Okay, given that my writing has slowed down, I really should not continue the every other day posts. But I'm continuing to think that somehow I'm going to finish writing this with enough time to post before I'm on forced time away for a screaming infant (well, hopefully not screaming, but I bet she will be if I spend too much time writing). This may mean I post the last several chapters all at once, I don't know, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Whatever it is, this is already turning out to be much longer than expected (I had estimated about 30 chapters, but I'm writing 27 now and am no where near the end) and at my current posting schedule, I wouldn't finish posting until the end of August at the earliest and I need to aim for mid-to-late June. So, given the large amount of buffer, I'm moving up to once every other day or so posts. (The “or so” continues to be there for days I just can't get online for whatever reason.) Even this has me finishing posting in mid-July (if my new chapter count of 45 is correct), so once I finish or at least start writing more frequently, I'll likely bump it up again. I'm hoping that watching my buffer whittle away will help with the writing more frequently thing.
A huge thanks to Carol – both for betaing and other assorted support the past couple of weeks unrelated to betaing except that it enabled me to write while the rest of my life has been a little more stressful than I'd like.
From Chapter 11Lois shrugged. “Maybe,” she said, but she sounded doubtful. “You are a good writer, Clark.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Not as good as you, though, right?”
Lois shrugged again. “Not everyone is born with the raw talent I was.”
“Or the self-confidence,” I threw back, but was immediately sorry that I had. Lois' earlier smile completely disappeared and even her shoulders seemed to slump.
“You think I'm overly confident. Don't you?” she asked.
I sighed. “No, not really. I think you are very confident, but I also think you're very talented.”
There was a hardness to Lois' eyes I couldn't completely understand when she replied, “I need to have confidence in myself. No one else does.” With that, she turned away and walked quickly towards her dorm.
Chapter 12“That's sad,” Maddie said when I told her about my conversation with Lois. “I mean, my parents and I could get along better, but I know they believe in me.”
“But it's Lois,” I said. “She could just be being melodramatic.”
Maddie nodded, “Maybe. At this point, though, you know her better than I do. Do you think that's what it is?”
I shook my head. “No. Something about the look in her eyes when she said it. She wasn't holding back a laugh while she joked away her attitude or something. She looked… hard, I guess. Like my response was typical. Except I kept feeling like she thought my response was different than it was.”
“What do you mean?” Maddie asked.
“Like… I don't know. I had been teasing her for being so confident, but I also told her I didn't really think she was being overly confident as she is actually that good. It was kind of like she didn't hear that part. She just thought I was telling her she wasn't good enough or something.”
Maddie put a hand on my arm. “You worry too much, Clark. Keeping Lois' spirits up is not your job. And while it sounds like maybe she has issues, you didn't know that. She never speaks about her family. So how would you respond except to tease her about her attitude? Really, ease up on yourself.”
“You sound just like my mother,” I told her with a smile.
“Just what every girlfriend wants to hear,” Maddie said, but she said it with a bright smile.
I leaned over to kiss her on the nose. “Ah, my mom's not so bad.”
“Should I start telling you to clean your room?” Maddie asked me.
“She's not that bad, but I don't want to date her!” I told Maddie.
“Well, that is good to know or I'd think you had more issues with your parents than Lois,” Maddie said before she leaned over to kiss me and we stopped thinking about Lois for awhile.
************************
“So, what are you going to do?” Maddie asked me later.
“What about?” I asked her, having no idea what she was talking about. We were stretched out on my bed, wrapped in each other's arms. Pretty much anything aside from Maddie was far from my thoughts.
“About the article,” she asked, as she adjusted so her head fit more snugly on my chest.
“I don't know,” I told her. “I haven't even started to really think about it yet.”
“Maybe Josh could help you find something from town?”
I shrugged. “Does that seem like cheating?” I asked her. “I mean a real reporter wouldn't need help to find the news.”
“They wouldn't?” she leaned up to look at me. “Isn't that what sources do?”
I nodded. I hadn't considered that, but she was right. “Yeah, it can be,” I said. “I think they also provide information if you have a lead on a story already. But you're right. Maybe I'll give Josh a call later.”
We settled back into silence when the door opened. “Aw, man, Clark, that's what the sock is for!” Steve said as he walked in.
“It is?” Maddie asked without lifting her head off my chest. “We're just laying here, Steve. Get your mind out of the gutter.”
“But still…” Steve said and shaking his head, he turned around and left.
Maddie and I both dissolved into laughter. “So, he can wake you up in the middle of the night to have sex with some random girl, but you can't lie here, fully clothed, in the middle of the day with your girlfriend without grossing him out?”
“Apparently so,” I said. “Not a bad thing to know, really.”
“Why, Clark Kent!” Maddie said, lifting her head to look at me. “I didn't know you had it in you.”
“What?” I asked, as innocently as possible.
