Disclaimer: I don't own the situations or characters portrayed herein. I'm just playing with them for a while.
The Three Faces of Emily
He opened his mouth to speak, and to his horror the Scarecrow voice spoke, instead of the Lee Stetson voice.
"I need you."
"You need me?"
"I need you. I came to ask you out."
Her eyes were wide. "You mean like on a…"
That Scarecrow voice was still talking. "A date." She nodded, puzzled, and he chickened out entirely. "Yeah, well, sort of." The Lee voice was back.
Maybe she responded to the change in voices, but her tone was relieved. "Oh, sort of! Oh, you mean it's, it's business. It's not, uh, you know, it's not pleasure." She blushed and stopped waving around her paint samples.
Where had he lost control of this ridiculous conversation? Would it not have been better, simpler, to just knock on her door and say he had an assignment?
Of course it would have. But the anticipation of finally taking her on a drive in his car, in fancy clothes, had clouded his judgement and reduced him back to being the ladies' man that Scarecrow had become.
He was still talking, to his own displeasure. "It is pleasure. For you, it will be pleasure. Me, I may have to work just a little bit, but for you, it's just straight out pleasure."
They both made some uneasy, noncommittal noises.
"Well, if it's gonna be such a lot of fun why don't you just take the girl that you're seeing now?" She started fiddling with a picture on the fridge, and his insides turned to ice. "Um, who is it, uh, Margot? She's the current one, isn't she?" Her smile was brittle.
How did she even know about Margot? Francine must have mentioned her.
"Margot and I aren't seeing each other anymore."
"Oh, well, you do go through them."
He felt a flash of fury that she thought him such a philanderer. Even if it was, ultimately, true.
"Wait, now, look, she took off with an airline pilot, okay."
They'd dated for two weeks. When he had finally realized she couldn't hold a decent conversation for longer than a minute, he'd left out his fake wedding ring for her to find in the shower the next morning. So, while she technically might have taken off with a pilot, he'd handed her the plane ticket first.
"I'm sorry," Amanda said, as he rose and walked closer to her.
"Okay."
"Yeah."
Back to business. "Now, there is a diplomatic reception tomorrow night at the British ambassador's house, and I think it would look a lot better if I had someone that I —"
"You just mean you need a person —"
"Yeah, just somebody to walk in with."
No, that was not at all what he meant. He was a yellow coward.
Get a grip on yourself, Stetson.