The Look of Love

DAVID GEORGE
RICHARDS is married and lives in Manchester, England. He has been
writing for several years on a regular basis. He writes science
fiction, thrillers and romance stories with particular emphasis on
leading female characters. Visit his website at
www.booksandstories.com.

Romance

An Affair of
the Heart

The Look of
Love

The Dreamer

A Fine
Woman

Mind Games

The Friendly
Ambassador Series

The Beginning
of the End

A Gathering of
Angels

Changes

Walking with
the Enemy

The Twelve
Ships

In the Shadow
of Mountains

The Lost
Girls

The Return of
the Sixpack

The Tale of the
Comet

The Dragon
King

The Althon
Gerail

The Sullenfeld
Oracle

Copyright 2012
David George Richards

Smashwords
Edition

Licence
Notes

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reserved.

You can’t win
unless you play the game. The problem is knowing what the game is
and who else is playing.

Manchester
Metropolitan University was a new start for Louise, a new
beginning. She had even moved out of her parent’s house. They
didn’t put up much resistance. Her mother and father both loved her
very much, even though they knew about her sexuality. Louise was
sure that they didn’t really understand how she felt, but they did
their best, and they had accepted it. In a way she thought that her
father was relieved. He often joked that at least he didn’t have to
worry about her being made pregnant by some hairy git of a boy.

Her parents had
helped her set up home in a flat in Sale in south Manchester. It
was quite big, really. Three self contained rooms on the top floor.
At the top of the stairs the front door opened directly onto her
lounge, inside there was only a small alcove to hang up her hats
and coats. The lounge itself was quite large. She had carefully
arranged a sofa and chairs around the fireplace, their focus being
the fire and the television. There was a dining table and four
chairs, and various cupboards and shelf units. On one side of the
lounge were two windows overlooking the road outside, and at the
back was a kitchen area with a cooker, fridge and a washer. On the
other side of the lounge were the doors to two bedrooms and a
bathroom. Both bedrooms were nice and roomy, and the bathroom had
enough space for a bath and shower.

She and her
mother had spent ages rearranging and buying more furniture, and
her father had done most of the decorating and painting. Now
everything was just how Louise wanted it. It was home, and it was
all hers. At first she was really happy, but then she began to feel
lonely. It was that same familiar feeling. Her environment had
changed, but her dreams and her yearning hadn’t.

It was
Wednesday, and she was on her way to the University. She had got
off the tram in St Peter’s Square and was now walking down Oxford
Street. Like usual her mind drifted to thoughts of companionship
and her continued lack of success.

Louise was sure
that she was pretty, a bit plain maybe, but still pretty. She
certainly wasn’t ugly. She paused to glance at her reflection in
the glass window of the Box Office of the Palace Theatre. Louise
was nineteen, five-foot-three, with shoulder length light brown
hair and brown eyes. She had a slim, but shapely figure that was
clearly visible in the jeans and tee-shirt she wore. So why
couldn’t she find anyone to love? Why couldn’t she find someone to
love her? What she wanted wasn’t so unusual was it? Other people
found partners. There were lots of beautiful women and handsome men
all around, and they all seemed to manage all right, they all found
one another.

And it wasn’t
as if she hadn’t had any admirers, so she couldn’t be that bad. But
they were always admirers that she didn’t want and had turned away.
And whenever that happened she would often wonder if she was being
too fussy. But why should she accept the advances of someone she
didn’t like just because they made them? She had to be happy, too,
didn’t she? It was only fair, wasn’t it? So why couldn’t she find
somebody that she did like? Someone who she could love as well as
being loved by? But Louise already knew the answer to that
question.

Louise’s
problem was twofold: Firstly, she had a particular kind of
companion in mind, and secondly, she was rather timid. If a
situation did occur, she would hesitate, and it would be gone. And
then she would play it over in her mind for days and days
afterwards.

Life wasn’t
fair.

By the time
Louise reached the University, she was feeling really depressed. It
was still the first year, and she had already made plenty of
friends among the other students on her course. She had also
quickly found out that none of them even remotely felt the same way
she did. And so far, she hadn’t found anyone she fancied
either.

Louise
retrieved her bag from her locker and went to her next class.

She was the
first to reach the classroom this afternoon, and had already
arranged her books, notes and pens on the desk neatly in front of
her by the time the rest of the class started to come in. She
looked around at her class mates. They were a mixed bunch on the
Degree course on Computer Graphics. There was Benjamin and Joshua
who were both from Ghana, Jo and Chrissy who were both mad on boys
and going to night clubs, and who both came from the same school,
Mark, James, Nikki, Susan, and Jonathan who Louise didn’t know very
well, but were all very nice and polite, Jason, Anthony and Gavin,
who was the joker in the class, always quick to make comments and
cause general uproar, Paul, Sarah, Dawn, Rebecca and Angela.

