From part 17...
Clark leaned down to kiss her gently, then stepped back, the bag containing his Suit still in his hand. "Goodnight, Lois. I'll look forward to seeing you on Friday."
"Me too," she told him with a smile. She watched him lift off the ground and soar into the night sky. She shook her head. It looked so strange to see him do that in Clark clothes. She'd only ever seen him do it in his Superman costume, and somehow it gave her an extra rush seeing him do it as "Clark." Turning, she walked back into her apartment and shut the sliding glass door behind her.
Their first official date. That was an important milestone, wasn't it? She suspected it was, but it didn't seem like the typical first date. She already knew she liked him, and they'd already kissed. She smiled at that. How could she forget? He was a really great kisser. And an official date usually had kissing in there somewhere, didn't it?
She grinned. The possibility just gave her one more reason to look forward to Friday.
**********
Now on to part 18...
**********
"Hey, Clark, where are you off to is such a hurry?"
Clark glanced over his shoulder as he walked up the ramp from the Planet's newsroom floor. He immediately spotted Jimmy hurrying to catch up with him and slowed his pace. "Hi, Jimmy. I, uh...I have a date."
Jimmy's eyebrows crawled clear up to his hairline. "You have a date?"
"Yeah..." Clark drew out the word, wondering why that was surprising. "Why?"
A broad grin spread across his friend's face. "Nothing. It's just...I don't think you've gone out with anyone since you moved to Metropolis."
Clark felt his defenses go up. "That’s not true. I go out."
"With women," Jimmy clarified, his grin broadening even further. "Going out with me and the other guys doesn't count."
Clark rolled his eyes. "Ha-ha, very funny," Clark drawled as he continued on to the elevator. So he didn't go out very much. Or at all. But that was because he hadn't found anyone he wanted to go out with. That is, until now. Regardless, what business was it of Jimmy's?
He took a deep breath and forced a patience he didn't feel. If he didn't hurry, he wasn't going to have time to shower and change before flying to San Francisco. When he reached the closed elevator doors, he turned back to Jimmy, who was still on his heels. "Is there a point to this?"
Jimmy's smile slipped a bit when he saw that Clark wasn't smiling. "Hey, CK, I didn't mean...I was just teasing, and I didn’t--"
Clark sighed and realized he had sounded harsher than he’d intended. "I’m sorry, Jimmy. I’m not mad. I guess I'm just a little preoccupied, that's all. Yes, I have a date, and yes, this is our first date. Sort of." Clark made a face at the amendment. It wasn't as if he could tell Jimmy the circumstances. His friend had no idea he could fly anywhere in the world to see the love of his life.
“So, is this woman hot?” Jimmy asked, his good nature restored by Clark’s apology and explanation. He saw Clark’s face flush slightly, and his own grin flashed back across his face. “Ahh, she *is* hot! Alright CK!” He clapped Clark on the shoulder. But then he sobered slightly and shook his head. “It’s too bad Lois Lane doesn’t live closer. Now *that* woman is the ultimate definition of hot. I could have really seen you two together.”
Clark breathed in sharply at the unexpected comment and started to cough. Luckily, Jimmy went on obliviously.
“It’s too bad, because I would have liked to have a shot at her myself,” Jimmy noted, “if she weren’t completely out of my league.”
The elevator chimed its arrival, and Clark breathed a sigh of relief at its perfect timing. He glanced at the opening doors, then turned back to Jimmy. “I should probably get going. See you tomorrow, Jimmy.”
“And you’d better tell me how it goes!” Jimmy called after him as Clark stepped into the elevator and the doors began to shut.
Clark smiled and shook his head as the elevator began its descent. He knew he wouldn’t have to wait to tell Jimmy how the date had gone. He could tell him right now. It would be wonderful.
A slow smile worked its way across his face as he thought about what Lois might be doing right then. Was she as nervous and excited about their date as he was? Was she at home, rushing around to get ready? She was probably putting on something that would make her look amazing. Not that she needed to put on anything to look amazing. He was certain she would look incredible in nothing.
His eyes suddenly widened and a blush crept across his cheeks. Whoops. That hadn’t been what he’d meant. But now that the thought was in his head, he found his thoughts turning to the glimpses of skin he’d gotten of her in the short time they’d known each other: the expanse of long, bare leg emerging from her short skirt in Perry’s office, then again when she’d ripped her skirt clear up to the top of her thigh after her encounter with the would-be mugger. Then there was the tantalizing view he’d gotten of her bare midriff the other evening when her shirt had lifted up as she’d reached to put the bowl high up in the cupboard.
