Tales of MU

In Which Mackenzie Comes Clean

I could have stayed a bit later after class than I did, but I was supposed to meet Jamie in the lobby of Gilcrease and I wanted a chance to get upstairs and change before running into him. Luckily, there was no sign of him when I got in.

I didn’t have any interest in dressing up for him, nor did I want him to think that I did, but I wanted to come as myself, not in fighting togs… it was only a little thing, but it seemed more important now that I’d started expressing myself more through my clothes instead of just wearing what was practical and not offensive to my rudimentary sense of taste.

Thinking about that made me think about how much it seemed like it was my wardrobe upgrade that had made me interesting or acceptable to him in the first place, which kind of ticked me off more than a little. I pushed it aside for the moment because I had agreed to meet with him, and I was doubly committed now that I’d opted out of more fighting practice to do so.

I hadn’t agreed to anything more than meeting with him, though, and I would definitely be keeping that tidbit in mind when weighing any further options. I doubted I’d have to strain myself to remember, though… if Jamie Bowman had a good point, it was that he liked to remind you of his faults.

…which raised the question of why I was even doing this. I couldn’t even say that it had seemed like a good idea at the time. The most I could say of it was that it seemed harmless. Was that enough? Well, I was trying new things, and hanging out with Jamie voluntarily and without any magical hijinks bringing us together was new.

And while the fact that I didn’t owe people second chances… or third, fourth, or fifth ones… had been a hard-won lesson for me, that didn’t mean the idea of a second chance was a bad one. Never giving anyone or anything a second chance would just get me stuck back in the same old ruts again. Also, even if his criteria for judging me were crass and shallow, he’d at least opted to give me a second chance. I could give him the same benefit.

That was where the “harmless” came in, I guess… the worst that would happen is I’d waste an evening, and if it was completely terrible, I wouldn’t even waste that long.

Amaranth was waiting for me when I got up to the room. I could tell she was waiting and not just there because of the expectant way she was looking in the direction of the door when I came through it.

“Hey… I thought you’d be at dinner,” I said. I tried not to sound disappointed or accusing, because I wasn’t, really… I was just undergoing that moment of adjustment that happens when reality doesn’t match up to what you were counting on. I’d expected to walk into an empty room and have some time to myself to get ready. It wasn’t that being alone would actually be helpful… or that Amaranth being there wouldn’t be… it was just the way I’d envisioned things unfolding.

“I ate fast and came back, in case you needed any moral support,” she said. “I guess I could have eaten a little slower… I was starting to worry that you were getting cold feet.”

“Nope,” I said. “You know me, I can’t stand to have cold anything… I was actually staying after for Coach Callahan, for extra credit.”

“Oh!” she said. “Well, in that case, I’m proud of you… and doubly proud for not using it as an excuse to blow this off.”

“Believe me, I thought about it,” I said. “Maybe not in those exact terms, but it was definitely a factor.”

“Well, I think you’ve made the mature decision in honoring your commitments… but having said that, I guess I should also remind you that you don’t owe time or attention to anyone,” she said. “So, if you don’t want to go through with this, you don’t have to. I can even carry your regrets if you want, if you don’t want to see him in person.”

“I have been having second thoughts,” I said. “And third thoughts, and fourth thoughts… does it show on my face?”

“Actually, if anything, you look sort of grimly determined,” she said. “Resolute. It’s just not a look I normally associate with someone about to go on a romantic assignation, which is why I said something.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not exactly romantic, is it?” I said. “But I just decided to put my doubts aside and just see what happens.”

“…if you’re having doubts…”

“I’m pretty much always going to have doubts, though,” I said. “I mean, if I only did things I was one hundred percent sure I wanted to do, I wouldn’t be with you… and a lot of the times when I do something that turns out to be a huge mistake, it’s something I was completely certain about at the time.”

She smiled.

“I guess I can remember some of those times,” she said. “So, maybe it would be more worrying if you didn’t have any doubts… but that doesn’t mean that more doubts are better.”

“My main doubts are that we’ll get along or I’ll have a fun time,” I said. “Which I think makes a big difference. I don’t think he’s got a hidden agenda or is going to drag me into anything dangerous, and if he does, I’ll leave. I guess it’s mainly the fact that I keep wanting to brace for the worst… which is probably unfair. I mean, underneath it all, I think he’s probably about as decent as most guys our age are. And he’s had some time to mature since the last time I saw him… and he didn’t really see me at my best then, either. And if he’s really kicked the bracelet habit for good… I don’t know. I guess my problem is that this whole thing could go either way, but I don’t have any model in my head for how it would be if it goes well. All I can dwell on is what I know, and that’s not good.”

“So don’t dwell!” Amaranth said. “If you do want to go, just go.”

