Unforgettable Embrace (7 page)

“
Everything alright,” he asked with a hint of concern in his voice.

“
Never better,” she smiled through gritted teeth.

“
I thought you might have fallen down the toilet, you were gone so long,” he guffawed loudly at his own joke.

“
Hardly,” she muttered under her breath, “shall we order?”

Let's get this fiasco over and done with as quickly as possible, she thought.

Several courses later and Brian was waxing lyrical about his very high profile friend who was involved in a very serious legal case, but he couldn't possibly tell her the details. Brian himself was a solicitor but it was his life-long dream to be barrister one day. Rachel was bored almost to tears. Her face ached from fake smiling and nodding all night.

“
Well, Brian, it's time I was going,” she interrupted his ramble, looking pointedly at her watch. She just couldn't take any more of his ranting and boastings.

“
Oh, but the night is young,” he insisted, “I know this very cosy wine bar with a late night licence. I'm sure you'd love it.”

“
I'm feeling quite tired, Brian, it's time I went home,” she started gathering her jacket and handbag together.

“
Let me give you a lift home,” he said.

“
No, honestly, Brian, I'll be fine,” she said curtly, “I'm a big girl, and I can look after myself.” “Fair enough,” he replied, “will I be seeing you again?”

Rachel was taken aback by his directness, but thought it would be unfair to give him false hope.

“
Umm, no Brian, I don't think we are compatible,” was her answer.

“
Oh, but we had such a lovely evening,” he looked crestfallen.

“
I'm sorry, I've just come out of a serious relationship and don't want to get into anything yet,” she felt guilty at her previous outburst and the disappointment on his face.

“
I see, never mind,” Brian said, “thank you for your honesty.”

He looked positively deflated, Rachel thought as she hurried out of the restaurant, leaving Brian to drown his sorrows in an aperitif. She fumbled about in her handbag and switched her mobile phone on. There were two texts, both from Liz, asking how her date was going. She sighed, not in the mood to analyse her disastrous date of the past few hours. She wanted to get home to the safe cosiness of her apartment. She couldn't wait to curl up on the couch in front of the fire.

It didn't take long for Rachel to get home. She was happy to shut the front door and leave the world outside. A nice cup of hot, sweet tea, that's what I need, she thought as she kicked off her shoes, and padded over to fill the kettle with water. Tea, like a hug in a cup, her mother always said. Never a truer word spoken, Rachel said to herself.

She suddenly missed her mother. She wished she was here right now with her, for a hug and a chat. She always felt safe with her mother; she was probably the only person who Rachel trusted implicitly, unquestionably. She loved her friends dearly but there was nobody like her mom. You're my own personal cheerleader, Rachel often joked with her mom, Angela.

Rachel and her mom were not only mother and daughter, but also friends. Rachel's father had left when she was six years old. Rachel was the eldest of four children. There were only five years between Rachel and her youngest sister, Colette. Holly was next in age to Rachel and then there was Jo, the only boy. They had all been very close growing up, but had drifted apart somewhat in adulthood. Rachel's mom often said she would have loved to have had six children, and Rachel used to joke that four was more than enough. Rachel had been her mother's confidante throughout her teenage years, and from this they had become best friends.

Rachel's mom was pleased that she and Tony had split. Over the years she would try to gently suggest that Rachel ought to experience new people and places and not limit herself too early in life. She liked Tony, but secretly never believed he was the one for her Rachel. She wanted Rachel to travel, date several people, enjoy life and have fun. There was plenty of time for settling down with one person later in life. Angela loved her children dearly but sometimes wondered what her life would have been like if she'd waited a few years before starting a family. She had spent her youth raising a family and immersed in all the responsibilities that entailed. She just didn't want that life at too young an age for her daughter.

Chapter 9

When did this whole recycling nonsense begin, anyway? Rachel thought in irritation as she rinsed a few food tins in the kitchen sink and slammed them on to the drainer to dry. I remember when all rubbish was just flung unceremoniously into one big bin and stuck outside once a week for collection. Now recycling is like some sort of an international obsession, Rachel thought; paper, plastic, drinking cans, food tins (heaven forbid you put a drinking can in with a food tin; both aluminium, what's the difference?), green glass, brown glass, clear glass.

You could spend half your life sorting rubbish piles.

It's all one big monopoly, her uncle used to say, the government gets paid for our recycling but we have to pay them for the pleasure of removing it.

The government should be paying us. She kicked the bin in annoyance as she tossed the cans inside. She even threw a drinking can in with the food cans. This minor act of rebellion made her feel a little better.

It was Saturday morning and Rachel was doing her weekly clean of the apartment. She had moved on from sorting the recycling to the mountain of dishes that had piled up in the kitchen sink over the past week. She had sold the dishwasher as she found it too expensive on electricity, so instead she washed the dishes by hand, en masse, once a week. The food that was ingrained on the dinner plates didn't help to improve Rachel's mood.

She scrubbed the dishes until they were shining, thinking all the while of the week she had just experienced. Disastrous didn't even begin to describe it.

Brian had called her several times, despite her honesty with him after their dinner date last weekend. He seemed to think he could take her honesty as an invitation to call her to vent about his frustrations with the dating scene and advice on what he could do to improve his first impressions on women.

Rachel indulged him initially as she had felt sorry for him and a little guilty at how abrupt she'd been with him on their date. She was beginning to realise that his air of pomposity was just bravado to cover up how insecure he felt about women.

