Sorry I've been so slow posting comments, but I've just been really busy.
This was a great part, Wendy. After the last part, I was tearing my hair out, wondering just what it would take to knock some sense into both of their heads. Clark runs away and Lois can't figure out the obvious.
For this part, Martha was her usual voice of reason. While she tiptoes and parses words, she manages to make Clark realize just what Lois was saying and putting things into the proper perspective. She gives him hope.
Forcing himself to breathe deeply and calm down, he continued, “Then I discovered that the only reason she’d done any of it was that she thought I needed help. That I was in love with someone and was too nervous to do anything about it. And so she felt sorry for me,” he spat. “She helped me shop and she went out with me just because she was taking pity on me.”
“Are you sure that’s all it was, honey?”
Clark blinked, staring at his mother. “Of course it was! She told me so!”
Sounding disbelieving, his mom asked, “What did she say?”
He pulled a face, the memory of the way the evening had ended still having the power to cause him pain. “I went to... to kiss her, and she told me that I didn’t have to pretend any more - that we both knew it wasn’t a real date and that I was in love with someone else.”
“That doesn’t sound like she was feeling sorry for you,” Martha pointed out. “In fact, it sounds to me as if she might be just a little jealous.” She grinned at him.
Yes! How is it that Martha can see what neither one of them can see from half a country away? Ah, but we do love our two lunkheads.
“You think she might have been jealous, hmmm?” his mother asked, smiling in a way Clark recognised. It was the way she always looked when she knew that she was right about something - a gleeful, smug kind of smile.
“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Maybe... It’s possible.”
“Aha! So it worked, then!”
Finally, it's sinking into his thick skull.
“Did I?” his mother challenged him gently. “She chose to believe that I had to be talking about someone else, Clark.”
It's amazing what some people will delude themselves into believing. Martha basically came out and gave Lois all the answers. She in turn made up a love interest for Clark, failing to recognize she fit all the parameters. Then she misses all the clues Clark dropped for his perfect woman. /me thwaps Lois with a 2x4
She would even think about talking to Superman, but she hadn’t actually seen him for days. In fact, it was well over a week since she’d actually had a conversation with him. All the same, she couldn’t quite imagine asking Superman about Clark’s love life... the thought of saying, “Hey, Superman, you don’t happen to know who this woman Clark’s got the hots for is, do you?” really didn’t seem like an appropriate question to ask the Man of Steel. And anyway, even if she did ask him, he’d probably come over all guys-stick-together and refuse to say a word.
This would have been funny to see.
Though she still needed to know just who her competition was. If she was going to beat this unknown woman, it would help to know what she was up against. Though just how she was going to get that information was part of the plan she had yet to work out fully.
Look in the mirror, Lois!
A sharp knock at her door disturbed that train of thought. Lois crossed the room and peered through the spyhole. Her jaw dropped as she saw Clark Kent standing on the other side.
I have mixed feelings on this one. On the one hand, WHOOHOO! They're going to talk it out and start smooching in the next part. On the other hand, it would have been fun, too, to watch Lois grilling everybody in sight for clues to who Clark's mystery love is. And maybe somebody at the Planet would thwap her over the head by telling her that everybody else already knew what she couldn't see.
Oh well, can't have everything.
Again, great part, Wendy! Looking forward to Part 10, which will be posted now, right?
