PART 15: Desire
By the time August rolled around, Jubilee was knee deep with various X-Men training sessions. Her time was occupied most of the day and Logan saw less and less of her. In fact, he really only saw her in their martial arts lessons. With Jubilee slowly being pulled away from him, he found himself alone most of the time. While he usually butted heads with the men on the team, he genuinely enjoyed the company of his female teammates. Unfortunately, Jean was often busy with Scott and Betsy wasn't the warmest person these days, although Warren was spending a lot of time with her as of late. Rogue and Remy were attached at the hip, so that left Ororo.
Their conversations still revolved around their teammates. It was if they couldn't bring themselves to talk about their personal lives. It was X-Men talk or no talk at all. Logan had settled for that in April, but it was beginning to grate on his nerves. Four months of reminiscing was driving him absolutely mad.
It didn't seem to bother Ororo at all, he noticed. She was content to talk about their past adventures and exploits as X-Men. She also enjoyed talking about their time spent with their teammates off the field. He didn't know what to do and he certainly didn't want to drive her away by changing the subject. But honestly, how many stories could they discuss before they began repeating them? Eight years of memories had lasted for four months' worth of conversations. It was beginning to get difficult to find something new to discuss.
"Good afternoon, Logan." Ororo greeted, meeting him for lunch as usual.
"How'd the flying lesson go?"
"Well, Jubilee has finally stopped screaming when we drop her, so I suppose it's an improvement." She joked. "Of course, she has been handling herself extremely well, but until today she couldn't hold in those incredibly loud screams of hers."
"I know the ones." Logan said.
Ororo nodded, but found she had nothing more to say. It was becoming quite apparent to her that her plan was slowly failing. By keeping the conversation away from more personal matters, Ororo had hoped they would fall back to their old ways. Unfortunately, she didn't count on how difficult it would be to keep their personal lives out of their everyday conversations. She found herself coming very close to slipping on more than one occasion. Luckily, she always managed to cover up the cracks in her façade easily by always turning the conversation to something that had happened years ago.
She constantly wondered what would have happened had she been stronger. Ororo knew it was her own weakness that caused her heart to ache everyday when she ate lunch with Logan. If only she had been strong enough to admit her feelings were worth fighting for, then she would've stayed the course. She could've made it work. Her mind continuously replayed that horrible fight by the lake and she cringed each time. While normally Ororo never regretted her choices, the one concerning the man next to her weighed heavily on her mind daily.
Goddess, could we still be happy together? Is it too late to save what we had started so many months ago?, she thought. Shaking her head, Ororo slowly put her glass of water to her lips.
Whenever she thought of these questions, she was always unsure of the answer. In her heart, she thought they could be happy. But in her mind, she always reminded herself of the destruction that ridiculous argument had caused to her friends and home.
Logan watched Ororo casually as they sat in silence. Her eyes were unfocused, staring ahead but not really looking at anything. Her lunch sat untouched while her fingers traced circles along the rim of her glass. The slight line was forming between her eyes. Her lips formed a thin line and she seemed to almost hold her breath. The expression was one she often wore on a mission when she was weighing the pros and cons of the situation the team was in. Logan couldn't help but wonder what she was debating within her mind.
"I'm sorry, Logan, but I just remembered Hank asked me to join him in the lab." Ororo suddenly announced.
It was a lie, but she needed to get away from him before she asked him to give her a second chance. The question was on the tip of her tongue but she dared not utter it.
Maybe we could try to pick up where we left off in January. Would you like to join me for dinner?
It was such a simple question but the answer frightened her to no end. Instead of being the confident woman she had grown to be, Ororo fled like a frightened child to the confines of her room.
Sorry it's so short…the next chapter is longer and just about done. I'm just rereading it and it should be posted by the end of the day…I swear, things will get better between them…it's just taking a while. ;-)
What did you think? Any reviews, good or bad, are welcome!
Jubes