"Giving Thanks"
Authors: Kate, Mandie and Ali
Disclaimer: SAMK is not ours. We are just giving the characters a little exercise by making them run around in our story! SAMK is owned by WB and Shoot the Moon, but the story belongs to we three!!
Rating: PG
Timeline: Early third season
Summary: A pre-Thanksgiving stakeout turns into a bloody tragedy, but ends up bringing Lee and Amanda closer together. 1st fan fic, please be nice! =)
Archive: Fanfiction.net, Kate's and Ali's
Feedback: GREATLY APPRECIATED!
Part 1
Amanda was in the kitchen, cooking her famous apple pumpkin pie, when Jaime and Philip came bursting through the door, tracking mud all over Amanda's sparkling clean floor she had cleaned that morning. She was preparing now for tomorrow, because she knew she had a stakeout with Lee tonight that would most likely run into the early morning hours. She knew she would be tired and not feel like cooking by the time she woke up tomorrow. Amanda went over to the boys, and, with the tension that she hadn't realized she'd had, she let it out on whoever was there at the moment.
"Jamie! Philip!" she barked at them. "What in the world were you thinking, running in here like that, all muddy!?!"
The boys looked down at the mess they'd made. Philip apologized, "Gee, sorry Mom, we didn't even think about that. We were excited about our project at school and couldn't wait to get started on it. We're really, really sorry!"
"Yeah we are," added Jaime remorsefully, looking sheepishly at the mud that now covered the carpet and stairway.
"But ya see," Philip rattled, starting to take off his shoes as not to get the carpet any dirtier, if that was possible, "I have to write this story for English class about what I'm thankful for. And it has to be four pages long," he emphasized.
"But my project is really cool, not just a stupid essay!" Jamie countered his brother, also removing his shoes. "My photography teacher, Mrs. Hill, gave us a project too. We have to take a picture of the thing that we are most thankful for. And it has to be in focus and centered and everything!"
Amanda smiled at her two sons. There were, after all, worse things to be so happy about. Listening as they rattled on about their project, she felt bad for blowing up at them only a few moments before. Jamie interrupted her thoughts.
"Mom, stay right there, don't move!"
"Okay," she replied, turning around anyway to start surveying the mess that her two sons had made. After a second, Jamie reappeared with his camera looped around his neck.
"Mom, smile!" he bellowed at her back. Amanda whipped around just in time to see a flash of light. Smiling immediately for the picture out of habit, a sappy smile then appeared on her face.
"Aww, Jamie, sweetheart," she cooed. "That is so sweet. But I know that I'm not the thing you're most thankful for."
"Yup, you are, Mom," he reassured her, trying to make it down the stairs and into the kitchen to give her a hug. He slipped halfway there from the mud, which was now all over not only his shoes, but his socks as well, but Amanda caught him.
"All right, enough of this. Both of you remove any muddy clothing, put it in the wash and go upstairs and change. I don't want to see any more mud on my beautiful white carpets!"
As they retreated up the stairs to clean themselves up, Amanda plopped down on the couch. Touched, she realized the tension she had released on the boys wasn't fair to them at all. She wondered why she had had all the tension built up inside of her. Usually she was a very happy person, not one to carry around a lot of stress. The answer struck her quickly.
'Of course that's why,' she thought to herself. 'Lee and I have been getting closer and we have this stakeout tonight.' She sighed. 'I guess I'm just nervous.'
But she still couldn't completely comprehend why that made her so nervous. Lee didn't make her feel uncomfortable or awkward or afraid or sad. Truth be told, she felt so . . . alive whenever she was with him. Sighing, she stood up again, trying to expunge those thoughts from her head.
Finishing her apple pumpkin pie, which was almost as famous as her poppy seed cake, and putting it in the oven to bake, she then pulled out her handy mop and cleaned all the mud off the floor by the door. When the floor was once again sparkling clean, she put away the mop and fetched the vacuum. The stairs were a little harder to clean, and by the time she was done, the timer for her apple pumpkin pie rang. Quickly removing it from the oven, she set it aside to go get ready for her stakeout. .
Lee was coming to pick her up at eight o'clock, but she knew Lee too well. He would be there at seven-thirty. She hurriedly got ready so she would be ready when Lee came. She jumped in the shower and tried to relax.
'Stop being nervous, silly!' she jibed herself. 'Why are you so nervous?' She sighed again. 'I seem to be having the same conversations over and over with myself all day. And none of them seem to help. If only I could talk to someone about it. Maybe that would help.' She sighed again. Sometimes this job could be pretty hard.
After putting on her makeup, making sure to take special care with every detail, she donned a pair of blue jeans and a white sweater. She hurried down the steps and quickly filled a kettle with water from the sink and turned on the stove to boil it. Digging through her cabinets, she found a packet for hot chocolate. Then she hunted around looking for a thermos. When she had finally found everything, and was waiting for her water to boil, she sat down on one of the stools to catch her breath. She spied Dotty seated on the couch in the family room, reading a book.
"Good evening, Mother," Amanda greeted Dotty casually.
"Amanda, are you going to another "premiere" tonight?" Dotty accused her.
"No, Mother, actually tonight we're watching a project develop." 'It's not really a lie. This stakeout was a project and Lee and I will be watching it develop,' she confirmed to herself, pretending if she said it enough times it wouldn't feel like lying. She hated this part of the job too.
"Oh, I see," Dotty replied, glancing at a very fidgety Amanda over the rim of her book. 'Amanda is biting her fingernails,' Dotty observed. 'Something must be up. I bet that Mr. Sampson, that man she works with at IFF, is picking her up tonight. She looks more fixed up than usual.' But Dotty kept these comment to herself, and only replied casually, "That's nice, dear. Have a great time." She paused. "And Amanda, don't bite your fingernails."
Amanda opened her mouth to say something, but the kettle whistled, and Amanda returned quickly to the kitchen. Pouring the hot cocoa into the thermos, she glanced at the clock. It read 7:28. Two more minutes. Her heart rate increased slightly.
As she expected, two minutes later, Lee arrived at her door. She was right thinking he would arrive early. She was beginning to be able read him like a book.
Amanda grabbed the hot cocoa she had put in the thermos and hollered, "Good bye, Mother, I'm leaving! Boys, you be good for your Grandmother. Go to bed when she tells you and do your homework! I love you!"
Opening the door, Amanda stepped outside to meet Lee.
"Hi," she said tentatively to him as they walked toward his 'vette.
"Hi," he nodded in return.
He put his hand on the small of her back and led her to the car. Opening the door for her, he waited until she was seated before closing it securely around her.
They didn't talk much for a few minutes, until Amanda, tired of this not-quite-companionable-silence, started to ramble. "Oh, Lee, today I was in such a rush, because I was trying to make my apple pumpkin pie for tomorrow, and then the boys came home with mud all over themselves, and tracked it all over my clean floor and carpet! Oh my gosh, Lee, it was such a mess! But then they did the sweetest thing! Jamie has this project for his photography class, for Thanksgiving of course, and he has to take a picture of the thing that means the most to him, and ya know what he took it of? Me!" Beaming, she took a long breath.
