Chapter 29
Chloe headed back to Lois' apartment to wait, while Clark had gone to check out Lex's greenhouse. As she walked into the Talon she's surprised to find one Lana Lang seated on the steps leading up the apartment. There's a box in her lap filled with an assortment of items.
"Hey Lana, what's up?"
"Hi Chloe." Lana stood up from her perch on the steps in order to close the distance between them. Chloe takes the opportunity to glance down at the box and then looks questioningly back up at her. Noticing the look of confusion, Lana quickly proffers an explanation for the parcel.
"Um, it was pretty crazy when we had to evacuate the dorms; I guess I took a few of your things by mistake."
"Oh, okay, um…thanks." While she recognizes some of the contents, others don't appear to belong to her. She's also a little perplexed as to why Lana would think to return them to her now. Unsure as to what else to do, she picks a few objects at the top of the pile and comments on them.
"Oh, wow, I was really missing this, uh...half-chewed eraser...and this is your library book, which is two weeks overdue. Lana, what's going on?"
Lana takes a deep breath, smiles, and gives Chloe a sheepish look. "I know it's pretty pathetic to bother you with this stuff. Um, I'm not sure why, but I felt like I needed some kind of an excuse to come by and talk with you."
Chloe gives her a quick smile of understanding. "Explanation accepted, come on, let's go upstairs."
As they enter the apartment, Chloe leaves the box over on a table, removes her handbag, and hangs it over one of the table's chairs. Lana shuts the door behind them and pauses to slowly look around the place that served as her home, for a time.
"It seems like it's been a lifetime since I stayed here."
Chloe lets out a light-hearted laugh and replies, "Maybe but transitioning from this place to an expansive 16th century mansion doesn't sound like too bad of a deal to me."
Lana follows her as she walks over to the kitchen and takes a seat at an ell-shaped counter. The counter doubles as a divider for the kitchen space and an eat-up to bar.
"Possibly, but even with all its rooms, the mansion's felt pretty full as of late."
Befuddled, Chloe lets out a hearty laugh at the notion that the Luthor residence could ever feel crowded. She retrieves a couple of bottles of water from the refrigerator and offers one to Lana, who gratefully accepts it. While Chloe opened and took a drink from her bottle, Lana only studies the one in her hand. A moment later Lana looks up from the bottle, embarrassed by going off in thought, and opens it to a drink as she continues.
"Although I've repeatedly made it explicitly clear that our relationship is over with, Lex seems convinced that I'm dragging Clark's ghost around with me."
"And our narcissistic billionaire didn't figure on entering into a relationship that included a ghost as baggage, right?"
"Something like that…Chloe, I have this terrible feeling. I feel like if I commit to the kind of relationship Lex is looking for, I'm afraid that I'll to lose who I am. I'll simply be what all the papers are calling me, 'The Next Lex Girl'."
"Well, Lana, if you don't trust him now, then committing yourself to a serious relationship won't cause that dynamic to change."
"It's just I keep blaming my trust issues on everyone else. And the truth is the person that I don't trust is myself. I keep..." Lana laughs quietly, remains quiet for a second to organize her thoughts, and finding them continues speaking. "I haven't always made the right decisions. And by the time I recognize those wrong ones, I'm too far gone to dig myself out of the mess I'm in."
Chloe looked down to study her bottle of water for a moment, and then looked back up to speak. "Lana, I can't stand here and tell you if Lex is the right guy for you or not; ultimately that's a decision you have to make. But there's one thing, since I've been romantically involved with Clark, that I can tell you. You can't just sit safely on the shore and watch all the blissful people splashing around. I mean, sometimes the quickest way to remember how to swim is just to dive in."
