Last time:
Clark
"Did you ask her to wait for you?"
"She told me she would and I told her part of me wanted her to, but that I wouldn't ask her to wait that long for me." I didn’t look at her as I said it.
"What did she say?"
I sighed. "She didn't say anything else; not really."
"Do you expect her to?"
"To what?"
"To wait for you."
"Expect her to? No."
"Do you want her to?"
Boy, she wasn't going for the easy questions was she? "Yeah, I do," I finally told her honestly.
"So you are planning on make love to her someday?"
I shrugged. "Maybe someday. But not while we're married."
She took a deep breath before she asked her next question. "Did you tell her everything? That it's not real and only temporary? Did you tell her this isn't your baby?"
My mouth opened once or twice but nothing came out.
*~*39*~*
Finally, I sighed. "It seemed like the right thing to do at the time."
"You *did* tell her!" she yelled at me.
"She thought I cheated on her!" I yelled back.
"You knew she would! We talked about it!"
"I know, but I was there and when she looked at me like that... I'd already broken her heart; I couldn't let her believe I'd broken her trust too."
"So you broke mine?"
I hadn't looked at it like that and I sighed again. "I guess I did."
"And what if she blabs to everyone that you're not the father of my baby and that we're only married for some reason she doesn't know but that you refuse to leave me? You don't think Mr. Latislani won't find that suspicious?"
"I told her I'd deny it if she ever said anything."
She turned to the dingy little window and stared out it, hugging herself as she did so. "So, say she doesn't wait for you. You're chained to me and the baby for the next five years. Say she finds someone else in the meantime and she's happily married, maybe with a baby of her own."
The thought of that was like a knife in my gut. "Okay."
"Do you stay with me?"
"I don't know," I whispered.
"Three years from now, she's moved on. She's getting married to a great guy. We've got another two years to go. We go to the wedding of one of your oldest and dearest friends because everyone in Smallville expects it and we wouldn't want to disappoint. She dances with her husband and you see them kissing and you know that, if they haven't already, they'll make love that night."
The knife twisted.
"Do you have sex with me then?"
The way she phrased it struck me as odd. "Do you want me to?" I asked her.
She shrugged. "We're both passably attractive people, when I don't look like a whale." I opened my mouth to say something but she went on. "We've been sharing a bed for three years. The love of your life is off making love to another man. You accidentally walk in on me naked or nearly naked. Do you have sex with me?"
There it was again. The wording. "Why is it that they're making love and we're having sex?" I asked her.
She shrugged. "They're in love. You're not in love with me and I'm not in love with you. The act is the same even if the emotions aren't."
"That's a bit cynical."
"What is?"
"You don't think there's a difference between just having sex and making love?"
"Not physically, I don't guess. I think someone can be very skilled at having sex without ever actually being in love."
"Probably," I admitted. "But wouldn't it be better if there was love involved?"
"That's not the point," she snapped at me. "Lana's off making love with her husband day and night on some beach in Hawaii or some cabin in the mountains. You walk in on me naked or nearly so. Is there no reaction?"
Reaction? My reaction to seeing Lois – a beautiful woman – naked would probably be the same as any other red-blooded male. "Oh, I suppose there could be," I said, trying to sound nonchalant. "But that doesn't mean I'd throw you on the bed and have my way with you."
"Okay. Lana's off on her honeymoon and I decide I want to see what all the fuss is about. I've already had a baby after all, why shouldn't I know what sex is like? So I tell you I'm tired and want to go to bed early. The baby's asleep – and probably not a baby by then – in another room. You come in and there's candles everywhere and I'm wearing nothing but one of your dress shirts or some skimpy lingerie or something and I kiss you and tell you that I want you but it's just sex. Do you?"
I shrugged. "Still not sure what you're getting at."
"Lana's off doing it with her husband, why can't you have sex with your wife?"
"I didn't say I *couldn't*..." My voice trailed off.
"The woman you're waiting for isn't waiting for you anymore," she pointed out.
I ran a hand through my hair. "I don't know. Maybe?"
"It's nice to know my husband finds me so desirable," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
I smothered a scream and stood up glaring at her back. "What do you want me to say, Lois? That you're not attractive? That the biggest problem Lana had with you being my roommate was that you are? That someday, I'm going to decide that I get to have sex with you because you're my wife and not really care what you say? That, someday, it's possible that we'll make love? That..."