They had arrived at the site of the stakeout, and Lee was in deep thought. He had seen something move across the street that caught his eye. Amanda searched for what he had seen, but had no luck.
Lee cautiously stepped out of the car with the stealth of a cat burglar and silently closed the door.
"Amanda, call Billy and Francine on the car phone. Something big is going down."
"Right," Amanda replied immediately, picking up the phone in Lee's car. She quickly dialed the number of the Agency. "Billy Melrose, please," she asked a receptionist. After a pause, she heard Billy's voice on the other end of the phone.
"Melrose here," he barked into the phone.
"Sir, it's Amanda," Amanda tried to explain their current situation to him while still keeping a watchful eye on Lee, who had almost disappeared somewhere across the street. "Sir, we're on the corner of 4th and Maple. Sir, please hurry, I think Lee may be in trouble!"
"Don't worry Amanda, Lee will be just fine." Billy reassured her. After hanging up the phone, he grabbed Francine and headed out the door, yelling behind him, "I'll need backup on this one. 4th and Maple!"
After waiting about fifteen minutes Amanda couldn't sit still anymore in Lee's deserted 'vette, so she got out of the car and ran across the street, looking around for Lee.
"Lee!" she called out to the seemingly empty darkness. No Answer. "Lee!" She called his name again, but still no answer. She decided it would be best to keep looking for him, even though she was deathly afraid of what existed out there in the vast darkness that lay before her. But Lee might need her!
Amanda started to back up when she bumped into someone. "Oh my gosh!! " she screamed as loud as she could, whirling around to find herself face to face with a very surprised Lee. "Oh it's only you," she breathed a sigh of relief.
Lee glared at her. "Amanda, what are you-" he tried to convict her, but that was as far as he could speak. Amanda gasped, as two shadow demons leapt out of the perpetual darkness, one on each side of Lee. They trampled him, like two football players, each greedily after the winning touchdown in the Super Bowl. They compressed his stomach together as a turbulent mass of bodies fell to the ground with a sickening thud. Amanda's face turned a ghostly shade of white. Her stomach felt like it had dropped down to the center of the Earth, and she cringed as she saw Lee, in slow motion, hit the ground chest-first, his hands nowhere to be seen.
Lee gasped for air, at once trying to stand up to punch the punk on the left in the stomach, but he couldn't even sit up, much less stand. The two men both turned simultaneously to glare menacingly at Amanda, and she could feel their eyes inspecting her, looking her up and down, and tried not to gulp.
Her voice faltering her, Amanda broke eye contact after less than a second, and glanced helplessly at Lee. If these two could take out Lee, they could most certainly do whatever they wanted with her.
A car horn sounded, and before she could blink, Billy and Francine were at her side, both of them equipped with guns that were locked and aimed at the two mysterious machines who could so easily and effortlessly pulverize Lee. The two men took off, sprinting into the obscurity of the shadows that lived beyond everyone's eyesight.
"Hold it! Stop!" Billy screamed after them, but they didn't stop running. Billy fired his gun into the air, but it still didn't produce the desired reaction. "Come on," Billy barked to Francine, and both galloped off in the same direction as the two brawny men had raced.
Amanda started after them, and then heard Lee try and suppress a moan, and she turned her attention to him.
"Lee!" she breathed, overtaken by the sight of seeing him lying motionless on the cold, hard ground. Though it was dark, she could make out the blood surrounding him, like he was lying in a big puddle of red rain. Only the rain came from his body, not the sky. Unable to help herself, she started to weep, and fell to her knees beside him, unconsciously landing in a pool of his blood that covered him on all sides. She heard him struggle to breathe, and at just that moment, the light of a car lit up the scene before her, and she could see clearly his bruised and pained face, clouded as if trying to hide his pain from her.
"Lee?" she tearfully asked the non-moving form that, sprawled before her, resembled a fallen tree after a thunderstorm.
He stirred, and opened his eyes. "Amanda?"
She put a hand to his cheek. "Lee…" relief flooded through her body, and she relaxed, though she was still kneeling in his blood. "Are you okay?"
"What are you doing here? I told you to wait in the car!" he yelled harshly.
Amanda's eyes quickly developed a confused gaze in them, and she stared at him incredulously, the tears still freely falling from her eyes. Before she could open her mouth to retort, however, he cut her off.
"Well, don't just sit there, Amanda! Go call an ambulance!" His callous voice cut through her small body, like a great gust of wind, and she quickly retreated towards the car.
'Darn it!' Lee thought to himself. 'Why did I snap at Amanda? What better site could you have than her angelic face when you first open your eyes? He tried to focus on her beautiful face an in effort to drown out the pain, but it didn't work.
Billy and Francine came trooping back, bad guys in tow, towards him a second later. At the site of him, Francine gasped, and even Billy grimaced.
"Don't worry, Amanda is calling an ambulance," Lee informed them, trying to choke out the words. Both nodded grimly.
In a second, the ambulance was there, and Billy and Francine returned back to where their cars were parked, next to Lee's. After shoving both of them into the back of one, Billy tentatively approached Amanda, who sat blubbering in the front seat of Lee's 'vette.
"Amanda?" Billy pleaded, knocking on the window, hoping she would respond. Obviously what she had seen wasn't the only thing that had upset her. Amanda gasped and looked up suddenly, not knowing anyone was standing next to Lee's car. She offered Billy a weak smile as she tried fruitlessly to dry the tears that still escaped her eyes.
'If only I had Lee here to wipe them away for me,' she mused forlornly. Sniffling, she met Billy's gaze shyly, choking out quietly, "Yes, sir?"
"Amanda, are you okay?" Billy questioned, concern inscribed all over his face as he slowly scrutinized one of his most promising Agent candidates.
"Yes, sir, I'm just fine," Amanda tried to say with a laugh, but she couldn't fool him. He shook his head and opened the door, helping her out.
"Amanda, it's nine o'clock. Why don't I take you home, hmm?"
She nodded, unable to do anything else without crying, and followed Billy meekly back towards his car.
Part 2
As Lee lay in his hospital bed, he remembered grunting with pain as the ambulance had picked up his numb body and placed it gingerly onto the stretcher the night before. He couldn't remember anything past that; he must have blacked out soon after. Glancing out the window, he saw the sun had just come up, and could tell it was very early. He tried to remember what had happened last night, but it was no use.
'My stomach is killing me! I wish I could get some help around this crummy place. Where's a doctor when you need one? Never around, always doing something else,' he grumbled to himself. His mind drifted. 'I wonder where Amanda is. Oh my God! Is she all right? I have to find out!'
He desperately tried to reach for the phone, but it was too far out of his reach, and his whole body flooded with pain at every movement. 'I wish I could pace…' he complained again.
"Ahh, Mr. Stetson," a cheery voice greeted him.
'I don't like hearing voices that cheery this early in the morning unless they belong to Amanda,' he griped to himself. But to the doctor, he said, in a sarcastic tone of voice, "Ahh, Mr. Doctor. Would you like to tell me what happened here, now that you've finally decided to grace me with you presence?"
