Chapter 29: Take Me Back

Laura decided she would stop by the cafe and see if Alex was there on her way to orchestra rehearsal. The cafe had just opened and he was not in line or seated. The line was all the way out the door.

She considered waiting and picking up a carton of coffee and some pastries for her fellow musicians, when she saw someone that was trying to get her attention. Unsure how to respond, she decided to skip the purchase and swiftly move out of line.

He was calling to her now, “Laura, Laura,” with a plaintive cry that was distantly familiar and able to make her soul ache deeply. “Laura, please come.”

She figured that if the mysterious man tried to hurt her, the entire line of cafe customers would serve as witnesses, if not also as defenders. She made a cautious move a few steps closer to him, this man who was down on his luck.

She reached for her coin purse to give him some change in his cup. Just as she was dropping it in, the voice, raspy and low was now identifiable; it was Luke. “Laura,” he gasped, “Please take me back.”

This man was her past intent on trying to destroy her present. She could not believe that he was on the streets and falling apart, but his concerns stopped being her concerns the moment she told him to get out.

“No sir. No,” and she stepped away from Luke, quickening her step to put as much distance between him and her as quickly as possible.

“You’ll change your mind. We were meant to be together. It’s me or no one. You’ll see.”

He repeated those threatening phrases in a constant loop until she was no longer in his field of vision and she was back safely in her car.

She shuddered to think of being with a man like that, who was dangerous to her heart and soul. She wouldn’t give up what she had to go back to someone who had hurt her in so many ways. It would have meant walking away from the newly found confidence, a growing career, and her discovery of opportunities and adventures she never would have dreamed of or attained with Luke.

Any other day Alex would have been there at the cafe and would have defended her. Or would he have? They just started dating and, despite having had sex together, they were not yet an exclusive couple. He might not have felt obligated to defend her honor as a chivalrous gentleman, at least on the surface, that he appeared to be. He was a competitor for her affections, not yet a fighter for her peace of mind and physical safety.

She was clearly shaken. Luke. Even as a downtrodden version of his former self, desperate and in need of the basics, he still thought he had some power over her. It’s times like this that a quick text to Caitlin was exactly what the doctor ordered.

She could not call the guys; the relationships were too new and she would come off as needy, crazy, or both and probably scare all three of them away. Maybe Caitlin was right; she should seek out a therapist, or some other trained mental health professional, not unload her emotional and psychological baggage on her best friend and use her as the receptacle for her problems with 3 billionaires who wanted her now and 1 ex-boyfriend.

She sat in the parking lot at the cafe for 15 minutes until her hands stopped shaking and she could drive. She was also hoping that Alex would have come by and seen her there by then.

This was the 21st century and a contemporary woman needed to be able and equipped to save herself, not rely on a man either from the gutter or the penthouse to rescue her from her problems, fears, and needs. This one encounter with Luke had shown her, now at the crossroads of having everything she thought she wanted, that she was the heroine in her own story,
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After the encounter with Luke, she noticed that her confidence in playing, teaching, and collaborating had taken a profoundly negative hit. She was ill-equipped to take Luke on in his current or past state. She was even more unprepared to try to explain why such a man had been able to hold her under his thumb for so long.

It might have started small, in the name of staying in a relationship, but grew in strength and importance, with the promise of always being able to claim she had a man. She chose to bear the pain of the known and regrettable instead of facing the new that accompanied the fear of breaking up and starting over alone.

She decided that she would spend some time alone at her loft tonight. She turned off her phone so that she could practice some much needed self-care. Tonight her pleasure would come from a long soak in a lavender, pink salt, and mineral oil bath by candlelight while sipping a cup of chamomile tea with clover honey and fresh lemon. Alone she did not have to be witty or strong. She only had to answer to the silence and be true to herself.

With something to look forward to, she had bounce in her step that came from placing value in who she was moving onward, without heartbreak or disappointment, but with joy and hope for figuring things out on her own, finally, for the first time. Luke had been a warning and a wake up call. She recognized her value independent of connections to others, rich or poor, male or female. Solitude welcomed her back and she was very, very happy to be home.