six
“I am so angry all the time,”
Jo said at length.
She didn’t know why she said it, except that it was true.
I am angry right now.
It wasn’t a reason for rejecting his proposal. It was just a fact. She hadn’t told anyone about it, but Laurie nodded curtly, once, as if he already knew.
I haven’t been hiding it as well as I thought.
Or maybe she had hid it, but he had noticed nevertheless. All this time, I thought him distant; but he has been paying attention.
“Have you been writing again?”
Laurie asked.
Jo sighed. Of course she had, but writing was not the source of her anger—it was the only thing that helped. He knows about my writing. Of course he does. He’s probably the one person who knows me so well.
“I have told you before, Teddy, writing does not make me angry. It’s putting my writing aside, finishing it, that does. And if I am to grow up, I shall have to abandon it altogether, don’t you see?”
He took hold of her hands and looked into her eyes.
“You won’t have to with me. You can write as much as you want, I swear it.”
If it wasn’t so absurd, she would have laughed.
“What with you, Theodore? There is no ‘with you’. There can never be, you are my—”
“Don’t say ‘brother’ again, or I swear—.”
He looked murderous.
“My best friend.”
Laurie tried to say something, and instead he made a choking sound.
“Look, I’m sorry, Teddy. I don’t—I don’t want to lose you.”
She was on the verge of tears again, and it made her even angrier.
“Let’s just forget this whole thing happened. Let’s pretend it never did.”
“I cannot. I cannot pretend any more, Jo. I am obsessed with thoughts of you, day and night. I am… I cannot sleep, I cannot eat, it’s been going on for years. Years of this, Jo!”
He was whispering by the end.
She wanted to smack him.
“Stop saying things like that and acting like a… like a lovesick puppy. It makes me want to kill you.”
He was quiet for a second. Then he said in the most impossibly kind voice:
“You are angry.”
His eyes were searching her face.
“More so than usual. Why?”
The way he asked it, so calmly, when he appeared to be about to combust before, destroyed all her defenses. She slumped.
“Why did you have to propose in such a violent manner?”
“Pardon?”
He looked at her as if she’d began sprouting Greek.
“The… the things you said,”
she replied, all the rage sucked out of her at his gentle tone.
“They were too much. If they were real at all.”
She was weak. If her best friend had not transformed into some sort of moronic Casanova, she would lean on him for support.
“I am to blame,”
Laurie said.
“The shock of it… I guess I thought… I hoped that you too felt something for me, that you had an inkling…”
“Well, I did not!”
she was back to yelling at him again.
Why am I like this?
Why is he like this?
Why is he ruining everything? He was all I had left. All I needed. And now he is ruining the most beautiful thing in my life.
He swayed a little.
“What are you doing?”
Jo grabbed his shoulder.
“Nothing, I am… I’m just dizzy. It’s overwhelming.”
“What is?”
“Being near you. I can… I can barely breathe. I get light-headed every time I so much as think about you.”
Laurie swallowed, looked down at his shoes.
“That’s why I tried keeping my distance in the past few months, but it got worse. Good Lord, how can you not have noticed?”
“I have noticed that you have been avoiding me. Spending time with every simpering debutante who throws herself at your—”
“Jo, Jo!”
He caught her hands in his, arresting her gaze with his eyes. They were wide and frantic. His hands were hot, shaking.
What is happening to him?
And more importantly, what is happening to me? Why, I am shaking as badly as he is.
Even though he was crouched on the grass in front of her bench, he looked huge. Kneeling, he was almost as tall as she. And the way his powerful body was trembling in front of her, completely in her power, was making her feel weak and ravenous at the same time. As if there was a fire burning in her veins. She had never felt like this, ever.
“I hate spending time in polite society, you know that,”
Laurie said in a way that could only be described as frantic.
“I hate every moment of this. Playing the rake? Haunting your brother’s card tables? I hate all of it. I miss you. Did you think I’ve changed? I have not. I am still your Laurie. I tried becoming someone else, for years I tried it, but I couldn’t. How could you not see that I did it deliberately? I could sense that you needed more time.”
“Time for what?”
He bit down on his lip so hard it went white.
“Time for what, Theodore?”
she asked in her most severe voice. She knew how he hated being called ‘Theodore’, but she hoped it would jolt them both out of this nightmare.
It didn’t.
He swallowed, then stuttered as he said:
“To l-love me.”
She flung down his hands, and he winced as if in pain. She knew she hadn’t hurt him—at least not physically, but the pain that visibly washed over him made her recoil.
This was new. Her hurting him like this. This power he had given her over him. As if she could kill him with one word. One look.
Of all the things that have changed, he cannot. He mustn’t change, if everything else does. He is the axis of my world.
Not that I would ever tell him that.
She did not know what do to with such power—he was right again, drat him. She was not ready. And she never would be.
“I don’t love you, Teddy. Not like that, at least. Please simply stop talking—or thinking—about the matter altogether.”
“You might as well ask me to stop breathing.”
She flinched.
