Chapter Four - Dealing - cont'd

This is wrong, James thought. I shouldn’t be doing this. It’s too weird.

But she couldn’t help it. She watched his window, knowing he was home, knowing he was alone. After all, it was 3 a.m. And it was his night off. And she knew Maggie didn’t have the night gene that she seemed to be possessed with.

So she sat in her car across from his apartment, watching his living room glow blue from the TV. She wondered what he was watching. Then she wondered why she was still sitting here. Then she wondered if Superman ever stalked Lois Lane. Not that she thought she was in Superman’s league. After all, if she were, her x-ray vision would answer her first question.

She flipped on her Ipod and Melissa Etheridge started to sing about “watching you.” She immediately turned it off.

The vision from the other day still haunted her and she couldn’t get it out of her head. It was all she had been able to think about. But she couldn’t exactly call him up and say, “Hey, Guy, you been sleeping with Maggie? You been thinking about sleeping with Maggie?” Because that would be weird. No weirder than her holding her own version of a stake-out but weird, nonetheless.

This shouldn’t bother me, she thought. He’s just my friend. She knew she was lying. The two of them had been doing that odd dance that male/female friends seem to do. She felt sometimes that they were only friends and that was fine for her. She adored him and he adored her. Nothing more than Will and Grace, when you thought about it that way. But then there were the times when she could feel the heat coming off of him and all she wanted to do was have him lean over and kiss her. There were a few nights she had to stop herself from doing just that. Those were the nights when he would catch her eye across the table or across the room and not let her go. She held her breath in those moments, waiting for him to say something, anything, but usually those moments were silent. Just his sea green eyes holding her hazel ones, nothing else existing for that single moment except that energy, that unspoken something hanging in between them. She’d always let it go, figuring she was just lonely, just clinging to him because he was there and he was truly an exceptionally lovely man.

Tonight, she knew the truth and it scared the shit out of her.

She knew she loved him.