That day was really strange. It’s been strange right from the morning when, despite the gloomy weather that had been forecast, a kind sun smiled on the sky, a sun that seemed to spur the naughty wind of November to play. A wind that should have been cold for that time but which was still warm as those April playful winds. All this lured the leaves from above to dance. Leaves that were yellow in places and reddish for the rest, of such an impressive color that seemed even more beautiful while they were dancing with the wind until they got to cover the earth with a warm coat to protect it from the cold winter that was about to come.
Those reddish playful leaves didn’t cover only the earth but also the asphalt touched by her soles. Feet that confidently stepped on the asphalt of November because Kathleen O’Connell was just like that: she loved to pass through life like a real queen who was confident, strong, and knew what she wanted from life. That’s why she was often compared to an ancient goddess, one that wasn’t at all interested by the rest of the world, a goddess with a mysterious aura around, and this was so because of the great thoughts that she might have had. „An untouchable woman for many men,” as she often heard others saying about her. „Still, she’s a woman about whom a lot of men dream silently, wanting her by their side.”
Yet, Kathleen didn’t want that. She didn’t want to be the woman or muse of many but the woman of a single soul. She wanted to be his beloved woman for an entire life, Jonathan Ward’s soulmate, whom she fell for right from the beginning and for whom she would have given up on her life if it had been necessary. Yes, Kathleen would have given up on her life for him, but she wasn’t that sure that Jonathan would have done the same for her. He was a strong man, authoritarian, and extremely cold with others. „He’s even colder than I might have ever been with the strangers that don’t let me breathe,” the young woman whispered, slowly bowing her head, and sighing.
Such thoughts made her sad again, although she thought that she got rid of sadness and melancholy after she had spent many hours in that coffee shop, reading a good book. Yet, she got rid neither of thoughts nor of the sadness from her soul. Sadness that had gotten to be her companion lately, following her everywhere, even if Kate was sure that she didn’t want such a life for her, just as she was sure she didn’t have the life for which others were envious of her. Yes, many were envious of her because she was with Jonathan, an important executive from Dublin, with whom she had been in a relationship for about three years already. They were envious of her, often telling her that God loved her if He allowed her to have such a man by her side, one with whom she could live like a Queen for an entire life, having no problems about how or what her life would be from now on.
What those envious people didn’t know was that her life wasn’t a fairy tale for sure. Yes, Jonathan gave her the material luxury she needed. He gave her money to buy whatever she wanted or to go wherever she wanted. What he hadn’t ever given her was that unique love that she had dreamt of since they met, just as he hadn’t ever given her soul warmth. She could even say that she neither had body warmth with him, even if they had slept in the same bed not only once and she had not only once been his woman. Yes, she’d been his so many times before, but she hadn’t ever felt that it was enough for him. Why? He was always unsatisfied with something about her: how she looked, what she did every day, her relatives, her education, and the list continued. All these „reproaches,” sometimes mentioned as a joke and other times during their serious conversations, when she got to reproach him that they got to spend so little time together, hurt her a lot, making her feel insecure about herself and unconfident.
Nevertheless, she hadn’t ever shown others her fears. She hadn’t ever told others about her problems, just as she hadn’t ever complained about her unhappiness. She simply smiled. Yes, Kathleen often smiled when someone asked her about her life and if she was happy with him. She always said that she was happy and that she couldn’t have ever found a better man than Jonathan Ward. Kate was saying this because this was what her mother taught her since she was little: to praise the man who was with her because it was the only way a woman could support the man she loved, and that it wasn’t enough for a woman just to be by that man’s side. And Kate, as many of her friends and relatives called her, strictly followed that advice and rules, thinking that it was fair to do that and that she had to do that no matter what. After all, this was what her mother had always done with her father, having a strong relationship with him for so many years.
Kate did that because she hoped that Jonathan would start respecting her one day and would tell her that he loved her. Three years passed already since they were together, but he hadn’t ever said those three words that she was starving for, „I love you.” Yes, she longed for those words for years. She dreamt of hearing them since she met him, but she hadn’t ever heard them or at least nobody spoke them with their heart: neither he, nor others. Kathleen hadn’t ever heard those words even if those men with whom she had had a relationship before Jonathan had told her that they adored her, but none of them told her that he loved her. That’s why Kate got to wonder sometimes if she was cursed. She did that because it was the only way she could explain why a strong beautiful woman like she was, a real goddess as she had often heard others calling her while she passed by them in the street, hadn’t ever heard such word told by others to her, especially „I love you so much” or „Still, I love you.”