He frowned. The memory brought back the troubling image of the long, harsh scar on her stomach, and the little ones around it. She’d seemed very self-conscious when he’d asked her about it. What had happened? What was she hiding? He realized they had only known each other for a short time, but he already felt like he could tell her anything. Obviously that wasn’t the case with her. Not yet, anyway.
The realization gave him new resolve. He would do everything in his power to prove to her he was worthy of her complete trust. It would help deepen their relationship, and he only hoped it wouldn’t be long before she felt as trusting of him as he was of her.
The elevator chimed and the doors opened. Glancing again at his watch, Clark hurried out through the lobby and outside into a nearby deserted alley. With time as short as it was, he needed some ‘super’ help getting home and ready for his date quickly. He made sure no one was looking, then took off for home.
~*~*~*~*~
Clark stepped out of the elevator at Lois’s apartment building and onto her floor, his nerves jangling. The hall was deserted, and he took a moment to pause and take a deep breath.
‘It’s just Lois,’ he told himself in an effort to calm his jitters. ‘There’s no reason to be nervous.’ But no matter how many times he told himself that, it didn’t seem to help. Nervous was exactly what he was.
He had just turned towards Lois’s apartment door and taken a step toward it when the apartment door next to hers flew open, making him jump. He looked over to see an elderly woman appear in the doorway, her short but thick silvery hair curled around her face. Her wrinkled face creased into a frown when she spotted him heading for Lois’s apartment.
“Can I help you with something, young man?”
Clark started as he realized she was talking to him. He froze in his tracks and swallowed, feeling very much like he had in the third grade when he’d been caught snooping in the school’s janitor closet during lunch. “Umm, I’m here to see Lois. I’m a friend--"
He had been about to say more, but just then Lois’s door opened. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Lois emerging from her apartment, smiling at him. She peered around the edge of her door and smiled at her neighbor reassuringly.
“It’s okay, Agnes, this is Clark. He’s my…” She paused, then turned back to Clark, her smile turning mischievous as she met his gaze. She finally finished with, “…good friend.”
Upon hearing the elderly woman’s name, Clark realized this must be the Agnes Lois had mentioned as being kind of a surrogate mother. He felt his body relax as he realized the elderly woman was simply being protective of Lois.
Agnes snorted. “Good friend, huh? Just what exactly does that mean? You’re going to have to be more specific than that.”
Lois rolled her eyes playfully, then turned back to Clark. “You’ll have to forgive Agnes. She seems to think everyone who comes to see me deserves the third degree.”
“Humph,” Agnes muttered indignantly, but Clark suspected she wasn’t as put off by Lois’s good-natured teasing as she sounded.
He opened his mouth to reassure the woman that his intentions with Lois were honorable, but just then a small white dog barreled out into the hallway, barking viciously. The next thing he knew, the dog had bit him on the ankle. Before he could react, the dog yipped in pain (he suspected those little teeth hadn’t appreciated biting into a hard-as-steel, invulnerable leg), then backed off, still barking--he suspected in an effort to regain some of its dignity.
Realizing two people were staring at him in wide-eyed shock at the dog’s behavior, he quickly pretended the dog’s bite had hurt and reached over to rub his ankle. “Ow,” he exclaimed, hoping he sounded convincing.
“Princess!” Lois exclaimed, looking over at the dog in dismay. “What has gotten into you? Agnes!”
Agnes bent over to pick up the dog at her feet and gave her a couple of reassuring strokes to soothe the riled animal. Then she glanced back up at Clark and took a couple of determined steps toward him, her eyes suspicious and accusing.
"Princess is protective, that's all,” she told Lois upon hearing the young woman’s protest at the dog’s behavior. “But she's also a pretty good judge of character. She knows better than most people when someone is hiding something." Agnes took a step closer to Clark, the dog still growling in her hands, and she narrowed her eyebrows at him. "You're not hiding anything, are you, young man?"
Clark tensed. In the next second, though, Lois stepped in, rescuing him from trying to come up with a response.
"He's fine, Agnes, I promise," she said, giving the elderly woman's hand a pat, then turned back to her apartment door. "We'll see you later."