“That’s pretty much where I am right now,” I said. “Except for the fact that there’s been time to fill and I can’t shut off my brain. Also, in terms of literally going, I want to, you know, freshen up a bit first.”

“I hoped you might,” Amaranth said. “I thought you might want some help picking out clothes.”

“Okay,” I said. Amaranth had an interest in clothing that was at odds with her nature and what she saw as her divine duty, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt anything to let her play dress-up. Well, as long as there were some ground rules for the game. “Just… remember that this is a casual thing. I doubt it’s going to lead anywhere, and even if it does, it’s not going to lead anywhere-lead anywhere, and it’s definitely not going to do that tonight…”

“Oh, I know, baby,” she said. “We’ll make you look nice, not wrap you up like a present.”

“I think I’m going to start with a quick shower,” I said. “I know I might not really need one, but I still feel kind of… spattered… even if it was all illusionary. I mean, I still felt it happening. I need to feel myself getting clean.”

“Make sure you wash your hair,” she said.

“…is there something in my hair?” I said.

“No, but you could wash it more often,” she said. “And comb it out more often, too. To be fair, I don’t think you’re used to your hair being this long? The tangles are a bit more noticeable.”

“Oh,” I said. I hadn’t really thought of my hair as something that got tangled, but then again, this sentence could have stopped seven words in and it would still be pretty much true. “Okay.”

“I’ll lay a few things out on the bed while you’re doing that,” Amaranth said.

Normally I would have lingered in the hot water and steam, but I was on a schedule so I tried to keep everything on a strictly utilitarian basis. While I’d thought of it as doing her a favor, I found myself glad that Amaranth was going to be seeing to my wardrobe because as I thought about it, I realized that pretty much everything I might have thought to wear myself was in the dirty clothes hamper. If I couldn’t talk Amaranth into some kind of reasonable middle ground on that whole issue, then I’d have to do something about it. Getting extra copies of my favorite clothes seemed a bit extreme, to say nothing of inefficient, but I wasn’t sure what else to do about it.

Okay, it seemed obvious that I’d have to start doing laundry more often, but where did you stop when it came to something like that? I was already looking at going to the laundry room twice as month as it was.

Amaranth had laid out my black miniskirt, one of the few skirts that I owned, which I probably should have expected… not because she ever really made an effort to get me into skirts, but because I hardly ever wore them and thus they were clean.

“I’m sorry, there wasn’t as much of a selection as I’d expected,” she said. “But I guess this is kind of your date skirt anyway?”

“You know that nothing is really going to happen, right?” I said. She didn’t seem to be pressuring me, but I still wanted to make it clear if for no other reason than to prevent her from being disappointed later.

“Oh, I know!” she said. “And the weird thing is that even with the idea of sex off the table, I’m still excited for you… because even if nothing happens, well… something is still going to happen, and I kind of want to find out what it is? And hopefully it will be something good! Maybe you’ll have a new friend, and even if it goes terribly, maybe you’ll have a funny story. I don’t know, baby… maybe this sounds strange, but I like the idea of you having a life apart from me. In a weird way, I feel like that will give us more to share.”

“But we’ll be sharing less,” I said.

“But when everything that happens to one of us happens to both of us, there’s no… effort,” she said. “It doesn’t feel like it counts for much when it just sort of happens? I mean, I wish I could have gone with you to see Glory, but hearing about it from you after the fact was kind of fun in a way I didn’t expect.”

“I guess that kind of makes sense,” I said.

“And I think about… well, it’s kind of silly,” she said. “I mean, I don’t want to get ahead of myself. The future’s going to be pretty complicated, whatever happens, but I think about a time when instead of both of us being in school, you’ve got a job and you come home and tell me about your day… okay, maybe that’s not the most likely scenario, but I think about it.”

I nodded, but didn’t say anything.

We’d talked about life after college before, but never for long and not very often… mainly because there were obstacles there, obstacles that didn’t have an obvious solution. Amaranth lived in… was bound to… land in what was essentially a religious commune. I was semi-infernal. Even if the people who owned the land that her existence was bound up in were amenable to her having a long-term relationship… and there was a decent chance they would be… it wouldn’t be the safest place for me to live, and it would be far away from any centers of industry. I could maybe find work as the enchanting equivalent of a village blacksmith, but that wasn’t what I wanted in life. A life away from Amaranth also wasn’t what I was looking for.

As intractable as those problems seemed, it was possible that something would happen in the next few years that would resolve them, or give some new perspective on them, or open up new possibilities… but that got into the other reason I didn’t like to think about it.

Any number of things could change in three years. I didn’t like to think about it… I couldn’t imagine the chain of events that might lead me in that direction, though that was less than reassuring when I couldn’t have imagined the events that had led me where I was… but who could even say that we’d still be together when we graduated?

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Characters: Amaranth, Mackenzie