gasped. “Do you know who Mr X is? It’s sooooo romantic!”

  “I haven’t got a clue.” Elise smiled uncomfortably. “He could be anyone but he can leave me all the love letters he wants. I’m already involved with someone.”

  “That’s a shame.” She looked really disappointed. “It would have made a great love story – you helping all these guys to find love and then you find love through the same feature.”

  “That’s true.” She had to admit it would have had a certain poetic justice. “But never mind. I’m sure Mr X will get over it and find someone else to love.”

  “I hope so.”

  Elise checked her watch again. “I have to go – project 3 is almost ready for me.”

  “Ooh, good luck!” Ella smiled at her and Elise felt herself warming towards her.

  “Thanks. I’m sure I’ll see you around.”

  “I hope so!” Ella waved as she headed out the door and Elise stepped into the lift feeling like she was leaving the Twilight Zone. She hoped she never went through anything as awkward as the confrontation she had just witnessed but she had the horrible feeling that it was all just the beginning.

  Jim left the magazine offices a changed man. They went for a quiet lunch together while he struggled to make sense of some of the emotions storming through him. The counselling had helped but it would be a long and difficult journey and Elise’s heart ached for him.

  “She broke my heart.” He confessed suddenly as their salads arrived. “I never told anyone.”

  “A girl you were dating?” Elise didn’t want to let on how much his mother had known or guessed.

  “We met when we were fifteen and dated for three years.” He looked dazed as he relayed this. “I thought we were going to go to university together and then get married. It was all planned.” He studied his plate like it had landed from another planet. “It was all planned.” He whispered again.

  “Life doesn’t always follow the path we think it will.” Elise winced inwardly, realising she sounded like some tuppence guru but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “When we were eighteen she told me she was pregnant. I was so happy I thought I’d burst.”

  Wow...now that was something his mother hadn’t known and Elise was shocked. “What happened?” She questioned gently and his face crumpled again.

  “She got rid of it. Just like that. I begged her not to but she told me she was too young, she had too many plans.”

  “Oh Jim.” She didn’t know what to say. “I’m so sorry.” She reached across and took his hand as tears spilled onto them.

  “All I ever wanted was to teach kids music but now when I look at them I can’t help wondering what my little boy or girl would have been like if they’d lived.”

  She couldn’t even begin to imagine how painful it must be for him. This unnamed girl hadn’t just taken away his child and broken his heart, she’d taken away his dreams and his future, condemned him to being tortured by the one thing he had always wanted. No wonder he had become a cold shell around the ruins of his heart. It was incredible he’d stayed on track at the school.

  “I’m sure your child would have been beautiful.” She squeezed his hand. As if realising she was there for the first time he straightened up and scrubbed the tears from his face.

  “I’m sorry.” He looked embarrassed. “I never told anyone that before. I don’t know why it suddenly came out.”

  “Sometimes it’s just the right time to let it out.” Elise smiled encouragingly at him. “Once the first telling is past it becomes a lot easier to say it again.”

  “The counselling will help.” He picked up his fork and pushed his food around his plate for a little while, clearly without much appetite. “I need to let her go don’t I?” He asked suddenly and Elise nodded.

  “Yes Jim. You do. Once you stop wrapping yourself around with your rage and sorrow you’ll find new dreams and new children to mend your heart.”

  “You think?” His smiled was bright under his red-rimmed eyes and Elise nodded seriously.

  “Yes I do. With all my being.”

  They spent the afternoon at his flat ritually burning everything of his ex-girlfriend’s that he had retained for the last five years. It was something better suited to teenage girls but Jim seemed to find the process immensely cathartic and Elise wasn’t going to argue with him. They lit a fire in a bucket in the back yard of his tiny tenement building and burned photographs by the hundred, a couple of items of clothing, small gifts she had given him in their time together such as books and CDs. It took them almost two hours.

  “I feel better now.” Jim raised his arms to the sky and stretched and Elise couldn’t help but wonder. He might be streaked with soot and dust but he looked a lighter man than he had when he had walked into the office that morning. “Definitely better.” He grinned at her. “I feel free.”

