“There’s no crying in Magecraft!”
― Maximus_Damage
Jonathan looked at me with desperation in his eyes, and he appeared exhausted, sweat trickling down his forehead. He must have just finished working. My smile dropped, and I tipped my head to the side in my default listening pose.
“I can’t keep doing this, Maxine,” he croaked, closing his eyes for a long moment. Before I could ask what he meant, he continued, “We’re talking to each other now like we’re friends, which is a huge step up from before. But it’s not enough! Don’t you feel anything deeper toward me after what we did last weekend? I know it was at least ten years for you since anything like that had happened, but nothing like that has ever happened to me. Not the sex, but the connection between us. I was so sure you felt it too, that you were in it with me. And now I get updates like I’m anyone else you know and are friendly with. Is that how you feel? About me, about us?” His voice steadily rose, not in anger, but in something resembling panic.
Someone could have tipped me over with a feather in that moment. I swallowed hard and schooled my face into as neutral of an expression that I could make, but I could feel myself blinking rapidly. Do not cry, I told myself. Don’t you dare. Warrior up, already!
“Jonathan, I felt a lot of things last weekend,” I said, sitting down on my sofa, careful not to jostle the phone too much. “It shook me, hard, getting so many of my defenses beaten down at once. I had only planned on being more outgoing in my life, I hadn’t planned on …” I trailed off.
“On us. You can say it, Max. You hadn’t planned on us.” His voice was firm, but I swear I saw him pleading with his eyes.
“No,” I agreed softly. “I hadn’t planned on anything that happened between you and me. That first time I kissed you, I know I was plastered, but I remember feeling very surprised, even though I wanted to kiss you.”
Plastered was probably an understatement. I was never drinking tequila again. I swallowed hard and fumbled for my librarian brain to kick in and organize the jumble of thoughts in my head where Jonathan was concerned. But it wasn’t happening; the jumble was still there.
“Please tell me I’m not alone in this, Max,” he said, licking his bottom lip and still making those kicked puppy eyes.
I couldn’t pretend to be ignorant of what he was talking about. He had already admitted that he had feelings for me at one time, and given his reaction to our casual contact since he went back to Florida, I had to assume he still had those feelings. So the big scary question before us now was, what did I feel?
I thought of the email I had drafted on my lunch break and then had been too afraid to send, almost shocked by the depth of my own desires I had voiced in it.
Jonathan:
I'm beginning to feel that we are doomed to a Regency era romance, if a romance is what this is. We write letters, we talk via text. The written word has replaced the spoken, and the miles have replaced the embrace. I've been thinking a lot about what happened between us while you were here, and now to be thrust into a situation where we can’t touch and can’t seem to talk beyond the mundane every day, makes me wonder what it all meant.
Did spending time together irrevocably change us? At this point, you are essentially indistinguishable from my other friends. I don't want you to be indistinguishable. I don't want to write letters and never see your face. What I do want is a bit more difficult to define. I want to hold you again. I want to whisper secrets as we lie under the covers, and sing out every song we know together. I want to cook for you and have you tell me how terrible it is, then dance with you in the kitchen while we wait for the pizza to arrive.
Yours,
Max
What he was saying, what he was brave enough to give voice to, wasn’t that far off what I wanted in that letter. But now that I was actually confronted with the feelings, I was confused. How could I feel this deeply about someone I’d only just met in person? It was all so new and scary, and I felt like I couldn’t trust it.
“I’m going to be completely honest here, because I want there to be nothing but honesty between us, Jonathan,” I started carefully. “I don’t know how I feel. If I did, I would tell you right now, I promise, and I don’t make promises lightly.”
He closed his eyes and made a low, self-deprecating chuckle. “I know you don’t. You’re so damn honorable that way. Well, let me make myself crystal clear, even if you’re not ready to hear it. I love you. I’ve been in love with you since we met, and I’ll stay in love with you because I know I have no other choice. You’re it for me, Maxine. You.”
I felt my eyes widen, and that neutral expression fell right off my face. “You can’t know all that, Jonathan. We just met last week,” I said, almost whispering.
“We met when I was seventeen, and you damn well know it,” he countered, that kicked puppy look gone and replaced by determination. “I can’t begin to count the number of conversations we’ve had, the amount of hours over the years we’ve played together, the two of us. Think, Max. If you really hated me, would you have kept grouping with me? Questing, dueling, fighting, whatever, we’ve been in each other’s lives. You have to acknowledge that.”