Clark quickly followed Lois into her apartment and he heaved a sigh of relief when she shut the door. "Whew,” he breathed, trying to relax his tense muscles. “That’s some neighbor you have there. She’s certainly watching out for you."
Lois smiled. "Yeah, well, I've known Agnes a long time. Naturally, she's protective."
“And what’s that dog of hers? It’s a good thing I’m invulnerable or I’d have teeth marks on my ankle.”
Lois laughed as she led the way into her living room and sat down on the couch. She gestured for him to do the same. “Well, like Agnes said, maybe Princess knew you were hiding something. Maybe we should just go back over there and explain that you’re Superman. Learning that you’re hiding something honorable instead of something dishonorable might make her dog feel better, you know.”
A slow grin worked its way across Clark’s face. “Just the dog? Maybe it would make Agnes feel better, knowing you’re with a man who could protect you from the consequences of your own impulsiveness.”
Lois’s laughter rang out once again. “You’ve got a point there. But then I’m sure she’d find something about you not to like. If you ask her, nobody would be good enough for me. I don’t mind, though. It’s actually kind of nice, knowing I have somebody looking out for me. Without her I would have been terribly lonely.”
The unspoken “since my parents and sister were killed” hovered in the air, and Clark wasn’t sure if he should say something about the implication or not. Before he could decide, Lois glanced at the clock, then stood back up, abruptly changing the subject.
“So? What do you want to do?” she said, clapping her hands together in front of her eagerly. “Are you hungry? If you’re as starved as I am, I thought maybe we could grab a bite to eat…” She suddenly paused as a thought occurred to her. “But then, maybe you don’t get hungry. I mean, I know you eat because we’ve eaten together, but…well, being super…do you even get hungry? I mean, if you’re not hungry and you don’t want to do dinner, maybe we could do something else, or--"
Clark quickly reached for her hands in an effort to stop her babbling, a grin spreading across his face. “Lois.” She stopped, and when her anxious gaze met his reassuring one, her words ceased. Realizing he had her attention, he squeezed her hands gently. “Dinner would be great. I don’t really need to eat, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like to.”
Lois breathed an obvious sigh of relief, then smiled weakly. “Sorry. I didn’t think…and I didn’t want to offend you by how little I still know about you, and--"
“Lois.” He interrupted her again. “There may still be things you don’t know about me, but I hope you at least know you don’t have to walk on egg shells around me. Besides, if there’s something you want to know about me, just ask, okay?”
His gaze was intent on hers for a long moment, and he found himself hoping she would relax around him, and hopefully return his openness. Finally she smiled and nodded.
“Okay.” She took a step back, pulling her hands from his and smoothing the front of her tan slacks. “We won’t want to go to any fancy restaurants. Not only are they incredibly expensive, but neither of us are that dressed up.”
For the first time, Clark realized how great she looked in her tan slacks and dressy-casual red sweater. He felt a surge of relief that he had chosen clothes along the same lines, wearing olive green Dockers, a white and black, long-sleeved henley shirt, and his black leather jacket. He had known the fall evening would be chilly in the city by the Bay, and while he wasn’t susceptible to the temperature, he wanted to fit in with what others around him might be wearing.
“Whether or not you think you’re dressed up, you look great,” Clark commented, taking in how her fitted slacks hugged her curves, and the sweater did little to detract from her thin form.
“You look great, yourself.” Lois grinned as she reached out to finger the lapel of his leather jacket. “Black is a great color for you. Very sexy.”
Clark’s heart skipped a beat and he struggled to draw his next breath. He caught the mischievous glint in her eyes and finally managed to laugh. “Thanks.”
Then Lois surprised Clark by reaching for his hand, entwining her fingers through his and giving his hand a squeeze. “Ready to go?”
“Absolutely.”
They left the apartment complex in Lois’s car, and Clark sat back in the passenger seat, happy to listen as she drove along the busy streets and told him a little about the city. She explained there were lots of places to go and see in San Francisco, but most of them cost money--and often lots of it. But if you knew the city well, there were a lot of things to do that didn’t require a load of cash. She asked him about his food preferences, explaining that the city was well known for its restaurants and its variety of foods. There were restaurants in the city from just about anyplace on earth—Thai, Greek, Chinese, Cambodian…. The list went on and on, but finally they decided to try a Chinese restaurant in China Town that Lois spoke highly of.
