How Can You Mend A Broken Heart?

By T. J. Robertson

One summer day Jack Dalton, a college senior, who has taken a job as a lifeguard on Cape Cod, sees a young woman on the beach. In a case of love at first sight, he intuitively feels that she is the one for him. Before he can get up the courage to introduce himself, however, she picks up and leaves. Never again does he see her from his perch on the lifeguard chair. So, afterwards, he spends his free time looking for her. All in vain. Then, one evening while ordering an ice cream from a popular outdoor spot, serendipitously he sees her again.
On their first date, a concert at the gazebo in Dennis, they chat late into the night enjoying each other's company and pleased at how much they have in common. Convinced that being together is their kismet, they become a steady twosome. Then, in the waning days of their blissful summer together, tragedy strikes. A drunken motorist, driving on the wrong side of the road, hits her car head-on and, poof, just like that, she is gone forever.
Unable to deal with the loss of his soul mate, he throws himself with abandon into his senior year at college and, upon graduation, takes a job as a police officer in Boston. There, too, he works feverishly and tirelessly to avoid thinking about her. As a result of his work ethic, he rises through the ranks and achieves his goal of becoming a detective in record time.
When Joey "the Nut" Nimby, a former enforcer for the deceased crime boss, Rocco "Bananas" Bonano, murders an armored car driver in a botched holdup attempt, Jack and Hank Duffy, his partner, stake out the apartment of Maria Bonano, the crime boss's daughter and Joey's girlfriend. The wanted man, however, never appears.
When Maria's car plunges over an embankment into a river, not only does Jack wade in and carry her to safety but, using CPR, gets her breathing again. At the hospital she welcomes him with a tirade of abuse and an exchange of angry words follows. He accuses her of being a lush and cavorting with scumbags. As he is leaving, hell-bent on getting in the last word, he shouts, "You've got a problem and you know it. Now do something about it."
When, by accident, they meet at a pizzeria in Boston's North End, she apologizes for the way she behaved at the hospital and asks him to forgive her. Thanks to him, she insists she has turned her life around. She has stopped drinking, is seeing a counselor, and has a job as a cook at a shelter for the homeless. As they are talking, Jack's feelings toward her are changing for the better.
Suddenly Joey "the Nut" Nimby looms above them. When she rebuffs his advances and tells him to get lost, he becomes enraged and orders them to get up and leave ahead of him. For, he wants to go to her apartment and get his hands on some of the money her father left her.
On a patch of ice along the way, Jack elbows him in the stomach, knocking him down. Kicking his gun away and jumping on him, he begins wrestling with him. When Joey gets on top of him and starts pummeling away, Maria jumps on his back and, putting her scarf around his neck, twists it so tightly he topples off Jack.
When, after the melee, she learns Jack Dalton's true identity and that their meeting, from the beginning, was contrived, she hurries away from him more in sorrow than anger.
Pursuing her, he tells her that at the time he was only doing his job.
"But I believed in you," she replies in tears.
He reminds her that if, as she is fond of saying, he saved her life before, she has just saved his; so, therefore, they are now equal. "I believe in you," he says, "and am asking you to give me a chance to restore your belief in me. Then, let's see where we go from there."
Believing that being together is their kismet, she relents and agrees.

• Language: English
• Publisher: T. J. Robertson
• Release date: Jun 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370812011

T. J. Robertson

Although I’ve made my living as a teacher and guidance counselor, I’ve always had a passion for writing. Thomas Bouregy and Company published my novel, Return to Paradise Cove, under their Avalon imprint. Two of my one-act plays, A Different Kind of Death, and The Flirt, have been produced, respectively, in New Haven, Connecticut, and Sacramento, California. Short stories of mine have appeared in commercial magazines such as Action and True Romance as well as in certain literary and professional ones.

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