It turns out writing is like Pringles: "Once you pop, you can't stop!"
This is a companion piece to Wise Up, though it could probably be read on its own.
As always, all reviews - good or bad - are greatly appreciated!
Woke up this morning, and guess what - I still owe nothing and no-one related to CSI. But playing with them sure is turning out to be a hoot...
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Give Up
She was running late, and by the time she finally got to the lecture, with just seconds to spare, her face was flushed and her chest heaving.
She didn't even notice him at first – she was too busy trying to locate a seat and pulling her notes out of her bag, but as her breathing returned to normal and her pulse rate calmed, she gradually became aware that someone was watching her. And when she looked up, she gazed straight into the bluest pair of eyes she'd ever encountered.
Giving him a small smile, she was rewarded with a lopsided grin in return, and she felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up as a shiver ran down the length of her body.
It was a combination of sensations she would become intimately acquainted with.
She found his lecture absorbing. Not just because of the way his face lit up, or the excitement in his voice, or his obvious enthusiasm for the subject - all of which made him look years younger than she suspected he was. But also because the scope of his knowledge was seemingly endless – he could punctuate important scientific points with a never ending supply of literary quotes and sardonic one-liners.
She found him intelligent, passionate and captivating.
And she couldn't stop staring at the way his eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled.
She sauntered up to him afterwards, hopped onto a corner of his desk, and spent the next two hours chewing his ear off. She had a thousand questions, and he answered every one with a patience and diligence she found endearing.
His intellect was astonishing - and for the first time in her life, she knew what it was to be in the presence of someone whose breadth of knowledge actually exceeded her own. It was an unsettling realisation: both exhilarating and daunting.
The first person she couldn't fool with her shrewdness.
The first person she wouldn't be able to deceive.
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They continued seeing each other almost daily during his time in San Francisco. He took her to parks in search of insects and bullied her into eating a chocolate covered grasshopper – and in turn, she took him to an open air rendition of Hamlet and showed him the best place to go stargazing outside the city limits.
It was comfortable.
It was intimate.
And he never took it any further.
Yet, she always harboured a suspicion that he wanted too. The flash in his eyes, which she glimpsed occasionally, gave him away. Or him scooting up, till he was right next to her with their shoulders and legs touching whenever they sat next to each other.
The way he would lean in really close when he had something to show her.
But he never did anything more.
And when it was time for him to go back to Vegas, he shook her hand politely, gave her nothing more than the ghost of a smile, and drove away without so much as a peck on the cheek.
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She was in the bath when he called.
His voice sounded strained and tired and he wasn't cracking as many jokes as usual, so she simply listened as he waveringly tried to tell her about everything that was going on, about being promoted to shift supervisor, about the crap heap he now had to deal with.
She sat with the phone glued to her ear long after the hot water and bubbles in her bath had both disappeared.
And when he finally dug up the courage to ask her to come to Vegas, she couldn't bring herself to say no.
Understood that it was the closest he could come to admitting he needed her…help.
A few days later, when he asked her to stay – permanently – she tried desperately not to read too much into it. Fought to quash the hope she felt stirring, as she watched the slight tremble of his hands and heard the catch in his voice as he struggled to get the words out.
Kept reminding herself that this was nothing but a business proposition.
It surprised her how quickly they managed to return to the camaraderie, the banter – the flirting. She revelled in any opportunity she got to tease him, sniggering to herself as she watched him squirm while he strove awkwardly to change the subject.
Waiting for the moment he would give up, and simply give her that look.
And for a while it was as good as it had ever been between them.
Which could be the reason why she dropped her defences and made one fatal mistake.
She allowed herself to hope.
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Things between them changed so gradually, that at first she wasn't even really sure whether it was just her imagination or not.
They certainly weren't working together as much any more. Definitely not sharing jokes or stories the way they used to. He wasn't looking at her the same way either, no longer trying to find plausible excuses to surreptitiously touch her.
In Vegas, she spent every waking second at work, in large part because he was there. She had no friends, no distractions, no life outside the lab. And when he started to pull away, her world became even smaller.
She promised herself that she would consciously go about building a life that was completely separate from his. But he exerted some kind of strange spell on her, and like a yo-yo, she always wound up back where she started.
She would make up her mind to leave – he would send her a plant and tell her she was the reason he cared about beauty.
He would ignore her for months, then sit in the interview room and pour his heart out – not to her, but to the suspect in a murder investigation.
She would avoid him, desperately struggling to get him out of her system, and he would walk up behind her, and make awkward attempts to start a conversation.
He was driving her up the wall - hot one minute, cold the next. She couldn't get a handle on him, couldn't figure out what the hell it was he wanted from her.
He seemed to be having the same problem.
He would tell her to get a life outside the lab, then have the audacity to look shocked and hurt when he found out she was dating someone.
He would call her "honey" and cradle her bloody hand in his, but mulishly refuse a simple dinner invitation.
It was infuriating.
But sometimes, just for a moment, she would be reminded of why she stayed.
Having him sit silently next to her after the DUI - no reproaches or recriminations, just a murmured offer to take her home.
Prodding her gently, until she let her defences slip and started pouring her sordid life story out to him. While he - not knowing what to say - just held her hand, and had a look on his face that showed her more clearly what he was feeling, than any of his words ever could.
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These were the reasons why she came to Vegas.
These were the reasons she decided to stay.
And why she still – after all these years, after all the disappointments, the doubts - and definitely against her better judgement – had refused to give up on him.
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