Falling by Default

Sam had just received an email from Amy, the daughter of a recently deceased friend. Sam had never met the daughter and, frankly, was unlikely to. In the email, Amy, recently reaching her 50th year, wrote to tell Sam about rejoining the dating scene. After exchanging a dozen emails with Amy about the single life, she finally admitted that, at 70, finding romance wasn’t exactly on her agenda… or so she’d thought. Quite honestly, looking at the average 70-year-old male didn’t appeal. Not only was it unlikely that the experience would be romantic, but most older men she had met seemed to have given up embarking on a life of new adventures. To Sam, it seemed that if they had been initially blessed with a sense of humour, it had died long ago along with their youthful personalities. She admired Amy ‘for getting out there again’ and dating, but she had no desire to copy Amy.

Sam had recently started attending a co-working cafe despite her flat being spacious enough to work from home. The aftermath of Covid had left a feeling of aloneness. The borders of her adopted country had re-opened, but all the usual activities that had kept her so busy before COVID-19 had disappeared. She’d joined some online courses and events, but when a particular course had been completed, she would be forced to try to find something else to fill her time satisfactorily.

Her friend Louise invited her for coffee in a co-working cafe near Sam’s condominium and suggested she start coming to the cafe to write her stories. After years in an office, Sam was immediately struck by the hum and energy of the young, international crowd, busily working and reminding her of the world's liveliness pre-Covid. However, when Sam first walked into the cafe alone, she immediately felt she had made a colossal mistake. Everyone was so young - much younger than she had noticed previously. Plucking up her courage, she nervously selected a desk and unpacked her laptop. She ordered a Latte from the cafe and was pleased the staff were so welcoming and charming, and she began to feel less out of place. By the end of the day, she knew she’d found a location that would keep retirement loneliness at bay.

Over the next few years, her personality slowly traversed from someone who hoped to be an enigma to the cafe community regarding her apparent senior years to someone who began to jealously guard her elated position as the ‘Oldest Person’ in the cafe.  

Amongst the transient crowd of digital nomads, she met numerous male and female colleagues from many foreign lands and the question of age was never raised. The overall age group ranged from early 20s to early 50s, and anyone nearing 60 coming into the cafe was a rare event. As the eldest in the cafe, she found many nomads turned to her to discuss their various problems, and she willingly gave up her private time to listen to their issues. Over time, relationships were made, some little more than brief acknowledgements, but regularly firm friendships were experienced and enjoyed.

Having retired many years ago from a position based in a corporate headquarters, she’d never heard of a ‘Co-workers Cafe’ before and sat open-mouthed that someone doing a similar job to her youthful self could be sitting and working in glorious tropical surroundings. Here in the co-workers’ cafe, people happily met in the coffee area, in the front or the back garden, perhaps on one of the many sofas available, or possibly by chance at one of the many local food locales, and strong links were forged almost instantly. She remembered that developing close friendships in a London office often took years to evolve—trust, ambition, and status issues being the usual deciding factors. 

One early Monday morning, she squeezed into a single-person booth, ordered her coffee, and opened her laptop. “Hi,” said someone, and a friendly, familiar face appeared.

“Hi, do you remember me? I’m Andre from Paris. We met a few years ago.”  

“Oh, Andre, yes, I do. We ate our Xmas Dinner together in an Italian Restaurant. Long time no see.”

“

I’m only here for a week, but come meet my friend Georges; he’ll be here a little longer.”

She slid along the bench and popped to the booth next door. Sitting there was an extraordinary-looking young man. His unusual colouring transfixed her. He had light red hair and pale skin, and as he turned to her, she saw his piercing sapphire-blue eyes. The look was so unusual that she wasn’t even sure if he was attractive, but despite her senior years, she melted as she looked into those eyes.

Frankly, Georges was immediately all over her. He flirted outrageously, and her emotions took flight. She was pleased that he seemed so enchanted by her.

“How come you are here in Asia?”

“Oh”, she said excitedly, “I decided on this country when I retired from China”.

“Retired? Did you take an early retirement?”

Sam hesitated. Georges was undoubtedly the most interesting man she’d seen in a long time but was years younger than her. He seemed blissfully unaware of this, and Sam began to panic. “I need to stop this before Andre starts to tease both of us”. Taking a deep, regretful breath, she said:  

“No. I'm 70 and have been retired for a long time.”

At that point, his whole face changed. Instead of displaying enchantment, he looked annoyed. She tried to continue conversing with him, but he had lost all desire to talk, so she turned around and returned to her booth. She couldn’t believe he didn’t even pretend he wasn’t agist!  

“Well, youth isn't wasted on the young—just their common sense! I didn’t make the mistake.  He was the fool to start flirting with an old woman!” His treatment of her decidedly ruffled her feathers. But after a short while, she began to sit straighter with her shoulders back: “No, you haven’t been insulted; you have received a compliment!”

By the afternoon, both Andre and Georges had disappeared from the co-working cafe, and she felt at ease not having to see Georges again.

A few days later, she was eating at an outdoor food stall on a side street near the co-working cafe. Struggling with her chopsticks and spoon, she had just shovelled a large amount of noodles into her mouth when she watched Georges sit on the vacant stool beside her. She slurped on her noodles nonchalantly, pretending to stare into the distance, while her brain furiously tried to work out if she could finish her noodles and leave before he noticed who he was sitting next to. She suddenly felt his glittering sapphire eyes appraising her face. Wiping her chin of grease, she turned and smiled at him.

