Thanks to Carol for all the help!
From Chapter 26
“I'm sorry, Lois,” I said softly. “I just got so angry when I saw Paul. And I never said anything to him about you complaining.”
“Well, thanks for being such a good friend!” Lois said, her tone leaving no doubt that my being a good friend was not exactly what she was thinking. “I really appreciate that I can count on you to let me handle things on my own.”
“You're not handling it,” I pointed out.
“I am, too!” Lois insisted, getting up. “Maybe not in the way you'd like, but…”
“Lois…”
“Don't!” she cut me off. “You're not my father or even my boyfriend. It really doesn't matter what you think. I asked you to stay out of it and you didn't. And you had no good reason for not doing so!” she said.
“I just…”
“Not right now!” she cut me off again. “I'm so angry at you, I can hardly think!” she said just before leaving my room, slamming my door after her.
Chapter 27
Okay, admittedly, this was getting to be ridiculous. I hadn't talked to Maddie in nearly a week now. I knew I should go see her, try to talk to her, but I was afraid to push her. How could I? I wasn't exactly willing to come clean with where I had been.
So, instead, I waited for her to come to me. It was a little frustrating. It was so unlike Maddie to ignore me this way. No one had said anything yet, but Josh kept giving us looks at lunch – it was hard to miss the fact that she was no longer leaving a seat for me at lunch, and when I left one for her, she ignored it.
Add to that the fact that Lois, too, was ignoring me, and it was becoming more and more painful to join my friends for lunch. The only redeeming thing in all of this was that Thanksgiving break started late that afternoon. Just a few weeks ago, I had had mixed feelings about the very long weekend. On the one hand, it would be relaxing to be back at the farm. On the other, spending five days apart from Maddie didn't sound like fun at all.
Now, I was only looking forward to it. While I still didn't want to spend five days away from Maddie, maybe five days without her anger and disappointment staring me in the face was not such a bad thing.
I sighed a bit as I recalled my conversation with Mom and Dad about the break – how Mom had suggested I invite Maddie to come spend the holiday with us. I had never done asked, afraid of what it meant to get that close to someone else. I was used to being myself at the farm, and so while having Maddie there would be wonderful, it would also limit my ability to relax for a few days and just be Clark Kent, weirdness and all.
Now, of course, it didn't matter. There was no doubt she would say no even if it wouldn't be impossible to get tickets there at this late date.
I watched her as she walked across campus with her friend, Natalie. From this distance, she looked just like any other college girl, bundled up against the cold, smiling and laughing at something Natalie had said. If I used my special vision gizmo thingy, though, I could see her eyes and they weren't laughing. She wasn't forgetting about her annoyance at me, she just wasn't dealing with it at the moment.
I zoomed out – was that the right term? I always found referring to my special traits weird, even in my head. Anyway, I did something so I couldn't see her eyes from this distance anymore, feeling guilty for spying on her. The truth was, though, that I missed her. I knew I was being terribly unfair to want us to move past this when I had no intention of giving her an explanation, but the truth was that that was precisely what I wanted.
I sighed again before getting up to go to class. It was my last lecture of the day and after that, I was planning on packing my stuff up and finding a place to take off for the farm. No need to wait until this evening or tomorrow to go home for the holiday. While I knew it wasn't true – I had other friends - between Maddie and Lois, it felt like everyone here would be happier with me gone.
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“Hey,” she said softly as I came up to my door after class.
I gave her a small smile, forced I was sure. I hadn't been paying attention, and so hadn't seen her waiting for me. Still, I should have known she would be. It was so unlike Maddie to ignore me this long, it made sense that she'd be ready to move past it before we left for the break. Of course, the real question was how did she plan to move past it?
“When does your flight leave?” she asked as she got up from the floor outside my door.
“Tonight,” I said, evasively. “Yours?”
“Not until tomorrow morning,” she said. “But given the time difference, I'll get home early enough to help my mom start preparing.”
I nodded. “How many people are coming to your folks'?” I asked her, hating the small talk.
She shrugged as I dropped my book bag on the floor and she sat in my desk chair. My desk chair. I couldn't remember Maddie ever coming in and not sitting on my bed before now. But of course this time she didn't want me sitting next to her. “I'm not sure,” she said. “Maybe a dozen or something. But everyone's local, so they won't be there until Thursday.”
I nodded, not sure what to say. I was such a coward. Why was I making Maddie do all the work when I knew I was the one in the wrong?
“Maddie,” I finally said, just to make myself say something. Anything at all would be an improvement. “I'm so sorry,” I finally said. “I miss you.”
She nodded her head. “I know,” she replied softly. “I can see it all over your face. But… I'm not sure that's enough, Clark.”
I looked at her, surprised. I'm not sure what I had expected. I guess, I had thought, as unreasonable as it was, that if I apologized sincerely – if I could just get her to see how sorry I was – she would be able to forgive me. She had to be.
“What can I do?” I asked her, moving to kneel in front of her so I could see her eyes better.
She shrugged, her gaze pinned to the floor. “I don't know,” she finally said. “But being sorry isn't it. I know you're sorry. Or at least sort of sorry.”
