A/N Thanks for all the fabulous feedback, you guys are awesome! And thanks for everyone's encouragement to do The Cat. That's next. No pressure!! :) Seriously, think good thoughts for me...I just hope I can deliver.

Relinquishing to Comfort

I stayed at Adam's the next day until he had to go to work. Then I took as long to go home as I possibly could. It was anybody's guess to what would greet me: stern disapproval, or indifferent silence. It depended on what they had heard. And how bad things were there.

I walked in the front door and had just made it to the front stairs when I heard my father. "Where have you been?" He didn't sound angry, just tired.

"I was at Adam's."

He looked at me with alarm, as if realization just dawned on him. "Did you and he..."

"No, Dad! Adam Rove and me? That's....No!" How could he entertain that idea? It wasn't even remotely a possibility!

"I heard about a party last night. Were you there?"

"Yes." I never lied to my father. Sneaking around defeated the purpose of a rebellion.

"Some girl got taken to a hospital."

I sighed. "I know. I'm the one that found her."

My dad frowned. "Grace, I don't want you getting mixed up with people like that."

I looked at him incredulously. "You're afraid that a girl at a party is going to make me start to drink? Take a look around you! It doesn't take a party for me to know I don't want to drink!" I yelled, and then turned and ran up to my room for the night.

---

The next morning I arrived at our spot before him. It wasn't like him to be late; most of the time he beat me there. I glanced at my watch, and then searched for him in the direction he would be coming.

Was he getting bored with it?

Sitting down on my skateboard, I tried telling myself that it wasn't a big deal. That happened in high school, why high school romances were a mistake. It was better to end it now anyway.

"I was wondering if you would be here." A pair of Jeans appeared in front of me.

Relief overcame me. I wanted to yell, to remind him that he was the one that was late, but I didn't. Instead, I looked up and shrugged. "Why wouldn't I?"

He sat down beside me. "I tried calling your cell yesterday."

"I was busy. Besides, article 2, paragraph 2, no phone calls."

"Phone calls aren't obligatory," he corrected, looking me squarely in the eye. "I didn't call out of obligation."

"But I didn't have an obligation to call you back."

He looked like I had slapped him.

I sighed. "Look, I just...was out, and stuff. I wasn't ...It's not...." I didn't know how to explain this to him.

He boldly brought his fingers forward and brushed the hair off my face. "What happened, Saturday?" he whispered.

I shook my head. "Nothing, just, you know, the contract."

He dropped his hand and sighed in frustration. "How do you do it? We were having a great time, Grace, but then two minutes later you wouldn't even acknowledge my existence. Did it have something to do with Jud—"

"No," I said, shaking my head. "It's not a big deal!" My voice was louder than I wanted it to be, and he ducked his head, silently absorbing my irritation. I forced my voice to return to normal.

"Can we not talk about this? Please?" I offered a small smile to show him I'd rather do something else.

He looked into my eyes for a while before leaning forward, and I looked at him after his eyelids fell. He is so very kissable, I thought as I closed my own.

---

It was a few days later that we got our physics assignment and I heard him say, "Grace wanted some help on a project."

I stiffened when I heard him say my name. Why did he insist on challenging every rule? The provision about working together for school was in case we got teamed together. Working together by choice was not an option. We were running in gym class, and I ran back to him "I don't need your help, pencil neck. Never will."

I turned around and kept running, but he followed me. He quickly caught up, due to his longer legs, once again ignoring the contract, to my dismay. When the P.E. teacher told us to do twenty sit-ups, commanding, "Grab your partner's ankles," we were stuck together. He looked at me uncertainly until the teacher told him, "Grab, Mr. Girardi." Without any way out of it, he took hold of my ankles and I began my sit-ups.

"Look," he said. "I just thought we could work on the assignment together. I mean, we did it last year, and, uh, it wasn't a problem."

I lay back on the floor, considering his words, and then felt his hands gently rub my legs, sending shivers down my spine.

"Are you fondling my ankles?"

"Yes," he replied as if he had every right. "I am."

I lied there contemplating how such an innocent thing like hold someone's ankles for sit-ups could be such a turn on before I snapped back to the issue at hand.

"Look," I told him, doing a couple more sit-ups, "if you can't handle the terms, the terms which you agreed to, then maybe you can't handle me." Not having the will to fight with him, I got up and ran away, ignoring the teacher's demands to return.

Why was he doing this? Things were going well, weren't they? But he kept pushing. He knew, when he signed on to this, that I wasn't like other girls. Why couldn't he leave it alone?

---

Being accosted by your stalker probably doesn't make your stomach lurch in pleasure like mine did. Still, the term applied when I almost ran into him.

"Girardi, waiting outside the girls' bathroom is a little stalky," I told him as I continued forward.

