They weren’t young anymore. She still had lofty goals for both her personal and professional life. He…..well…..not so much. Rebecca was never content. She may have been 64 years old but she worked as hard as she did when she was 34. Patrick was retired and he did a little work but was more interested in traveling and having fun. Rebecca liked those thing too, but she needed time to work at her writing. Her personal life with Patrick was of crucial importance to her. First on her list. She also had a full life outside of Patrick. Patrick had a life outside their relationship as well. It made things difficult.
When they were together, none of those things mattered very much. They took advantage of every moment as there weren’t many moments. No one seemed to understand that what they had together didn’t threaten anyone else. It was their’s and their’s alone. Some mysterious something they had never been able to find with anyone else. God knows they had tried. Rebecca alone had spent her life trying to find what she had with Patrick with other men. It never worked. It was never there. It was very frustrating.
Rebecca thought to herself, looking at Patrick across the room, that she guessed this is what love was. That mysterious something that you had with one person and didn’t have with anyone else. When she looked at him, she knew. She had always known, that he was the one, the love of her life. But it had never worked out between them. They had been in each other’s ives in some way, even if only off and on, for 35 years. In all those years, either she was married, he was married, or they both were married. Yet, they wanted to be together. How could that be?
Patrick was on the phone as Rebecca was thinking about this. She was watching him, with great love in her heart. Sometimes, she wished fervently that she didn’t feel like this. That she could just walk away. She had tried. Over and over, down through the years, she had tried. She always missed him so much, she went back again and again. How could she not go back to the love of her life?
It may sound foolish to say that, at 64 years old, Rebecca was still searching, still going back to the love of her life. Rebecca had never felt her age. She was young at heart and been fortunate to keep her physical health. She didn’t feel much different than the day she had met Patrick all those years ago. Looking at him, she remembered that day clearly. She had walked into his office and fallen in love. What a day that was!
Patrick was a few years older than Rebecca and was struggling with some health problems. Rebecca wondered if, for Patrick’s sake, it really was time to walk away. If Patrica had still been married to the mother of his children, the answer would have been yes. She was a good person. But a woman had broken up Patrick’s marriage a number of years ago. She was a controlling, manipulative woman who thought she knew what was best for Patrick and did not much care for Patrick’s input into the matter. Patrick seemed frightened of her for some reason and that was never good. There was something wrong there with that marriage and Rebecca wa worried for Patrick’s sake. This woman seemed to feel the need to judge and criticize Patrick as a method of control. Rebecca was quite concerned. How could she abandon Patrick under those circumstances?
Patrick ended his phone call, walked over to her, and put his arms around her. She felt so warm and safe in his arms. She always had though they saw each other so infrequently. They didn’t feel the need for conversation at that moment. They just felt the need for each other. They dissolved into each other and neither of them had any concept of time until two hours had passed. Patrick made her feel totally fulfilled in every way. Any thoughts of giving him up flew out of her head as she lay beside him. #amwriting #amblogging #writing #romance
*Excerpt from the upcoming novel The Lost Romance
The Write Scribe 