Her closest
friend was Angela. There wasn’t anything going on between them,
they were just friends. Angela had also been at school with Jo and
Chrissy, and the three of them often went out clubbing together.
Angela would try and persuade Louise to go with them, but so far
Louise had declined.

Louise waved at
Angela as she came in, and Angela hurried to sit next to her.
Angela was the same age and height as Louise, she also had the same
brown eyes, but her brown hair was shorter and curly. She dumped
her rucksack down on the desk and began pulling all her books out.
As she spread them over the desk, she knocked Louise’s carefully
arranged books all out of place.

“You’ll never
guess!” she said hurriedly and excitedly.

“Guess what?”
Louise replied without thinking as she tried to return her books
into some semblance of order.

“Tori Canyon’s
turned up!”

Louise was
confused rather than enlightened by the name. “Tori who?”

“Tori
Canyon!”

Louise turned
to stare at Angela with raised eyebrows. “What are you babbling on
about? Have you, Jo and Chrissy been smoking funny cigarettes in
the lunch hour again?”

“No, we
haven’t!” Angela looked slightly hurt. Then she smiled and nudged
Louise. “Well, not this lunch time, anyway!”

As Angela
laughed, Louise demanded, “Well who, or what, is Tori Canyon?”

Angela turned
and pointed. “Her!”

Louise looked
round to see another girl she hadn’t seen before coming into the
classroom. She was fairly tall, with tangled long blonde hair. She
wore a pair of torn jeans with several holes in them, and a greyish
looking sweat shirt that hung down over one shoulder. Her face was
quite striking. She had a narrow jaw line with high cheekbones, and
her nose and green eyes were perfect. She was definitely beautiful,
but her expression and general demeanour was sullen. She walked
into the classroom as if it was an execution cell. She kept her
hands in her pockets as she dumped herself down at the back of the
class and sat back, gazing around. Almost immediately, her feet
began moving back and forth nervously under the desk.

As Louise
stared at her in fascination, the girl saw her looking at her and
immediately tilted her head to one side, crossed her eyes and made
a face. Louise looked away in embarrassment.

Angela giggled.
“She’s a laugh, isn’t she?” she whispered to Louise. “She went to
the same school as me, Jo and Chrissy, but I haven’t seen her since
we left. If you think Jo and Chrissy are nutters, wait ‘til you
meet her!”

Louise peeped
around again as the lecturer came in and the class started. She saw
the look of recognition on the girl’s face when Jo and Chrissy also
looked round at her and waved. The sullen expression briefly left
her face, allowing her beauty to show through as she sat forward
over the desk and mouthed, “See you after,” at her two old
friends.

Gavin also saw
the mouthed words and stuck his hand up. “Me too!” he said
eagerly.

The girl merely
held up her middle finger and scowled at him.

Gavin pouted,
and turned away pretending to cry.

The lecturer
looked up at them both and said, “Quiet! We’ve got a lot of work to
get through this afternoon, so let’s get on with it. You…” he
paused briefly to glance down at his class list, “…Victoria Kenyon,
now that you’ve finally decided to turn up, you better get yourself
sorted out. If you can’t catch up on the work you’ve missed, you’ll
be referred. Got it?”

Victoria looked
even more sullen. “Yes,” she said, and after a long pause,
“Sir.”

“Then you had
better find something to make notes with, hadn’t you?”

The lecturer
turned away and put his first transparency on the overhead
projector. He had just started to talk when, before Louise knew
what was happening, Angela reached over and grabbed a pen from her
neat pile, tore some sheets of A4 paper from her pad, and quickly
turned and reached out with them to Victoria.

As soon as
Victoria saw Angela, her eyebrows went up and she whispered, “You,
too? What is this, a bloody class reunion?”

“Sort of! Here,
take these and get your head down!”

“Thanks,
Angela. I’ll pay you back later.”

Angela shook
her head and pointed at Louise. “Not me, her,” she said.

Louise looked
round, expecting to receive some abusive comment after her earlier
stares, but was surprised when Victoria almost smiled and said,
“Thanks.” All Louise could do was smile back.

The lecture
went on almost as usual after that. Gavin kept everyone awake by
passing some silly comments like he always did, some of which were
aimed at Victoria. She looked bored throughout, and her only retort
was to stick her tongue out at him.

Louise did her
best to concentrate, watching the lecturer and taking notes without
really listening. She was getting that familiar feeling again, that
feeling of urgency and the need to do something, say something,
anything, so long as the moment didn’t pass with some effort on her
part. But the moment wasn’t now, and her fear was that, like usual,
she would miss it when it came.