Null Pointer

Loquacious Lumberings

March - Honey

March Crawl - 1,530 words

Sprint for 3 minutes as you race down the stairs – 134 words.

Write at any pace for 5 minutes as you listen to their charming stories – 223 words.

Flip a coin. Tails – write 250 words – 5:42.

Do a three-digit challenge using the number of words you have written so far in this crawl – 607 words / 17:36.

Write for 10 minutes as you tell your parents about your day – 310 words.

1,530 words.

It wasn’t fair to Brian. Honey Wheeler knew that much. None of this was fair to Brian. He’d expected a vacation and he’d gotten a week of Honey venting about their relationship. He’d expected romantic and he’d gotten falling apart. He had expected gratitude and he’d gotten doubt. Brian had gone out of his way to arrange this for her, to do something special with her, and she’d hinted that she might want a breakup. More than hinted. It wasn’t fair to Brian because he was a good man and she didn’t truly doubt that he loved her. She didn’t truly doubt that she loved him, for that matter, so how could their relationship be at an end? How could she even suggest it might be? It wasn’t fair at all. Honey knew that.

At the same time, if their relationship wasn’t going to advance, how fair was it for her to keep him trapped in it a few more years, or another decade, until they weren’t in love anymore, and the relationship ended in a fight and them not even being friends? How fair was that outcome to their friends and family, who they could not possibly ask to choose sides, but who, inevitably, would feel they had to? How fair was it to Honey, herself, who had already put so much of herself into this relationship, to stick with it, if it was only a dying relationship? It wasn’t fair that things weren’t working out between her and Brian, but they didn’t seem to be. Sure, one could blame it on the academic rigor of Brian’s high school and collegiate education. He’d needed stellar grades in high school to get accepted and earn scholarships, and top performances in his undergraduate studies and on his standardized testing to gain acceptance into the medical school of his choice. One couldn’t expect him to have the time for his girlfriend that his brother—pursuing journalism—had for his girl. The same held true when Brian graduated medical school and moved on to the residency. Double shifts, extended shifts, and zero seniority meant Brian was working at all hours, and sleeping the rest of them. His very limited free time had so many claims on it: his family, his friends, the Bob-Whites, and Honey. She couldn’t expect to monopolize all of that time. And even if she had, would it have been enough? Would her needs, her expectations have ever been met in the time Brian had available to spend with her? And if he couldn’t possibly have made her happy in the time he had, then his only option would have been to give up his dream, his career for her. And how fair was it for her to expect that of him?

But he’d known from the moment they started dating—from almost the moment they’d met—her history. He’d known that she’d felt less important to her father than his job and how much that had hurt her as a child. He was a smart man; he should have known she wouldn’t be okay with being less important than his job.

So that’s where they were. On what was supposed to be a romantic vacation, just the two of them, and Honey had finally found the courage—or, she sometimes thought, the lapse in her legendary tact—to say things she’d been thinking for years. But she knew it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that she’d bottled it all up for years. It wasn’t fair that she was dumping it all on Brian now. It wasn’t fair that they were both trying so hard to make their relationship work and yet it still wasn’t working. It wasn’t fair that their relationship was dying even though they loved each other so much.

It especially wasn’t fair that Brian was sleeping so peacefully while she wrestled with her thoughts about their relationship, Honey thought, glancing over at her sound asleep boyfriend. It came with working all those crazy shifts, she supposed. One learned to fall asleep when the opportunity arose no matter the time of day, or the thoughts swirling in one’s mind. Her anger at Brian for his ability to sleep was unfair, too, she knew, because he wasn’t at peace about their relationship, either. She knew he’d been wrestling with uncomfortable thoughts over the course of their vacation as well. That he happened to be sleeping while she lay awake wasn’t something she should be holding against him.

Honey sighed and started trying to calculate the time at home. She really needed to talk this all out with someone who would tell her she was being ridiculous, and that she should just go to sleep. That meant only one person: Diana Lynch Belden. Deciding it should be the middle of the afternoon, Honey slipped out of bed and hunted for her tablet to see if Di was online and reachable.

Honey stomped her foot in frustration when she opened her tablet and saw Di’s most recent FaceBook post, a check-in for an event she was at for the museum that meant she’d have no time for girl-talk with Honey. It wasn’t fair! There should be a law that a girl was immediately freed of all other obligations if her bestie needed her for girl-talk. But life didn’t work like that.

Disappointed, still frustrated, and wide-awake, Honey put the tablet away and returned to her bed.

Brian rolled to his side. “Everything okay?” He mumbled sleepily.

“Not really,” Honey admitted.

Brian sat up, reaching for her hands. “What’s wrong, Hon?”

“Nothing new. Just everything we’ve been talking about all week, about us. Gleeps, Brian, I want this, I want us, to work so bad. I love you. You love me. I see a beautiful future for us together. But I don’t know how to get there, don’t know if we even can from here. It just feels so unfair. It feels unfair to give up, if there’s a possibility we can make this work. It feels unfair to drag this out another month, or year, or decade, if it’s destined to failure.”

Brian nodded in the dim light. “It is unfair,” he agreed. “It’s unfair that I haven’t had the time for you that you deserve. It’s unfair that we can want something so badly that we can’t have. It’s unfair that we don’t know whether a future together is something we can’t have or not. It’s unfair that relationships are this hard. But they are, we don’t know, we both want, and I haven’t. I love you. I don’t know what that means for a future. I don’t really know anything else, but I know and I love you and I know I want to keep trying, if you do.”

“I love you, Brian, I do, but….”

“But, what? Honey, tell me what you’re thinking.”

“I’m thinking I’ve loved you for ten years. I’m thinking you’ve loved me for ten years. If it’s not working now, what reason do we have to expect that will change in the next ten years?”

“Because we can focus on each other more now. We’re both more settled into our careers. We’re living in the same town. Our families—our siblings—are grown up and pursuing their own lives, so we won’t be pulled in so many different directions. Because we’re more aware of the problems now, so we can work on them, instead of ignoring them. I don’t know, Honey. Maybe no reason. Maybe all I have to go on is hope. Want.”

“Will it be enough?”

“I don’t know,” Brian admitted. “Honey, I want to pull you close and kiss the worry off your face and tell you something romantic about how hope and love are all we need, baby, and everything will all work out as long as we have hope and we love each other. But I don’t really believe that life is anywhere near that simple. If hope and love was enough to solve every problem, well… look at Jim’s childhood, his birth parents, his great-aunt and great-uncle’s stories. Plenty of love and hope there and it still wasn’t anything close to enough. Look at how much Trixie struggled when she came home from the National Investigative Bureau. Hope and love didn’t fix that, either. Will it fix us? I hope so. I don’t know so.”

“So we hope for the best going forward?”

“And work even harder to make it so,” Brian said. “Maybe this is 3 a.m. logic and I’m completely crazy, but maybe we focus on the future, on what we both want going forward—on communicating with each other, on becoming a team instead of just two people who care about each other and occasionally occupy the same physical space, on building that future together that we’re both hoping for—and maybe someday we’ll be sitting awake at 3 a.m. and we’ll suddenly realize we have it.”

“Or maybe we’ll suddenly realize it’s a lost cause.”

“That’s a possibility, but I’m holding on to hope. And love. And you, Honey Wheeler. For as long as I possibly can, and I am not letting go.”