"Thanks Chloe, I appreciate the advice. The other reason I came by was about Clark. When he stopped by the mansion trying to find Lex, he passed on the good news about you two. I'm really sorry for not having been by or called to talk to you about it, it's just…"
"Hey, I get it Lana, I imagine even minus the craziness of trying to define your relationship with Lex; just getting things back to a semblance of normalcy would be a priority. Honestly, I've regretted not being there to tell you about us too. It's just, after everything that's happened I didn't want it to look like…"
"You don't need to apologize Chloe; Clark and I are ancient history. Even before we officially called it off, it seemed like we'd drifted so far apart, that we might as well have been from different planets. To tell you the truth, I wasn't too surprised when he told me that you two were together."
"Aww, come on Lana, you had to have been a little surprised. I mean, it was always obvious to everyone around here that Clark was in love with you. Okay, almost everyone, Clark was on the low side of slow to drop the moniker of you two being 'just friends'. You should have heard Lois right before our graduation; she figured she had Clark's future all mapped out."
"You're kidding?"
"Nope, she had Clark attending community college with a major in agriculture, and minor in law enforcement. Then you and he were going to have a typical, small town church wedding."
"Don't tell me, she saw the minor in law enforcement as being needed so he could head up Smallville's Community Watch Program, right?"
"Wait it gets better! Lois said that he'd also join the local bowling league, take over the farm, and by that time, you two were going to have Clark junior in the oven."
"Wow, it sounds like Lois was doing a pretty poor impersonation of Cassandra Carver."
"Well, you're close; Lois told me a while back that she took one of these career assessments in a magazine. The assessment recommended she pursue a career as a radio disc jockey. You know, that's actually a pretty good evaluation now that I think about it. The way Lois can ramble on about things, you could guarantee that there'd never be any dead air."
"Yeah, except when the FCC would have to step in to censor her rants. You've heard her in the past when somebody gets her worked up. There's no question she was raised living on army bases. If the FCC thought George Carlin's seven words were bad, wait until they hear Lois!"
"Well, if Howard Stern is able to get away with it, I'm sure Lois would find a way to succeed. You know Lois, once she gets it into her head to do something…"
"Yeah, good luck to the person that's in her way."
"All joking aside, sorry, I still run to my attempts at humor as a defense mechanism; are we okay? There's a lot of water under the bridge, over the dam, or wherever the water goes between all of us. Having played the sounding board for Clark for so long, it's no secret that your relationship with him has had more up-and-downs than a roller-coaster. I don't know, I guess I've felt like the third wheel for so long I…"
"Chloe, you can stop beating yourself up, okay?! A long while back we made an agreement, remember? We said we'd define ourselves by what we do, not who we date. Or don't date."
Chloe takes a sip of water and does a quick scan of her memory. "Yeah, that seems to ring a bell. As I recall it was back during the fiasco caused by Allison Sanders, a.k.a. Desiree Atkins, incident. Didn't we come up with that as way to keep Clark from affecting our friendship? I guess some things don't change over time."
"That's my point Chloe; I haven't forgotten how much you and your dad helped me out through high school, especially when I went about getting emancipated from Aunt Nell. You've been very much like a sister to me ever since then, and I don't want that to change; especially over who we are or are not dating."
Lana pauses to take a drink of water and continues. "You've given me a lot to think about in regards to Lex, but you can put your mind at ease about Clark. While I agree that we played the 'together then not together' game longer than necessary, I assure you it's a game we've retired from permanently."
Giving Chloe a reassuring smile, she continues, "I may have been a cheerleader in high school Chloe, but that doesn't mean I miss everything."
With a confused look on her face, Chloe asks, "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Just that even when Clark and I were together, I was felt he was more at ease opening up to you."
"Lana…"
"No, don't misunderstand me, I'm not blaming you or saying that you were the reason why Clark and I did not work."
"Then what?"
"I'm saying, I think that's what will make your relationship with Clark work. Beyond that, you two have this…I don't even know how to put it into words…but there's a trust there that anyone can see. So, what do you say, do we renew our pact on friendship?"
"Cool." Both laugh, lean across the counter, and give each other a hug.