Sometimes she even wondered if she had ever heard such words from her parents. No, she was sure she hadn’t ever heard them because her mother, a woman who was as cold as Jonathan was, thought that children shouldn’t be loved so much because this would spoil them and would make them lose the right path in life. At the same time, Marie O’Connell considered that children grow up and forget about their parents after that. That’s why it wasn’t worth the dedication and love their parents shared with them. At least, Marie thought that the children shouldn’t receive the same love as her partner because she was sure that she’d stay with him after Kate flew from the nest and would never turn back.
Because of the same principles, Marie O’Connell hadn’t ever wanted a second child, although Kathleen had told her so many times that she would have wanted a sister or a brother. She received material things instead and she’d been asked to be grateful for that and stop pocking her nose into the adults’life and business because they had enough things on their shoulders and no time to waste with her caprices. Then, after she had been „scolded” like that, Kate was left alone again, or in the care of the nannies, because her parents, both of them university professors and important personalities at QUB (Queen’s University Belfast) from Belfast, her hometown, didn’t have time to waste to educate their daughter. They had time for important projects though, for traveling, for themselves, and for their friends, „Important duties” that Kathleen got to hate. She did that because she considered that all this had stolen her parents’love from her and made her feel so lonely.
Actually, still a child, Kate swore not to be like that ever: always busy and never having free time for her family. Because of this, she tried to make friends when she was a teenager, an impulse she felt for her huge desire to stop being alone. Yet, no matter what she did, she had always wrongly chosen her friends, something that made her lonely again. Yet, she didn’t lose faith, thinking that she’d stop being alone when she’d find her soul mate or when she’d fall in love. She was actually sure that loneliness would vanish somewhere when this would happen, and that she’d finally have that unique love she was dreaming about.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
This was the reason why Kathleen had refused the invitations of many of the rich youngsters from Belfast to go out. This happened when she was already in college. At that time, she went out only with men she considered „trustworthy,” but she was disappointed very soon when she understood that they were more interested in themselves and their careers than in making her happy. That’s why she also focused on her career after this, trying to understand what was so pleasantly about work and being an important and extremely busy person. All this made her feel bored soon, especially about Economics, something she started to study because of her parents. She had actually always felt like that because of her studies, and this happened because she hadn’t ever felt comfortable learning about numbers, marketing strategies, relationships among business partners, and so many others. Yet, she stopped feeling all this once she changed her career and started to study Theater and Film at the same University where her parents were teaching.
Kate’s choice hadn’t been ever appreciated by her parents. It had actually been the reason why they argued so badly one day. They even stopped talking to each other for years because the spouses O’Connell considered that Kathleen would have had a great future if she had finished Economics. For them, being an actor in theater and film, or worse - a playwright or screenwriter - something Kathleen intended to practice once she had finished her studies, was equal to poverty and being a nobody. They considered that only a nobody can do anything in life because, you see „Who goes to the Theater or Cinema nowadays when they can watch all this on TV or the Internet?!”
Her parents’contempt made Kathleen feel even lonelier than she had been before. She felt betrayed, disappointed, unappreciated, and somehow trampled. Because of this, she withdrew into the world of books, preferring to read than think about life, problems, and gaps. Yet, she didn’t give up on her passion related to the theater, something she continued to do after she finished her studies. She even started to collaborate with a few important theaters in town, for which she was writing screenplays. Kate even helped them with the stage art, something she did great. For this, she was highly appreciated. She could even say that many actors and directors loved her. Even so, with all their love, Kate hadn’t ever felt comfortable working in that area, just as she hadn’t felt comfortable with her boyfriend, especially lately, although she knew she loved him and wanted to make that relationship work.