As she steered toward China Town, she told him it was one of her very favorite places to visit, with its variety of stores and markets, as well as the colorful displays and cultural items. After finding a place to park, they entered at the gateway on Grant Street where Chinese arches stretched above the entrance and walked north. Clark eagerly took in all the shops and window displays as they walked, and soon they arrived at the tiny restaurant.
He was skeptical as they entered, since the place looked like quite a dive, but he soon learned his first impressions had been deceptive. The food was incredible, as incredible and as authentic as any he’d eaten during his brief visits to China. What he enjoyed even more, however, was the easy conversation he and Lois shared as they ate. He knew it had only been a couple of days since he’d seen her, but in those two days he’d managed to forget how her smile lit up her eyes, or how the sound of her carefree laughter tugged at the strings around his heart.
When their meal was finished, Lois led him back out into the crowded streets and he found himself enjoying the festive feeling of the area’s ethnicity. Before long they were back in the car. The daylight was all but gone, and the night was barely noticeable as a blaze of lights emerged throughout the city, and the bustle of activity only increased, as did the intense traffic. He’d lived in big cities before, but few seemed to have the energy of San Francisco.
As they drove around the city, Lois told him about some of the city’s bigger attractions, such as the dozens of theaters and the Museum of Natural Art. He found himself entranced by the streets of San Francisco, and found himself holding his breath on several occasions as she navigated the steep roads. They’d be driving down hills so steep he thought for sure the car was going to tip over frontward, and then they’d turn a corner and go up and up and up. Signs dotted the curbs, warning drivers who were parking their cars to “curb your wheels” to prevent runaways down the steep inclines. He shook his head in amazement as he watched Lois use her left foot on the brake and her right on the gas almost simultaneously in order to navigate the hilly roads. After experiencing the streets, he had no idea how anybody could drive with a standard transmission in the city.
He continued to listen with interest as Lois told him about the bridges in the Bay Area. There was the Golden Gate, which was the shortest of all the bridges and connected San Francisco to the North Bay area. There was also the Bay Bridge, which connected San Francisco to the East Bay. He was fascinated to hear that it took a full three minutes to get from one side to the other, and that it was actually two bridges with Treasure Island in the middle. She told him of several other bridges, but he found himself looking forward to coming back to the city another time to walk along the pedestrian section of the Golden Gate with her. He was sure it was something he would love experiencing.
Their driving tour took them to Fisherman’s Wharf, and Lois found a parking place not far away. As giddy as a kid on a field trip, Lois grabbed Clark’s hand and pulled him toward the Wharf. Clark had to admit, it was amazing. There were tons of gift and specialty shops, but Lois steered him toward Boudin’s, a place serving delicious clam chowder in sourdough bread bowls. Even though it hadn’t been long since they’d eaten, the soup was gone in a matter of minutes, the treat warming them from the inside and helping ward off the Fall evening chill.
They wandered around for almost an hour, and Clark found himself fascinated by the huge, black pots of boiling water dotting the piers, with lobsters and other seafood offered for quick meals. Just off one pier was a dozen or so log rafts about twenty-by-twenty feet square, where a couple of hundred sea lions could be seen and heard, their barking filling the night air.
Just when he thought they’d seen everything they could possibly see, Lois took his hand once again and hurried him along. Not far from where they were, they boarded one of the cable cars and rode it downtown. They got off at Union Square, where a bustling shopping district attracted tourists and residents alike.
“This place is amazing,” Clark gushed as he took in the sights of the bustling city around him, holding on to Lois’s hand tightly as they walked. Even though it was approaching ten o’clock, the stream of pedestrians and traffic only seemed to increase. “I can see why you love it here.”
As soon as he said the words, he realized the appeal of the marvelous city could actually work to his disadvantage. If their relationship were to progress and things started to look promising together, what would happen then? Surely she loved her city as much as he loved Metropolis. How did that fare for one of them moving closer to the other? He heard her speak and tried to quell the threatening discouragement.
“It’s never boring, that’s for sure,” Lois answered, looking around them as if seeing her city through the eyes of a newcomer. “Sometimes you can feel a little lost in a big city, though, you know? I’ve never lived in a small town, but I expect it would feel more personal—like somebody there actually knew you and thought about you. A busy city doesn’t hold that advantage.”
