Estimated reading time at 200 wpm: 11 minutes
The call was brief—deliberately so. Tarek rang Elara around five thirty. His tone was clipped, almost procedural. He mentioned that he had a conversation with Walker about ‘this’. But he was seeking a different kind of dialogue, one less restrained than his recent conversation with Walker, which, by design, was clinically detached. He was in a state of confusion, seeking a deeper, less guarded exchange.
“Let’s meet and talk in person. But we won’t go into what Walker said. I need a totally fresh perspective. Stuff happened,” said Tarek.
Whether or not you agree our Fat Disclaimer applies
Elara agreed without elaboration. The silence between them wasn’t avoidance; it was containment. They both understood, and neither wanted to contaminate a meeting with second-hand sentiment. They tacitly agreed to respect the confidentiality of his conversation with Walker.
Elara, “Let’s meet at ‘The Gilded Spoon’ this evening over a light dinner.”
Tarek, “Around seven thirty?”
Elara, “Sure. I’ll be there for you.”
At The Gilded Spoon, with its velvet banquettes and low amber lighting, the mood was ripe for a conversation that would cut deeper than Walker’s clinical restraint ever allowed.
Tarek arrived first, nursing a quiet reluctance. He and Elara were close—intellectually matched, emotionally fluent—but tonight’s topic felt unusually fraught. He stirred his whisky on the rocks, watching the condensation bead along the glass.
Elara slid into the booth, her coat folding beside her like a sigh. She met his eyes briefly, then looked away.
“I did speak to him,” Tarek said.
Her brow lifted. “And?”
Tarek, “It was… restrained. We agreed not to dissect it.”
Elara nodded, her expression unreadable. “Then let’s not.” The menus were placed to the side, and a waiter approached. Tarek nodded at the waiter, a silent understanding passing between them. “A side of the roasted chickpeas and some sourdough.” Elara waved a hand. “Just some edamame and some fine olives, thank you. Oh and a glass of your finest Sauvignon Blanc.”
A pause. Tarek leaned forward getting straight into it, “She was the one who asked. ‘Do you love me? My stomach twisted, but I knew the answer. ‘No,’ I told her, ‘I don’t.’ I was honest. And then, a couple of days later, a WhatsApp message. ‘I’m going on a date! Ta!’” He let the words hang in the air, a mix of disbelief and confusion. “I’ve been going over it in my head. What does that even mean?” He leaned further in, his voice dropping. “When she said that—what do you think she’s saying? I mean why do I need to know she’s going on a date?!!”
Elara’s gaze was a soft mirror, and her voice a low, steady current of empathy. “What did you hear, Tarek? Not what she said, but what did you hear?”
He nodded. They fell into a comfortable silence, each picking at their food. It was a brief moment of shared grounding, the quiet rhythm of eating providing a counterpoint to the intensity of their conversation.
“She was performing detachment,” Elara said. “It wasn’t flippant—it was strategic. A declaration of autonomy disguised as breeziness.”
Tarek exhaled. “It felt like dismissal. Like I was being edited out.”
Elara, “She wanted you to react. Or at least to notice.”
He looked down. “I did.”
Elara’s voice softened. “You said ‘no’ to love. She reasserted her desirability. That’s not irrational—it’s transactional logic.”
Tarek frowned, “So it wasn’t about romance – was it?”
Elara, “No. It was about adjusting her social currency. Emotional recoil. a patterned response to perceived threat.”
He leaned back, absorbing – “I’m still drawn to her…biologically.”
Elara didn’t flinch, “Attraction is not endorsement. Your body votes one way, your psyche another.”
Tarek smiled faintly, “Which parliament governs my decisions?”
“Exactly.”, Elara exclaimed.
He rubbed his temple. “She’s brilliant at seduction. But there’s no continuity. It’s like she’s emotionally bankrupt.”
Elara nodded, “Love requires object constancy. It thrives on non-transactional reciprocity. It collapses under validation addiction.”
Tarek looked at her, “You think she’s addicted to validation?”
Elara, “I think she’s operating on short-term emotional economies.”
He sighed, “I told her she’s too flaky.”
Elara’s eyes narrowed. “Was that honesty for her benefit—or yours?”
Tarek,“I don’t know, it didn’t feel true. But it was true. I’m confused.“
“Clarity is kind,” Elara responded, “But only when matched to the recipient’s capacity. Truth shouldn’t be a scalpel when a diagnostic lens would suffice.”
Tarek was quiet. Then: “There’s reputational risk, too. What does involvement with her signal to my world?”
Elara leaned in, “You’re not just navigating emotion—you’re managing optics. Think like you do in governance: risk, optics, defensibility.”
He nodded slowly, “I’m not in love. Why am I feeling like this?”
“No,” she said. “You’re in a live experiment.”
Tarek looked up, “What hypothesis am I testing? Am I being tested?”
Elara didn’t answer. She just held his gaze, a mirror polished with logic and empathy.
He studied her face, “Do you believe in love?”
She smiled, a slow curve that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I believe in its potential. But not its permanence.”
Tarek leaned in, “Why not permanence?”
Elara, “And love, if it’s real, must evolve. Most people want love to be a fixed point. I think it’s a moving target.”
He nodded slowly, “So you’ve been in love?”
Elara, “Yes. But I’ve also outgrown it.”
Tarek’s brow furrowed, “Isn’t that sad?”