“Hi, aren’t you the woman in the Cafe?” he asked.

“Yep, that’s me. How are you?”

They sat exchanging small talk until his noodles and pork arrived.

Despite chatting, she felt an awkwardness between them. Their first encounter in the Cafe had been fun and easy, but their relationship had instantly crumbled at the mere mention of her age. Even sitting over the noodles, she noticed they were cordial with each other, but she was not experiencing the vitality of the initial connection.  

Amy, the email friend, had been appraised of the man problem that Sam had gone through.  

“How annoying that the first man to flirt with you in years seemed to have made a make a mistake with your age. I’ve never met you face to face, but after reading all your emails to my mum, you seem amazingly young for your years.”

She wrote to Amy, “All my life, I have wanted to be considered young and lively, not realising that appearing more youthful than my years has definite drawbacks.”

Weeks later, she was sitting in her booth drafting a possible story when Georges suddenly appeared.

“Hi”

“Hi”

“Going for noodles at lunchtime?”

“I hadn’t decided. It’s only 10.” Mike from the cafe appeared at her desk, delivering her Latte.

Georges looked confused and cheerfully asked, “Why do you get your coffee delivered? The rest of us have to go and collect ours. What makes you so special?”

“I think it’s because I am the oldest in the cafe, and it is a form of respect for the ag-ed”, she laughed, feeling strangely embarrassed by her age.

She had expected him to become distant, just as he had done the last time the question of her age had come up.

“Honestly, I thought you were joking when you said 70?”

“What do you mean, “joking I was 70”? Who on earth do you know that would joke about being 70?”

“I thought you were no older than 60.”

“Gosh, even 60 sounds old!” she laughed. “So I’m assuming my age is a problem. You were so friendly one minute and so cold the next. Have you never had a friend in their senior years?”

“I thought you were being sarcastically unpleasant…..I didn’t realise you were being honest. You didn’t seem to be that…..old, frankly. I thought that saying you were 70 was your way of saying, “Push off!”. I am not good with relationships with women, so I kept away from you. I felt embarrassed that I had been so interested in you.”

“Ah, as I thought, you found it inconvenient that I am 70!”

He laughed loudly: “I just felt silly and thought you were making fun of me, so I distanced myself from you as quickly as possible.”

******************

For the next few years, the two remained inseparable. Georges found she completed him in so many ways. Through conversations, they revealed their pasts, vulnerabilities, and hidden parts of themselves that they usually keep carefully guarded. They started as friendly adversaries and had many disagreements. Georges was impressed that she was very open about her thoughts and opinions, although many were vastly different from his.  She encouraged him to express his views and seemed to take a genuine interest in his thoughts and beliefs. Georges had never experienced any friendship where he was motivated to be refreshingly honest. Even with his male friends, specific topics were never discussed for fear of significant fallouts.  Over the years, the two developed a genuine, long-lasting friendship.

She encouraged him to find a woman his age and form a love relationship. In the past, Georges had always suffered in his relationships. He tended to choose the wrong girls, and after a few dates, the relationship would fall apart, frequently leaving Georges in pieces. With the older woman, he began to grow in confidence and behaviour. He started to realise the kind of woman he was looking for: someone who wanted to listen to his ideas, difficulties, and dreams for the future. Equally, he knew he wanted to form a true bond with someone he had a genuine interest in, someone who could share his humour, sympathies, and emotions. Before Sam, all his relationships had been superficial, and due to George’s shyness, this had suited him. Having met Sam, he now wanted something much more profound and meaningful.

As Georges took up his travels again, he would enthusiastically write to her about his new friendships despite missing their face-to-face intimacy and rapport. Sam would often fly out to one of his new locations, and they would spend time catching up. 

“Quite honestly, I’ve missed you”, she said on one of their catch-up travels.  

“Quite honestly, I’ve missed you too. I have been so looking forward to you joining me here. I am always so grateful that neither of us let prejudices ruin a perfect relationship.”

She looked into those beautiful eyes and took a deep breath. “Well, if you’d asked me how I expected to spend my 70s, this is far beyond anything I could make up. Thanks, Georges, for being my special person.”

They flung their arms around each other, thrilled to have identified each other’s qualities despite neither appearing to be a promising partner at the first meeting.

Sam was thrilled to have found Georges with his charm and wit and thoroughly enjoyed their time together. She had often felt young men were slightly annoying, lacking in maturity, and not given to being responsible and reliable, so she had kept her previous conversations light and brief. Georges was the opposite; he became a companion she trusted and enjoyed hanging around with. With Georges, time comfortably sped by as they shared their humorous observations and work issues.

“I can’t believe that we ever became friends”, she said. “I had always found it difficult to tell younger people my age - so when we first met, I was so thrilled with myself that I immediately told you how old I was. There you were, being super friendly and charming until I said “70,” - and you immediately stopped talking.  I felt such a fool because I knew my age had caused the problem. In the past, I had often let my age stand in the way of possible companionships.  

Georges sat nodding. “Age is a funny thing. Until I met you, I never realised that age is just a number. I would say dumb things like: “A woman must have dark hair, must be slim, must laugh a lot, and ideally should be mid-20s”. It had never occurred to me that a woman could be my best friend, mentor, and confidante, and the relationship controls I had set were robbing me of my chance of finding a soulmate. You taught me there’s more to a relationship than I ever considered and showed that love doesn’t always follow a logical path and that the right person can be the one you least expect.

“Careful, Georges, you’re beginning to sound like a 70-year-old!!!”