Disclaimer: I don't own the situations or characters portrayed herein. I'm just playing with them for a while.


Rumors of My Death Part 1

He was used to being a guilty secret. None of his girlfriends had ever brought him home to meet their parents or even mentioned dating him, since no parents would ever have approved of him. All his life he was, put simply, the type that parents warned their daughters about.

So when Amanda called him Sunday night to ask if he could swing by the house and pick her up for work in the morning, he was surprised. He was even more surprised to hear Dotty and the boys in the background, telling Amanda to say hello for them. And then, for the first time in his life, he heard the mother of the woman he was romantically involved with say, a little muffled by Amanda's hand over the phone, "He is such a nice man."

It was all very new and thrilling. The fact that he was accepted at face value as Amanda's "gentleman friend", as Dotty put it so politely, was heartwarming. He was assumed to have always been a good person, because Amanda herself was. She had clearly never told her family that he used to be a rascal, and he fervently hoped it never came up.

He found out the hard way that morning at the King house was a far busier time than the afternoon or evening, when he usually showed up. Mornings apparently involved a rodent of an unknown species named Luke Skywalker, wadded up homework rotting in a gym bag, a teenager messing with his Corvette's fuel injector, and too-long and too-friendly phone calls between Amanda and Joe.

It was a lot of information to take in in only five minutes.

When they finally got settled in the car, he asked the question that had been burning a hole in his tongue ever since Jamie said hello: "What's Joe up to these days?"

Amanda didn't seem too interested in what Joe was up to; she was looking at her newspaper.

"I don't know, he wants to have lunch. I think he's got something on his mind."

"Yeah, you," he said, ill-advisedly. He knew jealousy was pointless where Amanda was concerned. She never could see that every man who met her was almost instantly smitten with her. He still couldn't quite believe his own luck at having her fall in love with him in return.

She scoffed. "Oh, come on."

"I've been waiting for it since he came back," he insisted.

Of course Joe was interested in Amanda. Who wouldn't be? She was beautiful and smart and charming and lovely and everything that was right with the world. She was also way too nice, and she had no idea that Joe might be mistaking her natural kindness for interest.

"I'm not even gonna talk about that," she said, dismissing his concerns easily, as if he were the crazy one to consider it.

"'Hope springs eternal' as they say, right? Remember what he said?"

"Are you kidding?"

Why would he be kidding about the best thing that ever happened to him?

"No. You're a different woman than the one he left behind. You're more exciting, more vibrant, more beautiful…"

"I'll have to agree with that," she said with no small amount of satisfaction, still looking at that dumb newspaper.

Fear made him honest. "Amanda, I am a man, okay? I know these things. You're a beautiful woman and he wants you back."

He knew full well that when — if, he told himself firmly — he lost Amanda's love, he would fight with everything in him to get it back. He could only assume Joe would feel the same way.

Amanda didn't seem to understand his reasoning, but she did seem to realize how much this was bothering him. "You're serious!" she said, chuckling in disbelief. "I can't believe it."

Was it so hard for her to believe that she was worthy of love and devotion? Was it so hard for her to see her shining worth and her intrinsic attraction?

Joe had really done a lot of damage, and he hated how much she forgave him. Couldn't she keep a few healthy grudges at least?