More Than A Feeling

By Lydia Patacca

They knew right away their connection was special. But sometimes the right love comes along at the wrong time. Thirty years later, they meet again - but did their bond survive the weathering storms of adulthood?

     Lydia and Luke were different in many ways, but alike in so many more. From the moment they met at seventeen, it felt as if they had been destined for each other - but the pressures of figuring out their places in the world took their toll, sending them in separate directions.

     Neither were ever the same.

     Now at the end of her twenty year marriage, Lydia has vowed to remain single for the rest of her life. Six years into his divorce, Luke has given up on the dismal middle age dating scene and has resigned himself to a life of solitude. Running into each other again threw an unexpected detour into those plans. Certainly they were vastly different people now - but some things never change.

     More Than a Feeling is the true story of Lydia and Luke's bittersweet journey from finding each other, to learning to survive without each other, and the magic of daring to believe in second chances - but also a raw and honest look at surviving life's challenges, finding strength and courage when you have none, and overcoming one's darkest hours on sheer faith in better days.

     Believe in miracles. You are not alone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lydia Patacca
• Release date: Mar 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201504953

Lydia Patacca

Lydia Patacca has spent the first half of her life working in graphic design and construction accounting, but has been writing stories, both fiction and life-based, since she was in middle school. She has one grown son and lives each day in gratitude with her husband/high school sweetheart, Luke, and their crazy pack of beagles. Luke Patacca, contributing author, is a jack of all trades and a master of several. He spent the majority of his career working with the developmentally disabled and now runs his own business with his wife/high school sweetheart, Lydia.

Book preview

Prologue

2017

Lydia

I stared at the photo comment I had typed for several minutes, alternating between hovering my index finger over the send button and pulling it back, as if it were a hot stove burner.

The boy cocked his head and grinned at me through my screen, young and ornery, gangly legs hanging over the front quarter panel of Roger’s old LeMans. A car I know he helped Roger restore. Roger posed with the car as well, and I had Throwback Thursday to thank for this ghost appearing on my timeline.

Damn you, Throwback Thursday.

The dreamy visions of senior year romances were planted deep in the psyche of young girls in the seventies and eighties. Through middle school novels, movies and television, fashion dolls and board games, the fantasy of all adolescent girls was the great love affair with (and subsequent wedding to) the Man of Our Dreams - who would somehow by fate’s divine intervention appear in the latter phase of our school careers.

Despite all my awkwardness, this magical fairy tale actually found its way to me my senior year. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work out the way they led us to believe. My high school romance crashed and burned - but not before changing me in ways I could never reverse. Never deny away. Never shake.

The boy who changed me in such a way continued to grin at me through my screen.

It had been thirty years since we split up. Yet seeing him once again unleashed waves of flutters in my core. Some things never change.

Other things do. 

I had spent much of my adult life working through the aftermath of our love affair. Innumerable hours in prayer and journaling and therapy sessions, both with professional counselors and professional bartenders, convincing myself that our relationship was not The One. That at seventeen, I was too young to have met the love of my life. That I had obviously just idealized this relationship with a boy who, after all, had ultimately run from it. 

In time I loved again, and for short spells was happy. Things were always a little off, but I chalked it up to life not being perfect. Usually I did okay. But not always.

I had heard his life had taken some unexpected turns. I hesitated, wondering if such a thing was wise, striking up some friendly banter with a man who set the bar no one else could ever reach - at a time when I myself was worn down and so very forlorn. But we were much older now, in our late forties ... Significantly more jaded ... And aside from the crazy-powerful love we shared back then, he really was my best friend too. Even for a handful of years after, we seemed to run into each other at times when we needed a friend the most. 

It had been decades since we last spoke. I had thought of him often, and always hoped he was okay. What I wasn’t sure of was if I would be okay if I checked in.

My comment awaited my decision in triple-dog-dare fashion.

I took a long, unsteady, steadying breath ...

And hit the post button.