'Hmm, the nurses were right,' thought Dr. Maddun wearily. 'He is going to be quite a handful.' But he continued in a light voice, "Well, Mr. Stetson, you have nine broken ribs. Apparently you were banged up pretty good."
"No, I hadn't noticed," Lee murmured.
The doctor decided to ignore that statement and continue. "Well, we bandaged them up for you, and since ribs very rarely require surgery, all we can do is let them heal. In the meantime, you must stay off your feet."
"Aww, Doc, they don't hurt that much," Lee whined, trying to get up out of bed without wincing.
"Mr. Stetson!" yelled Dr. Maddun. "You must remain in a lying position! No working, no exercise, and no pacing!"
Lee groaned in annoyance sat back down, delicately, on his bed. "So when can I got home, then, if you can't do anything here for me?"
"As a matter of fact, you are free to leave now, just first take your medicine."
"Yeah, yeah, I will," Lee lied, spying the nurse walking down the hall with everyone's breakfast.
"All right, I'm leaving. But please take you medication, and take it easy, all right?" Dr. Maddun requested as he turned to leave and closed the door.
"Yeah, right," Lee said under his breath when the door slammed shut. He quickly found his clothes and called Billy for a ride home. His car was still at the stakeout site.
Part 3
"Amanda?" Dotty called up the stairs to her daughter. She had had a peculiar return the night before. She arrived back at the house wearing someone else's clothes!
"Yes, Mother?" a little worse-for-the-wear Amanda replied automatically.
"Darling, are you all right? You looked terrible last night! What happened?"
"Umm…well," Amanda thought hard. "The project we were watching develop kind of…backfired, and, well, it was all just a big mess. I don't really want to talk about it." She decided to change the subject. "Happy Thanksgiving. Where are the boys?"
"They're down here, waiting for Aunt Lillian to arrive."
"Oh good. Did you put the turkey in the oven?"
"Yes I did, dear. It's cooking now. Your apple pumpkin pie looks delicious!"
"Thanks, Mother. I'm going to go take a shower."
"All right dear."
Amanda sighed and turned back into her room. 'If only Lee would come crawling up my trellis and tell me everything's okay,' she moaned. Turning on the water and stepping into its steamy aura, she once again hoped it would relieve some tension from her body. She still felt disgusting. She had taken a shower last night, but still couldn't shake the images from her mind.
'Lee was just lying there, totally motionless, before my eyes.' She replayed the scene over and over and it still scared her. 'And what did he say to me when he opened his eyes? He screamed at me! You would think he'd be a bit more understanding. I didn't mean to distract him. If only I hadn't come to tell him about Billy and Francine…' But she'd thought that already. She had, and she couldn't change that now. 'Well, I can at least try and make it up to him. But how?' She thought hard until an idea struck her. A smile spread across her face and she smiled at her own craftiness. She would be able to see him today!
Part 4
Lee walked into his apartment and slammed the door behind him. He was not in a good mood. He hadn't taken his medicine, his stomach area was killing him, and he wanted to see Amanda. Billy had just dropped him off downstairs with the orders to relax.
"A lot of relaxing I'm going to do now," he grumbled to himself as he daintily lowered himself onto his couch. For a moment he just sat, looking around his apartment. He had nothing to do. He lowered his head into his hands and started to reflect upon what had happened the past few days. He could remember some more of what had happened by the time Billy had showed up at the hospital, and what he didn't know, Billy had filled him in on, including what happened to Amanda, which he was particularly interested in, much to the pleasure of Billy.
'Ya know, I probably shouldn't have yelled at Amanda. She didn't mean to sneak up me; she just wanted to tell me something. It wasn't her fault that those two thugs jumped out of the dark and attacked me. They almost attacked her, too!' A sudden sense of possessiveness washed over him, and his jaw clenched and his eyes narrowed. He took a deep breath to release his anger. Billy and Francine had caught the two adversaries.
'I must have looked pretty terrible, the way she looked at me. I mean, could she help it if I looked frightening? Francine made a face and even Billy looked away. I must have looked positively hideous. No wonder she was crying. Could anyone blame her?' He shuddered as he remembered the look on her face. She had looked so hurt, and then extremely mad. She must be furious with him.
'I can't believe I let her down! Good thing Billy and Francine turned up. I wonder what she's doing right now?' A smile spread across his face. 'Maybe I'll call her and ask her to pick me up some food at the grocery store. Oh, no wait! Today is Thanksgiving. Well, I can still call her anyway. If I don't find out how she's doing soon, I'm going to go crazy!'
He reached for the phone, to the best of his ability, and dialed her number. The phone rang for a moment, and then a light voice answered.
"Lillian!?" the voice accused angrily. "WHERE ARE YOU? The boys and I have been waiting at least an hour for you to show up here, and the boys are just DYING to go outside and get Amanda's floor all dirty again, and-"
"Umm, no, this isn't Lillian. Is Amanda there?" Lee said with a slight chuckle and a shake of his head. Dotty was too much sometimes.
"Oh. She's busy right now, may I ask who's calling please?" Dotty asked, taking out a piece of paper to jot down the number.
"Oh, no, it's okay. I'll call back later sometime. Happy Thanksgiving."
"You, too. Good bye now." Dotty hung up the phone.
Lee sighed and put his phone down too. 'I could still go and see her,' he thought. He started to jump up, and then realized that with broken ribs, that was a little easier said than done. He let out a frustrated scream and sat back down again. Running a hand through his hair, he skimmed his apartment again.
He spotted a bottle of brandy and, as best he could, limped over to it and was about to pick it up and take a long drink, when he noticed that color of the liquid contained inside the clear bottle. Its color was a translucent brown that caught the light from the early morning sun as it danced in pretty little circles and eddies inside the bottle, like Amanda's eyes, only lighter.
Groaning, he put the bottle down and decided instead to just take some aspirin. Amanda would be proud of him, anyway. 'Well, I suppose it could be worse,' he thought with a chuckle. 'I could be Lillian.'
Part 5
"Mother!" yelled Amanda. "I have to go run a quick errand! Can you manage without me for about an hour? I'll be back before Aunt Lillian gets here, if she ever does arrive, and the boys can help you finish fixing dinner," she screamed, rambling on and on, hoping that Dotty wouldn't play twenty questions with her.
"Amanda, darling, you know that I trust you, but why on earth do you have to go out right now? We have everything we need for the meal. This doesn't have anything to do with that film company of yours, does it? Tell me they don't have you working on Thanksgiving?" inquired Dotty in a disgusted tone of voice.
"No, Mother," sighed Amanda, "This has nothing to do with IFF. A good friend of mine just got hurt pretty badly, and, well, he's all alone for Thanksgiving, so I figured he'd appreciate it if I went to see him today," she explained, avoiding all the details, not realizing her mistake in telling Dotty that her friend happened to be a "him."
"Him? Amanda, is there something you're not telling me?" Dotty asked, raising her eyebrows. Oh, how she wished Amanda had a man in her life, someone more than a friend, with his own hair, of course.