  By the time she had made sure he was happy to be on his own and rushed home to shower and change and get rid of the smell of smoke, Elise was almost late to dance class. Sh
e rushed in to the dance school, skidding round the corner with her overnight bag flapping, and Nathan’s face lit up as he laughed.

  “I thought you weren’t coming.” He chided and she heaved for breath.

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world. Had a crazy day.” She managed between gasps. “Am I late?”

  He checked his watch. “No, you got here with a couple of minutes to spare. Why don’t you go grab a cup of water?” She did as he suggested and they went through to the studio. It was full of people all milling around and they took their place in a small clear area for the warm up stretches. They were clearly the newest students and felt a bit awkward as they circled the room along with everyone else. They were encouraged by everyone though and the tutors followed them closely, instructing and correcting, so they didn’t have too many mishaps.

  Afterwards as they walked towards the tube station Nathan put an arm around her. “You seem preoccupied.” He told her. “You want to talk about it?”

  “Not now. I want to eat some grossly unhealthy food and spend some time cuddling on your couch before I even start telling you about my day.”

  He grinned. “I’m pretty sure I could help you with that.”

  Later when they were snuggling up together surrounded by Chinese takeout carton carnage Elise told him about her day, starting with Jim.

  “That’s awful!” He gasped when she told him the cause of Jim’s heartache. “I can’t believe she’d just get rid of it like that!”

  “Me either.” Elise shuddered. “I can understand her not wanting to keep it if the time wasn’t right for her but if he wanted it...what a mess.”

  “Poor guy.”

  “And for him not to tell anyone what he was going through.” The thought of keeping all that inside made her chest ache. “His mother had no idea. None of them did. They thought he was just cut up about the break up.”

  “Not surprising he turned out so abrasive.” Nathan commented. “But at least he’s getting help now. This feature might just be the best thing that ever happened to him.”

  “I wanted to tell him that today was the first day of the rest of his life but then I remembered saying that same thing to Mark.” Elise sighed.

  “It would still have been right. In both their cases.” Nathan kissed the top of her head. “It is the first day of the rest of his life.”

  “How did I end up here?” She asked miserably. “I don’t have any training or background in this and somehow I’ve ended up playing God in these men’s lives.”

  “You don’t need training to be a good person.” He shrugged. “You’re over thinking this. All you can do is your best.” He squeezed her reassuringly. “So what else happened today?”

  “I found out why Taylor was so rude to me when I came down and he broke his brother’s nose because of it.”

  “What?” Nathan was astonished. “Taylor broke his brother’s nose?”

  “Yup.” Elise was still a bit bemused by it all. “Laid him out flat right there on the office floor.”

  “You’re going to have to start at the beginning with this story.” Nathan was incredulous. “This I have to hear.”

  “Apparently when Taylor came back from Aviemore he told his brother about me and Anton got the wrong end of the stick. He thought we were more than just friends and figured it would be damaging to Taylor’s reputation to be dating some penniless nobody with a terrible fashion sense. So he threatened Taylor’s secretaries into sabotaging our friendship by recalling his emails and faking phone calls. Taylor thought I’d been ignoring him which is why he was so rude to me when I arrived.”

  Nathan’s jaw had dropped. “Two things...one, you are not a penniless nobody and there’s nothing at all wrong with your fashion sense. You always look beautiful. Two, how did this end up in a broken nose?”

  “Taylor figured it out and got his secretary to confess so he called Anton down to the office.” She shifted uncomfortably. “Anton said some less than gentlemanly things about me and Taylor was defending my honour.”

  “How very gentlemanly.” To her surprise Nathan didn’t sound at all irritated, just amused. “Did he really break his nose?”

  “It certainly looked broken. There was blood all down his shirt.” Elise had to smile at the memory of Anton’s face as he lay on the floor.

  “Excellent.” He sounded satisfied. “Remind me to shake his hand next time we meet. I don’t appreciate anyone that puts you down.”

  “Is this a man thing?” Elise asked amused and Nathan grinned.

  “Something like that. I’d have knocked his lights out if I’d been there, saved Taylor the trouble.” He said easily and Elise burst out laughing.

  “Definitely a man thing.” She shook her head.

