Wishful Thinking (a journey that will change lives forever) by Melissa Hill Page B

asked.
    “Well, I love him, but I’m not in love with him,” Dara had slurred.
    “Bullshit! Either you are or you aren’t.”
    “But I am.  I like his company, I like his sense of fun, his reliability – ”
    “Next you’re going to tell me he has a nice personality.”
    “Well, he does.”
    “But?”
    Dara sighed exaggeratedly. “But he’s just not Noah.”
    “Look, Dara,” Ruth insisted, “if this Noah was so bloody perfect and the right guy for you, then how come you two aren’t still together?  What the hell happened?”
    “I was an idiot,” Dara shook her head ruefully.  “It was all my fault. I made a total mess of things.”
    Ruth got up and poured another shot of tequila. “Tell me everything,” she implored. “And start at the very beginning.”
    Dara did.
     
    *******
     
     
    Like most women, Dara had always had a pretty good idea of the kind of man she’d like to meet and fall and love with.  He’d be attractive of course, charming, considerate, funny, and with any luck he’d be also be very romantic.  Dara was no extreme feminist; in her eyes a dollop of old-fashioned romance was essential in a relationship.  Pulling out chairs, opening doors, all those things made her go weak at the knees, and while it mightn’t have been fashionable to admit such a thing in these days of so-called equality, Dara didn’t care.
    But Noah Morgan ticked all those boxes and more.  With intense green eyes, jet-black hair and a smile that could make him a living in Hollywood, Noah was so attractive it should have been illegal.  He had the power to make Dara – and quite possibly every other woman within a hundred-mile radius – go completely weak at the knees. 
    Yet for some reason, he seemed to have taken a fancy to her in return, and from the very first moment they’d laid eyes upon one another, the two of them had been inseparable.
    Considering their passionate and romance-filled relationship, they’d met in the least romantic of circumstances.  Dara had popped out one evening to buy an emergency packet of tampons in the little shop near her rented flat, and was standing in front of the checkout when she realised she’d come out without her purse.  To her utter embarrassment, the fine thing standing behind her insisted on paying on her behalf.  Dara had been unable to determine which was more embarrassing: the entire shop knowing her menstrual workings, or Mr Sex-on-Legs seeing her at her worst in baggy track bottoms, no make-up, and greasy, unwashed hair.
    But this hadn’t deterred Noah Morgan, and when a blushing Dara insisted he walk back to the flat with her so she could repay him, he duly followed and then promptly asked her out.  After that, they were rarely apart.
    The relationship was fantastic and every day Dara pinched herself, wondering what she’d done to deserve someone like him – someone who was drop-dead gorgeous, but who was also funny, intelligent, faithful.
    The early days had admittedly been challenging for her – Noah’s fun-loving personality, brooding good looks and magnetic appeal to other women being almost too much for Dara to bear.  But after a while, after coming to terms with the fact that she was the only one he wanted, much of her jealously dissipated. 
    And Noah was different to most men she’d met in that he was quite unashamedly romantic.  He loved grand gestures, and would think nothing of sending a dozen roses to Dara’s office on any given weekday, or whisking her away for romantic weekends for no apparent reason.  And she’d loved his devil-may-care attitude about work and careers. To him everything was transient, and to Dara this facet of his personality made him all the more enigmatic.  Noah had a way of making real life seem so unimportant, had a way of reducing things like career and money to the most mundane. 
    When it all started to go wrong, they’d been together for as long as she could remember, and at the time Dara was sure