"Mother, I have to go, and to answer your question, he's just a friend. If he was more than that, don't you think I would have told you about him before this?" she said exasperatingly.
"All right, all right, I believe you. But I have an idea. No one should spend Thanksgiving all alone in front of the TV, which I'm sure he's doing. Why don't you invite him over for dinner? We have enough food to feed an army here, so it won't be a problem," she said, hoping Amanda would agree. She could tell that when Amanda said they were "just friends," she wasn't being completely honest by the way Amanda had answered her question with a question. What would it hurt if she played the role of matchmaker a little?
"Mother, he was hurt very badly in an accident...he broke his ribs. Nine of them. He can barely move, so I thought it would be nice to take some food over and bring Thanksgiving to him," she explained.
"Oh, dear, that's terrible!" Dotty exclaimed, quite shocked. "Yes, yes, go now! Tell him I said to get better!"
"Okay, Mother, I will," Amanda said, rolling her eyes. Sometimes she felt like a teenager trying to sneak out of the house. "Goodbye! Bye Phillip! Bye Jamie!" she screamed at the top of her lungs.
Stepping into the crisp air of the November day in Arlington and getting into her reliable station wagon, Amanda was lost in her own thoughts, all having to do with Lee. When she had seen him lying motionless after the two thugs had played toss with him, she had been so worried about him, and then when he hadn't opened his eyes after a moment, she had been so scared.
'I sure have a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving,' she thought to herself. She wasn't quite sure where Lee's feelings for her stood yet, but since a few months ago, they had been spending more and more time together, and their relationship seemed to be growing deeper and deeper every day.
Stopping abruptly, she realized that she was in the parking lot of Lee's apartment. Getting out of the car, she could feel her heart beating a mile a minute inside of her, and she didn't even know why. She kept telling herself that she had nothing to be nervous about, but lately Lee had the effect of making her knees turn to jelly at the mere sight of him.
Ringing the doorbell, she cleared her throat, sure that her voice would tremble when she spoke.
"Yeah?" she heard a blunt Lee ask. He was just about to go get that aspirin and fall asleep on the couch dreaming of Amanda.
"Lee? It's Amanda." She hoped she hadn't come at an inopportune time, but from the sound of Lee's voice, she could tell he was in an ill-tempered mood. But then again, who wouldn't be in a bad mood with nine cracked ribs?
"Amanda? What are you doing here?" Thoughts began racing around in his mind. He knew that she cared a great deal about him, but the fact that she had left her family on Thanksgiving to come and visit him proved to him just how much she cared. And he couldn't have been happier to see her.
"Well, ah, I came to see how you're doing," she said, "and to take care of you," she added in an unusually shy voice.
"Oh, Amanda, you didn't have to come you know," he said, not wanting to sound desperate. Noticing the hurt expression that fell onto her angelic face, he realized how bad those words had come out. 'Why do I always stick my foot in my mouth around her,' he screamed in his head. "But I'm really glad you did come," he reassured her promptly.
"Well, I figured you were all alone here with a bottle of wine and a football game, and, well, no one should be alone on Thanksgiving. I brought you some food. I hope you like turkey...you're getting a lot of it! And you can test my specialty, apple pumpkin pie! The boys just love my pies. You're lucky you're getting one. I saved it especially for you. Usually they're completely gone right after I bake them!" said Amanda, laughing. Opening his fridge, which happened to be empty except for a few bottles of wine, she put all of her home cooked food inside of it. "Now you can eat whenever you want to, it's all right here," she told him proudly, hoping that he'd enjoy the Thanksgiving pie."
Walking towards the chair he was sitting in, she shook her head. "You shouldn't be sitting up, you know. Do you have any blankets and pillows anywhere?" she inquired.
"Amanda, I know what you're thinking. There's no way you're gonna get me to lie down all day," he said, trying to persuade her with that begging smile of his.
"Aww, come on Lee, how are you ever gonna get better? I'm going to personally see to it that you lie down if it's the last thing I do!" she ordered. "Now, where are the blankets and pillows again?"
Sighing, Lee gave in to her persistency, not being able to say no to Amanda. Boy, could she act stubborn sometimes, but she sure looked cute when she was determined. "In the closet," he said.
"Now was that so hard, Stetson?" she chuckled.
Amanda quickly gathered them up and made a cozy little bed on the couch for Lee. Helping him up, she gently put her delicate fingers on Lee's injured ribs and lightly stroked them. Once he was on the couch, she covered him up with his warm fleece blankets and propped him up on the pillows, making sure he was in a comfortable position. "There you go. I promise you you'll feel better once you rest a little," she whispered.
"Okay, okay," said Lee, pretending to act disgusted, but not succeeding. Amanda could see through him like you can see through crystal clear glass.
"Uh huh, you will. You know, the boys are exactly the same way as you. They'll never just stop and rest and let someone else take care of them, but you know, once they do, they always feel a hundred times better." Amanda realized she was rambling, but when she got nervous, she could never control her motor mouth, and sitting alone with Lee in his apartment definitely put butterflies in her stomach.
"So, when do you have to get going?" Lee asked her, secretly hoping she'd be able to stay a little longer.
"Ummm, I probably should get going. Aunt Lillian's supposed to be at the house any minute now, and I said I'd be back before that to help get dinner ready."
"Yeah, I know."
"You know what?"
"That your Aunt Lillian is coming."
Amanda glanced curiously at him. 'How does he know aunt Lillian is coming?' she wondered. 'Did he call the house? He must have. How sweet. He was checking up on me. I guess that means he's not mad.' She breathed a sigh of relief.
"Anyway," she continued, "I let it slip to Mother that I was coming to visit a man...what a mistake! You know what? She practically had your place set at the table, that is, until I told her about your accident," laughed Amanda.
"Someday," thought Lee, not realizing he had said it out loud. 'Awww, smooth move, Stetson,' he screamed to himself. Thinking up some lame excuse, he quickly said, "Ahem, you know, someday I can meet your Mother and the boys, or something."
"Uh huh," said Amanda, her heart bursting inside of herself. She laughed at the sight of seeing the infamous Scarecrow, always cool under pressure, squirm. "Well, yeah, I guess I'll talk to you later, then."
"Yeah," Lee said, sounding a little disappointed. "Amanda, you know, I'm really glad you came."
"I'm glad I came too! Now remember," she added in her motherly tone of voice, "you've gotta rest to get better. Now I know you're not a very good patient, but you just take care of yourself, okay?"
"Don't you worry, I will," he said, smiling his mischievous grin.
"Uh huh," said an unconvinced Amanda. Walking over towards the couch where
Lee was laying, she leaned in towards him and planted a kiss on his cheek.
Smiling, she said, "I hope you feel better soon, Lee. Happy Thanksgiving!"
"Happy Thanksgiving, Amanda!" Smiling, Lee realized how much he had to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, something he hadn't really put much thought into for years. 'I wish Amanda could've stayed,' he sighed, but he knew that she had a family to go home to. 'Someday, Amanda, I'll be the one carving the turkey at OUR family's Thanksgiving. Someday...'
