Table of Contents
From Part 1:Sitting back again, she relaxed into Clark’s loose embrace. It really was just so nice to be here like this, in the undemanding company of the one man she actually liked. He made her laugh, kept her amused, stimulated and challenged her brain. And, best of all, he’d never once tried anything on with her.
It was such a shame that none of the men she dated seemed to possess those same qualities...
“You know,” she murmured, snuggling more comfortably against her partner, “It’s kind of a pity that you and I aren’t attracted to each other, isn’t it? I mean, we get along so well... and I can’t imagine tipping boeuf bourguignon into your lap.”
She was taken aback when he seemed to tense immediately. Then, sounding stunned, he said, “Who says I’m not attracted to you?”
*********
Now read on...Had he actually said that aloud?
Oh god, he had, hadn’t he?
Wishing that he could sink through the floor, or hear a sudden cry for Superman and disappear, Clark shrank back against the sofa, expecting that any second Lois would leap away from him in horror.
She hadn’t said anything. Oh god. It had to be at least twenty seconds by now, and she hadn’t said a word.
But... uh-oh, she was moving. She was sitting up, pulling herself away from his arm around her shoulders, and she was...
She was turning to look at him. He tensed, waiting for the sarcasm. The cold, angry reminder that she’d warned him long ago not to fall for her. The biting response that she certainly wasn’t attracted to him. The announcement that she was going home, followed immediately by the suggestion that he should take a long, cold shower. And the end of their comfortable, easy,
trusting friendship.
He almost didn’t dare to look at her face. But he made himself... and what he saw wasn’t what he’d expected.
Instead of anger and rejection, he saw... curiosity. Surprise, yes, but none of the annoyance he’d been sure he’d see.
“You... are?” She sounded... almost flattered. But that couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t - not the Lois Lane who’d sat opposite him that night at the Planet all those months ago and warned him off her.
“Well... yeah,” he confessed.
“Really?”
He hung his head, still unsure about what her reaction meant. “Yeah, I am. I’m sorry, I know you told me not to but... you have to know that you’re a beautiful woman, Lois. And any man would be crazy not to be attracted to you.”
“That’s really sweet of you, Clark!” Lois exclaimed softly, reaching out to touch his arm. Relieved, he looked up again and smiled at her. Of course, being attracted to her wasn’t the same as being in love with her, so it probably wasn’t so bad from her point of view.
Then she looked at him, arrested. “Wait a minute... I told you not to?”
Ouch. He winced, wondering how he could’ve been so stupid as to give her that kind of opening. And how he was going to explain it.
“Well...” he began, spinning out the word in the hope that inspiration might strike somewhere between the first and the third syllable.
“Hang on,” she began, realisation apparently beginning to dawn. “You mean when I warned you off falling for me? Clark...” She hesitated, beginning to nibble at her lip.
“Uh... yeah, then.” Feeling as if he was under an obligation to say something, he acknowledged her statement.
“Oh, Clark!” She reached for him again, this time clasping his hand in her own. “I meant... I didn’t mean...” Breaking off in apparent frustration, she head-butted his shoulder.
“What?” he asked, confused.
“It was the way you were looking at me. At least, I think you were,” she explained. “I’ve... seen that look before. I’m not being mean, Clark, but you were all puppy-eyes and rapt admiration. And the last thing I wanted was for the new hire to develop a crush on me. I mean, you didn’t even know me!” She grimaced apologetically. “That’s why I said it. I guess it must have sounded really horrible,” she finished.
“Well...” He shrugged awkwardly. “You were just making it clear that you weren’t interested. I can understand that.”
“No,” she insisted. “I was making it clear to some guy I barely knew and I resented having to work with that he was wasting his time and mine if he got a crush on me. Clark, that was... oh, it feels like another lifetime now!”
“So, what?” he asked, still not understanding, not feeling at all comfortable with this conversation. “If I looked at you like that now, all puppy-eyes and rapt admiration - what?”
**********
Lois caught her breath. Because Clark was looking at her, all puppy-eyes and rapt admiration - or at least something close to it.
And what did she mean? What did she want?
To tell him again, now, that he was wasting his time? That he shouldn’t fall for her?
But if she did, she’d hurt him - hurt her best friend. He hadn’t said so, and he’d been very careful about what he had said after that confession which she knew had been completely unguarded and which, she sensed, he felt had left him vulnerable.
And she didn’t want to hurt Clark.