“You know, I wished you were as dramatic as this when I was trying to get you to play Count Roderigo in one of my tragedies. Even Meg was better than you, and she hates playing the tragic princess.”
He did not laugh. The smile died on her lips—it was false anyway.
“I am not pretending,”
he said quietly. There was a tone of resignation in his voice that nearly broke her.
“I am not pretending, Jo. I belong to you, whether you want me or not. I am deeply in love with you. I have been losing my mind over you for months. I lost my heart to you years ago.”
“You lying bastard!”
“Jo, come on.”
“You were pretending to be my friend all these years, and inside you had that explosive secret that would ruin everything.”
“I didn’t want to ruin everything—”
“You pretended to play with me, to fight with me, to…”
She got up, too frustrated to sit still.
“I love fighting with you, Jo!”
He was on his feet now, coming after her. His voice had grown soft, pleading. So impossibly sweet. She felt as if she was being seduced, like a heroine in a Greek myth. If she let herself fall, she would drown.
“I love it. I would rather do that for the rest of my life than be bored with any other woman on earth.”
She shivered down to her toes. No one has ever said a more beautiful thing in the world, and no one ever will.
“That is terribly immature, Teddy,”
she snapped, “and it shows, more than anything else, why you are sprouting pure nonsense.”
“Every interaction with every other human being on earth bores me to tears.”
“That is because you are a genius, you idiot!”
“I am not,”
he scoffed.
“If anything, I have been drifting aimlessly for years. I have been wasting my life, not dedicating myself to my studies or my music or to anything else. I am a wastrel and a rogue, or at least I would be if I didn’t have you in my life.”
“That’s complete balderdash.”
Jo flung her hand at him in a most unladylike manner.
“My brother does have me in his life, and he is a wastrel and a rogue, and much worse besides.”
But Laurie was shaking his head.
“One thing I know for certain and it is that I am insanely in love with you. Have been, since a child. But now… It’s gotten worse. Serious. Grown-up, Jo. I want to… I want to devour you and worship you at the same time. I want to marry you and have you as close to me as possible for the rest of my life.”
“Well, then, there is only one thing I can say to you…”
“And what is that?”
“No.”
“Jo, please. I-I can’t go on like this. I’m losing what’s left of my mind.”
“That’s not my problem. You’ve been out of your mind since the nursery. How is that my fault?”
“It’s because of you that I’m going mad. Since forever.”
“You always exaggerate so, Teddy. When did it start?”
He simply looked at her, his eyes tortured, ashamed. Sudden panic took her.
It was finally sinking in: he was in earnest. He had said it so many times, and had laughed none of them. Impossible as it sounded, he was deadly serious. She had never known fear like this.
She was losing him; it was final.
“Teddy?”
she hated how utterly frightened her voice sounded.
He looked down. He never looked down.
“Lord Lowry,”
Jo said, and enjoyed watching him flinch at the use of his title. She never addressed him by it, but these were extenuating circumstances.
“When did you start having these… disgustingly inconvenient feelings for me?”
she spat it as if it were a vulgar word.
“Tell me now!”
“Since I was fifteen,”
he said, head still down.
“Since… You… What?”
“I see you are bereft of speech,”
Laurie said, and there was something ugly in his voice.
“No one has managed it since you learned how to talk, so I guess I have accomplished something today.”
“Fifteen?”
Jo sputtered.
“Yes,”
Laurie replied quietly.
“Do you remember that day on the ice?”
She nodded, mutely.
“I—”
he closed his eyes as if it was painful to even remember.
“That day, as I watched the water closing over your head, I knew. I could not deny it any longer. I screamed myself hoarse as I fought to bring you back to me, and I still have nightmares about not managing… about not…”
His words trailed away, and he took a deep breath.
“I went home that day with a violent cold—well, it was nothing compared to what you and Amy went through, but still—and the terrifying realization that I simply could not live without you. If I hadn’t pulled you out, I would have jumped in after you and died with you.”
She shuddered. Would he stop already? She was beginning to feel ill.
How was it possible that he could have been suffering through all these intense feelings without anyone being aware? Without her being aware?
“I have adored you since we were children,”
he continued, “you know this, but when we got older, and without me realizing, it grew with me. And now, it is not a boy who loves you, but a man. And this is not a boyish infatuation. It has turned into this fire, this burning thing that is swallowing me whole, that won’t let me breathe, that…”
“Stop, please, I’m going to be sick.”
He laughed once, harshly.
“Oh, lovely. That is entirely beautiful to hear from the lady whose hand one is hoping to win,”
Laurie said. His mouth had gone flat, and his lips were trembling. She had not seen that expression on his face since he was a little boy: it was one of utter despair.
“Teddy…”
“I didn’t say anything until now, because you were too young…
“You were too young as well,”
Jo said. He was barely twenty. “Are.”
“I know what I want.”
His eyes were burning as if with a fever.
“I know what I want,”
he said again.
“It’s the same thing at twenty as it was at fifteen. You.”
Dear Beth,
Did these words come out of his mouth?
Obsessed
Torment
Worship
Jumped in after you
Died
Did he
Why did he
How on earth
I can’t
All this time?