The End…
Authors: Kate, Mandie and Ali
Disclaimer: SAMK is not ours. We are just giving the characters a little exercise by making them run around in our story! SAMK is owned by WB and Shoot the Moon, but the story belongs to we three!!
Rating: PG
Timeline: Early third season
Summary: A pre-Thanksgiving stakeout turns into a bloody tragedy, but ends up bringing Lee and Amanda closer together. 1st fan fic, please be nice! =)
Archive: Fanfiction.net, Kate's and Ali's
Feedback: GREATLY APPRECIATED!
Part 1
Amanda was in the kitchen, cooking her famous apple pumpkin pie, when Jaime and Philip came bursting through the door, tracking mud all over Amanda's sparkling clean floor she had cleaned that morning. She was preparing now for tomorrow, because she knew she had a stakeout with Lee tonight that would most likely run into the early morning hours. She knew she would be tired and not feel like cooking by the time she woke up tomorrow. Amanda went over to the boys, and, with the tension that she hadn't realized she'd had, she let it out on whoever was there at the moment.
"Jamie! Philip!" she barked at them. "What in the world were you thinking, running in here like that, all muddy!?!"
The boys looked down at the mess they'd made. Philip apologized, "Gee, sorry Mom, we didn't even think about that. We were excited about our project at school and couldn't wait to get started on it. We're really, really sorry!"
"Yeah we are," added Jaime remorsefully, looking sheepishly at the mud that now covered the carpet and stairway.
"But ya see," Philip rattled, starting to take off his shoes as not to get the carpet any dirtier, if that was possible, "I have to write this story for English class about what I'm thankful for. And it has to be four pages long," he emphasized.
"But my project is really cool, not just a stupid essay!" Jamie countered his brother, also removing his shoes. "My photography teacher, Mrs. Hill, gave us a project too. We have to take a picture of the thing that we are most thankful for. And it has to be in focus and centered and everything!"
Amanda smiled at her two sons. There were, after all, worse things to be so happy about. Listening as they rattled on about their project, she felt bad for blowing up at them only a few moments before. Jamie interrupted her thoughts.
"Mom, stay right there, don't move!"
"Okay," she replied, turning around anyway to start surveying the mess that her two sons had made. After a second, Jamie reappeared with his camera looped around his neck.
"Mom, smile!" he bellowed at her back. Amanda whipped around just in time to see a flash of light. Smiling immediately for the picture out of habit, a sappy smile then appeared on her face.
"Aww, Jamie, sweetheart," she cooed. "That is so sweet. But I know that I'm not the thing you're most thankful for."
"Yup, you are, Mom," he reassured her, trying to make it down the stairs and into the kitchen to give her a hug. He slipped halfway there from the mud, which was now all over not only his shoes, but his socks as well, but Amanda caught him.
"All right, enough of this. Both of you remove any muddy clothing, put it in the wash and go upstairs and change. I don't want to see any more mud on my beautiful white carpets!"
As they retreated up the stairs to clean themselves up, Amanda plopped down on the couch. Touched, she realized the tension she had released on the boys wasn't fair to them at all. She wondered why she had had all the tension built up inside of her. Usually she was a very happy person, not one to carry around a lot of stress. The answer struck her quickly.
'Of course that's why,' she thought to herself. 'Lee and I have been getting closer and we have this stakeout tonight.' She sighed. 'I guess I'm just nervous.'
But she still couldn't completely comprehend why that made her so nervous. Lee didn't make her feel uncomfortable or awkward or afraid or sad. Truth be told, she felt so . . . alive whenever she was with him. Sighing, she stood up again, trying to expunge those thoughts from her head.
Finishing her apple pumpkin pie, which was almost as famous as her poppy seed cake, and putting it in the oven to bake, she then pulled out her handy mop and cleaned all the mud off the floor by the door. When the floor was once again sparkling clean, she put away the mop and fetched the vacuum. The stairs were a little harder to clean, and by the time she was done, the timer for her apple pumpkin pie rang. Quickly removing it from the oven, she set it aside to go get ready for her stakeout. .
Lee was coming to pick her up at eight o'clock, but she knew Lee too well. He would be there at seven-thirty. She hurriedly got ready so she would be ready when Lee came. She jumped in the shower and tried to relax.
'Stop being nervous, silly!' she jibed herself. 'Why are you so nervous?' She sighed again. 'I seem to be having the same conversations over and over with myself all day. And none of them seem to help. If only I could talk to someone about it. Maybe that would help.' She sighed again. Sometimes this job could be pretty hard.
After putting on her makeup, making sure to take special care with every detail, she donned a pair of blue jeans and a white sweater. She hurried down the steps and quickly filled a kettle with water from the sink and turned on the stove to boil it. Digging through her cabinets, she found a packet for hot chocolate. Then she hunted around looking for a thermos. When she had finally found everything, and was waiting for her water to boil, she sat down on one of the stools to catch her breath. She spied Dotty seated on the couch in the family room, reading a book.
"Good evening, Mother," Amanda greeted Dotty casually.
"Amanda, are you going to another "premiere" tonight?" Dotty accused her.
"No, Mother, actually tonight we're watching a project develop." 'It's not really a lie. This stakeout was a project and Lee and I will be watching it develop,' she confirmed to herself, pretending if she said it enough times it wouldn't feel like lying. She hated this part of the job too.
"Oh, I see," Dotty replied, glancing at a very fidgety Amanda over the rim of her book. 'Amanda is biting her fingernails,' Dotty observed. 'Something must be up. I bet that Mr. Sampson, that man she works with at IFF, is picking her up tonight. She looks more fixed up than usual.' But Dotty kept these comment to herself, and only replied casually, "That's nice, dear. Have a great time." She paused. "And Amanda, don't bite your fingernails."
Amanda opened her mouth to say something, but the kettle whistled, and Amanda returned quickly to the kitchen. Pouring the hot cocoa into the thermos, she glanced at the clock. It read 7:28. Two more minutes. Her heart rate increased slightly.
As she expected, two minutes later, Lee arrived at her door. She was right thinking he would arrive early. She was beginning to be able read him like a book.
Amanda grabbed the hot cocoa she had put in the thermos and hollered, "Good bye, Mother, I'm leaving! Boys, you be good for your Grandmother. Go to bed when she tells you and do your homework! I love you!"
Opening the door, Amanda stepped outside to meet Lee.
"Hi," she said tentatively to him as they walked toward his 'vette.
"Hi," he nodded in return.
He put his hand on the small of her back and led her to the car. Opening the door for her, he waited until she was seated before closing it securely around her.
They didn't talk much for a few minutes, until Amanda, tired of this not-quite-companionable-silence, started to ramble. "Oh, Lee, today I was in such a rush, because I was trying to make my apple pumpkin pie for tomorrow, and then the boys came home with mud all over themselves, and tracked it all over my clean floor and carpet! Oh my gosh, Lee, it was such a mess! But then they did the sweetest thing! Jamie has this project for his photography class, for Thanksgiving of course, and he has to take a picture of the thing that means the most to him, and ya know what he took it of? Me!" Beaming, she took a long breath.
