Dinner and a bench!

As arranged, Ridge arrived outside the orphanage around seven pm. A little later, Taylor came out of the building. Since they had no lunch, both were starving. For this reason, they stopped at the first restaurant that came across their path. After they both placed their orders, Ridge could no longer contain his curiosity.

"Nie tell me, what do you do at the orphanage when you weren't there as a professional?"

"I volunteer there,once or twice a week."

"Wow, that sounds great!"

"Yes, it's so much fun with the kids and these kids are so grateful for every bit of attention. All of them have lost both parents and have no other family to take care of them and even though most of them are only in elementary school, they have just a little chance of being adopted because they are already too old. Most of them stay in the care of welfare until they are of age."

"That sounds sad, and what exactly do you do with the kids?"

"Anything that's going on, helping with homework, organizing games, accompanying them on outings, helping to prepare the parties. In general, just helping out where it's needed. The educators really do everything they can, but they can't really do justice to every child."

"It's certainly not always easy, and without volunteers it would probably be even more difficult. How did you come up with the idea?"

"Through a colleague, she works as a child psychologist and has professional work there from time to time and at some point she mentioned to us how difficult it is for the orphanage to find volunteers. Well so I thought I would like to participate. You know when I came here, I always wanted to pack my days full of activities. I definitely wanted to avoid having time to-" Taylor broke off and looked at her plate in silence.

"You didn't want to have time to quiet down and think about everything that had happened?!" Taylor looked at Ridge in amazement. He still knew exactly what she was thinking. Silently, she just nodded.

"I can understand that, I feel the same way right now." Ridge would have liked to hear more about her volunteer work, but at that moment the waitress brought them their food. They both pounced on their noodles as if they hadn't eaten in days. It wasn't until the waitress cleared the plates again that Taylor continued their conversation.

"Now I was just talking about me the whole time. How are you doing? What gave you the idea to open a store here in San Francisco?"

"Dad was offered the store by a former business associate. He suggested I take over it because I told him I'd like to get away from LA for a while, and Europe was too far away for me, especially because of Thomas and Steffy.

"Did you want to leave because of Brooke? The kids told me it's ice time with you guys right now and you're going your separate ways again?!" Ridge noticed her mocking expression, groaning loudly. "Did I say something wrong?"

"No not exactly, I can just see you are thinking exactly what most are thinking or rather almost all are thinking. You are sure the thing between Brooke and me is just a phase that will eventually subside, eventually we'll get back together and remarry until it starts all over again."

"Sorry Ridge, but what other way should I see it? I mean, this whole thing has been going on for years. So far, none of your so-called breakups have lasted forever."

"This time, though, it's final. It's over. I have no interest in ever living with Brooke again. I have no feelings for her anymore and I'm definitely not in love with her any longer. I wanted to leave because it's just too hard to work with her every day right now because she still doesn't want to acknowledge the breakup. I just need distance from it all." Taylor was more than taken aback; she had never heard Ridge talk about Brooke with such determination. So far, they had mostly only broken up because some circumstances had come between them, but never because he had doubted his feelings for her. She guessed there must have been a lot more going on this time than the usual minor difficulties.

"Well anyway, San Francisco is a great city to just take a breath and relax," she changed the subject.

"Right now I don't have a lot of time to switch off and relax, my assistant and I have both hands full with the renovations. I want to give the store a whole new look, so right now it's more like one giant construction site. There's no telling when we'll even have the opening."

"That means you can't estimate how long you'll be in town yet?"

"Do you have plans to make a red cross on your calendar today for when you'll be rid of me?! I'm sorry, I can't give you that date yet." Taylor laughed at his joke.

"Well, that's not what I meant."

"Like I said, first we have to get all the renovations done, get the store set up, etc., and then if we ever open, I'll definitely be here for the first few months until the store is a successful run and stable enough that I can trust it with a store manager. So I guess you'll have to put up with me for a while."

"I could imagine worse!"

"Thank you! I'll take that as a compliment." They got ready to leave the restaurant. Ridge paid the bill and the two left. In front of the restaurant was a small plaza with a few benches. It was a mildly pleasant evening, so they sat down on a bench. For a moment there was silence between them. Until Taylor took her heart and asked the question that had been on her mind all along.

"What actually happened between you and Brooke? I mean, if you're that decisive, then it must really be something serious." Ridge looked at her in surprise; he hadn't expected that question. Taylor interpreted his hesitation differently.

"Sorry, you don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. I'm just curious."

"No, it's not that. I'm surprised you asked. I actually purposely didn't want to talk about it, at least not with you. I don't want you to feel like I use you as my complaint box again."

"If I felt that way, I wouldn't have asked. I really do care. Because Thomas and Steffy kind of have the feeling like they're to blame for your breakup. At least, that's how Brooke seems to convey it to them."

