That kiss, which she had stolen from Alex that day at the docks, followed Kate in the last few weeks after their break up. It had also followed her the scent of the tormented sea and the song of the seagulls from above. A melody that she went to listen to every single day after their break up, thinking that this way, seeing that place daily and feeling all she had felt that day, she would get bored and move on eventually.

Nevertheless, Kate was lying to herself thinking about all this. Why exactly? Because there was one more reason why she went to the docks every day - she wanted to see Him. Yet, Alex was late to come. Actually, he didn’t pass by that place after this or look for her after that day. He just… vanished somewhere and that’s all, as though he wanted to make Kate suffer with his absence, punish her maybe, or just make her understand that she had been wrong that day when she chose the comfort and the habit of many days of waiting instead of the unknown and happiness.

Maybe Alex was right in thinking this. Maybe he was doing the right thing because, by moving away from her, he allowed Kate to feel his absence so much. At the same time, she missed so much those evenings when they read and listened to the piano music and when they felt the scent of the fresh scentful coffee that was surrounding them from everywhere. There wasn’t only the smell of coffee that charmed them in that coffee shop. There was also the scent of the beech logs that was felt coming from the fireplace in front of which they had spent enough days, talking about a book, sipping from the glass of wine, and falling for each other because Kate was sure that what they felt weren’t simple transient feelings.

Yet, besides their beautiful feelings for each other, there was also their ego. Kate was pretty sure of this - that the ego impeded them from seeing each other after that kiss. She also knew that she needed so little to be happy and smile again. Yet, she couldn’t do violence to her conscience. She really couldn’t do that because, despite her choice, about which she understood that it maybe wasn’t the right thing, she couldn’t break her word and end her relationship with Jonathan. Kate couldn’t do that, even if she understood that their relationship ended years ago and that they were only hurting each other by staying together for an entire life. Why exactly? Because of Ward’s sudden madness of having that wedding and a kid.

„As though he’s doing everything to keep me with him.”

Yes. Kate started to hate this truth - the one of living the loneliness together with Ward. She also felt more and more irritated next to him because, even if he returned to her and swore that she was the only woman in his life, Kate didn’t trust him or what he said. At the same time, she didn’t trust herself, the one who got to taste, even if for a short time only, that glass of happiness while being with someone else. „With a man that I hurt eventually when I made that choice with my brain and not with my soul.”

At that moment, her whisper had perfectly woven with the whisper of the wind that was felt at the docks. A whisper that returned to her in the form of a kiss - of that kiss that had the taste of two soft lips as she had felt that day at Alex when they’d seen each other for the last time. It’s when she felt their pleasant aroma. She felt it so intense and so alive that she couldn’t replace it with anything else. And, because of the same kiss, she started to avoid Ward, who didn’t lose any chance to kiss her lips and look for more.

Nevertheless, Kate couldn’t give him all this, not anymore. Not after she had kissed another man. She really couldn’t do that because all that time, which they’d spent far away from each other, that time when she had the chance to meet another man and she could feel like a real woman in his arms, made Kate understand that happiness was like Doyle told her - the result of a single person and not looking for it in other people. „At the same time, we wore this happiness in our hearts. We wore it tattooed on our skin and in the form of a short kiss - the one I gave you that day. Even so, I can’t give up on reality and on everything I’ve been building all these years.”

This truth hurt her so much. It tore her apart inside and made her hate herself. Yes, she really hated herself. Kate hated the fact that she was stubbornly clinging to pain and loneliness, and not choosing happiness. However, she couldn’t do something else. She was grown up like that, she’d been educated this way by her parents, and she educated herself, and fought for this for her entire life. „Even if it wasn’t maybe fair,” just as Alex told her and as she had told herself so many times before. Yet… „Against a hurt ego, nobody could ever fight. Just as nobody won a battle with that ego. What we can do instead is accept our defeat and, living with all this in our hearts, simply move on.”

Kate hoped to be able to do that one day. She hoped to be the previous Kate and move on - alone, as she had always been. She was sure that she’d live her life like this because, despite Ward’s promises of being with her forever, Kate felt the betrayal so close to them. She started to feel it from far away, just as she knew that, sooner or later, he’d betray her again or would give her another unpleasant surprise. It was only a matter of time until he’d trample her heart again and would show her that she’d been wrong when she chose something that seemed steady and something that she thought she had been building for years instead of the unknown future by another man’s side, the one she’d met about two months ago.