  “Do I want to know what he said about you?” Nathan asked a few moments later and Elise shifted again as another small pang of hurt shot through her.

  “No.” She said after a moment’s hesitation. “It doesn’t matter anyway. He won’t say it in front of either of us again. Anyway, I pity him. It’s a sad world to live in when you feel you have to judge everyone by the clothes they wear and the size of their bank accounts rather than the person they actually are. I wonder if he has ever actually loved or been loved.”

  “Probably not.” He blew out a breath. “You’re right. That is a sad existence.” He fluffed her hair. “How did you get to be so wise, huh?”

  She burst out laughing. “It’s the love of a good man, I’m sure.”

  They say that the evil men do lives after them but the good is oft interred with their bones. I wonder how many of us think about how our actions impact on the world around us...how a word or a deed can live for years in the lives of the people we come into contact with. I’m not talking about those silly little every day decisions like whether or not to wear that lime green spandex or which channel to watch. I’m not even talking about the few pounds you did or didn’t give to charity when you had the opportunity. I’m talking about how many of us actually mean it when we say “I love you”. How many of us choose our fear of ridicule or need to associate only with people from our social circle over our hearts when it comes to life decisions? How many of us are in a relationship where we make our own decisions without consulting our other halves?

  How many of you have made a decision that has broken a heart...broken a person? And how many of you are brave or self-aware enough to realise it?

  Jim is a broken man, broken by the selfishness of others. He’s like an old sock that someone poked a massive hole in the heel of and he patched it and darned it and got it twisted right up into being almost unwearable when really it just needed unravelling and re-knitting. He didn’t realise that the shell he had created to protect himself was working too well...it was pushing people away. It fell to me to take him apart so that he could be reconstructed.

  I organised an intervention. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. To be kind I had to be cruel and it hurt. It really hurt. I had to sit him in a room to listen to the truth about his behaviour from women that had experienced it. Many of the women he had dated gave me videos of them explaining why they wouldn’t contact him again. To fix him I had to break him. And boy did I break him. Bless his brave soul he sat through it all and took every painful moment of it to heart. It was so brutal I had arranged counselling for him afterwards...a ten week course. I’m still not sure if that will be enough to help him work through his issues.

  I thought he would hate me but he didn’t. After the intervention and first counselling session we went for lunch together followed by an afternoon at his house. He was a totally different person. Gone were the arrogance and pretentiousness, leaving in their place a strangely humble man who was ready to start over. He had finally let go and underneath that glacial exterior was someone warm and most definitely human.

  Only time will tell whether my intervention has helped on the dating front but if the man I spent the afternoon with sticks around I strongly suspect it won’t b
e long before he finds love. There was a lot about him to like. I hope he will forgive me for what I have put him through in the weeks and months to come and I also hope he will invite me to a future wedding and, fingers crossed, many christenings!

  If he was a cake, what would he be? Only one choice......a Baked Alaska.

  When she opened up her inbox later that evening there was a one liner from Taylor in the internal mail system.

  Dearest Elise, What on earth is a Baked Alaska??? Taylor xx

  Grinning, she hit reply.

  Taylor, It’s a layer of sponge cake and a layer of ice cream surrounded by meringue. It gets baked in a really hot oven very quickly so the ice cream doesn’t melt. Very difficult to make but one of my favourite desserts. If you’ve ever had it at one of your posh restaurants it would be known as a glace au four. Elise xx

  Dearest Elise, I have never had such a thing. I will most certainly be on the look-out for it though. Sounds delicious. Have fun at the office today. I’ll be away at meetings this afternoon but they’re expecting you for your dress and I’ve also got a team from the makeover department ready to do your hair and make-up. I know you have an appointment with Mark at the studio so they’ll leave you plenty of time. See you later xx

  Elise stared at Taylor’s last email wondering how on earth he had known she had an appointment to be photographed that afternoon. She certainly hadn’t told him and suspected somebody at the studio must have said something. That was weird.

  Shaking it off she checked the time and realised she was going to have to get going. If she was expected to have her hair and face done before her photo shoot then that only gave her a couple of hours and she had no idea what to expect on the outfit front. If she had to come home to collect shoes and a coat then she would be running late to catch Taylor back at the offices.