Lame writer is lame. I have a long list of excuses, which include Christmas, New Year, church choiring, a novel I've just started working on, and the nomination season of the Highclere Awards. This is a shorty and written with midnight brain, so many apologies! Anyway, I've got one more week off work, this time with no siblings to interrupt, and there has been a huge and painful shortage of A/B fic of late, so I figured that instead of whining about it, I'd try and get back on top of this. :)
Chapter 10
How much longer did he have to wait to talk to Anna? John had given her words so much thought over the last two days. He even had a decision. Yes, he was almost entirely certain of his decision, of his future. He had to do this right. He loved her.
But this was impossible! How was a man to tell her something like that if he could never get her alone? She wouldn't be so cruel as to show him what he had done to her deliberately, but he did understand it now. No wonder she had been so upset the other night, this was killing him. It must have been torture for her to live through it alone, to be treated… to be treated as he had treated her.
How dared he? He had been angry, yes, and even with good reason. She had hurt him badly, and he had a right to feel it. But she didn't have to feel the brunt of his anger. He had put her in such a difficult situation with their secret. He had borne it, but it had been so hard for her. And not only did she have that hardship to endure - seeing him manage it must have been awful, too. Had she doubted the strength of his love for her? Had she doubted what he felt, when he was all the while burying his feelings for her sake? She might have been wrong to act as she did in ending everything, but he had been wrong a dozen ways before that. They both had. There were things to talk through, choices to be made, but they could work it out. He loved her so much and he would not spend any more of his life without her.
But he could never seem to catch her alone!
So, eventually, he gave up on waiting, and that afternoon, he settled down in his bedroom to try and write.
Anna,
As you may have guessed, I have spent the last two days…
Anna,
I have thought of nothing but you since we spoke, and I can't help but feel…
My dearest Anna…
Anna,
This has been the hardest decision I have ever had to make. It seems…
Anna,
I love you. I am an idiot and I wish we might…
Marry me…
John sighed wearily as he threw yet another scrunched up sheet of paper at the bin. Why couldn't he do this? The right words just didn't come. He could do nothing to express to Anna what he felt. No, this would not work at all. Emotions and words did not match well for him. There would have to be another way to plead his case.
That night, he slipped the ring back into her pocket, taking care to brush his fingers against her in just the right way that she would notice without betraying anything. The next morning, at breakfast, he could see the chain against her neck. And now everything would be alright.
Mostly.