PART ONE

Chapter One

1986

Lydia

It was already mid-autumn, and I wasn’t sure what I expected the dating aspects of my senior year to be like, but it wasn’t this. The summer had been a blur of sporadic dates that never became anything, followed by a brief relationship with the varsity basketball captain from a neighboring school. He was a junior, and I really didn’t expect it to last in the first place - but hearing I think we should see other people is never any fun. He was the only jock I had ever dated, and I figured he’d be the last. We had some laughs, but he was not really my type. 

Following Captain Hoops was an even shorter run with a shaggy-headed troubled youth from my work. I sensed the good in him despite some poor decisions he had made in his life, but I wasn’t fast enough for him and I was unceremoniously dropped for another coworker who was more of a sure thing. Again, no big deal. He was a cute distraction - but long-term, not really my type. 

The problem was, though, I didn’t really seem to have a type. As with the rest of my life, I never quite fit in anywhere. I had adopted a rough-edged, wild-haired persona of the 80s era rocker chick - part Lita Ford, part Joan Jett, part Pat Benatar, and all attitude - but it was largely an act. 

I had a difficult and painful adolescence. During middle school I was gangly, awkward, wore glasses and had genetically bad skin. I grew into my full adult height of 5’7" by sixth grade and it took awhile for me to adjust to it, giving me an air of scarecrow-like gracelessness that is so undesirable in girls. My poker-straight hair refused to obey any popular fluffed up hairstyle of the day, and despite undying hope and great devotion with a curling iron and hairspray each morning, the results were little more than a resemblance to a sickled wheat field by the time I got to school. Attempts at fitting in with humor only came across as dorkiness, and I was ostracized from the popular groups as well as the unpopular groups, in fear of making them even less popular. Middle school was straight-up misery for me.

By freshman year, I had developed a rather large chip on my shoulder. I reinvented myself for presentation to the new social circles of high school with the fallen angel persona - my way of hiding my tender adolescent feelings beneath a tough exterior of painted on jeans, heavy metal tees, and way too much makeup. I had mercifully grown out of my ugly duckling phase and looked like I knew my way around the block pretty well, but I was a walking contradiction. I had been raised in a conservative home, attending Sunday school every week, and my Southern Baptist roots were set deep in the core of who I was. I had plenty of dates but nothing lasted long - the nice guys not knowing how to take me, and the wild boys usually booting me to the curb when they realized I didn’t put out. 

I had managed to become semi-popular in my own little microcircle. Girls usually hated me, probably because I had no willingness to be manipulated by anyone - but I did fall in with a small group of similar cool chicks who preferred concert shirts to designer clothes and tousled shaggy layers to perfect poodle-poofy hair. Boys loved hanging out with me though, stating that I was real and easy to relate to. Frankly, I preferred male friends. So much less drama. Although they all flirted with me, I took it as kidding around. I never considered myself to be particularly attractive, so I wrote it off as being more like a guy than a girl - loving sports, cars, action flicks, and knowing an exceptional amount about guitarists, songwriters, and the history of rock and roll. I was accepted and treated as one of the guys, and I liked it that way. 

But as far as my love life went? One flaming bag of dog crap after another.

Luke

It was already mid-autumn and I had no real plans for my life after graduation, but I was completely done with senior year already. Sick of classes, sick of the people, sick of spinning my wheels. You have no idea.  

Life had gotten way better in a lot of ways over the summer, though in plenty of others it was just as lousy as ever. After spending the majority of my life as a fat kid, the butt of the joke, I finally had my fill of it. I had spent the previous summer starving myself and spending hours upon hours in the weight room, bludgeoning my body into shape - launching senior year lean, cut, and barely recognized by anybody at school. Once word got out, guys who had messed with me were acting like we were friends and girls who wouldn’t even talk to me before were flirting with me and giving me their number. 

Some of the girls I would flirt back with a little, but mainly just to set them up for a blowoff. Nah. Where were they last year? The year before that? I knew exactly where; nowhere near me. I have a long memory that a fake smile will not erase.

