The Heart Wants What It Wants

He would move the world, shake the earth, to find her if he had to. He didn’t think of why he felt so much. He didn’t think why the thought of losing her, of something happening to her, made him feel as if his heart had been crushed to a powder.

None of it mattered. All that mattered was finding her.

Keeping her safe.

He double parked and ran into the restaurant, and was relieved to find Alex there. She didn’t look devastated. She was laughing with somebody. If something had happened to Diana, she’d look devastated, wouldn’t she? She wouldn’t be laughing with a friend.

George didn’t care about politeness or rules. He strode to the table, and interrupted the conversation rudely.

“Alex, I need a moment. It’s urgent.”

Alex looked at him, surveyed him as if he was something she had had to scrape off the sole of her designer shoe.

“I’m busy.”

“I can talk to you here, or you can sit down at a table where we won’t be overheard. Whichever you prefer.”

“If you think I’d mind a scene, you have me confused with somebody else, buddy.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t. How about Diana?”

Her face changed. The venom in her eyes – oh, she disliked him now. He didn’t care. He didn’t care about anybody except Diana.

“Fine. You have five minutes.”

That was all he needed. Five minutes, and the assurance that Diana was fine. That she was doing fine.

That she needed him, and missed him.

That she would come back to him, and forget about all this talk of things he couldn’t give her. He could give her enough to make all of that not matter.

“Talk.”

“Where’s Diana?” asked George, without preamble.

“It’s none of your business, isn’t it? She’s sent back everything you gave her.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s staying with me for a while. She’ll go back to her place when she’s ready to. You sure did a number on her, pal. Why do you want to see her now? To talk her around?”

“Our relationship is none of your business.”

“Oh, like hell. You see, you might be utterly incapable of loving anybody, Georgy old boy, but I love her. I love Diana because she’s the sister of my soul. She’s my other half. You broke her heart. Do you have any idea how badly you broke her? I’m helping her put herself back together again. She’s strong. You have no idea how strong she is. So she will do it. She will put herself back together, and she will be whole again, even if she doesn’t think so. You can’t break her.”

“I don’t fu*king want to break her!”

“Then why the fu*k did you break her!” shouted back Alex.

“I… She asks for too much.”

“She never asked for any of the stuff you insisted on giving her, did she? She never asked for the dresses, or the jewelry, or the trips. She never asked for any of those things.”

“I… No.”

“She never even asked you to love her. She just fell in love with you. Goodness knows why, I don’t see what she sees in you. You are obviously a closed off, emotionally immature man who likes having a younger woman who obviously worships the ground he walks on. Do you think that all the gifts you gave her meant anything for how expensive they were? She treasured everything because you gave them to her. You could have given her bubblegum wrappers and she would have treasured them because you gave them to her. She didn’t take them because they were expensive gifts. She took them because they mattered, because you gave them to her. That’s a woman who was waiting to love somebody, who was waiting to be loved by somebody. She thought you would love her.”

“I never made any promises.”

“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that, buddy. But she had faith in you that you don’t have. You knew, didn’t you, that she’s a traditional kind of woman, with the traditional kind of hopes and dreams? A man, children, a career that means something, love, happiness. Those are things she wants. She wants what her parents had. She wants a happy ever after. You knew that, didn’t you? Don’t tell me you didn’t. You’re a perceptive enough man. You would have known.”

“I…”

He didn’t have anything to say to that.

He had known, hadn’t he?

“There you go. You knew it, but because she didn’t sit you down and tell you that, you ignored it. I don’t know why you’re looking for her, George, but if you can’t give her what she needs, you should leave her alone. And she wants you to give her an estimate of how much her car cost. She wants to pay it all back, even if it takes her the rest of her life to do that. That’s what all her gifts meant to you. She thinks a lot more of you than you think of yourself. She deserves a lot more than you’re willing to give her. Make her happy, or get out of her life.”

With that, Alex got up and walked away, not knowing that she had echoed what Diana had told him.

She thought a lot more of him than he did of himself.

And he needed her.