However, he was trying to make his insecurity Rachel's problem, which was starting to get on her nerves. She'd stopped answering his calls, in the hopes he'd get the message and move on to someone else for advice, but it seemed he was a little slow on the uptake and still continued calling her on an almost daily basis.

She had enough problems of her own in the relationship department, for goodness' sake. The last thing she wanted to do or felt remotely qualified to do was get involved in other people's love lives. The whole dating game was rather annoying to her. So much flirting and mind games were involved. If you were attracted to someone you just couldn't come straight out and ask them out on a date, oh no, they had to ask you. Such a load of rubbish, she thought, almost smashing a dinner plate as she bashed it into the sink.

Why can't people just be straightforward? I like you, you like me, let's spend time together and see what happens. She resolved to go on a few more dates, if any were forthcoming, and then just give it up as a bad job after that. She was already getting bored with the whole scene; all that hope and expectation, only to be crushed on the first date. She enjoyed the part before the date a lot more than the actual date itself. It was fun making an extra effort with her appearance, getting dressed up and going out to dinner with someone who might just be the man of her dreams. So far, she hadn't gotten past the first date. In fairness, Brian was her only first date so far, which is why she promised herself to keep an open mind and go on a few more dates.

She was quite proud of herself for going to The Boardwalk date night, and thought she might get a few more dates out of it, but instead of waiting around she decided to take a slightly more pro attractive approach and try internet dating. Several hours, and several broken plates later, Rachel found herself sitting at her computer, searching for love online. She decided to type “dating” into the search engine and was met with page after page of websites.

There was gay and lesbian dating, interracial dating, even married dating websites and many more besides. She was amazed at the sheer choice on offer, and was happy in the realisation that she was far from being the only person looking for love. She didn't know which website link to click on so she closed her eyes and pointed her mouse randomly at the screen. She figured meeting your soul mate was up to fate anyway so she may as well leave the decision to fate and randomness.

She opened her eyes to find the mouse hovering over the link to “Maybe Love.com”. She clicked on the link and mentally crossed her fingers and toes. Would the next page take her to the man of her dreams? Apparently not, as she looked at the website's home page with one eye open and the other closed, she found herself looking at several faces, male and female, in passport photo size. The site advised her that she was about to discover many new friends and perhaps even more, and “all” she had to do was fill out a questionnaire and their inbuilt matchmaking programme would match her with several potential dates.

Of course, there was a fee involved, each fee increasing depending on the membership level, which comprised bronze, silver and gold, along the same lines as the Olympics with gold being the winner. She absent-mindedly thought that they could actually make dating an Olympic sport. It would be interesting to see what the criteria for the gold medal would be on that one.

She decided to go with the bronze, thinking that she could always upgrade if necessary, but it wasn't always so easy to downgrade. Bronze allowed her to view other members' profiles and “poke” them if she was interested. Poking, hmm, sounds like a rather rude concept, she thought to herself as she read on further. It was then up to the “poked” member to respond to the “poker”. Apparently, bronze members were limited to just “poking” each other, silver members could “poke” and email each other, without providing telephone numbers. There was a very strict policy on not providing personal telephone numbers unless you were a gold member. If it happened once, you'd get a warning and a temporary suspension, if it happened again, your membership would be terminated.

Gold members could “poke”, email and telephone each other to their hearts' content. How do they come up with these rules and regulations? Rachel mused as she dug around in her handbag for her wallet and credit card. Oh well, might as well give it a go. Her credit card was accepted and before long she found herself filling in the detailed questions. The basic information was easy enough but then it came to filling in her profile and who she'd like to meet and what her hobbies and interests were and where she'd like to go on a first date. She wrote and rewrote her profile several times but still wasn't too happy with the tone. She even pretended to be “a man seeking a woman” to have a look at the other women's profiles on the site and check what the competition was writing. There were the usual provocative profiles, mixed in with a few quite desperate profiles, and several very honest profiles. Rachel went back to her own profile and decided to go with complete honesty in her description of herself and what she wanted in a future date.

Several hours after her initial login to Maybe Love.com Rachel had finally finished her profile. It was a mixture of honesty and humour and she felt quite pleased with the result. Next item on the agenda was finding a suitable photo for her profile. She waded through her photo albums which she kept on her laptop, but none were appropriate. Most of them were too busty or were with Tony. She didn't realise how many photos she had of the two of them together. She smiled as she went through the pictures, remembering the many good times they'd shared over the years.

She felt a pang suddenly, and she wondered if she had done the right thing by letting Tony go, but she quickly dismissed the doubts from her mind and ploughed on with the task of finding the perfect profile picture. She decided to take one of herself on her digital camera and after several attempts, several of which made her look like a cross-eyed psychopath, she settled upon a head shot where she looked fairly pleasant and not too demented. She decided to go with a head shot because she would prefer to have a man be interested in her face and her smile than her bra size. She knew this was assuming that most men are shallow but her personal experience was that many men had an inordinate interest in her bust.

She did have exceptionally large breasts, which were completely natural. She was the owner of a size 36FF bust. Sometimes, she felt quite proud of her chest, but mostly they were slightly annoying. She could rarely find tops that were long enough, as she was five feet nine and a half inches to be precise, but her height, combined with her bust size meant that most tops usually ended at her belly button, which was not a good look when combined with her jeans and muffin-top peaking out. Then they often ached when she was menstrual, or even sometimes when she lay in bed she squashed them when she slept on her stomach. She often found herself envying the smaller-busted women in her office, who ironically envied her ample cleavage.