Were he and Lois trading notes behind my back? And what did it mean that both my bestie and my … my … Jonathan, were saying essentially the same thing? As his words sunk in, I knew this wasn’t a point I could argue with him. Jonathan believed himself to be in love with me. Lois had guessed as much, from his behavior and words. They were both right in that there was a lot of history between us, so even though we hadn’t met in person until a week ago, we really had met and been something for a long damn time.
But what would it mean for me to acknowledge his love for me? This morning, I had thought I needed to declare myself somehow. Now that I had the perfect opening, I wasn’t brave enough to commit to anything. I was scared that this was too much, too soon. Even in my rowdier college days, I had almost no experience with an actual boyfriend, and forget romantic love. I had liked the variety of playing the field too much.
What had changed since this morning, when I was so keen to put out those feelers about how he felt about the concept of us? Was I discombobulated that he had been the one to bring it up, not me? And over Skype, to boot, where I couldn’t hide behind my avatar? He looked at me expectantly, but I didn’t know what to say.
“The stuff you said when you were here about not deliberately hurting me over the years, about thinking I was a decent person all along; you meant that,” I said, the sincerity in his earlier words only now resonating with me.
“Of course I did,” he replied. “I’ve been in love with you the whole time. I didn’t always know how to express my feelings or frustrations. I was immature, and I was attention-seeking. I know that now. And I’ll apologize for how I’ve behaved, over and over, if you need me to.”
“No, I believe you,” I said, and I realized I meant it. He had no reason to lie. He really believed he loved me. Or rather, he really did love me.
“Well, thank God for that much,” he said, looking away and scrubbing his hand over his face.
“Jonathan?” I started, his name a question on my lips. “I’m scared that I can’t trust this yet.” When his face fell, I added, “Honesty, remember? It’s all so new, and I’ve thought about you in such horrible terms for so long. What if I go down this road with you, and it crashes and burns in our faces?”
He closed his eyes and exhaled loudly, then nodded. When he spoke, there was a tone of defeat in his voice. “Yeah, I get it. Look, I gotta go. I reek and have to shower, and then I should make some supper for Mom and Olivia before I crash. I won’t be online tonight, I’m tired.”
Suddenly afraid he was going to disconnect, I blurted, “Jonathan!” I caught him by surprise, and his eyes darted back up to the camera. “I’ve missed you. I don’t know how I feel about you, except I’ve never felt like this before either. It feels like this horrible pit in my stomach, but somehow not horrible too. I don’t know. I mean, give me a little time to think about all this, please?”
A grin split his face. “Yeah, you can have time, sweetheart.” I smirked. I was no sweetheart!
We waved at each other, and he said, “Talk to you tomorrow, Max. I know you’re heading to the jam then, so when should I call you?”
“Same Max-time, same Max-channel works for me,” I replied, returning his smile. And with a click, he was gone. I looked to She-Ra and Catra, both buzzing around my legs for food, and said out loud, “Now what?”
“He straight up said he loves you, no holds barred, while you were on Skype, probably looking like a deer in the headlights?” Lois asked, sipping her iced tea, while I drank the last of my boxed wine.
I was lounging on the bed in the gaming room, that sandalwood and sunshine smell still lingering around me, facing my laptop. I was wearing my flannel pajamas with a kitten print this time, and my hair was still in its now slightly frazzled fishtail braid from earlier.
“Yes! I’d never seen him like that, Lois, but then I only ever saw him for four days. Though I’ve talked to him plenty, and heard his voice through the game, and he’s never sounded like that. He was practically desperate.”
“He was probably desperate to get through that thick skull of yours where your own self-worth is concerned, Maxine. I know you’re trying to come out of your shell or tear down those walls around you—pick your metaphor—but that can’t happen overnight. It has to be a sustained effort over time, or you’ll fall back into bad habits and thought patterns. And one of those is thinking that you’re not worthy of affection or love. I mean, why else would you have denied yourself romantic or sexual relationships for over a decade?”
I sighed. “Lo, do you always have to go right for the freaking jugular?” I asked, downing the last of my drink. I put the empty glass on the bedside table and noted that it was now past eleven o’clock. I should be in bed instead of drinking alone and getting life-coached by my bestie. “Can we talk about you for a minute, instead of rehashing the hash that is my love life?”
Lois laughed. “But your life is so much more interesting than mine! All I do is work a job I don’t love to pay rent on an apartment in a city I don’t love anymore, and of course I have Elsa to take care of.”