Honestly, she had felt such an emptiness in her soul since they met, but it became more evident in the last few months after Jonathan had started that important project in Westport, and both of them started to live in a hotel. At first, she blamed the change of entourage for that feeling of emptiness. Then, for the same feeling, she blamed the change of their place of residence and the relationship increasingly soured between them because Jonathan preferred to spend time with his business partners than with her. Actually, they started to see each other fewer than in Dublin. All this made her feel abandoned and think that he had really forgotten about her because she couldn’t understand how a handsome man like Jonathan Ward didn’t want to spend at least the nights in her company, a beautiful woman next to whom many men would have given everything to spend at least one night. He instead, who had her so close and knew that she was already his, preferred to ignore her, hurt her, disregard her, considering her a kind of expensive trinket in his office, one in which he could invest money but not time or soul.
Feeling all this, Kathleen started to look for pace and love in books. She was reading a lot, sometimes for days, closed in her hotel room, and seeing nobody. She read old novels, new ones, avenue novels, or books that weren’t that known. All these books she was taking from the main library of Westport, just to make sure she’d have a tool to „kill” her free time. This one with „killing her time” wasn’t at all a simple metaphor because, having no friends in town and being ignored by Jonathan most of the time, Kate could afford such a luxury. Yes, she could afford the luxury of being alone with the books, of sinking into a world different from hers or similar, living foreign loves as being hers, stories she started to compare with her love story. Thus, she found out that many of the main characters of the stories suffered because of love just as she suffered, and this was a feature she was unable not to pay attention to.
Something changed after that first evening when she read „Red and Black” by Stendhal in that coffee shop called „Aisling.” A coffee shop that was usual at first sight, which she’d seen many times before while passing by there, but which she didn’t pay too much attention to because Kate preferred loneliness while the coffee shops were crowded, especially on rainy days. That day though, something lured her to that place and she entered. What made her enter that coffee shop and spend an entire day there? She wasn’t that sure. She just… remembered a pair of blue eyes watching her while she passed by there, a pair of blue eyes that somehow charmed her just to make sure Kathleen O’Connell would cross the threshold of his coffee shop. The reason? Not to drink a cup of coffee as she intended at first but to read a book… in silence, in front of the fireplace, and with that pleasant aroma of fresh coffee felt all around her.
Kate really felt well that day at „Aisling.” This didn’t happen just because she had the chance to read a good book or drink a cup of fresh coffee in front of the fireplace. She felt so good because of the guitar music she had heard in that place and that pleasant and luring smell of books and romance. Why did she feel so good? Kate wasn’t sure. She just felt it, and this was really impressive because she hadn’t ever felt so much inner warmth and pleasure before. She hadn’t felt it in none of the places she visited in her life, places similar to the coffee shop „Aisling,” and Kate hadn’t felt it because nowhere else did she feel that perfume of love and longing, at least it hadn’t anywhere else been so intense as she felt it in that place.
Honestly, because of the same pleasant feeling of longing and love, and because of that pair of blue eyes that she had seen that day when she gave Alex her credit card to pay for the coffee she ordered, Kathleen remembered Thomas Hardy’s book, „A pair of blue eyes,” which she read in the park after this, completely charmed by the love of the characters, by the landscapes described in the book, and even because of nature around her. All this overwhelmed her and awakened in her soul feelings she thought she had forgotten about, feelings that made her also forget the book on the bench when she felt the need to take a few steps, and then she walked a little further from that bench. When she remembered the book and turned back to take it, Kathleen realized that the book wasn’t on the bench anymore, and this made her sad because she didn’t imagine that there were book thieves in those places.
She found that „book thief” quickly after that, a few days after she had forgotten the book in the park when she stopped by „Aisling” again. That day, entering the coffee shop and approaching Robert, who was behind the counter, to order a coffee, Kathleen spotted her book „forgotten” on the left corner of the counter. This didn’t enrage her. On the contrary, realizing who had taken her book from the park, Kate smiled. At the same time, she’d been amazed because the „book thief” was the owner of a coffee shop, and this meant only one thing: the owner of a pair of blue eyes wanted to have a novel named after his eyes. Why exactly did he take the novel? Undoubtedly, because he’d seen her reading it and realized that she’d stop by his coffee shop again and he’d have the chance to give it back to her. Yet… was he eager only to return her the book she had forgotten in the park or he wanted something more? Kate didn’t know that. Even so, a weird idea came to her mind after this: that maybe someone needed her in that world - a strange being, a lover of books, a soul so similar to his, and she realized that after she’d looked for the first time into Alexander Doyle’s blue eyes. It’s when she realized that he was a hopeless romantic, an in-love person with the world and maybe with her too…