"Yes!" She interrupted me, surprising me with her vehemence.
"What?"
She turned and looked at me, tears streaming down her face again. "I want you to tell me that there could, possibly, be some circumstances at some point in the next five years – regardless of how convoluted those circumstances might seem right now – that you could make love to me. Without either of us being inebriated or drugged or whatever. Both of us perfectly lucid. I don't want to know that it's probable. Not even likely. Just remotely possible. Some eensy weensy, microcosmic, although highly unlikely possibility that you'll make love to me at some point during our marriage."
I thought about that for a minute. Were there any circumstances under which I could find myself making love to Lois that didn't involve us being drunk? Not that I could get drunk, but she didn't know that. That was another point. Would I make love to her without telling her about myself? How was I going to keep that a secret for the next five years? *Should* I keep that a secret for the next five years? I didn't think I could justify making love to her – when we were both stone cold sober or whatever – without telling her about myself. So, assuming that, at some point, I had told her about myself, could I see us making love at some point?
"Never mind," she said interrupting my train of thought. She turned towards the closet. "I'm going to take a shower."
I sighed. "After all that, don't you want to know my answer?"
"I already do," she said without looking at me.
I moved towards her and turned her to look at me. "Lois, you are an incredibly attractive woman. I've always thought so. Did that mean I wanted to take off my towel and jump you the minute we met? No. Of course not. The biggest problem Lana had with you being my roommate was that you're attractive. And now we're married and we will be for the foreseeable future. So is it possible that sometime in the next five years that we'll make love? Yes, it's possible. How probable? I don't know, but it is possible."
She crumpled in my arms. I pulled her close to me and let her cry. I didn't know what had gotten into her or why she needed to know that it was possible that we'd make love someday. Did I consider it probable? No, not really. But it was *possible*. "Are you going to tell me what this is all about?" I asked her quietly.
"No."
"Why did you need to know if there was a chance that we could make love someday?"
"I just did."
"This is going to be a very long five years if you won't talk to me," I told her gently, feeling slightly guilty at the same time. I hadn't exactly been talking to her or making it easy for her to talk to me when I disappeared all the time.
"I didn't say I wouldn't talk to you, just not about this. Okay?"
"No, it's not okay. We just had what might qualify as our first fight and now you won't talk to me."
"It's not over," she muttered.
"What do you mean?"
She moved away from me and plunked herself down in the middle of the bed. "You really want to know?"
"Yes." I moved back to the loveseat.
"Okay. First, a question. I want an honest answer and then I'll tell you."
Well, now we were getting somewhere. "Fair enough."
"I've fallen off the top of a building. I'm barely hanging on. You could save me and the baby. Do you?"
"Of course." What kind of ridiculous question was that?
"Lana's hanging off a building at the same time. We're both barely hanging on. You can only save one of us. Which one do you choose?"
My gut twisted. "You can't ask me to answer that," I whispered. I didn't know the answer myself, except that I could probably get to both of them in plenty of time. But if it really came down to my wife or the woman I'd loved since childhood – the woman I still loved?
"Sure I can. And I want an honest answer."
"I'd try to find a way to save both of you." That much was true.
"You can't. You can only save one."
"Why only one?"
"Because it's my question, Alex Trebek." She threw up her hands. "Fine. We're both sitting on bombs some distance from each other. One of us moves off the chair, and the other goes boom. If neither one of us move in thirty seconds, we both go boom. Who do you choose?"
"I won't answer that," I told her. "I can't."
"So you can't choose between us," she said flatly.
"No. I can. I *chose* to marry you. I *choose* to be here, every night, sharing a bed with you. I *choose* not to be alone with Lana under any circumstances. But I wouldn't want either one of you to die. And I can't say right now what I would do if it absolutely came down to the two of you."
"Because you love her but you're obligated to me and if I die the baby does, too," she said bitterly.
"No. Because I care deeply for both of you and I don't know how I would make that choice." I took a deep breath. She wasn't going to let me avoid answering. "Under extreme duress, if there was absolutely no other way, no way to save both of you, I'd choose you."
"Why?"
"You're my wife," I said simply. "I promised to protect you. Saving you when I can falls under that."
