Read The melody in our hearts Online
Authors: Roberta Capizzi
Even though it was nothing like that first kiss....
She suddenly wondered why, after so many years, she should still think of that kiss. With a beautiful guy standing by her, waiting for her to say something, all she could think of was the night her best friend had kissed her.
She shook her head involuntarily, as if to send that thought away and felt Jake move away.
“I...I’m not very good when it comes to this,” she whispered, feeling stupid for a woman her age. “But I can’t say I didn’t like it, if that’s what you’re dying to know.”
He chuckled and wrapped his arm around her again, pulling her close to his chest.
”It’s not exactly what I was hoping to hear, but at least it’s a start!”
“I enjoyed spending time with you, Jake. I had a good time, and I’m glad you didn’t give up on me after all the invitations I turned down.”
He squeezed her a bit tighter, and she realized she didn’t mind, after all. She had been fighting so hard to push him away, and now that he was holding her in his arms, all she could think of was that she had been really stupid.
“I had a good time too. I guess we could do it again, what do you say?”
“I’d love to.”
With that, he turned again to face her and kissed her again, holding her face in his hands until she pulled away, breathless, and they both agreed it was time to go home, since they would both have a morning shift the following day.
Ryan called her first thing in the morning, and she groaned when her phone started ringing while she was still in bed.
“So?” was all he asked, and she hid her head under the pillow, groaning even louder.
“Ryan!” she yelled, wishing she could just hang up and go back to sleep, but knowing she couldn’t. Ryan wouldn’t leave her alone until she had told him everything, down to the closest detail, and even then, he would probably go on talking until she asked him to stop.
“You’d have to get up anyway; you have a morning shift, remember? So why don’t we get this over with and you tell me what happened?”
She sighed, kicking away the blanket, and sat up. He would never stop, so she had no other choice but tell him everything and hope that it would suffice, at least until they met and could talk face to face.
She quickly told him what they had done and what they had talked about, until she reached the part where he had kissed her. It was weird for her to say it out loud, especially to Ryan, who was like a brother to her and had always been her knight in shiny armor when it came to boys. When she finally said it, she felt as if a load had been taken off her mind.
“Woah, why didn’t you call me when you got home? I should’ve been the first to know!”
“You are the first to know, Ryan. And probably the last, too. It’s not as if I’ll go around the hospital telling everyone that Jake kissed me!”
She stood up and walked out of the bedroom and into the kitchen, then switched on the coffee maker and opened the fridge to pull out a bottle of milk.
“Will you see him again?”
Would she want to see him again? The answer came quickly to her mind. Of course she wanted to see him again. The question was: Would he want to see her again? They hadn’t talked about it when they had said goodbye and stepped into different taxis. They would see each other at the hospital the following day, and she assumed he would want to see her and talk to her. Possibly he would ask her out again; that’s what he had said the night before, wasn’t it? Or was she imagining things? No, he had said it, which meant he wanted to see her again. But what if he had changed his mind overnight?
She was ridiculous, honestly. She was acting like a teenager, thinking like a teenager, and she suddenly realized that even talking about it with Ryan wouldn’t help her. She needed a female point of view, actually, an experienced female point of view. Karen was the best when it came to guys. She and Kevin had been seriously dating for over a year now, so Valerie knew she’d be the right person to speak to, and for the first time she felt strangely guilty for choosing someone else over Ryan as her confidant.
“Val? You there?”
She shook her thoughts away and took out a mug from the cupboard, filling it to the brim with warm black coffee.
“Listen, I have to get ready for work now. Can we talk about it some other time?”
“Alright, you have a good excuse this time. I’ll come to the hospital after you finish your shift, and we can have a coffee at my place, so you can tell me
everything
about last night.”
He giggled and she sighed, knowing fighting would be useless. There was no way she could escape his interrogation this time.
“Okay, you win. I’ll see you later.”
She hung up and felt strangely excited about going to work, knowing that she would probably see Jake there.
After their first date, they started going out whenever their shifts allowed them to, and she enjoyed spending time with him. It was different from spending time with Ryan, but she liked it anyway. She had never thought she would enjoy another man’s company, but spending time with Jake felt good, and Ryan didn’t seem to be jealous of her spending time with another man.
Jake was sweet and passionate, and she always felt flattered by his attentions, especially when he did it in front of other women. She never thought it would feel this good, but it was probably because she had never had a man’s attentions before, so it was all new for her.
But she should have known better, and she should have listened to that little voice inside her mind that kept telling her it was too good to be true and that it just wasn’t meant to be.
It only took her a little over four months of dating Jake to get her heart broken.
He had been acting weird in the past couple of weeks, and she couldn’t help thinking that it was because of the night when he had wanted to make love to her and she had said no.
She knew it sounded childish, and she knew she was too old to believe in Prince Charming and all the silly fairy tale romances she had read so much about when she was a child. Still, she had always thought that, since her first kiss had been so special, her first time should be special, something she would remember forever. It should happen with a man she would want to remember forever, maybe the man she would spend her whole life with.