„Two months when I felt so alive though,” Kate whispered to the sea. She was still at the docks, with her hands in the pockets of the white coat she wore on her shoulders, with her eyes closed, and deeply feeling the scent of the sea. She also felt the smell of coffee, the one she fell in love with eventually, and which she had given a single name in her head. A scent that was woven with the jasmine scent, one she started to adore eventually, wearing it hidden among the woven lines of the white scarf that was wrapped around her neck. A scarf that made her feel like she’d have been hugged by happiness and not by loneliness, something that was stubbornly clinging to Kate eventually.

Or maybe it wasn’t loneliness that clung to Kate but she did it? This wasn’t something she was sure of. Kate also didn’t know this truth, just as loneliness seemed not to know it. The sea also didn’t know that truth. What the sea knew was the truth hidden in the woman’s soul - that in-love soul that longed for happiness, that soul that was in a continuous war with the ego, a strong ego that impeded her from continuing her life in a very different direction.

„If it hadn’t been for it… if it hadn’t been for this ego, would I have been happy now?” Kate caught herself whispering to the sea again. „Would I have been another Kate? That Kate that loves to live next to love, the one that has the smell of coffee, the jasmine scent, and the one of beech that is felt from the fireplace? A Kate that lives in harmony with herself and with the world? Who knows?! If I don’t know this, who might know? Maybe the sea? Maybe this stubborn ego knows something? I’m not sure. I’m not sure of anything, honestly. All I know is that I’ve chosen betrayal and ego instead of myself and my own happiness.”

Such thoughts, confusing and twisted at the same time, finally gave Kate the courage to move on. She turned her back to the sea, to the seagulls, and the scent of loneliness and went downtown to be closer to people. Why? To look for happiness somewhere else, once she couldn’t win the war against her ego. Happiness that Kate wasn’t that sure she’d find someday because she knew that it was in another place - where she wasn’t capable of leading her steps anymore, at least not at that moment.

***

„Do you think that’s really over?” Mark asked Erin after minutes in a row of silence. All the time they kept silent, both of them looked at the white horizon because of the snow, which was painted black here and there because of the trunks of the trees that surrounded the cottage of the Doyle family.

They had been in that place for days already, accompanying Alex, who decided to let the coffee shop in the care of Robert and hide from the world in the arms of loneliness. The best hiding place had been the cottage of the family, which was in the heart of the forest, somewhere near the mountain and that mountain lake that was frozen at that moment. Yet, he didn’t leave alone. Mark and Erin, who motivated their presence in the cottage as a short vacation or a trip where they had had the chance to be together because they told Alex already about their decision to be together, had followed him. A choice that had been accepted with no protest, although both of them thought that Alex would be against their relationship, once both of them knew that Alex thought that nobody was a good man for Erin, especially Flynn.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Instead of making a fuss, Alex just carelessly nodded, mumbling a barely heard and lacking enthusiasm „If you decided so.” Then, after finishing loading his few things in his Jeep, he climbed behind the wheel. Yet, before closing the door behind him, Alex told them, „I need to be alone. At least for a while. I’ll be just fine, don’t worry.” After that, he simply went away.

His words didn’t calm Erin and Mark. On the contrary, they felt more worried than before. Especially, they became concerned after they found out from Robert that Kate hadn’t stopped by the coffee shop for days if not weeks, and that all that time Alex had been thoughtful and absent. Robert also told them that Alex seemed to lack life and suffered a lot because of love, and this was so because Kate had chosen Ward and not him.

„As we’ve suspected actually,” Mark murmured eventually while sitting on a wooden armchair on the porch of the cottage. In his hands, he held a cup of hot tea while a thick blanket was covering his legs. After that, he looked at Erin, who seemed thoughtful, asking her, „Do you think you’ve been wrong that evening in asking Kate to stay with us for dinner?”

Erin shook her head. „No, I don’t regret this. What I regret is that she hasn’t been determined to try something new. If she had done that, they would have undoubtedly been the perfect team.”

„I agree with that - they would have been the perfect team. Yet, Erin, we can’t command our hearts. We can’t tell it what it should feel or not, just as Kate seemed determined to love Ward forever.”

„I wouldn’t be that sure. No. I felt that at her - that she wasn’t in love with the other one anymore.”

„Then? Why do you think she rejected Alex? For the habit of being with the other one?”

„This is also a probability. Yet, I’m more tempted to think that’s been because of the ego.”

„Ego?” Mark asked, stunned. „She didn’t seem to be a proud woman. On the contrary, she seemed to me a courageous woman, who knew what to expect from life, even if her romantic life was a mess. She’s a woman that has principles, it’s better to say.”

„This is what makes me think she’s made that choice listening to her ego and not to her heart. Yes, she undoubtedly listened to her pride only, the one that told her that she couldn’t give up on what she’d been building for years for something unknown because we can’t deny the fact that she’d been so involved in that relationship. She hoped that her relationship with Ward would work eventually. She fought so hard for this to happen. That’s why I can understand her eventually because I’d have done the same if I were her.”