He nodded. “I know exactly what you mean. Smallville is really little, and everybody there knows everybody else. It’s very personable and friendly. I think that’s what I like most about it.”
They continued to walk for a while, then finally headed back on another cable car to the Wharf where they had parked. On the way back to the car, they stopped on a street corner to wait for the pedestrian light to signal it was okay to cross. For the first time that evening, they were alone on the sidewalk. A breeze picked up, and Lois tightened her light jacket around her.
Clark noticed. “Are you cold?”
“A little,” she admitted. “The city always gets chilly at night with the cool air coming off the water.” She glanced at him and made a face. “Let me guess. You’re not cold because you’re invulnerable.”
“It’s one of the perks, yeah.” He grinned. “I can’t get hot or cold. My body kind of regulates everything just right.”
“That must be nice.” She looked pointedly at his long-sleeved shirt and his leather jacket. “If you can’t get cold, then why the warm clothes?”
He shrugged and lowered his voice slightly. “It’s just one more way I try to fit in. If I never wore a coat on a cold winter day, or wore sweaters during the summer, it might look suspicious, you know? Here.” He slid his arms out of his jacket and held it out for her. “Put this on. It’ll warm you right up.”
Lois hesitated for only a moment, then slipped her arms into the sleeves. She could feel his body warmth radiating from the jacket’s lining. Gratefully, she smiled up at him. “Thanks.”
They fell into a companionable silence as they listened to the sound of the traffic around them and watched the pedestrian light across the street for it to change for them. Lois fumbled with the buttons for a moment, but then felt Clark elbow her lightly.
“Light’s green. Let’s hurry across.”
Lois giggled as Clark took her hand and pulled her quickly out into the crosswalk. They half-walked, half-jogged across the street and didn’t slow down until they reached a store’s darkened doorway several yards past the street corner. Lois was a little breathless as they stepped into the store’s doorway for a moment to shelter themselves from the breeze while Lois finished with the jacket’s buttons.
Clark watched her fingers fumble with the buttons, and he wondered if her hands were cold. He reached out for her hands, stilling their movements. He felt her cool fingers beneath his warm ones, and tightened his hands around them. Her gaze flickered up to his, the smile on her face fading as their eyes met in a silent moment of connection.
His eyes moved to the buttons at her throat and spotted the empty button hole near the collar. “It looks like you missed a button.”
Without hesitation, he reached for the button, his fingers working at slipping the button through the hole. When he was done, his fingers lingered on the smooth leather for several moments. Clark felt his heart start to hammer in his chest when he lifted his gaze back up to Lois’s and saw her watching him intently. For a long moment, the noises of the bustling city around them faded into the background, blurring all but the woman standing before him.
Clark’s eyes roamed over her face, taking in the smooth, creamy skin, the dark brown eyes set off by his black leather jacket, and the silky, dark hair that danced around the jacket’s collar. There was no doubt about it. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
A slow smile tugged at the corner of his lips as he looked down at her. He cleared his throat, his voice low and rumbly as he spoke. "My coat looks good on you."
“Does it?” Lois’s voice was a breathless whisper.
The air seemed to crackle with electricity around them as Clark found himself moving imperceptibly closer to her. His gaze flickered down to her full, red lips, then back up to the beautiful brown eyes he’d come to love in such a short time.
Giving into the impulse to kiss her, his fingers grasped her lapels more tightly and slowly pulled her to him. When he leaned down to kiss her--slowly, tenderly, deliciously--he found himself wishing the moment would never end.
When it finally did, he let his forehead rest lightly against hers, willing the moment to last even a few moments longer. The sounds of a car horn honking brought them back to the present, and Clark glanced around to see that they were no longer alone. The sidewalks were busy once again.
Letting his hands slip from her lapels, he took her hand and pulled her away from the storefront. “As much as I hate to, let’s get back to the car. You’re going to freeze if we stay out here for too much longer.”
They walked the rest of the distance in silence and were at Lois’s car a short time later. They climbed in and were buckling their seatbelts when Clark finally spoke. “One of these times I’m going to talk you into taking me to the beach. It’s dark now and the water’s freezing, I’m sure, but I’d love to see it.”
