Round 2: Laurent

Oliver Laurent is an Elder. His son Ellis Laurent is a Teen.

* * *

Oliver and Kylie couldn’t afford a real wedding. They went down to the town hall to sign the paperwork, exchanged rings privately out by the garden, and it was done. Oliver couldn’t suppress a pang of regret that he hadn’t been able to give Kylie the kind of lavish ceremony he’d had with his first wife, but he knew it didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was happier than he had been in a very long time.

Kylie, on the other hand, didn’t know how she felt. When she was with Oliver, it didn’t matter. All her thoughts got lost in a haze of emotion. It was when she was alone that the doubts would come. She had spent her whole life avoiding marriage, until Oliver had swept her off her feet, and she couldn’t escape the nagging thoughts telling her that she had signed away her freedom that day at the town hall. And the day after they had gotten married, Oliver had started talking about adopting a child. At their age? Wasn’t being married enough? Why would Oliver need more than that?

The stress started bringing up issues she thought she had left behind a long time ago. She would find herself in the garden in the middle of the night, talking to people who weren’t there. Or in Ellis’s room, punching his teddy bear for no reason whatsoever.

But whenever she was around Oliver, all the rest of it disappeared. Because despite all her doubts, she loved him more passionately and all-consumingly than she ever had anyone else.

It had never occurred to her before now to wonder whether that was entirely a good thing.

Ellis didn’t know what to think, either. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d had a conversation with Kylie. This marriage seemed like exactly the kind of impulsive decision his dad had lectured him about avoiding. But on the other hand, he didn’t dislike Kylie, exactly. And he wanted his father to be happy.

It was one night, talking it over with his bear, that he realized he hadn’t talked to anyone besides his bear in a long time. He still talked to his dad, of course, but not about this. If there was one thing he couldn’t talk to his dad about, it was this. And when was the last time he’d really had a good friend outside his family? He hung out with Sawyer from school sometimes, and Liss Kirsch, but there was no one he would really consider a close friend. Not even Dmitri Fish, seemed to have practically forgotten about their plans in his efforts to improve his grades. And he wasn’t sure how to change that.

All he wanted was a simple life. Why was that so hard?

When his dad had felt lonely, he had gone out to the Blue Velvet, and in that single night he had met Kylie. But a club wasn’t really Ellis’s idea of a good time. He would much rather go to the playground, if it weren’t too weird for someone his age to be playing on the pirate ship.

He started going to the gym instead. It wasn’t really his thing – he would much rather take in calories than work them off – but it was an excuse to get out of the house, and getting out of the house had worked for his dad. Not that he wanted a girlfriend. Not that he wanted life to change at all, really. Just maybe someone to talk to besides his bear.

All he got out of it was a bunch of sore muscles.

Well, maybe things weren’t so bad. He still had his room, and his toys, and his bear, and his dad – at least when his dad wasn’t all wrapped up in Kylie. It was a good life. Maybe he didn’t need anything else.

It was only after he stopped thinking about making friends that he realized he had been seeing a lot of Liss Kirsch lately. She would offer to help him with his homework, or ask to help out with his dad’s garden, or just drop by his house unannounced. It was strange – they talked to each other at school sometimes, sure, but it wasn’t like they had ever been good friends.

His dad had an easy answer when Ellis asked him about it over breakfast one morning.

“She likes you!” he said. “Congratulations.”

Ellis wasn’t so sure. Wasn’t Liss dating Dmitri? And what would Liss want with him anyway? Liss was probably going to be a famous artist when she grew up, or a famous inventor, or a famous something, anyway. She was brilliant and talented and her mind moved faster than that of anyone Ellis had ever met. Ellis was… well, his best friend was a teddy bear.

But there was the way she kept looking at him. Or the way he thought she kept looking at him.

This was the turning point, he knew. He could keep going the way he had been, and things would keep on being good. Nothing would have to change. Or he could go somewhere with this, and give up his childhood forever.

He did it. He called her and asked her on a date.

She said yes.

He didn’t want to go to the park, since that was where his dad had always gone with Kylie. So he took her to the Blue Velvet, even though that wasn’t really his scene. He tried to calm his nerves by telling himself this really wasn’t different from hanging out any other day. They were just two friends, having a good time together.

And that worked – at least until she kissed him.

After that, it was hard to think at all.

When the date was over, he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do. Were they in a relationship now? Was he supposed to treat her differently than he would another friend? Would there be more kissing? A lot more kissing? But she took care of that, dropping flirty notes into his locker, dropping by his table at lunch with a casual kiss. They went on another date, and another, and before he knew it, he had a girlfriend.

But he still talked to his bear every night.

Meanwhile, Oliver was trying hard not to notice that something wasn’t right with Kylie.

He would see her sometimes, talking to no one. One day she talked excitedly about meeting a new friend; it turned out to be the small stuffed bear on his dresser. And there were the midnight jogs, when he would wake up to find her gone only to hear her sneak to bed hours later, wearing her jogging clothes and dripping with sweat. He tried talking to her about it, but she would get offended whenever he suggested that there might be something wrong.

Whatever the problem was, he would help her if she would only ask. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that she was closing him out – and that he hadn’t seen any sign of this before now. In the short time they had been dating, he had felt like he had known her all his life. How was there so much he had missed?

But things were still so good between them. That was part of what made it so confusing.

Oliver had another problem, too. Now that the novelty of his relationship with Kylie was wearing off, he was beginning to see that no matter how happy he was with her, being happy wasn’t the same as being fulfilled. He realized it when he first felt the urge to go out and work in his neglected garden again. He was still bored, and staying in bed all day with Kylie wouldn’t fix it. He missed his job – that was the problem. How much of his hasty marriage had been an attempt to cover up the pain of losing what had once been his driving purpose?