Chapter 10: Libby In The Middle

Look out, dear readers: we're going into fast-forward mode again!

There's not a whole lot to tell about the rest of February. Well, there are things to touch on, but nothing vastly important happened... nothing worth recounting in detail, anyway. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times - it was the freakiest of times, and I felt like a golden thread myself, that's for sure.

School and work went on just fine, blah blah blah. Let's face it - no matter how interesting the story about the lobster truck, the hurdy-gurdy and the missing Palm Pilot is, that stuff is unimportant in the grand scheme of things, so I feel I ought to sum it up with "blah blah blah" and move on.

Mom? She and her new family up and left, evidently - without so much as a goodbye to anyone. I asked Dad, but he said they never called again or anything. It's almost funny; I was tensed up and ready to meet my mother head on when she tried to de-lesbify me, and as it turned out she didn't even care enough to talk to me about it. Goes to show how badly she wanted to work things out, huh? Man, do I loathe her with a passion.

Who don't I loathe? Ophelia. When I told her the unabridged story, she mostly listened and understood without doling out a bunch of potentially useless advice. Y'know, yeah, it would've been great if she could snap her fingers and put all the pieces of my life back together, but sometimes it's nice to have somebody who's just there for you... and once we got past our close encounter of the lurid kind, it was almost like it had never happened. So much so that before I knew it, I actually had a girlfriend - scratch that, "friend-girl" - in the city; somebody to hang out with, talk girl talk. Hell, any female companion would have been nice, but this girl... only Sabrina has a bigger heart. Adymm was one hundred per cent wrong about her.

Speaking of which - no, I didn't patch things up with Adymm. That, perhaps, is the saddest part of all this; we didn't talk for over two weeks! It amazed me how much I missed not having him there to touch, and to touch me. Don't get me wrong, I tried to reach out - maybe not as hard as I could have, but there was so much crawling around inside my head, everything demanding equal attention. It's not like he made the effort, either! Besides, you'd think talking would be unavoidable, what with band practice, not to mention those three gigs we played... but he always seemed to magically have to do something, or be somewhere else, or talk to someone else. Anyone but me.

Unlike us, though, Ophelia and TQ patched things up well enough; TQ groveled, Ophelia melted, and everything was in its right place. In a way, I was the "other people" she wanted to see, and we saw plenty of each other on the subway. Despite being a painful reminder of my own failure, it was somewhat reassuring to live vicariously through their relationship; in fact, she actually came to one of our practices, though she didn't do much but hang around and watch him play (or stare off into space).

Little did I know, in the midst of all this, how much more I was going to have to go through in a few short weeks...

There's one conversation I feel compelled to write down here before we get to that, though - from early March. There wasn't anything else special about that day, but Ophelia said something to me that got things moving in the right direction again...

- i o i o i o i o i o i o i o i -

"God, Keanu is desirable with a capital 'hot'!"

Ophelia nodded sagely. "You speak the gospel truth, my friend."

"Would you look at that ass... God damn, I wish Adymm were here!"

It didn't take very long before she opened her mouth to say something; then she bit her lip, her eyes flicked back and forth, and she turned back to the TV.

"What?"

She glanced at me sideways. "Nothing, just... you're going to have to tell him, you know."

I rolled my eyes, reaching for my mug of cocoa. "Not this again..."

"Libby," she sighed, "how can you not? All the poor guy wants is for you to let him in, and what do you do? Exactly the opposite!"

"Ophie..." It wasn't so much a nickname as a shortened version; think "Sophie" without the "S".

"I know, I know, none of my business."

"Glad we understand that. Now, let's just watch the movie."

We returned our attention to "The Matrix" (not MY choice, I assure you), and we soaked up a good two minutes before I blurted, "C'mon, I can't!"

"What?" she asked distractedly as she dug into the popcorn.

"I can't tell Adymm everything! What about you and me? If I tell him about me and Sabrina, I have to tell him about... well, you know."

Her hand had stopped halfway to her mouth. "Oh. Y-yeah, I guess so. But, um... I think I'd be okay with that."

"Really? I mean, you don't care if he finds out we-"

"That's not what I said," she laughed - a very nervy laugh, at that. "It scares the hell outta me, being like, really, truly exposed, but... I could deal. Meanwhile, I do get that you can't, and it's okay if you're not ready. There's just..."

When she didn't finish, I paused the DVD. "What is it? Speak, young woman."

She let out a long, gusty sigh before turning to face me properly, legs folding under her. "This is gonna sound really, really mean, and I've been trying not to say anything. But you have to know I only wanna help, right?"

"You're always trying to help. You're like Smokey The Bear that way."

She gave me a really funny look before shaking her emerald head out. "Whatever. Anyway, the thing is... I get not being ready to spill, I do. The only problem is, you don't have an infinite amount of time to lay your cards on the table before your poker pal checks outta the casino."

"I'm not exactly following - are you saying I should challenge Adymm to five-card stud?"

"Stop making fun of my analogies!" she growled playfully, throwing a pillow at me. "What I'm trying to say here is... you have to tell him soon, 'cos if you don't, he may not keep waiting for you."

My eyebrows knitted. "What... what are you saying? Ophelia, I- I don't wanna lose him."

"C'mon," she said simply, "you have to know it's true; he won't keep waiting around for you to bridge that gap. Sooner or later, he's going to write off your relationship as a failure and try to move on, so if I were you-"

"No, no, I get what you're saying now." But that didn't mean I'd fully absorbed it, even though I restarted the movie and pretended like I had.

Adymm might leave me? Whatever you might think of my poor little brain for it, that possibility actually hadn't yet occurred to me; I guess I thought he'd simply go on waiting for me to apologise, or give him the Westbridge lowdown, or whatever he was waiting for. The very idea that I could lose him forever - or, worse yet, that he might find somebody else - tore me apart, picked me up and shook me to the core of my being. That simply would not do, y'know?

So I devised a plan - an evil plan, both underhanded and genius. And it was going to take careful consideration if I was going to pull it off.

- i o i o i o i o i o i o i o i -

It was dark in TQ's dad's garage; I shifted uncomfortably. Would he come? My fingers stung from the hot wax, and I kept sticking them in my mouth to cool the burning. It was taking a while for him to get there - then again, he was always as late to practice as he could manage these days. To avoid me, talking to me. Well, maybe he wouldn't - not this time.

"Guys?" I heard his voice echoing. "Hello, is anybody here?" A few seconds of silence - then footfalls on concrete. "Jesus, it's dark as a crypt in here - did Mr. Q forget to pay the light bill again?" Just as he rounded the corner of a LeSabre, he was saying, "Is anybody even back h-"

He stopped short as I said, "Just you and me."

I could see his eyes move from my face to the bottle of wine next to me, and from there to the hundred or so candles flickering, to the boombox on the hood of a Chrysler playing moody jazz... and finally, to the red lace teddy I was (barely) wearing.

"Wha- uh, what is this?" he stuttered, eyes fixed quite below my face.

"Whatever you want it to be," I said, hoping I had succeeded in making my voice as husky as possible.

He caught himself, shaking his head and staring deliberately away from me. "I don't want it to be anything. If we're not having practice, then I'll-"

"Stop."

He did. I got up, and again his eyes were following my hips as they swayed toward him. "You're not going anywhere. No matter what happens next, you're staying right here with me, Mr Koriander."

"Uh, but we, uh-"

"Shh." I laid a finger on his lips, staring into his eyes. "Words are very unnecessary."

- i o i o i o i o i o i o i o i -
END Chapter Ten