“You just said something that could be construed as potentially negative. I thought you were the eternal optimist,” she teased me.
“Just shut up and lie back down,” I told her. “Your elbow is digging into my side this way.”
“Sorry,” Maddie said, sounding sincere as she got comfortable again. I leaned over slightly to kiss her on the top of her head, just in case she had thought my annoyance was real.
We lay there in silence a little bit more before I felt Maddie stiffen slightly inside my arms. “You okay?” I asked her.
She nodded before asking quietly. “What was Lana like?”
I shrugged, surprised by the question. Was that why she had stiffened? Was she jealous of Lana? She'd never shown that sort of jealousy or possessiveness before. “She was…” I floundered for words to describe Lana appropriately. “She was the head cheerleader,” I finally settled on and suddenly understood at least part of why my parents hadn't liked her. Those words really did describe her well, but… well, how sad was that? I couldn't imagine that my telling anyone that Maddie was an art history major would give them a full view of who she was. She was much more complex than that.
Maddie looked up at me with a smile, “You dated the head cheerleader in high school? And here I thought you were the shy, brooding type.”
I laughed. “I was. I'm not sure if would be fair to say I dated Lana. I mean, I did. When she wasn't dating someone else.”
Maddie frowned at me. “You never mentioned that before. I thought you guys were serious.”
I shrugged again. “I was, I guess. I had liked Lana since we were in grade school. But she wasn't as serious as I was. We would go out for a week or so, and then she'd find someone else.”
“And so she'd break up with you and you'd take her back?” Maddie asked.
I could feel myself flush and was thankful that it was getting dark outside, so maybe it wouldn't be so obvious to Maddie. “She didn't really break up with me. She just…”
Maddie shook her head, sitting up. “Clark! She cheated on you and you let her? This explains a lot about how you deal with Steve.” She shook her head at me. “You know you're better than that, don't you?”
I didn't respond. I knew what I was supposed to say. Clearly, she expected me to tell her that I did know and I probably should add in something about being lucky to have her now. But I couldn't. The truth was that I didn't really blame Lana for cheating on me. I mean, I wasn't the most fun guy in high school. She was always after me to try out for the football team, but I never agreed. After my brief stint freshman year, I was too worried about forgetting myself and hurting someone.
I mean, I could sort of see how on the surface Lana's behavior seemed bad. It's never nice to cheat on someone else. Still, though, how much could I expect from her? She was dating a freak. And even if she didn't know it per se, she must have sensed. There was always so much I wasn't telling her.
For a moment I wondered how long it would take before Maddie would realize that, too. She wasn't Lana. She wouldn't cheat on me. She'd just break up with me. “I love you,” I told her. I wasn't sure if it was completely true – at least in the way that Mom and Dad meant it. Was it a forever kind of love? Maybe not. But then, I'd never have that. I couldn't be with someone forever without telling them about me and once I did that…
But I did love her. Even if I felt badly that she wasn't getting what she deserved – a guy who was exactly what she thought I was, a typical small town boy with nothing unusual about him at all.
Maddie smiled at me shyly. “Really?” she asked me and I nodded.
“I love you, too, Clark,” she said biting her bottom lip and blushing. I leaned forward, kissing her bottom lip lightly until she released it from her teeth and I could kiss her more properly.
Half an hour later, no longer fully clothed, we pulled apart. I smiled at her slightly. In reality, our activities were still pretty harmless, particularly compared to my roommate. Despite that, I had never gone this far with a girl before. I had wanted to with Lana, sometimes, but it never had felt right. I was always second guessing myself with her: was I kissing her right, was my hand was in the right place, all the logistics. I never felt that way with Maddie. When we kissed, I sort of forgot to think for a while.
Now that we weren't kissing, though, I was worried. Had we gone too far? Too fast? Too slow, maybe? Was Maddie disappointed?
“What are you thinking about?” Maddie whispered. It was weird – we were all alone, but her whispering felt right. Like talking at a normal volume would spoil the moment or something.
I flushed slightly, although it was now so dark there was no worry that she could see me. “I'm wondering how you are.”
“Me?” Maddie asked.
“Yeah, I mean was that… okay?”
Maddie nodded. In the dark, I couldn't see her features clearly, but something about the way her hair swung back and forth made me feel like maybe she was embarrassed.
“I know this is kind of a prudish thing to say,” she whispered, “but I've never really done anything like that before.”
“Me neither,” I whispered back.
She raised her eyes to look at me and I could see them glinting with laughter in the moonlight. “What? You and Ms. Head Cheerleader never…”
“No,” I cut her off.
“Wow,” Maddie giggled, “you were a boy scout in high school.”
“What about you?” I asked her. “You never mention anyone from high school. But you must have dated.”
“No,” she said and her voice was just a little sharp. “I didn't really date in high school.”
“Why not?” I asked, running a finger over her bare shoulder.
“I just… didn't,” she stammered.