They had arrived at the site of the stakeout, and Lee was in deep thought. He had seen something move across the street that caught his eye. Amanda searched for what he had seen, but had no luck.
Lee cautiously stepped out of the car with the stealth of a cat burglar and silently closed the door.
"Amanda, call Billy and Francine on the car phone. Something big is going down."
"Right," Amanda replied immediately, picking up the phone in Lee's car. She quickly dialed the number of the Agency. "Billy Melrose, please," she asked a receptionist. After a pause, she heard Billy's voice on the other end of the phone.
"Melrose here," he barked into the phone.
"Sir, it's Amanda," Amanda tried to explain their current situation to him while still keeping a watchful eye on Lee, who had almost disappeared somewhere across the street. "Sir, we're on the corner of 4th and Maple. Sir, please hurry, I think Lee may be in trouble!"
"Don't worry Amanda, Lee will be just fine." Billy reassured her. After hanging up the phone, he grabbed Francine and headed out the door, yelling behind him, "I'll need backup on this one. 4th and Maple!"
After waiting about fifteen minutes Amanda couldn't sit still anymore in Lee's deserted 'vette, so she got out of the car and ran across the street, looking around for Lee.
"Lee!" she called out to the seemingly empty darkness. No Answer. "Lee!" She called his name again, but still no answer. She decided it would be best to keep looking for him, even though she was deathly afraid of what existed out there in the vast darkness that lay before her. But Lee might need her!
Amanda started to back up when she bumped into someone. "Oh my gosh!! " she screamed as loud as she could, whirling around to find herself face to face with a very surprised Lee. "Oh it's only you," she breathed a sigh of relief.
Lee glared at her. "Amanda, what are you-" he tried to convict her, but that was as far as he could speak. Amanda gasped, as two shadow demons leapt out of the perpetual darkness, one on each side of Lee. They trampled him, like two football players, each greedily after the winning touchdown in the Super Bowl. They compressed his stomach together as a turbulent mass of bodies fell to the ground with a sickening thud. Amanda's face turned a ghostly shade of white. Her stomach felt like it had dropped down to the center of the Earth, and she cringed as she saw Lee, in slow motion, hit the ground chest-first, his hands nowhere to be seen.
Lee gasped for air, at once trying to stand up to punch the punk on the left in the stomach, but he couldn't even sit up, much less stand. The two men both turned simultaneously to glare menacingly at Amanda, and she could feel their eyes inspecting her, looking her up and down, and tried not to gulp.
Her voice faltering her, Amanda broke eye contact after less than a second, and glanced helplessly at Lee. If these two could take out Lee, they could most certainly do whatever they wanted with her.
A car horn sounded, and before she could blink, Billy and Francine were at her side, both of them equipped with guns that were locked and aimed at the two mysterious machines who could so easily and effortlessly pulverize Lee. The two men took off, sprinting into the obscurity of the shadows that lived beyond everyone's eyesight.
"Hold it! Stop!" Billy screamed after them, but they didn't stop running. Billy fired his gun into the air, but it still didn't produce the desired reaction. "Come on," Billy barked to Francine, and both galloped off in the same direction as the two brawny men had raced.
Amanda started after them, and then heard Lee try and suppress a moan, and she turned her attention to him.
"Lee!" she breathed, overtaken by the sight of seeing him lying motionless on the cold, hard ground. Though it was dark, she could make out the blood surrounding him, like he was lying in a big puddle of red rain. Only the rain came from his body, not the sky. Unable to help herself, she started to weep, and fell to her knees beside him, unconsciously landing in a pool of his blood that covered him on all sides. She heard him struggle to breathe, and at just that moment, the light of a car lit up the scene before her, and she could see clearly his bruised and pained face, clouded as if trying to hide his pain from her.
"Lee?" she tearfully asked the non-moving form that, sprawled before her, resembled a fallen tree after a thunderstorm.
He stirred, and opened his eyes. "Amanda?"
She put a hand to his cheek. "Lee…" relief flooded through her body, and she relaxed, though she was still kneeling in his blood. "Are you okay?"
"What are you doing here? I told you to wait in the car!" he yelled harshly.
Amanda's eyes quickly developed a confused gaze in them, and she stared at him incredulously, the tears still freely falling from her eyes. Before she could open her mouth to retort, however, he cut her off.
"Well, don't just sit there, Amanda! Go call an ambulance!" His callous voice cut through her small body, like a great gust of wind, and she quickly retreated towards the car.
'Darn it!' Lee thought to himself. 'Why did I snap at Amanda? What better site could you have than her angelic face when you first open your eyes? He tried to focus on her beautiful face an in effort to drown out the pain, but it didn't work.
Billy and Francine came trooping back, bad guys in tow, towards him a second later. At the site of him, Francine gasped, and even Billy grimaced.
"Don't worry, Amanda is calling an ambulance," Lee informed them, trying to choke out the words. Both nodded grimly.
In a second, the ambulance was there, and Billy and Francine returned back to where their cars were parked, next to Lee's. After shoving both of them into the back of one, Billy tentatively approached Amanda, who sat blubbering in the front seat of Lee's 'vette.
"Amanda?" Billy pleaded, knocking on the window, hoping she would respond. Obviously what she had seen wasn't the only thing that had upset her. Amanda gasped and looked up suddenly, not knowing anyone was standing next to Lee's car. She offered Billy a weak smile as she tried fruitlessly to dry the tears that still escaped her eyes.
'If only I had Lee here to wipe them away for me,' she mused forlornly. Sniffling, she met Billy's gaze shyly, choking out quietly, "Yes, sir?"
"Amanda, are you okay?" Billy questioned, concern inscribed all over his face as he slowly scrutinized one of his most promising Agent candidates.
"Yes, sir, I'm just fine," Amanda tried to say with a laugh, but she couldn't fool him. He shook his head and opened the door, helping her out.
"Amanda, it's nine o'clock. Why don't I take you home, hmm?"
She nodded, unable to do anything else without crying, and followed Billy meekly back towards his car.
Part 2
As Lee lay in his hospital bed, he remembered grunting with pain as the ambulance had picked up his numb body and placed it gingerly onto the stretcher the night before. He couldn't remember anything past that; he must have blacked out soon after. Glancing out the window, he saw the sun had just come up, and could tell it was very early. He tried to remember what had happened last night, but it was no use.
'My stomach is killing me! I wish I could get some help around this crummy place. Where's a doctor when you need one? Never around, always doing something else,' he grumbled to himself. His mind drifted. 'I wonder where Amanda is. Oh my God! Is she all right? I have to find out!'
He desperately tried to reach for the phone, but it was too far out of his reach, and his whole body flooded with pain at every movement. 'I wish I could pace…' he complained again.
"Ahh, Mr. Stetson," a cheery voice greeted him.
'I don't like hearing voices that cheery this early in the morning unless they belong to Amanda,' he griped to himself. But to the doctor, he said, in a sarcastic tone of voice, "Ahh, Mr. Doctor. Would you like to tell me what happened here, now that you've finally decided to grace me with you presence?"
