Disclaimer: Don't own them; don't profit from them, just like to play with them.
I feel like I'm emotionally drained right now. This last month has been an emotional roller coaster for me and every time I start to catch my breath something new happens.Walking, then not walking, contemplating suicide, taking a life, a serial killer X5, the pictures, my family's secrets, financial ruin and now this.
I never started out to live my life in the middle of a secret governmental war involving genetic engineering, biosynths and some quasi-military lunatic. Eyes Only was originally no more than an extension of the great journalistic tradition of muckraking and expose of corruption and graft. There have been journalists that have done that for over a century, I just had a little more technology. Then I met Max. and things started to snowball.
A rational person would probably have walked away when they found out what she was. Not me. In my arrogance I thought I could use her and not get involved. Peter, my old bodyguard, had my number all right. "Looking for your new girlfriend?" he said. Maybe I was, even then. I have to admit she hit me like a ton of bricks the first time I saw her.
"A person has a right to know what they're getting into when they start a relationship" I told her tonight. She responded that you never know what you're getting into with a relationship. I can't claim ignorance though. I walked into this one with my eyes wide open.
Poor Charlie, he didn't know. He met Tinga and fell in love with her and had a son with her. Suddenly his nice normal life is turned upside down, his wife turns out to be "not the girl next door" and he has soldiers after him with machine guns. I have to give him credit. After the initial shock and his first response which was to walk away, he turned out to be everything Tinga thought he was. Charlie will be okay and so will Case. I hope Tinga will be too but I'm not optimistic. Max told us what Brin was like after her reindoctrination. Point in her favor, Tinga has something Brin didn't have; she has her love for Charlie and her love for Case. If anything can keep her sane that will.
Charlie was an eye opener for me tonight. When we were talking about him and Tinga I was thinking about Max and me. He made the assumption everyone seems to make that Max and I are a couple. I gave him my standard denial but when he asked if it was because of what Max is, I didn't really have an answer for him. I realized at that moment that I don't really have an answer to that for myself. When I told him that he was involved in this thing like or not, I was talking about myself as much as about him. About me and about Max.
Why aren't we together? I have feelings for her, I think she has them for me. True there are obstacles - her past, my wheelchair, but are they real or just excuses? I wasn't kidding that night when I showed her my poem. That was the closest I've come to telling her how I feel and I was shaking when she was reading it. "Completely exposed and vulnerable" I said to her and it was true. I'm afraid to come out and tell her, afraid she won't return my feelings, afraid she will leave and I will lose her for good. So I skate around things, giving her looks and oblique comments but never coming out in so many words.
Charlie knows how we are. I could see it in his eyes when he was talking to us about Tinga tonight. That was a message he was giving us. Time together with the one you love is precious and you never know how long you really have. I felt like he was telling me "Don't waste a minute, not a second, of the time you can have with Max." Max knew what he was saying, I could see it in her eyes when she turned to face me. I saw something more too, something I've been afraid to hope for.
It's time we did something about this relationship of ours. Everyone else can see it; we need to admit to it. I'm afraid of emotional involvement, afraid of rejection but I think I'm finally more afraid of losing Max. I want whatever minutes and seconds we can have. I don't know if she can love me the way Tinga loves Charlie but I know I already love her. If she loves me backā¦