“Let’s go tonight,” Lois said, her eyes sparkling at the idea. “You’d love Ocean Beach. It stretches on forever. You could walk along it all the way to San Mateo County if you wanted.” She broke off to turn and look behind her for oncoming traffic, then steered the car onto the road. “It’s been a long time since I’ve walked down by the ocean, and there’s nothing like walking along it at night. If we wear coats we should be fine.”
Her enthusiasm was contagious, and Clark found himself nodding. “Sounds great.”
“If it’s okay with you, let’s swing by my apartment first so I can change. You may be impervious to the cold,” she flashed a grin at him, “but I’d like to put on something a little warmer.”
It wasn’t long before they were back at her apartment. As they stepped off the elevator and he waited while she unlocked her door, Clark felt a sense of relief when Agnes didn’t rush out to check on their arrival. One third-degree for the night was all he could take.
When the door lock clicked, Lois opened the door and led him inside. She tossed her purse onto the couch. “Go ahead and make yourself at home. I’ll just be a minute.”
“Take your time. Neither of us have to work tomorrow,” Clark pointed out as he wandered over to the windows overlooking the city.
“Thank goodness,” Lois called back from where she’d disappeared down the hallway. “I’ve been working really hard on the Mesopotamia, Inc. stuff the last two days. I’ve found a few things that look promising. I think I might have found a link between their board members and a larger corporation back east.”
Clark turned toward the sound of her voice. “Really? What corporation?”
With his super hearing, he heard her push her bedroom door mostly closed, but since he didn’t hear it click shut, he guessed she’d left it open part way while she changed to be able to hear him. The thought made his stomach somersault, and he had to give himself a stern talking to in order to bring his hormones under control. He barely managed to bring his attention back to his surroundings in time to hear her next words.
“It’s a corporation I haven’t heard of before, but they seem legit; not a shell company this time. I was doing some research on them at home last night. I put the research I found into a file on my computer’s desktop. Take a look and tell me what you think.”
Clark smiled. She truly was a workaholic, doing story research from home at night. He couldn’t chastise her, however, because he did the very same thing. When you didn’t have somebody to spend the evenings with, work was sometimes all you had.
He turned from the windows and walked the couple of steps to her computer. As he flipped on her computer and waited for it to boot up, he glanced at the view she had from her desk. She’d arranged the desk to prove a beautiful, unobstructed view of the lights of the city out of the large windows while she was seated at the desk. Apparently she loved the view as much as he did.
The computer screen flashed, drawing Clark’s attention back to it. From his standing position behind the desk chair, he reached for the mouse. It only took him a moment to find the folder on her desktop listed “Articles” and click on it. He skimmed down the list of files listed there and spotted the one listed “Mesopotamia.”
He was about to click on it when another file further down the list caught his eye. He paused. While did she have a file titled “Superman” in her work file? But as quickly as the question came to his mind, he remembered the story she wrote for her editor. The file was probably that story. Still, his curiosity got the better of him and, after only a moment’s hesitation wondering if what he was doing could be considered snooping, he moved the cursor to the file marked “Superman” and clicked on it.
The article came up, and the bold headline “Superman Exposed!” leaped off the page. Clark reached out and put a shaking hand on the desk’s surface to steady himself as the room started to dip and spin around him crazily. Struggling to breathe in spite of the increasing tightness in his chest, his eyes began to move over the words of the article. Each word seemed to shove an invisible dagger deeper and deeper into his heart. When he finished, Clark reached blindly for the desk chair and sat down before his legs gave out.
She had done it.
She had written the story.
And not just any story, but a full-blown, vicious, no-punches-pulled expose. She had lied to him. She had told him she understood the reasons for keeping his secret, and had spent the last two weeks stringing him along. How long had she planned on doing that? Until she printed the story?
He was a fool. A trusting fool. He had trusted her, yet she was obviously planning on betraying him. No wonder she didn’t want to open up about her scars, or divulge too much information about herself. She wasn’t planning on letting him get too close because she knew what they appeared to have wouldn’t last.
Feeling as if someone had just reached into his chest and ripped out his heart, he continued to stare unseeingly at the computer screen in a daze. The woman he loved had been about to betray him. Not only had he trusted her, but he had poured out his heart and soul to her. He had turned to her after that horrific day in Japan, had cried on her shoulder. Didn’t he mean more to her than that? She had become such an important person in his life in such a short time, and he had fooled himself into thinking she felt the same way.