She knew it was old-fashioned, and nowadays it only happened in movies and novels, but it was just the way she wanted it to be. Ryan used to tell her that it wasn’t something to be ashamed of. She had principles she believed in and, in a world where most people didn’t even know what principles were and didn’t believe in anything other than enjoying their lives without having to worry about the consequences, he thought she was special. If Jake loved her, he would respect her feelings and wait until she was sure she wanted to share this experience with him.
Obviously Jake had said he understood and wouldn’t force her to do something she wasn’t ready for, and Valerie had felt so relieved and even more in love with him that she hadn’t noticed the look in his eyes as he was saying it.
She should have known better.
It happened on a Wednesday afternoon after her shift was over. She had been planning to surprise him with a romantic dinner, and then they would spend some time cuddling each other, snuggled up on the sofa. Karen would be on a night shift so they would have the apartment to themselves, and who knew what might happen later.
She had started to feel that maybe Jake would be the right man for her: He had always been romantic and charming, and he had showed her in so many ways that he loved her. Why should she wait? What was she waiting for? Who was she waiting for? Jake loved her, and she loved him back – at least that was what she thought, since she had never really known what loving someone meant. But the feeling was strong, and she liked being with him, so that must be what love was.
She had made up her mind during her shift, and she couldn’t wait to go home and prepare everything for their special evening.
She left the hospital and walked quickly toward the subway, looking for her cell phone in her bag. She wanted to call Ryan to ask him for advice on how to make it a special night without being too mushy and romantic, something men usually didn’t like, at least from what she’d heard from her colleagues.
When she couldn’t find it immediately, she stopped walking and started rummaging frantically inside her bag, wondering why it wasn’t there. Then something suddenly clicked, and she remembered taking it out of her white coat and placing it on the shelf in her locker while she was changing, so she guessed she had probably left it there.
She snorted and shrugged, knowing she’d have to go back to the hospital and pick it up. She couldn’t possibly leave without her phone. Besides, she was on call, so she had to have it in case somebody needed her, and she would have to run to the hospital, although she hoped it wouldn’t be the case.
Paula, the nurse at the reception, looked at her quizzically when she stepped through the sliding doors. She shrugged.
“I forgot my phone in the locker. I guess I’m getting old!”
Paula smiled and went back to what she was doing, while Valerie walked quickly down the corridor and into the locker room. Her phone was there, just like she remembered, and she was glad she didn’t have to look around the hospital trying to find where she had left it.
She started looking for Ryan’s number in the address book while closing the locker door, but since she wasn’t paying much attention, her index finger got stuck in the door.
“Damn!” she yelled, instinctively bringing her finger to her mouth to ease the pain, and she slumped down on the bench behind her.
Her finger started to pound, and she knew it would take a while before it would stop, so she decided to look for a cream or something that would make the pain subside more quickly. She knew they kept some basic drugs and medications in the room next door, where the staff toilets and showers were.
She opened the door with her finger still stuck in her mouth, her cell phone in her hand, and her bag slung over her shoulder. Before she switched the light on, she froze. She could hear moans and giggles coming from the other door where the toilets were, and she wondered whether she should get out and simply ask a nurse for some ice and just go home.
After being in the ER for so long, she had learned that it wasn’t that weird for a couple of colleagues to be found having sex somewhere in the staff room when they thought nobody was around. Paula had told her some weird stories about people she would have never thought could be having an affair. But Paula loved to gossip, and Valerie wasn’t sure all of it was always true: She was sure Paula loved to spice things up a bit, just to make them more interesting.
Although she had heard of it, it was embarrassing to be there and actually witness it, so she quickly spun and was just about to close the door behind her when she heard something that made her freeze where she stood.
A woman’s voice calling out a name, a name she knew too well, a name that wasn’t as popular as other names in the hospital. As far as she knew, there was no other doctor, nurse or paramedic whose name was...
“Jake! Jake, stop it now!”
More giggles and a man’s voice whispering something she couldn’t hear.
Her legs went weak and she had to hold onto the door jamb because her head had started to spin so hard, she had suddenly stopped feeling the pain in her finger.
Everything around her became fuzzy, and she knew she should sit somewhere, anywhere, even on the floor, before she collapsed, but she couldn’t move.
Then, suddenly, her legs started to move as if on autopilot, and she found herself opening the stall door, making both people wince. A part of her was hoping she was wrong – a part of her had desperately wanted to believe that there was another Jake in the hospital, maybe some new guy from the upstairs wards, someone she didn’t know.
But when she opened the door and saw it was
her
Jake half-naked in there, with a girl sitting on his lap, wearing only her bra and a pair of unbuttoned pants, she thought she was going to be sick.
The girl turned back and Valerie recognized Deirdre, a nurse who had always drooled over Jake but who, like everyone else in the ER, knew too well that he was dating Valerie.
She didn’t know whether it was Deirdre or Jake she loathed more right now. It seemed like they were both having fun and neither was being forced to do something against their will.
“Valerie... I...um....” Jake stuttered, unable to say the usual thing everyone always said when they got caught, the stupid
I can explain
thing.
She really didn’t want to hear his explanations right now. She only wanted to cry, to hit his head with her purse so hard that he would never forget it. She wanted to go to her chief’s office and have Deirdre fired straight away, to have Jake moved to another hospital, somewhere far away like Seattle or San Diego.