Thanks again to Nancy and Carol. Hope everyone enjoys.
PART SIX
*~Ellie~*
I leaned close to Jay’s ear, but unlike the couple sitting across from us, it wasn’t to murmur sweet endearments and nuzzle his neck.
“I’m blaming you for this,” I whispered furiously.
“Me?” he asked in bewilderment. “Why?”
“‘Oh, let’s double date, Ellie!’” I mimicked. “‘It’ll be fun!’ Just between you and me, Jay, I’m not having too much fun.”
“That doesn’t mean you should blame me! You’re the one who set us up with a couple who has decided to take their honeymoon a few months early!” He gestured illustratively across the coffee table to indicate Jon and Kaylie, who were so absorbed in each other that they failed to notice the tiff that was happening a few feet away from them.
“It was a choice between them and my parents,” I told Jay. “And I’m pretty sure that double dating with your parents is considered to be a pretty lame move.”
“Like they would be much better anyway,” he scoffed. “They’ve must’ve gotten better at hiding it over the years, but they’re just as bad as these two.”
“Maybe my aunt and uncle then?”
Jay goggled at me. “Have you completely blocked out that whole stethoscope incident we walked in on the other day? If you have, please tell me how you managed it so I can too.”
“Okay, fine! My entire family consists of sex addicts! Is that what you wanted to hear? We can’t keep our hands off each other!” I hissed. Then I paused, and caught sight of Jay’s befuddled expression. “No, wait. That came out wrong. What I meant to say was-”
“I know what you meant,” Jay cut in. “Look, I think it’s safe to say that this evening isn’t exactly going as planned so how about we just make a quick excuse and get out of here?”
“An excuse? What on earth would we say?”
“I don’t know! But you should be good at that kind of thing. Isn’t it in the superhero handbook or something?”
“Cute, Jay, but you’re out of luck there. What about you? What happened to all that ‘thinking on your feet’ stuff you’re always talking about?”
“That doesn’t involve lying to my sister. She can smell a fib on me before I’ve even thought of it.”
Unfortunately, my response was cut short when Jon and Kaylie finally became aware of their guests again. Kaylie at least had the decency to look embarrassed, but Jon just grinned stupidly.
“Sorry,” Kaylie apologized bashfully. “What were talking about?”
“Windows,” Jay reminded her flatly.
“Oh, right. So Jon and I still have to decide whose place we’re going to move into. And there are pros and cons either way.”
“The windows have never really been convenient in this apartment,” Jon continued for her. “But on the other hand, the location actually works better for both of us.”
“Not that’s ever really been a problem for you,” Kaylie said as she nudged Jon affectionately.
“But what about you?” he asked sensitively. “You said that this place makes the drive to Riverview easier.”
“Well, you can just fly me to work every day.”
“Now that’s what I call a good start to my day. Having you in my arms as we fly through the clouds.”
“I suppose I could get used to that,” Kaylie murmured.
I had had enough of this. I shot up from my seat.
“Sorry to just leave,” I apologized, “but we’ve got to-”
“-pick up something from the store,” Jay cut in.
“-get to bed early,” I finished on top of him.
Whoops.
We were literally saved by the bell when the phone rang, and Kaylie snatched it up, saving us from having to explain ourselves.
“Hello? Yes, that’s me… What?!” Kaylie’s whole demeanor tightened as she gripped the phone harder. “No, of course we won’t consider a different date. We booked that one! … Well, I don’t care! We paid our- Yes, we did! I have the receipt if you don’t believe me! What good is a deposit if it doesn’t guarantee us the date we want?” She stood, flashed an apologetic, yet frustrated, glance in our direction, and walked into Jon’s room for some privacy. I hadn’t listened in on the conversation to begin with, but now I was curious. I shot a questioning glance at Jon.
“It seems that the hall we booked for our reception has been double booked,” he explained. “They want us to switch the date.”
“But you already booked the church for that day,” I pointed out.
“I know. I guess we have to hope that whoever else booked the place is willing to be flexible or we’ll have to find a different place to have the reception. Look, I should probably go help Kaylie with this, so…”
“We’ll leave,” Jay offered, trying hard to cover up his relief, but not quite succeeding. “I hope you can get things straightened out.”
“Me too,” I told him.
We saw ourselves out as Jon went to go help Kaylie deal with the wedding crisis. Although it was too bad they had too deal with the problem, it did give us a good escape excuse.
“Want to walk for a bit?” Jay asked me after we had gone outside.
“Sure.” I saw that Jay had his hand held out towards me. I took it, and we headed down the street together, our hands swinging between us. “I guess you must walk around town a lot, huh?” I asked him.
“A fair amount,” he shrugged. “I’m still looking for a car and walking makes more sense than paying for cab fair.”
“You said you were looking for a car a month ago. How come it’s taken you so long to get one?”
“Just waiting for the right opportunity, I guess.” He had that look on his face again. I could tell when he was trying to cover up something deeper with superficial conversation.