Girls in general had been a disaster. Oh, I was interested in getting with girls. Big time. I’d had a few crushes here and there over the years, but nothing significant. I had gotten close with a friend my junior year, sharing a lot of heart to heart talks about some difficult things going on in her life. In the process of wanting to help her, I became quite enamored with her. She picked up on this and capitalized on it to make herself feel better. One day, to my delight, our hangout session led to kissing, which led to a few more make-out sessions and some mutual groping. But it didn’t go much further than that and it ended abruptly with a You’re such a good friend, but I don’t really like you in that way talk. Great, thanks. 

I got over it, but she messed me up pretty bad for a little while. I had recently run into her in my new and greatly improved state, shoulders way broader than my waist, chunky kid long gone - and the look on her face told me she was rethinking sticking me in the friend zone. It was quite enjoyable walking away from her, knowing she regretted it.

Earlier in the fall, a girl at my career center I had been cat and mousing with since the year before decided to make a move on me when she found out I had morphed from chubby to cut. We hung out a few times, had a few dates, and one night ended up at her house. We were making out pretty heavy when her dad came home and pulled a gun on me. Yeah, that was the end of that. She gave me a Dear John note the next school day, saying she couldn’t see me anymore because she was getting back together with her fiance’, some 24-year-old that her dad - her DAD! - had set her up with. She watched me from across the commons as I read it. I don’t know if she was expecting me to be upset or run over to beg for her to reconsider or what, but I gave her a look like she was nuts as I wadded the note up to emphasize I was way ahead of her. Already gone, darlin’. Already gone.

Women are crazy, and I had enough crazy in my life in every other category - I sure didn’t need more of it. So I was basically now trudging through senior year focusing on wrestling, keeping my head above water in my studies, catching a buzz when I could, and trying not to kill anybody. 

One day I came into history class and sat down next to Tori, who was babbling with her friends as usual. Tori and I had known each other since kindergarten, and you could say we were each other’s first crushes. I gave her an engagement ring out of a gumball machine when we were about 6 and she claimed she still had it, though I had never really seen it since that day. In any case, we had grown up together and while we had become more like brother and sister, I still didn’t exclude her when I would schmooze the other girls she hung out with, and she took it good-naturedly. 

As we all talked and shifted around, Tori knocked her purse off her desk, scattering some of the contents across the floor. I leaned over to help her collect everything and glanced at a picture I had picked up.

I almost fell out of my chair.

I held in my hand a portrait of the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Her hair, feathered back in smooth shiny moguls, jumped off of the dark background like an aura. Her movie star smile, natural and relaxed, flashed straight perfect teeth. She had the face of an angel. But her eyes. It was her eyes that reached right into me and pulled a part of my soul out. Bright jade and blessed with an extra scoop or two of highlights. How many lights did that portrait studio have on her?

WHO! Is THIS! I demanded as I flipped the photo around to show Tori.

She glanced up. Oh, that’s my friend Lydia from my career center class.

Holy crap, I responded. She’s... holy crap.

Yeah, Tori giggled. She gets that a lot. I think half the guys at the career center are in love with her.

Ugh.

Is she single? I asked. I couldn’t help it.

Tori crinkled her eyebrows in thought. I’m not sure. I think so, but... The light bulb went on and her eyes widened, her face busting into a huge smile. You want me to find out?

Is she psycho? I further questioned. 

Tori’s eyes widened in sincerity. No, she’s really sweet. Super nice.

Then yes. Find out.

I studied the photo some more before giving it back. She was something. Something different. I swear I could FEEL that something was different about her right from the picture. I didn’t know what it was, but it was something. I wanted to meet her. Like, now.

Lydia

I had found my core niche with other misfits - most notably with my art class at our career center. The lot of us, a complete random batch of weirdos, fit together perfectly in our oddness. We had a natural ability to volley dialogue like a comedy troupe and had melded in a way that other classes both envied and marveled. We were family. One that ran deep and fierce, mercilessly giving each other crap yet defending each other to the death if anyone else did.

