Nov: It Wasn’t Meant To be

© Jane Harvey-Berrick

David got the house in the divorce. By then, I no longer cared and just wanted it all over with. At least he had the decency to let me pack up my stuff in peace before he moved in his new girlfriend. Sorry, wife … before he moved in his new wife.
I was sad and I wasn’t; sometimes I was angry. Mostly, I was just frustrated by the five years I’d wasted on him. Fifteen years that I wasn’t going to get back; fifteen years where I wasn’t getting any younger.
In hindsight, we never should have married. It should never have gone beyond a few dates and then called it a day. We had nothing in common but he was nice, and I was tired of going on endless first dates.
I’d tried to make it work, and I’d let him have his own way on so many things, from the house we bought and the way we decorated it, the furniture we sat on, the bed we slept in, even the car I drove. Because fighting every small battle was tiring, and I thought that letting him decide on material things would help me win the war.
But no, he decided he didn’t want children either.
In hindsight, I was a fool.
And David wasn’t as nice as I’d thought.
I’m not sure when he first start having affairs—possibly from the first year of our marriage. I didn’t want to know. But the most recent one had resulted in a baby. David’s daughter was six months old.
“What do you want to do with this box of old photographs?” asked Bonnie.
I turned to look at my oldest friend, the one I’d met in kindergarten, and tears gathered in my eyes. “What would I do without you?”
“You’re my best friend in the whole world, Carla, so you’ll never have to know,” she replied with a small smile. She shook the box at me. “So, photographs?”
“I don’t even know what they are—I haven’t printed out a photograph in a decade or more.”
I sat down on the floor with the box and picked up the first one. It was of my mom and dad, taken in the back yard of the house I’d grown up in. Fresh tears pricked my eye and I wiped at them angrily.
“God, I’m such an emotional mess,” I half laughed, half cried. “I can’t go more than five minutes without welling up. Last night, I started crying at that advertisement with the dog.”
Bonnie threw me a look. “Everyone cries at that—and if they don’t, they have a heart of stone.”
“David wouldn’t,” I sighed. “He doesn’t like dogs.”
“I rest my case,” Bonnie said with a smirk.
The next photograph was of me and Bonnie at the top of the Empire State Building. You wouldn’t have known where it was from the blurry background, but we both smiled at the same time.
“That was a great weekend,” she said. “We should do that again—have some serious retail therapy.”
“I’d love to,” I sighed. “But money is going to be tight for a while.” Probably the rest of my life.
“My treat,” she said immediately.
“Bonnie, I can’t…”
“La la la! I can’t hear you!” she sang. “Come on, Carla. What are friends for? Don’t say no. Just think about it, okay?”
I nodded, noncommittal, and picked up another photograph.
“Who’s this?” she asked.
I peered at the photograph, plucking it out of her hand.
“Oh, that was at my bachelorette party in Vegas. I loved that dress, but the air conditioning was crazy in the hotel and I had to wear a sweater all weekend. It was so cold in the cocktail lounge, I could practically see my breath. Do you remember that?”
“Yeah, sure,” she said, casting a puzzled look at the photograph, “but who’s the guy?”
A faint blush heated my face.
“Oh, I think it was Joe.” Short for Giovanni. “Alice must have taken that photograph—she’d gotten that new Polaroid camera.”
“Oh, I remember that,” Bonnie said, still frowning. “But why is this guy in the picture?”
“We just sort of started talking,” I said, smiling down at Joe’s handsome face and thick, dark, wavy hair.
His eyes were hidden in the photograph, but I knew that they were a delicious chocolate brown.
“And?” Bonnie prompted.
I shrugged.
“And nothing. We talked,” for hours, “and then we all left to see a show. He was with friends and they were going to a casino.” He invited me to go with them.
I smiled to myself. I’d kept that memory close to me for years. Bonnie, Alice and Melissa had been drinking cocktails that night and were flirting with a bunch of Navy guys, so they hadn’t really noticed me talking to Joe. He’d liked me, maybe more than liked me, and I’d thought he was gorgeous and out of my league, and had seriously considered having a final, pre-wedding fling with him. I didn’t because I couldn’t bear the thought of cheating on David; couldn’t have born the guilt. What a joke.
What a giant, cosmic joke.
I reached for the next photograph of me and Bonnie at our high school graduation.
“Oh my goodness! Look at your perm,” I laughed. “I’d forgotten about that!”
“There’s a phone number on the back,” said Bonnie. “And a message.”
I turned over the picture in my hands. “No there isn’t. What are you talking about?”