"Yeah, I know. In their eyes, the two of them are the culprits, but that's far from any reality. Our disagreements may have started with them, but they did nothing wrong. After a while, Brooke was no longer sympathetic to my wanting to take care of Thomas and Steffy more than in the past. She disapproved of me spending time with them some evenings during the week and once in a while on the weekends. She always accused me of neglecting our family. On the other hand, I could no longer simply accept and tolerate her interaction with the kids. With Steffy she was always at loggerheads, I know Steffy is not innocent but Brooke said some pretty hurtful things to her. I don't even want to talk about Thomas."

"Well, the fact that she wasn't exactly in Thomas' good graces is understandable in a way."

"At first, certainly, I had a lot of compassion for her reaction. But as time went on, it didn't get better, but rather worse. No matter how much Thomas begged for forgiveness. The crowning glory was when she insisted on firing Thomas and Steffy from the company. She hurt me deeply by pressuring me, how could she even ask me to go through with this? I'm their father and after years I finally had a relaxed relationship with them again and she expects me to put my own children on the street and on the other hand she actually relatively quickly reconciled with mother, who after all was the mastermind of the whole scheme. The discussions about Thomas and Steffy were perhaps the touchstone, but this conflict alone did not lead to our separation. We simply forgot how to communicate with each other. We no longer treated each other like lovers. Either we kept quiet and only talked about the most necessary things or we argued about everything and nowadays I really don't know what was worse. With our behavior we even drove RJ and Hope away from us. The two of them have hardly been home in the last few months."

"I think I'm starting to understand, but by all means, you guys have had tough times before and you've always gotten your act together. What made you feel like you had to break up for good this time?"

"It was like an epiphany. I was in New York for two weeks on business and then on the flight back I just realized, during that whole time Brooke and I didn't even talk on the phone once. We only wrote each other short messages from time to time and what shocked me the most, I didn't even miss her or think about her in particular. On the contrary, I really enjoyed the time. I was finally free of this discontent and dissatisfaction. When I was back home, I just realized that the feelings were gone. I looked at Brooke and there was nothing left. I wished, I really tried, I didn't want to admit it at first, but the feelings were just gone. There wasn't even hate or anger, it was just nothing, like I was sitting across from a random family member. But not the wife I had been married to for so long. It was clear to me then, this relationship no longer made sense, especially since RJ and Hope also suffered significantly from our differences. That was actually the most painful realization for me. For years I told myself that for the sake of the children I had to do everything I could to keep this family together, and for years I was convinced that we had always done what was best for the children. But in the end, we really drove them crazy with our back and forth."

"So how did they react to the separation?"

"Hope reacted very dramatically and was very distraught. Since the breakup, I have had very little contact with her. I keep writing to her, but she doesn't respond. She blames me for breaking up the family and on top of that she sees her mother suffering every day."

"It's certainly not easy for her, but to cut off any contact with you now, I mean you are still her dad after all."

"I don't think she even sees it that way any longer. I've recently learned that she's back in contact with Deacon."

"Deacon? That dumbass?"

"Indeed, the other day I spotted a picture on her social media showing her with him with the caption 'My dad and I' "

"Ouch! That's cruel, I mean you've been there for her practically since she was a baby, you've done everything and yes in a way you even neglected your own kids because of her just so she wouldn't feel like you loved her less. You did everything for her and now none of that counts?"

"It kind of shocked me too, but that's the way it looks like."

"And what about RJ?"

"Well, we really drove him away. Just after Christmas he came up with the idea of living in a boarding school in the future. He's going to a private school in Boston now. He was convinced, like most of the family, that our separation wasn't permanent and he didn't want to get caught between our windmills again. He made it pretty clear that he loves each of us, but together we had become intolerable to him."

"Wow, pretty radical view, but also understandable and remarkable in a way."

"At first I wasn't excited about it at all, but he seems really comfortable there. He gets good grades, participates in a lot of activities, and has made friends. So I think for him it was the right thing to do. I just hope Brooke and I manage to be better parents again someday. Anyway, I've been seeing a lot of things from a completely different perspective now. I wouldn't outright demonize Brooke like Mother or you are so fond of doing, I'm still convinced she has her good sites but she definitely also has her dark sites too and I didn't want to see them for far too long."

"You've just loved her so very much for so many years, you didn't want to see it and you were always spinning everything so that she still shined in a good light."

Ridge wasn't clear whether Taylor was talking about him or herself. Either way, it did him good to sit here with her and get everything off his chest. No one had listened to him so patiently in the last few months. Taylor was moved by his report. She felt for him and the difficult situation he had endured. At the same time, she was impressed by how critically and reflectively he thought about what had happened. She never saw him like that. In the past, he had always expected her to be able to interpret his problems and have a solution at hand. But this time he seemed to have understood himself where the core of the problem lay. That paid her respect. Moreover, her mother's heart was full of joy because this time he had chosen his children over Brooke. Often enough in the past she had had to watch him drop his children for Brooke's sake. It was a satisfaction for her that his relationship with his children was more important to him now. Neither noticed how time flew by over their conversation.