Elara, “It’s only sad if you expect love to be static. I think it’s beautiful when it adapts—or even when it ends with grace.”
He watched her, the candlelight flickering across her cheekbones and cautiously said, “You speak like someone who’s made peace with heartbreak.”
“I have,” she said. “Heartbreak taught me to listen better. To myself, mostly.”
Tarek was quiet for a moment, “Do you think I’m capable of love?”
Elara tilted her head, “Yes. But you’re afraid of its cost.”
He looked down, “What’s the cost?”
Elara, “Vulnerability. Surrender. The possibility of being rewritten.”
He exhaled, “That sounds terrifying, and it’s true. I am terrified.”
“It is terrifying at times,” she said. “But it’s also the only way love becomes transformative.”
They sat in silence as dessert arrived. After a few spoonfuls of rich chocolate lava cake, Tarek’s curiosity re-emerged, spurred by Elara’s composed clarity on the matter of heartbreak.
“What is it like, then,” he began, “to fall in love as a woman? I mean… my concept of love was too biologically determined, wasn’t it?”
Elara set her spoon down, her eyes growing distant as she recalled a time he could only guess at. She said, “It’s a surrender you don’t even know you’re making until you’re halfway through. It’s the moment you realise that his presence, his very existence, has become a new, necessary variable in your emotional equation. It’s the sensation of your internal architecture being rearranged, of old boundaries blurring, not because you’re weak, but because you’ve found a new, more expansive blueprint for yourself. It’s like a quiet storm—it builds so gently, and then one day you realise the landscape has been entirely transformed, and you’re grateful for the change.”
Tarek captivated, “And when it ends?”
“It’s a violent recalibration,” she said, her voice dropping to a near-whisper. “It’s the psychological equivalent of a phantom limb. You still reach for a part of them that isn’t there, and the ghost of their touch, their voice, their presence, aches with a physical intensity. But the pain is also a teacher. It’s a loud, unignorable signal that a part of your former self is gone, and you must now rebuild, not as you were, but as something new—something forged in fire.”
They sat in silence, the weight of her words settling between them. Tears then filled his eyes. Elara reached across the table and held his hand. It wasn’t a gesture of pity, but of profound, unburdened empathy—a recognition that he had, for the first time, allowed a raw, emotional vulnerability to surface. In that touch, and in that shared silence, was the acceptance he had not yet been able to grant himself.
He swallowed hard, his voice a low, unsteady rasp as he fought for composure. “I… I’m not a crying person,” he said, the words a raw protest against his own body’s betrayal. Elara squeezed his hand gently, her eyes meeting his without judgement. “You don’t have to be,” she said softly. “You just have to be human.” Tarek finally looked up, his eyes glassy and bright, his face a mosaic of raw emotion and faint relief. “This is… a very different kind of conversation,” he managed, his voice still thick with emotion. Elara simply nodded, a knowing glint in her eyes. “Sometimes Walker gets a bit… philosophical, doesn’t he?” she said with a wry half-smile. “He can be overly poetic sometimes.” A small, chuckle escaped him, a sound that seemed to break the tension. Tarek, “I’m realising that as a man, my concept of love was too biologically determined,” he confessed, the words a quiet revelation. “It’s like I was trying to solve for a reproductive equation, not a human one.”
He straightened in his seat, the weight in his chest now less a crushing burden and more a profound, new understanding. He looked at Elara, his gaze steady and clear. “I think you’ve just helped me test my hypothesis,” he said quietly, a faint smile touching his lips. “I was mapping her behaviour. You showed me the human architecture behind it.” He paused, looking around the intimate restaurant, the low lights, the quiet hum of conversation. “Walker and I… we’re good at the satellite view. We can chart the movements, analyse the patterns. But you,” he said, looking back at her, “you’re down here on the ground. You feel the earthquakes.”
Elara’s expression softened into one of immense compassion. “Oh, Tarek,” she began, her voice low and soothing that seemed to resonate with the quiet of the room. “That’s why we’re so terrified of love, isn’t it? Because it demands that we stop being cartographers and start being the land itself. It asks us to feel the ground shift, to live with the unpredictability, to be fundamentally rewritten or terra formed. And that,” she said, squeezing his hand once more, “is where the true work begins.”
“Thank you, Elara,” he said, his voice finally regaining its strength. He squeezed her hand back, a gesture of gratitude that went deeper than words. “Thank you for not giving me a map. You gave me a compass instead. For showing me that vulnerability isn’t a weakness, but the only way to truly navigate this kind of… terrain. I feel like I’ve just discovered a new continent within myself.”
The waiter arrived with the bill, placing it discreetly between them. Tarek, his hand still warm from Elara’s, did not hesitate. He picked it up and placed his card on top, a silent gesture that spoke of a new kind of composure. “I’ve got this,” he said, a simple statement of fact that carried the weight of a larger declaration. It was an end to the evening, but the beginning of something else.
They emerged from the restaurant and strolled back to the ground floor of the nearby NCP car park. The cool evening air was a welcome contrast to the intimate warmth of The Gilded Spoon. They stopped by their cars. Elara leaned forward, and they shared a brief, meaningful cuddle—a quiet moment of shared humanity. Then, she slipped gracefully into the low-slung driver’s seat of her Lamborghini Revuelto, its orange paint gleaming under the sodium lights. Tarek slid into the quiet opulence of his Bentley Continental GT. With a nod, they went their separate ways.
