Just For Tonight

Mini Chap 6

"I'm in-charge of designing new toys for the company."

Marcus showed Lillian his workshop when they got tired of talking in the sofa, and he get awkward staring at her and controlling himself.

"I knew who you were when you mentioned your nephew."

"And you said you're not Jean Gray."

She chuckled.

He gave that revelation a thought, then realized. "You worked at Hopkins Medical?"

She faced him and hesitated for a moment whether to admit more, but then decided out of it. "Studied and practiced there, actually. His Pediatrician, Dr. hunt is my classmate and friend." She smiled at him and looked away to study a plastic toy horse, "Annabelle adores him. She never forgets to tell us something about the boy when we eat lunch together, some nurses would ask about the Hot Uncle most of the time."

"What a small world. But we never saw each other there. I would have noticed you."

"I don't wear glittery and skimpy clothes at work, you know."

He chuckled, "Your eyes would be something to notice wherever you go."

She playfully glared at him and sit at the table in front of him, hugging a stuffed bear in the process. "That's how you judge people who would help you with riddles?"

He leaned at the wall in front of her, "I was searching for somebody who was different, somebody who would rather have a conversation than stay there and get wasted."

"You got the right person." She thought that she can hold her ground with eyes like that by now, but she's wrong. So she moved away, returned the bear and change the subject. "I've never been comfortable chasing strangers away in places like that, but my brother forced me to go and 'have a life' as if free spirit runs in the family." She sighs, "I'm tired of being blown by my family's free spirit. Jumping from one country to the other, the endless creativity and dark humor of everybody in the dinner table, the book editors, fan mail, the depression."

She looked at him, embarassed by her ramblings. "I'm from a family of writers and musicians but I don't feel happy being creative. I just want to settle and live alone in a hut above a mountain or something. Stay away from civilization. That sort of thing."

"You get away by studying Medicine."

"That was the only idea at that time that would force them to allow me to settle somewhere."

"That's some decision."

She gave him a tight smile, "So you should not think of me as some special person who solves riddles and disappears suddenly. I'm just another human being who dreams of becoming a hermit someday."

"A hermit?"

"Yeah. A hermit."

He just beginned to like her more when she showed that side of her. He felt the creeping warm feeling that he only once felt when he carry his nephew for the first time. A miracle, he thought, he met another miracle in his life right here.

"I never trusted a woman before, much less thought of them as special. But I have always thought that they disappear when men begin to open up to them."

They are sitting at his workshop table now, side by side, facing the wall to wall abstract painting in front of them.

She can't face him when she heard that. She was scared to be curious about it. She was scared to care, because for the first time, being alone isn't a nice idea at all.

But there's no stopping him. All he have is faith that she's listening and that she would believe him.

"My mother was a rich socialite, who was never there for me and my brother. She got divorced to my dad shortly after I entered school. All the girls I met as I grew up think of me as her son, the splitting image of a popular, beautiful socialite, I liked it at first until I got sick of it. They stopped coming when I stopped wearing expensive clothes and started driving my dad's old pick-up to school.

"They preyed on my brother even before me. He has always been the sociable, gullible one. I like to think that I went after my father's in personality. Atleast, I tried to. Matthew was the one who got my mom's social skills.

"One succeeded. She was an actress trying to land a break. She's Simon's mother. She left him at our care the moment being a mother became a big thing she can't handle anymore. The press fed on that story for a year, and she got what she wanted in the end. Simon never knew her. He learned not to."

5 minutes was a long time for them in the silence of their thoughts.

"2.5 billion."

He looked at her, puzzled.

She smiled at him. "Women in the world that wouldn't disappear. You just have to look for somebody that will be worth your effort of not letting go."

"Or I ignore that 2.5 billion women and live as a hermit, like you."

They laughed.

Lillian thought that he's the best person for any girl to be with. It is so easy to fall and just see how this will all go. And if she admits that to herself, there's no turning back.

Marcus thought that maybe she is worth another chance. If this will all turn out to be another heartbreak, it would hurt the most because it will be the one closest to home. He is sure he will never open up to another one after her.

They both thought how fast one ordinary night can end up like a crossroad.

As if the next choice would be decided like a matter of life and death.