“Maddie, what's wrong?” I asked, seeing a sheen of tears on her eyes.
“Nothing, really,” she said. “I had a boyfriend for a few weeks. His name was Michael. But we never really did anything and it ended pretty fast.”
“Did he hurt you?” I asked her. I'm not sure what made me ask her the question, but something in her actions made me wonder.
“No,” she assured me. “Michael was great. He was a nice guy, really. It just didn't work out.”
“Okay,” I said. I believed her, but something still was bothering me. I felt like there was more to the story than she had let on.
************************
I sat over my desk agonizing over what to write. I had found a topic for the journalism paper – I just wasn't happy with it. I had decided not to ask Josh for help. I had forgotten, but he was also taking Professor Matthews' class, just at a different time than Lois and I were. He was less sure than Lois and I were that he was interested in journalism, but that didn't change the fact that he needed to do the assignment as well. So, I felt badly asking for his help. He had to find his own topic; I couldn't ask him to find one for me as well.
Still, the topic I had settled on was bad. My only saving grace at all was that the topic only counted for twenty-percent of the grade. On the other hand, I didn't want to essentially fail that twenty-percent.
“Hey!” Steve said as he came in, dropping his bag on the bed. “You coming to lunch?”
I sighed. The topic paper wasn't due until the end of the week anyway. I had hoped to turn it in during today's class, but it could wait. “Yeah,” I said as I got up and followed him out.
“Where've you been?” I asked Steve. I had talked to Mom and Dad and agreed to cut down my Boy in Black hours a little, so I'd been home at night more often. I still wasn't sure it was the right decision, but between schoolwork and Maddie, I didn't have a ton of free time. I had gone to Mom and Dad trying to find a way to spend less time with Maddie, but they were both insistent that it was the Boy in Black stuff that be cut down.
“Clark, you're only eighteen years old!” Dad had said. “You can't fill your time up with responsibilities like this.”
“So you think I should hang out with my girlfriend instead?” I asked, surprised.
“Yes!” Mom responded. “You know, maybe it seems silly to you now, but developing relationships like this is a part of life. You can't opt out of life so you can help others. I thought you said you loved Maddie?”
“I do,” I said, “but I also feel guilty choosing her over…”
Dad came over and put an arm around me. “I love you, son. But you need to stop acting like an adult. You need to enjoy being eighteen and in love while you can. It's different when you're older, and you won't get this time back.”
“Besides,” Mom said, “the trade-off isn't really fair. You see Maddie during the day mostly, right?” I nodded. “And you go out and do Boy in Black things at night.”
“But if I saw less of Maddie, I could sleep during the day to make up for the time I'm away at night.”
“Losing study time in the process,” Dad pointed out.
“Unless you and Maddie aren't spending as much time studying as you say you are,” Mom said, grinning at me.
“We're spending most of our time studying,” I mumbled, looking at the ground. We were
spending most of our time studying, and I was pretty sure I had been honest with my parents that "most' of our time was not the same as "all' of our time. So far, they hadn't asked what we were doing with the rest of our time and I didn't really see them asking that either.
Still, sometimes the way they teased me made me feel like they knew. While I didn't think we were really doing anything wrong or that even came close to going against the promise I made to my parents to be careful, I didn't really want to go into detail with them about it either.
“You're allowed to have fun in your life, Clark,” Mom said, her voice serious now.
I shook my head, although I wasn't sure I believed her. Well, I sort of did – I believed I was allowed
to have fun in my life. But being allowed and having time were different things.
“Promise us you won't stop seeing Maddie,” Dad said. “Just cut the Boy in Black stuff down to twice a week. See if that works and you feel less tired.”I had agreed, and so far it had worked, although I was still feeling a little guilty about the decision.
“I've been studying some,” Steve said in response to my question. “The library stays open pretty late.”
“Why haven't you been coming back to the room to study?” I asked.
Steve shrugged. “I didn't want to interrupt your "study-time' with Maddie,” he said.
“Mostly we are studying,” I told him. “I put the sock on the door when we're not.”
Steve shrugged. “Well, that's not the only place I've been.”
“Where else have you been?” I asked, laughing as I sort of knew the answer.
“Different places. I told my old man that I'd study more, not that I was going to turn into a priest.”
I laughed as we walked into the cafeteria. “Somehow, I can't picture you as a priest,” I told Steve.
“Who knows?” he said. “Maybe one day.” Then his eyes found a redheaded girl in a miniskirt over by the buffet line. “Not today, though,” he said to me, motioning towards her. “I'll meet you at the table,” he added before running over to try to make plans with the redhead. I shook my head. I wished I had the confidence he had with girls.
“Hey,” a soft voice said beside me and I looked over at Maddie as she slipped her hand into mine. Although, I guessed I was doing pretty well for myself for now.
I smiled at her as we walked towards the pasta station and ordered our lunch.
