Page 9 of Rejected
There it was. That word.Torment. She could see it written plainly on his face. He was in torment. She just could not accept it.
“Why?”
“Because I love you.”
Would he stopsayingthat?
“Look,” she said, trying to be sensible.Let us be sensible, for once. We can be sensible, even if it’s Laurie and me.“You cannot blame me for being surprised, to say the least, given your recent behavior. Laurie, I have barely seen you since we’vebeen in London. I thought I was losing you too, along with everyone else.”
“Never.” Laurie was shaking his head, and looking up to her face with such determination in his eyes that it scared her. No, it wasn’t just determination. There was something else there too. Something primal, possessive, something… Something akin to hunger. “You’ll never lose me, Jo.”
“Stop calling me with that childish name! How dare you come here, at my sister’s wedding, and call me that, and say those things…”
“What things? You act as if I have betrayed you in the worst way, instead of laying out my soul to you, and binding myself to you in the most intimate way known to man.”
That was it.
Jo could not stand it anymore. If he referred to another ‘intimate’ thing, she would go mad. She stood on shaky legs and started to walk away, but Laurie’s hand, a manacle on her arm, stayed her.
“Do not run away from me, for heaven’s sake.” There was such desperation in his voice that she stopped mid-step. She could not resist the pleading in it. “Please.”
She turned around to face him.
“Fine,” she said. “Let’s talk this through. Teddy, these things you think you are feeling, they are not real. Besides, we are… You are my best friend. My brother, almost.”
“I. Am.Not. Your. Brother.” Laurie’s eyes were spitting fire, his whole body coiled in anger.
He shuddered a little, as if the very thought was repugnant.
This was new, too.
If felt as if it had been only yesterday when they had sat on the floor of her father’s library and laughed themselves silly over the caricatures of the fops and dandies that were rumored to be walking around London. They had plotted their future together, half in jest: They would join a pirate ship and run away. They would hide themselves in a cottage deep in the countryside and never have to deal with society. They would…
But that had been two years ago.
Now suddenly the thought of being her best friend filled him with rage.
And, worse still, it madeherfeel somewhat resentful too. She did not understand it. Why did it sound so strange when it had felt completely natural a minute ago? What had changed within the past few minutes?
Laurie’s idiotic, tortured eyes and his stupid, passionate proposal, that’s what.
“All I’m saying is that we are as ill-suited to romance as a fish and a bird,” Jo started saying, but stopped when she saw a muscle tick on Laurie’s jaw.
He pressed his lips together, but did not move his hand away or get up.
“I was wondering why you have been distant lately, and I think I know why,” she went oncarefully. “It is because we must leave our childish games behind. I mean, today is proof of that, isn’t it? It is time to follow in Meg’s footsteps, find a husband for me, a wife for you,” at this Laurie went gray about the mouth and swayed a little, but Jo went on, “and do… whatever it is we are supposed to do with the rest of our lives. But here is the problem: I don’t want to. I’m boyish and headstrong and I don’t fit anywhere. So everyone will move on, grow up and leave me behind, won’t they? And you as well.”
Laurie was silent, his jaw working.
“You stopped coming around to our house the last two weeks before we came to London,” Jo said, trying to hide the trembling from her voice. She hated how vulnerable she sounded. She had vowed never to let him see how much she’d missed him.
How much it had hurt.
“It’s because I couldn’t stand it, Jo,” Laurie replied. “I had reached my limit. Being near you and not telling you how I felt… I could no longer endure it. Being near you was pure torture.”
“Well, that’s polite,” she murmured.
A strangled laugh came out of his lips. “You know very well what I meant, you rogue.” He hadn’t called her ‘a rogue’ in years. He’d given it up at around the same time when it had begun to be ‘inappropriate’ to practice sword-playing together. Aunt March had caught them at it; it had not been pretty.