„What about her feelings, Erin? What about what Alex feels? It’s obvious that he loves her and wants her to be happy. I’m also sure that she also has feelings for him. Yet, something keeps them far away from each other, even if both of them had been the other one’s happiness.”

„Maybe you’re right, Mark. Yet, we don’t have the right to judge them. Just… to talk about this and be with Alex because… I’m afraid that he won’t be able to leave all this behind. Not after Lucas’s departure.”

„The poet?” Mark inquired, frowning. „I don’t think so. They weren’t close enough, as far as I know. Just… people that knew each other.”

Erin smiled. „You know, Alex is right in saying that you are so naive sometimes.”

„Naive, I? What makes you think this?”

„What you said? Your eyes? Those eyes that see only me but not others’feelings?”

„This sounded weird already,” whispered Mark, smiling, after he stole a kiss from her. „And, honestly, I don’t think that it’s as you say. Eventually, I’ve been friends with them for so long and I know that even if they have common features, Alex and Lucas haven’t ever been that close. At least, they haven’t been intimate friends to suffer so much after the departure of one of them.”

„You forget about common interests, Mark. You forget that both of them suffer for love and for being rejected, as has happened recently to my brother. That’s why I say that I’m afraid that Alex will do eventually what Murphy did.”

„To leave to Syria as a war correspondent? No chance! Doyle loves loneliness too much to venture himself among bullets. Yet, I must also accept that maybe he won’t ever be able to recover after this suffering. Even so, he won’t give up. I’m sure of this because, as much as he loves books and loneliness, your brother also loves life. And, trust me, Doyle loves life!”

Erin smiled again. „More than he loves Kate?”

„Undoubtedly! Do you know why? Because if he hadn’t loved life, Alex wouldn’t have loved her.”

Erin frowned this time. „What makes you think that?”

„His ego?” An answer that made Erin even more confused than before. „I mean that if he hasn’t looked for her yet, it’s undoubtedly because of his ego. He’s a man eventually, Erin. He’s an in-love man, who would have given everything to be with her. Yet, he’s still a man with principles, a man who is incapable of fighting for someone else’s woman. That’s why he’ll stay away from Kate, at least he’ll do that while she’s still with the other one. Nevertheless, I’m sure he’ll hope that one day she’ll understand where her happiness is and she’ll come to see him.”

„Maybe you’re right. Yet, if he feels all this, shouldn’t he stay in the coffee shop? It’s the only place that has always linked him and Kate and the only place where she can find him if she decides to be with him.”

„What if it’s not the only place?” Mark asked her confidently. „No, this isn’t a rhetorical question now because I’m sure that’s been more than a simple platonic love between them, as Alex has always wanted us to think about them.”

„A kiss then?”

„Undoubtedly. Also, the time. I mean… both of them need time right now. How much… I’m not sure. What I’m sure of is that they won’t be together again so soon. That’s why Doyle hid here, and Kate… God knows where. Thus, they give each other a chance to breathe freely without having the other one with them. And, when they eventually understand that their happiness is undoubtedly the other one, they’ll find him, no matter where the other one will be at that moment.”

„Yet, what if they understand that’s nothing like this? What if they decide that’s better for them not to be together? What will happen to Alex then?”

„He’ll be just fine,” Mark whispered, putting his cup of tea next to him and holding Erin to his chest. Why did he do that? Why did he give her that vague answer? Because Mark also didn’t know what the future would bring them. At the same time, he didn’t know what was waiting for them and not only what was waiting for Alex and Kate. Nevertheless, he was sure Alex would be fine because it couldn’t be different while he was surrounded by friends and had his sister with him. „That family that one needs in such moments,” Mark thought eventually. „A family both I and Kate didn’t have when we needed it. What we’ve had instead was a toothy life that threw us into the madness of the world with no life preserver so many times before. That’s why we can count only on us. And, of course, we also can trust our ego, the only one that assures our survival.”

What Flynn said weren’t simple words or random thoughts but reality. Yes, that one was their reality because he already found out, from trustful sources, that Kate didn’t have a good relationship with her family and that she had always been alone. Yet, he didn’t tell anyone about what he had found out because he understood very well Kate’s reasons for not giving up on what she had tried to build for years… alone. At the same time, Mark understood that he did the same in the past - he lived alone and fought alone for everything he had. He also fought for Erin for years and never gave up. He did that because he was sure that she was his happiness. Thus, once he was sure that his heart and perseverance helped him to have Erin in his arms eventually and both of them were happy at that moment, Mark was also sure that Kate would do the same. He was sure that she’d find the way toward that life that would make her happy and proud of herself for everything she made it in life… alone.