"So, it's not because you'd choose *me*, it's because you took a vow."
"Maybe. But right now, it's the most honest answer I can give you. So what's this all about? Does it have something to do with Lana?" That made sense.
She nodded.
"Did she say something?"
She nodded again.
"What happened?"
"She just said some stuff that upset me. And I don't know why it upset me. It wasn't anything I didn't already know."
Part of me was furious with Lana, but part of me knew the only reason she'd lash out was because she was hurt. "What?"
"She and Linda were walking on the quad and I walked by them and I didn't want to talk to them so I tried to avoid them, but Linda waved me down like we were old friends. I shouldn't have stopped but I did. She said something about Europe and how the food over there must be really fattening because I'd put on a lot of weight since last semester and Lana said something like hadn't she heard – I'd seduced her boyfriend while you were practically hypothermic and then trapped you into marrying me because of the baby."
More of me was furious than before. They were roommates. The little conversation had to have been at least partially scripted.
"Of course, part of that is true and the rest is the public truth," she continued. "Then Linda said she was going to go talk to someone and it was just me and Lana and I started to walk off but she grabbed my arm. She spoke quietly – there's no chance anyone else heard – but she said that pregnancy didn't agree with me and just made me look fat. That you still loved her – would always love her – and you told her two weeks ago at the library that if you were ever alone with her you wouldn't be able to stop yourself from making love to her and that there was no way in hell I'd ever know what you were like in bed."
"I'm sorry," I told her. "She shouldn't have said any of those things."
She shrugged. "They're true, aren't they?"
"Mostly," I admitted. "I do love her. I can't imagine *not* loving her, though I suppose it's possible. But pregnancy *does* agree with you, most of the time. You look great, not fat." And that was the honest truth.
"And if you were alone with her?"
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I told her that's why I couldn't be alone with her. Because I don't trust myself and I won't break my vows to you, I won't compromise my morals by being with her and I won't turn her into the other woman. And we've already been over whether or not there's a chance that we'll make love someday," I pointed out.
She didn't say anything.
I sighed. "Regardless of the truth or untruth of any of the statements she made, she shouldn't have said them. And she's really not a vindictive person. She's just hurting."
She snorted. "I know we're about as unconventional as it gets, but forgive me for not feeling terribly sorry for my husband's ex."
"I hurt her when I married you. If things had worked out as planned, it would have been a bit of a speed bump, but that's about it. She would have understood. She wouldn't have liked it, but she would have understood. When I told her we had to stay married and that we were over – at least for now, maybe forever – I broke her heart. She's lashing out. She shouldn't but she is."
"Then tell her to lash out at you," she said bitterly. "And don't make excuses for her."
"I'm not trying to make excuses for her. I'm trying to tell you how I think she feels and why she's acting the way she is."
She looked at me with tear filled eyes. "I know you don't love me, Clark. I get that and I don't love you like that either and so our marriage isn't going to be conventional in more ways than just our lack of sex life. But be honest with me. If you were married to Lana and I said some of those things to her, what would you do?"
She wasn't going for easy questions at all today, was she? "I'd tell you to back off and leave my wife alone," I told her honestly. If that's what I'd do for Lana, what should I do for Lois?
"Are you going to tell her that?"
I didn't say anything as I rolled that thought through my mind.
"I mean, I don't really expect you to," she continued. "I wouldn't be hurt like she is if the situation was reversed. I wouldn’t have any justification for lashing out at her like that. It's not like you were my boyfriend who I thought was going to propose to me sometime in the next couple of years."
"It wouldn't have been in the next couple of years."
She looked at me, surprised. "Really? When were you two going to get married?"
I shrugged. "Sometime," I told her being vague, unsure why I'd commented at all.
"Tell me."
"This summer," I finally said. "We probably would have gotten married this summer."
There was a short bark of laughter from the bed. "When were you planning on proposing if you were going to marry her this summer?"
"In Paris." I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. "I talked to her dad over Christmas and told him I wanted to propose to her while we were in Europe. I didn't discuss when we'd get married with him, but it probably would have been this summer."
"So the night you went with me to Latislan was the night you were planning on proposing to her?"
"Something like that."
"Then why on earth did you go with me?"
For a minute, I didn't say anything. Why *had* I gone with her?
*****
TBC