That gave me pause. “Wait, what’s wrong with New York? You used to be nuttier than a squirrel about the city.”
“I know, but I’m getting older, Max. I’m a single mom, raising a daughter in a city with no backyard, no room for a dog, or a zillion other things I had growing up in the country. I remember chasing lightning bugs and grasshoppers, not finding a condom in the sandbox at the park. I wonder if I’m doing right by her, raising her so differently than how I was. I want her to have those same kinds of childhood memories we both have. And on top of it all, my company is downsizing. I’ve got the feeling I’m on the chopping block, and I don’t know what to do next.”
My mind whirled with this new information. Lois and I had never met in person in the ten years I’ve known her, but she was like a sister to me, truly. Her parents were out of the picture, having disowned her when she had gotten pregnant and married a man of color. He lived in Europe now and didn’t always send back child support regularly, and I worried what would happen to her if she did lose her job. From what I understood, it barely provided enough for them to get by. I couldn’t believe I was so wrapped up in my own self that I didn’t know how she was feeling about the city and her tenuous situation at work. A seed of an idea formed in my brain, and then sprouted. I thought of my mom, alone in that big house, with three spare bedrooms.
“So Lois,” I said, leaning closer to the laptop. “It sounds like you want to make some changes too, especially if you lose your job. Ever consider moving?”
“Where?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at me. I grinned wide and raised my eyebrows a few times suggestively. If Mom wouldn’t welcome the company—which I was sure she would—then we could always convert my gaming room into a space for Lois and Elsa. It would be cramped in the cottage with a child, but all we had to do was open up the back door and she’d have all the room she could want to run and play in.
“Well, we do have plenty of lightning bugs,” I said.
Thursday melted into Friday, and I had another Skype video call with Jonathan after work. He seemed calmer, more focused, but something was still a little off. He was probably anxious, waiting on me to figure out my own heart. Hell, I was anxious waiting on me to figure it out. I kept waiting for some kind of signal to whack me upside the head and tell me what to do. Barring that, I was going to have to plow along with my life and wait for my heart to quietly reveal itself. I dismissed that drafted email as a flight of fancy during a lonely moment and decided not to send it, at least until I knew for sure that was how I really felt.
The cupcakes I baked after my Skype call were still a bit warm when I dropped them off at the dessert table at the jam session. A lot of folks nodded at me, or smiled, and asked about my mom; the predictable, everyday type of conversations. But what I didn’t expect was the keen interest from the good citizens of Green Valley in my gentleman visitor from last week. I should have known I was wading into shark-infested waters, and the town gossips could smell blood. I made it out and back home relatively unscathed, with a few comments on how nice it was to finally see me with a man, and how much Mom would love a grandchild before I was too old to have them. I couldn't decide which irked me more, being written off as a spinster or this new and overeager interest in my theoretical love life.
The weekend dawned bright and sunny, full of the glory of autumn in the Great Smoky Mountains. Days like this were why I’d agreed to host the gathering here in the first place. The trees were like various shades of fire, and the wind blew softly but cool and crisp. I couldn’t stay inside and game all day like I would on a typical weekend. It was too nice outside, and a walk across town to Mom’s sounded perfect. After breakfast, I tossed on a Doctor Who T-shirt, a light hoodie, and faded jeans, then pulled my backpack from the closet and loaded up a few games. I laced up my running shoes and stifled a yawn, resisting the teeny part of me that longed to climb inside some cozy yoga pants and take a seat in my comfy gaming chair at the computer. As I was leaving my cottage, I caught a glance at my reflection in the mirror by the front door and realized I should go to Knoxville and visit some plus-size clothing stores. I couldn’t keep wearing my old, worn out college clothes, and frumpy, oversized business casual wasn’t going to cut it anymore either. I resolved to do that before going back to work on Monday.
My mind cleared in the fresh autumn air, thoughts of Jonathan bubbled up. I shook my head, almost like a wet dog, and instead thought about Lois and her situation. The Green Valley job market wasn’t exactly booming, but she could probably find something in the region. And it’s not like I would charge her rent on a house that was already paid for, thanks to what was left to me by my grandparents, were she to move in with me. I was sure Mom would feel the same about her house.
This morning, mom and I would hopefully have a nice, long talk about it, and about my situation with Jonathan. I had a therapy appointment next week in light of what I had gone through at the sheriff’s office, but there was something special about my mother. She always had this way of putting things into perspective for me. Her neighborhood crept up on me faster than I though. I checked my watch and realized I made some good time. Go me!