He was attracted to her. Part of her wondered if she’d known that all along but had somehow, for some reason, suppressed that knowledge. Attraction... that was no big deal, really. People were attracted to each other all the time without it meaning anything at all. She found movie stars attractive. The guy who cleaned the windows at the Planet once a month was a hunk, and she’d drooled over him once or twice when she was sure that no-one was looking. She found Superman attractive - well, he was gorgeous, a Greek god, a perfectly-sculpted specimen of manhood. Who wouldn’t find him attractive?
And Clark? Yes. She found him attractive too; always had, really. Despite the unfashionably long hair and oversized suit he’d worn when she’d first met him, despite the geeky glasses he still wore - why on earth didn’t he get more fashionable frames? - her first idle thought, when she’d deigned to notice his presence at all, had been that he was a pretty good-looking specimen. But not one she had any particular interest in, beyond - later - ensuring that he couldn’t butt into her patch.
So, yeah, she’d been completely wrong in her assumption when she’d told Clark that it was a shame that they weren’t attracted to each other. Because he was attracted to her - and she was attracted to him.
Oh, it was very tempting indeed... To answer Clark’s question with actions, not words, and kiss him. To discover whether kisses born out of inclination as opposed to ruse would be equally sweet and equally desirable. To enjoy her intelligent, witty partner’s company on a date or two over the next few weeks, sharing fun and great conversation with kisses and light romance.
Except...
Except that this was Clark, her partner, her best friend. How could she plan a light flirtation with him - a few dates and a little bit of passion - and then call a halt, as she did with all of her casual relationships, as if their friendship and their working relationship could continue undisturbed afterwards?
What if she lost his friendship as a result?
Wasn’t it better therefore never to venture beyond the safe confines of their easy friendship?
But she was over-dramatising things, surely. She’d ended relationships before and still managed to keep the men concerned as friends. She still saw them occasionally, exchanged casual conversation with them, swapped snippets of gossip before parting amicably, promising to get in touch, to meet for a drink some day.
Casual conversation. Meaningless promises. Was that what she wanted to have with Clark?
Clark was different. Clark wasn’t just a casual friend. He was her best friend - the brother of her soul. How could she possibly treat him in the same way as she treated the other men she’d dated in the past few years, relationships which had meant nothing and the ending of which had caused nothing more than the minor inconvenience of not having an escort to the latest movie?
Clark could never be the kind of guy she’d be happy to discard like yesterday’s newspaper once she’d grown tired of him. She cared about him too much for that -
needed him in her life too much for that.
The men she dated, she admitted suddenly, painfully, were chosen precisely because they could never mean anything to her. She could never care about them.
And so they could never hurt her.
So what if they cared about her? If her lack of feelings for them hurt? It was nothing to her - they were nothing to her.
She wasn’t interested in love, or in commitment. In a relationship which meant anything. Not any more. Love meant being vulnerable. Ceding control. Getting hurt.
Ever since... him... she’d only dated men who meant nothing at all to her. To whom she was moderately attracted; whom she could kiss, and enjoy kissing, without feeling anything deeper. Without ever being tempted to want more or to give more.
Her relationships, if they could be called that, usually lasted around three or four dates, spread out over something close to two months. Since... him... she’d probably dated about nine or ten different men, some of whom, as Clark had reminded her, hadn’t lasted beyond one date. Actually, that had happened more often since she’d known Clark. She just seemed, more recently, to have met only men who didn’t measure up to her standards.
Not that she really needed dates right now - if she wanted an escort to the cinema, or company for pizza, she had Clark.
Clark was important to her. And that was why she could never relegate him to the ranks of the Identikit men she dated - the men who meant nothing to her. The men who couldn’t hurt her.
Clark meant everything to her. And Clark could hurt her.
Far safer to keep him as her friend. To save any stronger feelings - any thought of that elusive, dangerous emotion called love - for the only man it was safe to have those feelings for: Superman, who was way, way out of her reach and would never return those feelings anyway. And, if she wanted dates, to keep going out with the kind of men who would never matter.
And there was one other reason not to give Clark a different answer this time, she realised as she mentally reviewed the conversation which had led up to Clark’s question. He’d made her remember that she’d told him not to fall for her.
Not ‘don’t be attracted to me’, but ‘don’t fall for me’.
Was it more than just attraction on Clark’s part?
Had he actually fallen for her? Was he... in love with her?
Or maybe he just thought he was, she told herself with a sense of relief. He hadn’t actually fallen in love with her. It was just a crush after all, wasn’t it?
Or was it?
Far safer never to find out. Far safer to hurt his feelings a little again, now, than to give him hope only to dash it painfully at some later date. Far safer to guard her own heart by telling him again that he shouldn’t fall for her.
