Tarnished Knight by Dante Harker

Chapter One

‘That must be very difficult for you?’

Jake looked across at his counsellor. Her blatant understatement did not sit well with him and her thick Welsh accent made the statement seem, at least to him, almost mocking. Her melodic tone caused her words to dance, which Jake felt made them somehow lose any sense of sincerity.

‘Well, yeah, it’s certainly difficult. When I think about it, I’m in a strange place, I guess. I’m thirty, gay, and single for the first time in eleven years.  I’ve spent my entire adult life in two relationships, with no gap between them. In fact, the one just ending overlapped the first by some time. Not something I’m proud of, it just happened.

‘So now I am here, living in a different country and for the first time in my life, I feel truly alone.’

Jake gritted his teeth and looked at the floor; he was doing his best not to cry. He had done far too much crying lately and he wanted this session to be about moving forward, not grieving for the past.

Jake thought about the idea of being in a different country. In fact, in the past he had never viewed Wales as a different country, at least not when he was back in England looking in. Wales had always struck him as part of the UK. Now, after two months of living here, and a week of being single, he felt a long way from home.

Jake’s thoughts paused.

The idea of being alone, all alone, in this strange place where he could barely understand a word anyone was saying. And worse still, they couldn’t understand him – Yorkshire being an equally difficult accent as any of the Welsh ones he had come across. The loneliness left him feeling empty, this in turn made him give in and cry.

Ariana, his counsellor, gave him a caring, yet practised, look.

The counselling room was warm and relaxing, the late summer sun bounced off the cream walls and filled the space with its presence. Ariana had dressed accordingly. The yellow and orange flowers that adorned her matching blouse and skirt gave Ariana a quiet, yet professional look – unimposing and unobtrusive.

Tears rolled down Jake’s face, his emotions free-flowing in the relaxed setting. Ariana leant forward and pushed a box of tissues across the small coffee table that divided their chairs. Odd, Jake thought, if he had been sitting in front of a power-suited psychologist, he couldn’t imagine sharing his innermost secrets, for fear of what they would do with them. Yet Ariana’s bright, caring smile and flowery composure had set him at ease, even with an accent he struggled to comprehend and found slightly insincere.

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