'Hmm, the nurses were right,' thought Dr. Maddun wearily. 'He is going to be quite a handful.' But he continued in a light voice, "Well, Mr. Stetson, you have nine broken ribs. Apparently you were banged up pretty good."
"No, I hadn't noticed," Lee murmured.
The doctor decided to ignore that statement and continue. "Well, we bandaged them up for you, and since ribs very rarely require surgery, all we can do is let them heal. In the meantime, you must stay off your feet."
"Aww, Doc, they don't hurt that much," Lee whined, trying to get up out of bed without wincing.
"Mr. Stetson!" yelled Dr. Maddun. "You must remain in a lying position! No working, no exercise, and no pacing!"
Lee groaned in annoyance sat back down, delicately, on his bed. "So when can I got home, then, if you can't do anything here for me?"
"As a matter of fact, you are free to leave now, just first take your medicine."
"Yeah, yeah, I will," Lee lied, spying the nurse walking down the hall with everyone's breakfast.
"All right, I'm leaving. But please take you medication, and take it easy, all right?" Dr. Maddun requested as he turned to leave and closed the door.
"Yeah, right," Lee said under his breath when the door slammed shut. He quickly found his clothes and called Billy for a ride home. His car was still at the stakeout site.
Part 3
"Amanda?" Dotty called up the stairs to her daughter. She had had a peculiar return the night before. She arrived back at the house wearing someone else's clothes!
"Yes, Mother?" a little worse-for-the-wear Amanda replied automatically.
"Darling, are you all right? You looked terrible last night! What happened?"
"Umm…well," Amanda thought hard. "The project we were watching develop kind of…backfired, and, well, it was all just a big mess. I don't really want to talk about it." She decided to change the subject. "Happy Thanksgiving. Where are the boys?"
"They're down here, waiting for Aunt Lillian to arrive."
"Oh good. Did you put the turkey in the oven?"
"Yes I did, dear. It's cooking now. Your apple pumpkin pie looks delicious!"
"Thanks, Mother. I'm going to go take a shower."
"All right dear."
Amanda sighed and turned back into her room. 'If only Lee would come crawling up my trellis and tell me everything's okay,' she moaned. Turning on the water and stepping into its steamy aura, she once again hoped it would relieve some tension from her body. She still felt disgusting. She had taken a shower last night, but still couldn't shake the images from her mind.
'Lee was just lying there, totally motionless, before my eyes.' She replayed the scene over and over and it still scared her. 'And what did he say to me when he opened his eyes? He screamed at me! You would think he'd be a bit more understanding. I didn't mean to distract him. If only I hadn't come to tell him about Billy and Francine…' But she'd thought that already. She had, and she couldn't change that now. 'Well, I can at least try and make it up to him. But how?' She thought hard until an idea struck her. A smile spread across her face and she smiled at her own craftiness. She would be able to see him today!
Part 4
Lee walked into his apartment and slammed the door behind him. He was not in a good mood. He hadn't taken his medicine, his stomach area was killing him, and he wanted to see Amanda. Billy had just dropped him off downstairs with the orders to relax.
"A lot of relaxing I'm going to do now," he grumbled to himself as he daintily lowered himself onto his couch. For a moment he just sat, looking around his apartment. He had nothing to do. He lowered his head into his hands and started to reflect upon what had happened the past few days. He could remember some more of what had happened by the time Billy had showed up at the hospital, and what he didn't know, Billy had filled him in on, including what happened to Amanda, which he was particularly interested in, much to the pleasure of Billy.
'Ya know, I probably shouldn't have yelled at Amanda. She didn't mean to sneak up me; she just wanted to tell me something. It wasn't her fault that those two thugs jumped out of the dark and attacked me. They almost attacked her, too!' A sudden sense of possessiveness washed over him, and his jaw clenched and his eyes narrowed. He took a deep breath to release his anger. Billy and Francine had caught the two adversaries.
'I must have looked pretty terrible, the way she looked at me. I mean, could she help it if I looked frightening? Francine made a face and even Billy looked away. I must have looked positively hideous. No wonder she was crying. Could anyone blame her?' He shuddered as he remembered the look on her face. She had looked so hurt, and then extremely mad. She must be furious with him.
'I can't believe I let her down! Good thing Billy and Francine turned up. I wonder what she's doing right now?' A smile spread across his face. 'Maybe I'll call her and ask her to pick me up some food at the grocery store. Oh, no wait! Today is Thanksgiving. Well, I can still call her anyway. If I don't find out how she's doing soon, I'm going to go crazy!'
He reached for the phone, to the best of his ability, and dialed her number. The phone rang for a moment, and then a light voice answered.
"Lillian!?" the voice accused angrily. "WHERE ARE YOU? The boys and I have been waiting at least an hour for you to show up here, and the boys are just DYING to go outside and get Amanda's floor all dirty again, and-"
"Umm, no, this isn't Lillian. Is Amanda there?" Lee said with a slight chuckle and a shake of his head. Dotty was too much sometimes.
"Oh. She's busy right now, may I ask who's calling please?" Dotty asked, taking out a piece of paper to jot down the number.
"Oh, no, it's okay. I'll call back later sometime. Happy Thanksgiving."
"You, too. Good bye now." Dotty hung up the phone.
Lee sighed and put his phone down too. 'I could still go and see her,' he thought. He started to jump up, and then realized that with broken ribs, that was a little easier said than done. He let out a frustrated scream and sat back down again. Running a hand through his hair, he skimmed his apartment again.
He spotted a bottle of brandy and, as best he could, limped over to it and was about to pick it up and take a long drink, when he noticed that color of the liquid contained inside the clear bottle. Its color was a translucent brown that caught the light from the early morning sun as it danced in pretty little circles and eddies inside the bottle, like Amanda's eyes, only lighter.
Groaning, he put the bottle down and decided instead to just take some aspirin. Amanda would be proud of him, anyway. 'Well, I suppose it could be worse,' he thought with a chuckle. 'I could be Lillian.'
Part 5
"Mother!" yelled Amanda. "I have to go run a quick errand! Can you manage without me for about an hour? I'll be back before Aunt Lillian gets here, if she ever does arrive, and the boys can help you finish fixing dinner," she screamed, rambling on and on, hoping that Dotty wouldn't play twenty questions with her.
"Amanda, darling, you know that I trust you, but why on earth do you have to go out right now? We have everything we need for the meal. This doesn't have anything to do with that film company of yours, does it? Tell me they don't have you working on Thanksgiving?" inquired Dotty in a disgusted tone of voice.
"No, Mother," sighed Amanda, "This has nothing to do with IFF. A good friend of mine just got hurt pretty badly, and, well, he's all alone for Thanksgiving, so I figured he'd appreciate it if I went to see him today," she explained, avoiding all the details, not realizing her mistake in telling Dotty that her friend happened to be a "him."
"Him? Amanda, is there something you're not telling me?" Dotty asked, raising her eyebrows. Oh, how she wished Amanda had a man in her life, someone more than a friend, with his own hair, of course.