He shook his head numbly. She herself had said he was too trusting of people. And naive. Well, obviously she had been right. He was naive. Naive and stupid.
A sound behind him yanked him out of his desolate thoughts, and he turned slightly to see Lois stopping behind him.
"Clark? Did you find it?"
She put a hand on his shoulder, but this time it held no comfort. It only served to remind him how he had been played for a fool. All those wonderful, delicious kisses…. She would obviously stoop to anything to maintain her cover of a woman in love. She’d been faking the whole thing, every emotion he thought he’d been sharing with her. But now he knew the truth.
Pulling away abruptly, his eyes were blazing as he leaped up from the chair and whirled on her. His face was tight with anger and the muscle twitched in his jaw. "How could you, Lois? How could you do this to me?"
Lois looked startled at the tense muscles in his face and the clenching and unclenching of his fists. “Clark, what are you talking about? How could I do what?”
When he didn’t respond right away, she glanced around his bulky form to see if the computer held a clue to his behavior. When she saw the expose on the computer screen, the color drained from her face. For several moments she stood frozen, unable to move, unable to speak.
Finally she managed in a strangled voice, "Clark...I--"
But Clark wasn't in the mood to listen. He’d seen the evidence; there was nothing she could say to explain her way out of this. "Lois, I trusted you!” he yelled, his words bitter and hurt. “I thought we had something...something special. How could you do this? How could you betray me by writing an article exposing me when you promised you wouldn’t? Didn’t you listen to a word I said about how damaging an expose like this could be to my parents? To my friends? To me?”
Seeing the pained expression on his face, Lois quickly spoke up. "Clark, I wrote it, but I wasn't going to print it!” When she saw that he didn’t believe her, she rushed on to explain. “I came back to Metropolis with that interview you gave me, and my editor flew off the handle. He accused me of losing my edge, of going soft. Then I had that terrible week, and when I didn’t hear from you, I started thinking you’d didn’t really care about me, that you’d only made me think you did so I would print the story. I was hurt and angry, and I came home and wrote that article.”
“So when were you planning on printing it?” He took an angry step closer and barely noticed when Lois stepped back, a hint of fear surfacing in her eyes. “Were you even going to tell me? Or was I just going to wake up one morning to see the headline splashed across every newspaper in the world?”
“Clark, I told you, I wasn’t going to print it! At first I wanted to…I planned to. But after I finished I felt awful. I knew I couldn't turn it in. No matter what I thought you had done to me, I couldn’t betray you like that."
But Clark shook his head, clearly not buying her story. "Then why didn't you delete it then?" he accused venomously. “If you had really changed your mind, then why is it still sitting on your computer?”
Lois opened her mouth to respond and started to stammer. "I--I don't know, Clark. I guess I got busy and didn't think about it--"
"Don't lie to me, Lois!” he shouted, his eyes flashing. “I'm a journalist, too. I know what it's like to finally stumble across a story that you think can make your career. You found the story you wanted and wrote it! It’s as simple as that!" He stood there for a moment, daring Lois to argue with his line of reasoning.
When she continued to stare at him in shock, her mouth half open in stunned silence, he shook his head and went on, unable to stand the silence even a moment longer. His anger turned to a throbbing ache and tears sprung unbidden into his eyes. He spoke, his voice a strangled whisper. “Lois, I can’t believe you would do this after everything we’ve meant to each other. I really thought we had something. For the first time in my life I thought I’d finally found someone I could share everything with. And I did, along with my heart and soul. And this is how you repay me.”
Lois took a step toward him, her eyes pleading and her hand outstretched. “Clark, please, you’ve got to believe me…”
But Clark shook his head and took a deep, shaky breath in an effort to hold back the threatening tears. He wasn’t about to let her see him cry a second time. “Goodbye, Lois.”
Then, without a backward glance, he turned and walked out her front door.
He got as far as the alley two blocks away before he let the tears come. He changed into the Suit and launched himself into the night sky, flying faster and faster in an attempt to exert the anger he felt exploding inside of him--and the hot, aching pain of betrayal in his heart.
A few days ago he had turned to Lois when his world had been falling apart and his heart was aching, and she had been there for him. But this time, as his world crumbled down around him, he knew the situation was very different. He was going to have to deal with his own heartache. Alone.
**********
to be continued in part 19...