Because Clark, she knew with a sudden shock, was the one real, down-to-earth man she could feel something for, if she let herself. The only man, since... him... who could persuade her to believe that love really existed. And who could really hurt her, far more than
he ever had.
She swallowed, realising that she had to do this convincingly. She had to be calm, collected, casual, giving no hint of the turmoil she’d felt while coming to her decision. She wouldn’t be needlessly cruel, but on the other hand she couldn’t be too concerned about hurting Clark’s feelings: being cruel to be kind was probably the best...
He was removing his hand from hers. And he was standing up. And, when she looked at him, his expression was withdrawn, his eyes behind the geeky glasses showing no emotion.
She’d waited too long, and he’d drawn his own conclusions.
“Don’t worry about it, Lois.” His voice was clipped, his tone distant. “I should never have asked the question. Forget it.”
And he turned away, picking up their empty mugs and heading towards the kitchen.
********
Fool! Idiot!
What the
hell had he been thinking?
He’d allowed the illusion of intimacy in their surroundings, the trusting way she’d been curled up against him, their conversation, Lois’s confidences and the way she’d been so sweetly apologetic about her earliest reaction to him to persuade him that things really were different. That now she might not be averse to something more than friendship. That his feelings for her could at last be spoken.
What a fool he’d been!
He’d embarrassed her, that was clear. For several minutes after his stupid, pathetic question, she’d just sat there, not even looking at him. She’d been deep in thought, wrestling with difficult decisions, he could tell. Wondering, he’d guessed, just how she was going to break it to him that nothing had changed, that while she might be flattered that he found her attractive she just didn’t feel the same way about him. Still didn’t feel the same way - and never would.
She had probably been trying to figure out the kindest way to tell him. Well, he’d saved her the trouble, he thought savagely as he turned on the tap, rinsing their mugs with unnecessary vigour.
God, he wished he’d stayed another hour at Mrs Brazzini’s. Then she would have given up and gone home before he’d got back.
He wished that she would just go home. That he could turn around once he’d finished his current task and find her gone. Or that he had been less well tutored by his parents in the fine arts of courtesy: then he could simply walk through to the bedroom and take off from his balcony, leaving her to draw her own conclusion - that he didn’t want her here.
She was moving. He shut out the sounds, focusing on the splashing of the water. He didn’t want to hear her leaving, hear the sounds of the door slamming behind her and her car being started. He didn’t want to be aware of the moment she walked out of his apartment. He just wanted her to be gone.
So he shut his mind to all noise, all movement. And so he was totally shocked when he felt her arms come around him from behind, felt her lay her head against his back.
“I’m sorry, Clark. I did it again, didn’t I?” she said, an audible choke in her voice. “Don’t you know that you’re the last person in the world I’d want to hurt? What is it about me that I always turn the relationships that mean anything to me to ashes?”
Unable to help himself, he turned and took her in his arms. It was his fatal weakness that he could never hold himself aloof from her tears. She was right: she had hurt him. But it sounded as if, in doing so, she’d also hurt herself.
He held her tightly, her head buried against his chest; after a few moments, he dipped his head to rest it on top of hers. He would make it all right for her. That was what he always did, after all. Some people might call it being a doormat, but Clark just called it being her friend. Just as she made things right for him sometimes, listening when he needed to talk, teasing him out of his rare bad moods. It was a mutual friendship - that was why it worked.
But to make it all right this time would involve denying his feelings for her, wouldn’t it? Pretending that he’d only been kidding about that question he’d asked her. Pretending that his coolness, his distance, when he’d got up and walked away from her had been nothing - a misunderstanding.
She wouldn’t buy it. But he had a suspicion that, for the sake of their friendship - which she seemed to need every bit as much as he did - she would pretend to buy it.
Pretence. There was already far too much of that in their relationship.
And suddenly he couldn’t bear to have any more of it.
She stirred, and he loosened his hold on her, letting her step back just a little. “Clark?” She stared up at him, a question as well as an apology in her eyes.
“It’s okay,” he said quietly. “We’ll be okay.”
“Really?” She sounded cynical. “I wish I could believe that...”
Clark sighed. She wasn’t the only one. But maybe... oh, maybe this time they had to get some of the stuff they usually avoided out into the open. Maybe that was the only way they could be okay.
“What have they got that I haven’t, Lois?” he asked, more in despair than bitterness. “Those guys you date... I know you’re not in love with any of them. If you’re in love with anyone, I’d have thought it was Superman, anyway. You don’t spend time with them the way you spend time with me. I don’t think you even like some of them. What’s wrong with me, Lois? What don’t I have that you want?”
********
...tbc