“Not our graduation,” Bonnie said impatiently. “You and Joe. He’s written a message on the back.”
“Really? Are you sure?”
“Very sure.”
“What does it say?”
Silently, she handed me the photograph.
Written in beautiful handwriting using a fountain pen was a short message that nearly stopped my heart:
Beautiful Carla, your husband-to-be is a lucky man.
I wish I was the one, but I met you too late. Perhaps it wasn’t meant to be.
If you ever change your mind, please call me, cara mio.
Voi che per li occhi mi passaste ’l core.
Joe
707 555 2233
Stunned, I turned my eyes to Bonnie.
“Wow!” she said, speaking for both of us. “And you never called him?”
“I didn’t even know he’d given me his number until now.”
“Where’s that area code?”
“Sonoma County, I think.” I didn’t think, I knew. His family had a vineyard there. I remembered it all…
“I wonder what the Italian means?”
“I have no idea,” I said, shaking my head.
She grinned at me. “I’m going to Google it: read it out to me?”
“Um, okay … vo-ey chay purr lee ochee, um, okky, me pass-ass-tee, el kor-ay…”
It took several tries, but finally she found the translation.
“‘You, who pierced my heart passing through my eyes.’ It’s by a poet named Guido Cavalcanti who lived like 700 years ago. That’s so romantic!”
The pain was surprisingly sharp. Never once in fifteen years of marriage had David ever said something so lovely to me. Never.
Bonnie pursed her lips. “So, are you going to call him?”
I laughed out loud. “Bonnie! No way!”
“Why not?”
I blinked at her in amazement. “Because!”
“Because what?”
I huffed impatiently. “Because! It was fifteen years ago. Because I’ve just gotten divorced. Because he won’t even remember me. Because we were both drunk and I don’t remember anything about him.”
My face heated as I lied to me oldest friend. We hadn’t been drunk and I remembered everything about him.
“Because that phone number probably isn’t even in service anymore.”
She shrugged as I was probably right, as if it didn’t matter.
But then she said, “One way to find out,” and she picked up her cell phone.
I grabbed her arm, horrified. “What are you doing?”
“What you should be doing,” she replied. “Getting over the asshole and getting on with your life.” Her voice softened. “You’re probably right: the number won’t work and if it does, there won’t be anyone named Joe at the end of it … or if there is, the chances are that he won’t remember you. But so what? Wouldn’t you rather know than not?”
“No, I wouldn’t,” I said fiercely.
“Why the hell not?”
“Because!” I yelled. My head dropped into my hands. “Because it’s perfect as it is—a perfect memory of a perfect guy. It wasn’t meant to be, but it’s a perfect memory.”
She sighed and squeezed my hand.
“Real life isn’t perfect, it’s just life. If you look for perfection, you’ll never find it. Honey, you deserve everything that life has to offer.” She paused. “But you have to make the effort to look for yourself.”
“It’s hard,” I whispered.
“A life lived in fear is a life half-lived.”
I stuttered out a shaky laugh. “You stole that line from my favorite movie!”
She winked at me. “Doesn’t make it any less true.”
“So, you just want me to call the number? That’s all?”
She shrugged and nodded.
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
I blew out a long breath. “Okay, give me the number. Before I lose my nerve.”
I punched the number into my cell and nearly dropped it when I heard a ring tone.”
“Hello?”
“Oh my God! Someone answered!” I hissed, holding my hand over the phone.
“Say something!” Bonnie hissed back.
“Hello?”
The voice sounded impatient now.
“Oh, um, hi,” I said weakly. “I’m looking for Joe.”
“Who am I speaking to?”
“It’s him!” I gasped.
“Hello?”
Bonnie prodded me and I squeaked.
“Oh, hi! I’m … this is Carla. You won’t remember me but about a hundred years ago, well, fifteen actually, we met in Vegas and, um, you gave me your number. I … I just found it.”
There was a painfully long pause.
“You don’t remember,” I said, my voice a whisper.
“Carla? Carla with the wheat blonde hair and green eyes?”
“Um, I guess? Yeah?”
“My God!” his voice was as quiet as mine. “My God, Carla! I always hoped you’d call.”
“You did?”
“Yes. How are you?”
I gave a shaky laugh. I could give him a long, rambling, misery-laden answer, or I could tell him how I felt right now.
“I’m great! How are you?”
“Better than I was five minutes ago.”
I could hear the smile in his voice…
And that’s where my story ends, or at least this part of it. Maybe something would happen with Joe, maybe it wouldn’t, but I’d taken the first step on the journey of the rest of my life. And I was okay with that.

THE END

I hope you enjoyed that story of second-chance love – based on a real event that happened to a friend of mine.

And talking of taking a second chance on love, have you read my new romcom with Stuart Reardon, SURVIVOR LOVE ISLAND? Lots of crazy characters but also a warm-hearted romance. Enjoy!