“A car is a pretty big commitment,” I commented offhandedly. He shrugged wordlessly. “I guess it would be difficult to be able to commit to something that big,” I tried again. “I mean, who knows what’s going to happen.” I saw his shoulders tighten, and I knew I had gotten a reaction from him. “Putting down roots has been hard for you, hasn’t it?”
“Maybe. Hey, I was thinking earlier… Would you mind checking my stitches for me tonight? I think they’re probably ready to come out.”
“Sure,” I told him, trying to maintain my positive demeanor. We hadn’t talked much about the incident that had lead to those stitches. I think we both wanted to avoid bringing it up again. I was a little disappointed that he had brought this up when he knew it would lead to a stilted conversation, yet he did have a good point. His stitches needed to come out soon. “Why don’t we-” I stopped talking as I heard a couple gun shots go off, and shouts following. Instantly, I was alert. “I think I need to go help out with this, Jay,” I apologized. He couldn’t have heard the noises, but he had become pretty good at deducing when I had heard something that needed attending to.
“Sure. Go,” he told me blankly.
I hesitated, not wanting to run off on him. But the escalating emergency was calling to me, and I had no other choice but to go help.
“I’ll meet you back at your place,” I said, as I flew off.
* * *
*~Jay~*
It was stupid to be jealous of some random rescue, yet that’s what I felt myself thinking as I sat in my apartment, waiting for Ellie to show up.
She had a certain way of announcing trouble that seemed so important. That quiet, intense strength that she only revealed when she became Nebula. I hadn’t really seen much of the superhero before I had met Ellie, and even though I knew they were the same person, I could see how the rest of the world could be fooled.
But every time she flew off to go deal with some new emergency, I was always reminded of how I didn’t need to go anywhere anymore. I was used to always being on the trail of something important, but now I was stuck waiting for other people to finish the important stuff. I hated it. And I hated how that translated to being irritated at people, rather than the situation. Of course it wasn’t Ellie’s fault that she had go help out. Put in her situation, I would do the exact same thing. But every time she ran off, I always felt an irrational streak of jealousy that I just barely managed to maintain.
But so far, I had managed to shove my dark feelings aside when dealing with people. And that’s exactly what I did when Ellie came into my apartment after dealing with whatever it was she was doing.
“So what was the emergency?” I asked her.
“A couple teenagers got their hands on some weapons,” she said, frowning sadly. “I confiscated them and everything, but that still doesn’t really solve the problem in the long run. Anyway, I don’t really want to talk about it right now. Let’s see your stitches,” she said, stepping around behind me to get a better look at the wound. I hadn’t worn bandages on it since the first day, and thanks to my dark hair, I had been able to keep its existence hidden from anyone else. “Yeah, they look good,” she informed me. “We can probably take them out now.”
“Okay,” I agreed.
“So, um… I guess that whole double dating thing didn’t really work well, did it?” she asked ruefully.
“They weren’t bad at all at the restaurant. It was only when we got to Jon’s apartment that things started to get awkward.”
“You know, I still can’t believe that Jon’s acting like that. He was dating this one girl a while back and they got pretty serious and everything, but they never acted like that.”
“Well, I guess it depends on who you’re with. Not matter how serious Jon got with that other girl, they were never going to get married, were they?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Well, that’s probably it. No matter how close you get to someone, I imagine it would still make a big difference once you got engaged and were planning a life together and all that.”
Ellie finished with my stitches and sat down across from me, a serious expression on her face.
“Jay… I think I might have a general idea of how much experience you’ve had based on a few things you’ve said, but we’ve never really discussed this in detail, so I don’t really know for sure.” She was twisting her hands in her lap, and I could see that she was nervous. “And I think that it’s important for us to discuss this, and so why not now?”
Damn. I could see where this was going. And while I figured we both had a pretty good idea of the other’s experience, I had avoided getting into specifics. I just knew that it couldn’t lead to anything good given the delicate balance we were already struggling with.
“Well, I’m not necessarily uncomfortable with it. It’s just that-”
“It’s hard to talk about. I get that. But I do think we should really talk about it so, um, why don’t I go first?” Rather than giving me any time to respond, she just continued talking, almost oblivious to me. “Well, I was pretty young when I got the whole birds and bees thing, and my parents had always stressed that sex wasn’t something to be taken casually. And then not too long after I found out the whole Superman thing, my parents explained to me that having this secret made… that kind of intimacy so much more important to be careful with. There’s the obvious risk of me giving something away during… um, in the heat of the moment. And of course after inventing Nebula it’s been even stickier. How could I sleep with a guy if I was keeping such a big secret from him?
“So anyway, I always knew that I would have to wait for just the right guy before I did anything, and… well, I guess you can say that the right, um, circumstances haven’t come about yet.” She was looking at me apprehensively.
I nodded. “I understand that, Ellie. And I respect you for making that decision.”
She nodded stiffly. “Thanks. Um, you know, I’ve had boyfriends and stuff before, but it was never serious enough to ever consider telling him about my… extras.”