“What do you mean "sort of sorry'?” I interrupted her. “I'm…”
“You're not really sorry, Clark,” Maddie said, her voice stronger now, and the residual anger coming to the fore. “If you were really sorry, you would have come to me before now. You would have told me where you disappeared to, and you might have promised not to do it again depending on where it is that you're going. But you've done nothing, Clark. Nothing. Just looked at me sadly from across the lunch table, occasionally across the quad. Looking sad and being sorry isn't exactly the same thing.”
I opened my mouth, but was unsure what to say. She had seen me watching her across the quad? That was surprising, although not really what rendered me speechless. She was right – I knew she was right. Still, I didn't know what to say about it. I still had no intention of telling her where I disappeared to or promising not to do it again. Did that really mean I wasn't sincerely sorry?
I didn't think so. I certainly felt sorry enough. Did sorry mean I had to trust her with my secret?
“I'm sorry,” I said again, feeling the need to say something, even though I had no idea what.
She shook her head in annoyance. “I don't get it, Clark. Really, I don't. I want to understand, but you're not giving me anything to work with. I thought…” she paused and for the first time I saw the tears falling down her cheeks. “I thought I meant more to you than this.”
“You do,” I insisted, meaning it and yet realizing after I said it how ridiculous it was. I didn't really, did I? When I said it, what I meant was that she meant a lot to me and she did. But when Maddie said it, she meant that she thought she meant more to me than what ever secret I was keeping. And while I wanted to think she did, the truth was how could I ever prove that to her when I had no intention of telling her what that secret was?
Sure enough she looked up at me, her eyes clear behind her tears. “Do I?” she asked me. “Do I really? Because if I do, why haven't you come to talk to me in the past week? Why haven't you come, apologized, and told me where it is that you disappear off to?”
I said nothing, having no answer I was willing to share and feeling like the world's biggest heel. I was making Steve look compassionate and sensitive, I was sure.
“You know…” Maddie started, brushing impatiently at her tears, “I haven't told anyone else about Dave. Anyone. And I'm not saying that as in "I told you my secret. Now you tell me yours.' I just mean that…” she paused, seeming to be at a loss of words, but I was afraid to interrupt. Or more honestly, I didn't have any words to interrupt with. “I love you, Clark. And for me, that means I want to share things with you – both good and bad. I don't want to have secrets between us.”
“I don't either,” I said. It was the truth. I wanted to be completely honest with Maddie, and I had no doubt that I would be if my secret didn't happen to be so out there.
“Then tell me where you're going at night,” she said, nearly pleading. “And tell me why you waited so long to tell me.”
I sighed. What was I supposed to say to that?
“That's what I thought,” Maddie said, her voice soft again. “I do love you, Clark, and I wish I didn't feel this way, but… I don't know. I trust you, sort of. I don't honestly think that you're slipping out at night to cheat on me or something.”
“I'm not!” I insisted.
She kept talking over me, though. “But I don't know where you're going and I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't be hurt as long as you promised that wasn't what you were doing. I can't help it. I'm sorry, but I can't… I can't do this. I can't be completely honest with you while you keep secrets from me. And I can't not be completely honest with you when I feel this way. It's not what I want. I want us to be completely honest with each other, and I don't think I can keep dating you without it. It just… it just hurts too much.”
I watched her face, the tears falling down her cheeks and tried to think of something to say. Anything. I had always known it would come to this. I knew that at some point, Maddie would suspect I was keeping a secret from her and she'd break up with me.
I had hoped it would take more time than this, but that didn't change the fact that I knew it was coming. And I had known, in a somewhat abstract sense, that it would hurt. But I had imagined it hurting like it hurt every time Lana had cheated on me. As it turned out, it felt nothing like that. It felt one-hundred times more awful. This was completely my fault and completely within my power to correct. Worse off, I knew I was going to do nothing to correct it.
That hurt badly enough – I was completely sabotaging a relationship, maybe even a friendship, with someone I loved. More than that, though, much more than that, was seeing Maddie. She looked the way I felt every time Lana had cheated on me – hurt and beaten down. Like she was tempted to say it was all right, she didn't care, just so she didn't need to lose me. But unlike me, who had done that with Lana every time, Maddie wasn't going to do that. She was going to hold her ground so I couldn't keep hurting her.
When I continued to say nothing, she sighed, and finally got up. “Have a good Thanksgiving, Clark,” she whispered.
“I do love you,” I told her back as she reached my door.
She shook her head. “No. I don't think you do. I used to. I want to. But if you did, you'd just tell me what's going on and we'd move past it together. I'm sure of it – I just can't believe whatever it is, it's so bad it's something we can't move past. But not saying anything, Clark? Well, how can I believe you love me when you won't tell me something so stupid?”
When a beat passed without my giving an answer, she nodded her head and walked out the door.
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Dad watched me across the table warily. He was conflicted, it was clear. His first reaction was that I had done the right thing - I couldn't tell anyone my secret. But then he had seemed to change his mind, saying I couldn't let my secret isolate myself from my friends.
Mom's view was much clearer cut. She thought I was being foolish – that if I wanted to keep being the Boy in Black and I wanted to keep being with Maddie, I needed to tell Maddie about the Boy in Black. If I wouldn't then I needed to realize that Maddie wasn't that important to me.
Maybe she was right – maybe Maddie wasn't that important to me. But it didn't feel that way. It didn't feel that way at all. It felt like my heart was breaking into a thousand pieces. And because I couldn't get the image of her face out of my head, I knew Maddie's was as well. No question about it – I was the world's biggest heel.
