A Letter Read Under an LA Streetlamp and Carried for a Hundred Years
By Dezdemona

TITLE: "A Letter Read Under an LA Streetlamp and Carried for a Hundred Years"
AUTHOR: Dezdemona
EMAIL: FreddysGirl@wickedmail.com
RATING: G (B/G, kinda)
DISTRIBUTION: Would anybody want this?  If by some miracle you do (urg!  I said I'd stop apologizing! <g>), please let me know and I'll do my happy dance and possibly kiss you.  Maybe even full on the lips.
NO SPOILERS, that I can think of. :)
DISCLAIMER: Ain't none of 'em mine, wish they were. :)

Look.  I have something to tell you.

Okay, maybe that wasn't the best way to begin-- but how do you ease up to something like this?  "Hi, how's the weather, how's LA, enjoying yourself?  And oh, yeah, I'm in love with someone else."  Not exactly breaking it gently, is it?

And it's not exactly true.  I mean, it's not a lie, either, but it's not the truth-- or really, not the whole truth.  It's not so much that I picked up the pieces of my broken heart and found somebody else-- I have picked up the pieces, several times in fact, only to have somebody else break them apart again.  And that's what taught me what I know-- that I didn't fall in love, or rather, I did, but not now-- that it happened years ago, and I didn't know it.

I'm getting all confused again...it's so easy to feel and to think, and so hard to explain into words.  Or the words are there, but I don't know what order to put them in.

Let me start over.

I have something to tell you.  Remember I told you I loved you?  I did.  I mean, I do.  But there was someone I loved before I loved you.  Someone I've loved through all of the guys I've dated-- not that there have been that many.  But he's been there, just the same.  I just didn't realize it.  It was so comfortable, so easy, so REAL, that I didn't recognize it for what it was.  I thought it was something else, always-- that mentor/teacher thing, father/daughter, advisor/student.  Watcher/Slayer.  I didn't realize how much more....

But now I do.  And it's been there all the time, staring me in the face.  And him, too, I guess, though he wasn't going to do anything about it.  It just figures I'd be the one who'd have to take the chance, to make the first move, and risk rejection--and destroying every chance we would ever have of working together again as a team.

Well, I decided it was worth it.

And it was.

But now that brings me to this:  I have to tell you....

But I've done it, haven't I?  Knowing my luck, you'd figured it out already, and that's one of the reasons why you left.  I appreciate that you were leaving to protect me, and that's very sweet, though it killed me at the time, but now I wonder if maybe you were leaving too to give him room.  Or maybe you knew what a gentleman he was determined to be, and you left to give *me* room.  Whatever, it worked.  If that is what you were doing.

Anyway, obviously, we're keeping it pretty hush; only the gang know.  My mom would go beyond conniption if she thought *anything* was going on between us-a year or so ago, she'd have had me in a convent and him in a jail cell before either of us could blink.  Of course, now I'm old enough to make my own decisions, but he would certainly never work again...well, not as a high school librarian, anyway.

Gosh, I didn't mean to rave on like this...it's late, and I can't keep track of how much I'm saying.  I just wanted to let you know.

And if you left to give us room to figure this out, I wanted to thank you.

END