"Mother, I have to go, and to answer your question, he's just a friend. If he was more than that, don't you think I would have told you about him before this?" she said exasperatingly.
"All right, all right, I believe you. But I have an idea. No one should spend Thanksgiving all alone in front of the TV, which I'm sure he's doing. Why don't you invite him over for dinner? We have enough food to feed an army here, so it won't be a problem," she said, hoping Amanda would agree. She could tell that when Amanda said they were "just friends," she wasn't being completely honest by the way Amanda had answered her question with a question. What would it hurt if she played the role of matchmaker a little?
"Mother, he was hurt very badly in an accident...he broke his ribs. Nine of them. He can barely move, so I thought it would be nice to take some food over and bring Thanksgiving to him," she explained.
"Oh, dear, that's terrible!" Dotty exclaimed, quite shocked. "Yes, yes, go now! Tell him I said to get better!"
"Okay, Mother, I will," Amanda said, rolling her eyes. Sometimes she felt like a teenager trying to sneak out of the house. "Goodbye! Bye Phillip! Bye Jamie!" she screamed at the top of her lungs.
Stepping into the crisp air of the November day in Arlington and getting into her reliable station wagon, Amanda was lost in her own thoughts, all having to do with Lee. When she had seen him lying motionless after the two thugs had played toss with him, she had been so worried about him, and then when he hadn't opened his eyes after a moment, she had been so scared.
'I sure have a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving,' she thought to herself. She wasn't quite sure where Lee's feelings for her stood yet, but since a few months ago, they had been spending more and more time together, and their relationship seemed to be growing deeper and deeper every day.
Stopping abruptly, she realized that she was in the parking lot of Lee's apartment. Getting out of the car, she could feel her heart beating a mile a minute inside of her, and she didn't even know why. She kept telling herself that she had nothing to be nervous about, but lately Lee had the effect of making her knees turn to jelly at the mere sight of him.
Ringing the doorbell, she cleared her throat, sure that her voice would tremble when she spoke.
"Yeah?" she heard a blunt Lee ask. He was just about to go get that aspirin and fall asleep on the couch dreaming of Amanda.
"Lee? It's Amanda." She hoped she hadn't come at an inopportune time, but from the sound of Lee's voice, she could tell he was in an ill-tempered mood. But then again, who wouldn't be in a bad mood with nine cracked ribs?
"Amanda? What are you doing here?" Thoughts began racing around in his mind. He knew that she cared a great deal about him, but the fact that she had left her family on Thanksgiving to come and visit him proved to him just how much she cared. And he couldn't have been happier to see her.
"Well, ah, I came to see how you're doing," she said, "and to take care of you," she added in an unusually shy voice.
"Oh, Amanda, you didn't have to come you know," he said, not wanting to sound desperate. Noticing the hurt expression that fell onto her angelic face, he realized how bad those words had come out. 'Why do I always stick my foot in my mouth around her,' he screamed in his head. "But I'm really glad you did come," he reassured her promptly.
"Well, I figured you were all alone here with a bottle of wine and a football game, and, well, no one should be alone on Thanksgiving. I brought you some food. I hope you like turkey...you're getting a lot of it! And you can test my specialty, apple pumpkin pie! The boys just love my pies. You're lucky you're getting one. I saved it especially for you. Usually they're completely gone right after I bake them!" said Amanda, laughing. Opening his fridge, which happened to be empty except for a few bottles of wine, she put all of her home cooked food inside of it. "Now you can eat whenever you want to, it's all right here," she told him proudly, hoping that he'd enjoy the Thanksgiving pie."
Walking towards the chair he was sitting in, she shook her head. "You shouldn't be sitting up, you know. Do you have any blankets and pillows anywhere?" she inquired.
"Amanda, I know what you're thinking. There's no way you're gonna get me to lie down all day," he said, trying to persuade her with that begging smile of his.
"Aww, come on Lee, how are you ever gonna get better? I'm going to personally see to it that you lie down if it's the last thing I do!" she ordered. "Now, where are the blankets and pillows again?"
Sighing, Lee gave in to her persistency, not being able to say no to Amanda. Boy, could she act stubborn sometimes, but she sure looked cute when she was determined. "In the closet," he said.
"Now was that so hard, Stetson?" she chuckled.
Amanda quickly gathered them up and made a cozy little bed on the couch for Lee. Helping him up, she gently put her delicate fingers on Lee's injured ribs and lightly stroked them. Once he was on the couch, she covered him up with his warm fleece blankets and propped him up on the pillows, making sure he was in a comfortable position. "There you go. I promise you you'll feel better once you rest a little," she whispered.
"Okay, okay," said Lee, pretending to act disgusted, but not succeeding. Amanda could see through him like you can see through crystal clear glass.
"Uh huh, you will. You know, the boys are exactly the same way as you. They'll never just stop and rest and let someone else take care of them, but you know, once they do, they always feel a hundred times better." Amanda realized she was rambling, but when she got nervous, she could never control her motor mouth, and sitting alone with Lee in his apartment definitely put butterflies in her stomach.
"So, when do you have to get going?" Lee asked her, secretly hoping she'd be able to stay a little longer.
"Ummm, I probably should get going. Aunt Lillian's supposed to be at the house any minute now, and I said I'd be back before that to help get dinner ready."
"Yeah, I know."
"You know what?"
"That your Aunt Lillian is coming."
Amanda glanced curiously at him. 'How does he know aunt Lillian is coming?' she wondered. 'Did he call the house? He must have. How sweet. He was checking up on me. I guess that means he's not mad.' She breathed a sigh of relief.
"Anyway," she continued, "I let it slip to Mother that I was coming to visit a man...what a mistake! You know what? She practically had your place set at the table, that is, until I told her about your accident," laughed Amanda.
"Someday," thought Lee, not realizing he had said it out loud. 'Awww, smooth move, Stetson,' he screamed to himself. Thinking up some lame excuse, he quickly said, "Ahem, you know, someday I can meet your Mother and the boys, or something."
"Uh huh," said Amanda, her heart bursting inside of herself. She laughed at the sight of seeing the infamous Scarecrow, always cool under pressure, squirm. "Well, yeah, I guess I'll talk to you later, then."
"Yeah," Lee said, sounding a little disappointed. "Amanda, you know, I'm really glad you came."
"I'm glad I came too! Now remember," she added in her motherly tone of voice, "you've gotta rest to get better. Now I know you're not a very good patient, but you just take care of yourself, okay?"
"Don't you worry, I will," he said, smiling his mischievous grin.
"Uh huh," said an unconvinced Amanda. Walking over towards the couch where
Lee was laying, she leaned in towards him and planted a kiss on his cheek.
Smiling, she said, "I hope you feel better soon, Lee. Happy Thanksgiving!"
"Happy Thanksgiving, Amanda!" Smiling, Lee realized how much he had to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, something he hadn't really put much thought into for years. 'I wish Amanda could've stayed,' he sighed, but he knew that she had a family to go home to. 'Someday, Amanda, I'll be the one carving the turkey at OUR family's Thanksgiving. Someday...'
The End…