Tori was one such polar opposite friend I had in the class. In contrast to my rough and tumble, smoky eyed street vibe, she was a pastel fashionista with large sparkling eyes and a halo of fluffy champagne hair. She was always radiant, and often wore an expression that looked as though she was privy to some amusing inside information. This particular day was no different, but her aura of impishness held a little something extra as she skated over to my drawing table in her shiny flats.

Soooo, she casually cooed, My friend Luke saw your picture yesterday and he told me he thinks you’re a babe.

My ears pricked up. I looked up from my project.

Really? I responded, sounding a little more excited and a little less blasé than I intended.

Yyyyep, she confirmed, looking like she swallowed the proverbial canary. He’s a really nice guy, too. I’ve known him for like, ever.

I returned my attention to my work, reclaiming my cool. Do you have a picture of him?

Yyyyep.

I kept my eyes down on my project but held out my hand palm-up, flicking my fingers at her like I was some kind of mob boss. Lemme see.

She skittered back to her drawing table, pulled her wallet from her purse and fished out a photo. As she headed back, light on her feet, a flurry of grounding thoughts flitted through my head. I figured he was cute or Tori wouldn’t be so eager to bring it up. Life was all about cute guys, after all. But Tori went to a private catholic school - one with a well-off, snooty reputation. Clean-cut, laser-focused leaders of tomorrow. My senior photo was deceptively flattering, mainly due to my mother pleading with me to do my hair and makeup on the modest side, and to wear something not so wild looking. I was already sure a Richie-Rich, Saint Francis Xavier guy wasn’t going to stick around long after realizing what he was getting into. But that was nothing new... If he got past the initial culture shock, maybe we could at least have some fun hanging out while he annoyed his parents with me before he turned tail and ran.

She crashed into my table like a fledgling bird, a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. Everyone in class loved a good instigation amongst each other, and Tori was no exception.

Here, she said, jabbing the small photo in front of my face in her polished fingers.

I found myself looking into the face of a shockingly handsome Italian boy - broad shouldered and bedroom-eyed, with a dusting of a mustache and student handbook regulation hair that flirted dangerously at the edge of his collar. A strong, slightly crooked nose complimented sculpted cheekbones, tapering into an appetizing jawline. Gazing just off camera with the slightest hint of a curve at the corners of his mouth, he emanated an intoxicating blend of boyishness and masculinity. 

His eyes are what got me, though. They held something. Something I immediately recognized but couldn’t place.

I felt my stomach drop into my suede boots as a flurry of butterflies exploded in my core.

Oh my gawd, I mumbled without realizing it.

Tori tittered, rather pleased with herself. 

He’s a wrestler, she added, then emphasized, He thought you were really hot.

The detail of another potential jock only registered for a microsecond before rolling right off. My cautious approach from moments before went out the window. I looked up and locked eyes with her. 

Give him my number.

College was a non-negotiable fate in my family. So was the fact that I would help pay for it, so as soon as I turned sixteen I found a job. In those days, the standard teenager’s jobs were at restaurants, the mall, the grocery store or the movie theater. I started my illustrious professional career at Wendy’s Old Fashioned Hamburgers. It was every bit as glamorous as it sounds, but I ended up working with a great group of people and we had a lot of fun. We knew we had to start somewhere closer to the bottom than the top, and the way to keep moving to the next phase was to work hard. Thus, I spent several nights a week taking drive-thru orders, making burgers to specifications (mayonnaise ketchup pickle onion tomato lettuce mustard, respectively), hand breading chicken breasts and wiping counters with some of the best kids I ever met.

I couldn’t wait to get to work that particular afternoon. It wasn’t the draw of working with hamburgers and french fry grease, but the need to talk to Trish.

Trish was my best friend. She was everything I wasn’t - dark haired, dark eyed and indisputably adorable, with curves beyond her years that I’d have hated her for if I didn’t love her so much. She was also a private catholic school girl, so I was keen for her input on this recent development. We were known as Double Trouble at work, and while our school schedules kept us on the same shifts, our managers would infallibly station us at opposite ends of the store in an attempt to alleviate our on-the-clock hijinks.

