Conversations 20

"But I was going to cheat on you. I needed to feel more... more... Oh, I don't know."

"You didn't get the chance to cheat, though. I stopped you. I rescued you from your own mistakes."

"Aagh. You drive me crazy, sometimes. 'Mistakes!' They weren't mistakes! How can you ever trust me in the future?"

I managed to smile, feeling frozen tears crack and shatter on my cheeks.

"I know, I know," she said, with a tremendous hiccoughing sigh. "You've never trusted me before, so why would you trust me now?"

I thought about that for a long time.

"Exactly," I said finally. "What would be different? If you do want something different from what we have, just come and tell me and we can part ways. I love you, and It would break my heart completely, but I'd let you go in peace. Until you do, however, I'll keep checking up on you. It's that simple. I can't change that part of me. And, if you ever felt completely determined to have an affair and to hell with the consequences, then why not just split with me before it happens? It might not be as exciting as playing around behind my back, but the consequences wouldn't be any fun at all, and you know I'd find out. I always do, so..."

"I don't want to do that -- and I can't see how that would be 'exciting', I just wanted to feel loved."

She saw my hands, gasped and immediately took my handkerchief and hers and wrapped them around the bleeding knuckles.

"Then we're fine," I continued as she nursed my wounds. "You love me. I love you. I don't trust you. The three legs of a good marriage."

"Love without trust." She shook her head, looking slightly stunned and very overwhelmed.

I nodded in agreement, slipping back into my calm place, drained and exhausted from that freakish outpouring I'd never experienced before -- that explosion of emotion. Somehow I felt at peace, tired but content.

"That's just how it is. If you do try and cheat on me, I'll try and prevent it. If I'm successful, we'll continue within my distrust. If you're successful, we split immediately -- with no second chances. It's who I am. I think it's too ingrained to change."

"This is so weird," Andrea complained. "I don't want to cheat on you. I never really did."

She sighed unhappily. "Until I did."

I shrugged, and we stood hugging each other until my feet went numb from the cold.

"You should have told me before," she finally grumbled, her voice soft and tired. "I spent years thinking you didn't love me, and every time I realised you didn't have faith in me it got worse. You didn't love me completely. Not as much as I loved you."

"You could have said something at any time."

"I worried that if I brought it to a head, it would force things to happen that I didn't want."

"You certainly forced things out in the open tonight," I said, testing that sense of pain within me once again, like playing a tongue over an already aching tooth.

"Yes," she said. "Stupid way of doing things, I know. I'm sorry I even thought of cheating. I'm so sorry I hurt you. Although I guess part of me wanted to hurt you as a way of showing you how hurt I was feeling. But at the same time, I love you and never want you to be hurt. Oh, I'm not making any sense."

She wasn't. But I understood what she meant anyway.

After a few moments, she brightened up again.

"But at least now, I know you love me."

I sighed. I don't think I could go through that storm again. "How many more ways can I show you that I do?"

"Well, I can think of a dozen right now," she said, and suddenly there was a sparkle in her eye that could have been a reflection of the moon. Or not.

"You want to tell me about them?"

"Take me home, and I'll write them down and pin the list on the fridge. No! I'll hang it on the bedroom door."

"So, sort of like the twelve days of Christmas."

"Mmm, yes," Andrea said dreamily. "Oh, even better, an advent calendar. I'll make one. Every day, we open a little door, and you find a new way for you to show me you love me."

"That sounds like it could be a lot of fun. Unless it's polishing your car during a snow-storm, something like that."

"You wouldn't do that for me?"

I groaned. "Yes, I would. If you need it."

She laughed with delight. "You do love me!"

She hugged me enthusiastically. "No dreary car polishing. Just lots and lots of loving fun."

"What about Santa Claus?" I asked, noting how much warmer she suddenly seemed in my arms.

"Oh, he can go fuck himself," she said casually. "Or his reindeer. Or the elves. Or even Mrs Claus if he's that desperate."

"But not you?"

"No, not ever!"

"I'll watch over your every move; you know that. It's not personal, but I don't trust you and never will."

"So?" She shrugged, clutched my arm to her as we started walking back. "If somebody had said before that I would be content living that way, I would have called them a maroon. But it feels like I can live with that, now that I know it comes from completely loving me. Maybe I'll even feel safer than ever. I certainly won't feel neglected. It's a strange, but happy feeling -- contented."

Snow began to fall, quickly turning our hair white.

"Then Merry Christmas, my love," With my coat sleeve, I gently wiped her face clean of the snotty remnants of her crying and kissed her.

"Merry Christmas!"

I looked into her eyes and saw only love and reflected love there. She blinked rapidly as a snowflake settled on an eyelash.

"Oh, come on already! Take me home; we have to have mistletoe somewhere!"

"Can we stop and get Christmas stockings?" I asked.

"What? Why? We still have those we got for our first Christmas. I was going to hang them over the fireplace tomorrow. I love those, and besides, It's tradition!"

"Not those. I want some you can wear under a sexy elf costume."

There was a pause.

"Did you peek behind the first door of my advent calendar before I even made it? Shit, you are good at this!"

A happier ending than usual for the end of the series, I know. And readers hoping for the sharp tang of BTB are not delighted. But I just couldn't finish it with a 'Bah Humbug' and a congratulatory slap on the back from the Grinch.

Adios for now, muchachos. I'll be back.

Trust me!

PS I have other pieces that I'm planning and plotting and sweating over right now. I'm also writing a companion piece on the whole concept of my Conversations; where it all comes from, how it developed, where the inspirations came from and why I chose to look at them all from different directions. If you're interested, keep an eye out. If not, stay well.