Scarlet Rose

Chapter 43

On hindsight everything is a game. You throw the dice and keep the fingers crossed your numbers are good. Just then, when the mind is clear, the moves you could have done, seem like the pebbles on the bottom of the crystal sea. Easy to reach, easy to catch, easy to throw.

But on the heat of the moment, the mind is inside a storm, the waters are muddy, and the floor of the sea impossible to view. The heart takes charge. The impulsive heart, the passionate heart, the irrational. It is blind inside this storm, ablaze with love, desire, hatred, jealousy, loading the mind with thoughts, the arms, the legs with action, stares full of fire. The paths such hearts carve leave nothing standing.

The next day, nothing stood between Terry and Candy. A river of anger had swept everything in its path. Their history looked  like a ghost which had overstayed its welcome. Even if nothing really was evident on the surface, underneath there was an uneasy silence. From everyone involved.

Terry from having been almost like a permanent figure in hers and Christian's lives, he was not there anymore. He hardly came out of the theatre. Used it as he had come learned to use it. Its salvation when he hit difficult times. For someone who didn't know him well, he seemed normal. But to those near him, his mood between the weekend and after Monday had been as different as  the night and day. The silences weren't the same. When before he looked like he had been a dream like state, as calm as the dawn of a summer's day, now permanent darkness  seemed to be  inside his eyes. His temper was short fused. Very short fused. Swear words hung from his lips at all hours of the day, the crease between his brows could may as well be carved for it never left. It was there, fixed on his face, making his stare ominous at best. Not many dared talk to him. They let him go on, do his tasks without too much interaction.

Robert's worry levels increased a notch from the weekend. The fact that his protégée was worse than the Sphinx wasn't helping much. If Terry had brushed him off before, there was no way in hell he would open up to him now. At least, the only thing that didn't drive Robert's anxiety levels to the roof was that Terry wasn't looking  to turn to the bottle. He was measured and in control. He didn't stink of booze which was good, considering that his stare harboured so many clouds, you'd think Mount Etna was ready to explode.

He had felt responsible for what had happened. He had let his insecurity and his male ego to take the better of him. He had opened his stupid mouth at a time he shouldn't have. He used Marion's infatuation to him to an extent where she became inconsiderate and provocative. He had never let a woman get close to him in a physical way as much as he had let Marion. Had he enjoyed it? In a way, yes. His ego had been bruised from the moment he entered Candy's life in London. When he saw her, not only having replaced him with another man, but she had changed so much, he actually came to realise Candy was detesting what her old self had stood for. The same things he had fallen in love with Candy, she had tried to go against. Her innocence, shyness, her altruism, her straight-laced manners.

Deep in thoughts he was. He had been lost as a teenager, and Candy...he...she...he thought of her as his lighthouse inside the dark waters his life had sailed. So all those things he loved on her... weren't a bit as if he looked for a mother in her? There had been the sexual attraction, no doubt but at the age of seventeen was unripe, green, bitter and dry. The kiss they shared back then, it was the first manifestation. It was an awkward kiss, a sudden one. It had been crass and forceful in a way, in his eagerness to show her something he hadn't even managed to work out what it was at the time. She got scared and confused.

With Candy, there was always a watershed moment in him, where all the controls he had, were failing him and his feelings would pour out. At those moments, he just had to show her, he had to let her know what he felt for her. That what's had happened inside the car. Like many years ago, he didn't think but he acted. He had to tell her, she had to hear what he had to say. Didn't matter if they had ten minutes or an hour. Didn't matter if they sped inside a car or were sitting comfortably on the sofa of her house.