What’s up, darling? she greeted me at the time clock as she tied her apron carefully around her hourglass waist.

Oh my gawd, I bated.

Her attention piqued, her eyes piercing me. What, she demanded more than asked.

My friend Tori told me about her friend who saw my picture and thought I was hot and she showed me his picture and girl he is so cute so I told her to give him my number, I blurted out in one breath. In the next I added the important bullet points: Italian, rival catholic school, wrestler, cute. Okay, I mentioned the cuteness factor to her more than once. That’s how it goes when you don’t know much else about a guy.

Trish’s face bloomed with excitement, dimples plunging deep into her cheeks. Yay! So did he call you?

I carefully arranged my ridiculous striped pageboy hat so as not to ruin my feathers. Not yet, I responded. She gave me a sympathetic look. But this only happened today. Tori probably won’t even see him ‘til tomorrow morning... so maybe tomorrow night... but I don’t know. I felt my face fall as the poison of insecurity seeped in.

Lydia, drive-thru. Trish, front register. Our manager curtly reminded us we were on the clock. We rolled our eyes at each other and drifted toward our stations.

We’ll talk more later, darling... And hey, Trish concluded, Trust me. He’ll call.

Chapter Two

Luke

I booked to history class the next day like they were giving away a free car. I couldn’t wait to talk to Tori. Wrestling practice ran late the night before, and she had gone out to do some social event thing by the time I got home and I was about to die from curiosity.

She saw me enter the classroom and began smirking. Her poker face was awful.

Well? I asked, my chair yelping out a painful scooch as I slammed into my seat.

She broke into a cheshire grin and held out a note, folded into a neat little origami rectangle like girls always liked to do. My name was written on it in strong, sharp print.

She’s single, Tori reported. And she’s interested.

I felt my heart jump as I grabbed the note, making a dramatic grin as I unfolded it. Tori laughed.

I don’t remember anything about what the note said. But I had her number; that was the important part. I went through the rest of the day with my head just buzzing. I couldn’t wait to get to wrestling practice and blow off some nervous energy. I had the best practice of my life that afternoon and while we all usually hung around and shot the breeze for a while afterwards, this night I was out the door. 

I was feeling super confident about calling this girl... until I got home.  

While I had planned to call Lydia as soon as I got the chance, I suddenly forgot everything I had rehearsed in my head all day long. Talking to her for the first time on the phone was going to be different than talking in person. All the flirting techniques I had practiced for countless hours in the bathroom mirror wouldn’t count for beans now. No facial cues, no body language. This first impression was going to be everything in a big way. What was I going to say? I paced the kitchen floor as I tried to reconstruct my plan and had almost summoned up the proper courage when my sister Olympia walked up and grabbed the phone. Hovering at her side, I glared at her and made wrap-it-up gestures until she hung up with a snarl and cussed at me under her breath. I started pacing again. This went on long enough that I was getting on my mom’s nerves and she told me to settle down right before she switched over to Italian. I never learned Italian but got the gist from her tone: Make the call or get the hell out of her kitchen.

I took a deep breath, picked up the phone, and punched in the number. As the line rang twice, I cleared my throat and hummed briefly, warming up my vocal chords to make sure my voice wasn’t going to crack or sound stupid.

Lydia

Each time the phone rang that next day, which was a lot, my heart jumped up into my throat. Mom was our church’s secretary and active on the Sunday school council, so she got lots of calls from church people, and my friends buzzed me quite a bit - but eventually the call I was hoping for came. I sat on the couch with my legs folded up underneath me, trying to control my breathing and keep my voice sounding effortlessly sultry. Getting goofy over boys was not really my M.O., so the jangly nerves felt a little strange - but I would have to figure out why that was later and simply deal with it now. 

Luke

Hello, a sophisticated sounding woman answered. Must be her mom.

Hi, may I speak to Lydia please? I managed to sound at ease, thank God.

This is her ...

Her voice, unlike the shrill bird calls of most of the girls I knew, was low,