Love, Lust 'n Geology (1ST DRAFT)

Chapter 32: Knock! Knock!

This chapter is dedicated to Jackmanfan who's amongst the novel's earliest readers. (She & I bonded over the pic of Hugh Jackman on her profile pg - check it out ;-)! I didn't know if she was still reading the novel & was thrilled to find out recently that she was :-)!

Thanks for all ur support & encouragement, Tracy! So glad to have u back :-)!

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Chapter 32: Knock! Knock!

Once Tom began swimming, he saw no reason to stop. While the lake was not very big, it did deepen, as lakes are wont to do with their generally bowl-shaped basins, so that Tom had no choice but to eventually abandon the bottom. Surfacing, he resorted to a stroke with which he was intimately familiar in all its various forms, namely, the breaststroke. (Tom was most definitely a skilled breast-stroker!) While he made steady, indeed, effortless progress with each pull and each kick across the miniature lake, the same could not be said regarding the problem which continued to eat away at him, namely, how two people who loved each other could find themselves on the outs quite so many times immediately after declaring their feelings for one another. The activity, not requiring Tom to focus on anything in particular, (such as a ball or a birdie), left him free to think. And so he continued to ponder the problem, until he found himself, quite unintentionally, on the other side of the lake.

He waded out and looked back across the water at the small, distant, reclining, white, brown and black figure of Samina against a backdrop of gray - the blanket. Sighing, he lowered himself onto the sand and sat, hugging his knees, gazing at her, feeling stumped, truly stumped, as to how to deal with her obvious insecurities, ones which, alas, appeared immune to his reassurances!

Perhaps if he lay down and relaxed and stopped feeling quite so frazzled, some ideas might come to him? And so he did, on his back, first stretching out fully by reaching overhead and pointing his toes, and then clasping his hands under his head and closing his eyes against the blinding sun suspended overhead. After a little while, he shifted onto his right side, and then onto his left, in search of the magic position that would point a way out of his dilemma, not only his but Samina's too! When no such avenue presented itself, he rolled onto his front and decided that he might as well get some sun.

While his focus was ostensibly on the somewhat severe set of tan lines that criss-crossed his body, particularly the one that circled just below his waist, he couldn't help but continue to think about Samina. She loved him, or at least she claimed to, but she obviously had issues with him, significant ones! On the other hand, he'd never heard her utter a single word of complaint about her rocks which she seemed equally, if not even more, passionate about! Not once had she bemoaned the fact that they were dirty, or hard - aside from taking measurements, he knew that she had to whack off samples with her hammer now and then - or frustrating, or confusing, or ... or anything! Granted rocks were inanimate, although it wasn't always apparent from the manner in which Samina spoke about them that she was aware of that fact, but perhaps he could still take his cue from them?

Just how would a man moulded after a rock behave like exactly? He would undoubtedly be the strong, silent type. Tom believed himself to be strong, but silent? Umm, no, not really. But going forth, he would be. He would speak only when spoken to and perhaps not even then! And although rocks were unlikely to experience the sort of storms which he had been buffeted about by lately, whichever type they did, well, they'd simply weather them. Wouldn't they? That's what he would do! He would wait out Samina's storms in the hopes that they would eventually peter out as she came to understand him and he, her.