I nodded again. She nodded in response. We were in danger of looking like a pair of bobble heads when Ellie spoke again.
“So that’s me. How… how about you?”
“Well, I never really had parents who were willing to sit down with me and talk about that kind of thing,” I told Ellie, trying to phrase it as gently as possible. “My sex education basically consisted of my dad threatening me to never get a girl pregnant or else I would risk screwing up my life forever. All that stuff about commitment and love and everything wasn’t really covered.” I took a breath, knowing what I would have to confess. “So for me, there were times when the opportunity presented itself and… I took it.”
“Oh.” Ellie’s voice was quiet and she remained frozen in her chair.
“Damn it.” I pushed my hand through my hair in frustration. “This is why I kept putting this conversation off. I knew you would get upset.”
“I’m not upset.” She spoke in that same quiet voice.
“Yes, you are. I can tell.”
“No, I’m not!” Her voice climbed upwards in volume and pitch. “It’s perfectly reasonable that someone your age has slept with someone before. You had a life before we met and you obviously met lots of other girls before me. And to get upset about something like that would just be childish and selfish and silly and-”
“Ellie, please-”
“-irrational and petty and… and… Just for the sake of thoroughness, how many were there?” She had jumped out of her seat and was pacing the floor. She crowded my personal space and pelted questions at me, stifling me with her presence. “And who were they? Are we talking about a high school girlfriend, or some woman you had been dating for years, or some random person you met at a bar one time, or maybe it was-”
“Ellie, calm down!” I shouted, needing her to back off.
Immediately, she stopped, and took a step back. “Sorry,” she whispered, her face flushed.
“No, I’m sorry,” I apologized guiltily. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that. You were just starting to get a little intense for a moment. Reminded me of some police interrogation techniques.” I tried to put a humorous spin on the comment, but there was a gritty truth behind it.
“Oh, Jay. I’m so sorry.”
“No, don’t… It’s fine,” I brushed it off. “Look, Ellie, I’ve had experience in the past. And I can’t lie to you and say that it didn’t mean anything to me at the time. But I will tell you that what we have going right now is so much more important than any past relationship. And the way that those relationships are impacting our relationship right now is killing me.”
“Who said they were impacting out relationship?” she asked with attempted casualness.
“C’mon, Ellie. You can’t pretend you’re not upset by this.”
“Okay, well maybe I am. A little. But I know that it’s stupid to think that way. And I believe what you said about our relationship meaning more to you right now. It’s just…”
“Would it make you feel better if I told you about them?” I asked gently.
She gave a small shrug. “Maybe.”
“Then I will. How about you sit down? You’re making me nervous hovering over me like that.”
“Okay.” She lowered herself into a seat across from me.
“Okay. The first time… was with a girlfriend I had in high school. We were seventeen, had been dating for two months, and thought that we were crazy in love. We were also idiots. We broke up three weeks after our first time together. And then I moved away, so I never got to see her again, even if I wanted to.”
“Oh.”
“And then the second time… It was on assignment for the NIA. Kaylie wasn’t with me because she was taking a bit of time off for college. And it was kind of an interdepartmental thing, so I was paired up with a girl from the DEA. We were both living under our dads’ shadows, and that put us on common ground. And being undercover with someone means you’re always together, often with nothing to do for long periods of time. So I guess we just kind of ended up together.”
“What was her name?”
“Stephanie Scardino,” I told her. Although I was surprised by the question, there was no reason to hide it from Ellie.
“What happened to her?”
“Well, having a relationship with someone during an investigation is typically frowned upon. I think her dad got suspicious that something was happening. Or maybe it was my dad. Whatever, it doesn’t really matter. Long story short, once our assignment was done, we were transferred to opposite ends of the country.”
“So you just… broke up?”
“It was never a really serious thing,” I explained. “It was just the circumstances that brought us together. Like I said, undercover work tends to lead to that kind of thing happening if you’re not careful. We went into it knowing that it would probably only be a temporary thing in the first place.”
Ellie nodded. “So who else?”
“That’s it,” I told her.
“What?”
“That’s all.”
“Really? I would’ve thought…”
“Ellie, the majority of my adult life has been spent undercover either alone or with my sister. Not a lot of opportunity for a guy to get any action.”
“I guess not.” She still wasn’t meeting my eyes.
“So, does that… help?”
Ellie mumbled indecipherably.
“Ellie, I’ll say it again. Yes, I’ve had experience in the past, but this is what really matters to me right now. What you’ve chosen to do is admirable, but please don’t hold my past against me.”
She shook her head. “I don’t.”
“Okay. But there’s still something bothering you.”
“No! Well, not really. It’s just…” She shook her head. “Never mind, forget it.”
“Ellie…”
“No, really. Just forget it.” She flashed me a tight smile. “It’s not important.”
I didn’t believe her, of course, but I didn’t really have any choice but to accept her answer. Whatever it was, it was clear she wasn’t going to talk to me about it.