He ran a few steps and stepped in front of me. "No." He said stoutly. "You said that if I can't handle your terms, maybe I can't handle you. Well, Grace, I think it's you who can't handle me."

Did he really think that would convince me to let him continue to break the contract? "Don't push it, Girardi, unless you want your make-out time cut," I told him as I walked past him.

He got in my face. "This is more than just about making out, Grace!" he argued, his eyes full of frustration. "I mean, I like the making out, don't get me wrong, but we have a relationship here whether you like it or not."

I looked away from him. He wanted more, but he had no idea what he was asking of me. "There are things you don't know about me, ok?"

"Exactly! It's that very indeterminacy that attracts me. I--I don't know why you're so scared by it."

Anger flared inside me at his accusation. "This is about my privacy and you not respecting it, that's all!"

"Ok. Fine." He waved his hands, washing them of this. "Then be private and alone, because clearly that's what you want." His expression, usually so kind and open, was cold and hard, and his words shot through me like a fiery arrow.

I walked away from him, furiously blinking back the tears that stung my eyes as the full meaning of what he had said sunk in, settling in a hard, cold stone at the bottom of my stomach. Blindly, I entered the library to work on my Physics paper and found an empty table in the back. Somewhere in my mind was the idea that I needed to start my research, but all I could do was stare blankly at the table as a new emptiness crept inside of me.

He didn't want me.

No, that wasn't true.

He thought that I didn't want him. He was wrong. Dead wrong. He didn't know that the moments we shared together brought me more comfort and warmth than anything else. He didn't know that his mere presence caused my head to spin and become remarkably clear at the same time. I did want him. I didn't know how much until I lost him.

What happened? The answer was uncomfortably clear. It was too much to hope that I could have a normal, happy relationship. Normal wasn't an option for me. There was so much he didn't know, things he couldn't know. Or things I couldn't tell. I kept them hidden for a reason; when people found out, they treated me differently. They treated me with either pity or contempt, and getting either from him was unthinkable.

Nobody knew about my mother, it was easier that way. For everybody.

"Then be private and alone, because clearly that's what you want." It wasn't, but I didn't have a choice. Somehow I always knew that we couldn't last. He deserved someone that would allow him to care for her openly and respond in kind. He deserved the chance to find that.

And maybe I could adjust to once again being alone.

---

He was standing there, waiting for me as I turned the corner of the stairwell. I teetered on my heels, fighting against my instincts to run the way I came. I didn't think I could face this conversation, but his eyes pled with me, so I sighed and continued down the stairs beside him.

"I've thought about it," he told me, "and I do want to work within your terms."

"Well, you shouldn't. It's totally unfair." It was typically sweet of him to reconsider, but he was right, and I couldn't ask him to continue like this.

"See, that's the thing. I don't think they are." He said as we walked down the hall. "I mean, basically, I've been asking for a total regime change in your public and personal life. But you know what? I looked up every major political revolution in the last hundred years, and not even the most violent ones were sudden. You know, they built up over years of dissatisfaction and unrest."

I listened to him with growing amusement. It was just like him to pull out an analogy. It didn't go unnoticed that the analogy was a political one. "Did you make a special effort not to use a science metaphor?" I asked.

"I'm trying to expand my range," he affirmed.

"So basically you're saying what?"

He looked at me with more patience than I deserved. "I'm willing to wait. Hoping that the... revolution will gain some small foothold in the outer regions, such as, maybe an occasional exchange of words in public." I listened to him and considered his words. He would wait, but that implied that there was something to wait for. Would I ever be able to give him what he wanted?

He held out a paper cup full of dirt, and I thought about his request: public acknowledgement of his existence. He deserved at least that, compared to what I had asked from him. What he was giving me.

I took the cup from him. "What's this?"

"Well, even warring tribes have been known to make peace offerings in, you know, recognition of their commonalities."

"Did you just make that up?"

"Yes," he said, and I smiled at his unashamed openness, "It's-it's a seedling for a sunflower. It's hard to believe it can grow over eight feet tall. I stole it from Joan."

I snorted at the thought of Joan's garden. "I can't believe she's still at it." We began walking and I gazed at the plant, touched by the gesture and what it might represent.

"You know, her hypothesis actually has promise. I mean, the idea of a community garden can be tied to some key aspects of quantum theory," he said.

"Lay it on me," I said. He gave me a quizzical look, so I explained. "I can't get through my paper. It's too much research."

Still looking at me with a small smile, he said, "Hey. We're having a conversation."

He had to point that out, didn't he? "Not anymore," I said, ducking my head "Just lay it on me."

"Well, um... according to one of the principles of indeterminacy, you know, there's a certain level of uncertainty to every equation..."

He continued explaining the garden and settled into the familiarity of science. It was comfortable talking with him like this; I hadn't in a very long time. It reminded me of working with him on the science fair, and realized that I missed that part of our relationship.

He was my friend.

He was becoming so much more.