“So what’s really going on between the two of you?” Hawke asked Zachary from his position sprawled on his bed. Zach had just come in their room after class to get a change of clothes. “You seem to be going out with her, you’ve eating dinner with her every night, but I know that you two have never gone off campus, neither have you shared a meal anywhere other than the student center.”
“I told you – we’re friends,” Zach replied, as he packed his gym bag surreptitiously. He grinned to himself. In the past months he had known Kat, it seemed to him they were often fighting with one another more often than they were friends.
It had become his joy to annoy her and hear her snipe at him over dinner, enjoying their skirmishes and knowing that she enjoyed them too or she wouldn’t have continued having dinner with him even after their brief stint as partners was over. However, she still refused to let go of the ridiculous stipulation of his learning how to dance before taking her out on a date. Well – he was working on that, too, even if it was slow going.
Hawke snickered. “Friends, what an ambiguous, all-encompassing word. I’m pretty darn sure that it’s more than that, at least on your part, for you to have wheedled McGregor into making pairings alphabetical so you could be partners last term. Or to spend all your free afternoons on dancing lessons.” he stated with a laugh. “Dancing lessons - you never even like getting within a hundred feet of anything resembling a dance floor!" He paused, regarding Zach's tense posture speculatively. "You love her, don’t you?”
Zachary spun around to glare at Hawke, but Hawke refused to be stared down, although he continued to laugh softly. Zach finally capitulated on a sigh. “Yes, I love her,” he said softly. He hiked the strap of his gym bag high on his shoulder. “I haven’t told her, but I’m sure she knows.”
“So why in the world are you still going around as ‘friends’?” Hawke asked, puzzled now.
“Because I don’t know how she’ll take it if I tell her now!” he replied, running his hand through this hair in frustration. “She has this life plan, and love doesn’t belong anywhere in it until five years from now. Not that I mind – because I plan to wait for her until then.”
“Wha-hat? What do you mean you plan to WAIT? Five YEARS?”
“She’s the one, Hawke. Don’t ask me how I know, I just do.” Zach laughed at Hawke’s stunned expression. “Forget it Hawke, it’s too darn complicated to explain,” he said. “And I don’t have time to do any explaining because I’m late for my dance lessons –“
“That’s another thing I wanted to talk to you about. You’ve been taking those dance lessons for almost a year – how are you doing at –“
“Don’t ask,” Zach cut him off, a wry grin on
his face, remembering his instructor’s perpetually exasperated face when
dealing with him, sublty telling him that it was hopeless for someone with
no sense of rhythm to learn how to dance. He had yet to learn to move to
the beat of the music - and this after ten months of lessons. He sighed,
rolling his eyes expressively. “You really don’t want to know.”
It was cool, crisp early autumn evening, and there was a brisk breeze that night as Zachary walked Katherine back to the women’s dorm. The wind was chill, but there was still a hint of summer in it, its unique flavor lending more magic to the evening. There was no moon, but the stars were out, and the trees rustled softly in the wind, diffusing the silver starlight on the pavement. They walked silently side by side, not touching at all, although Zach was sorely tempted to take Kat’s hand in his.
He looked her way, and she looked up at him, a smile in her eyes. “Penny for your thoughts?” she asked with a grin. “It must be something nice, you’re smiling.”
“It is,” he said, drinking in the ethereal beauty of her face heightened by the silver of the starlight. He looked up at the sky, taking in the sight of a million stars. “I was just thinking how incredible it is that just a few more months from now, we’ll be flying among those stars ourselves.”
She smiled. “I know. That’s why I can hardly wait – up there, even when you’re completely alone, it doesn’t feel that way surrounded by the endless eternity of stars. I don’t think there’s anything more beautiful.”
“It’s funny though,” he said softly, drinking in the sight of her dream-filled eyes and her delicate face bathed by starlight and thinking that nothing could ever be more beautiful for him ever again. “A lot of those stars are so many light years away that it takes years for us to get to see their light at all. So by the time we’ll get to fly to where they are, it’s always a possibility that there’s nothing there anymore.”
Startled, she turned to him. “I know that – but do you ever let yourself think so?” she asked him incredulously. “I hardly ever do,” she confessed. “It would be like admitting that something that I’ve always dreamed about reaching doesn’t exist.”
“I do, sometimes,” he replied, tracing the curve of her cheek reverently. “I’ve done that more often now, now that flying among the stars is no longer my most important dream.”
“It’s not?” Her brow furrowed in thought as she looked up at him with puzzled emerald eyes.
He shook his head solemnly. “Want to guess what is?” he asked, his other hand coming up to cup the other side of her face, his head begin its inexorable descent toward hers. His eyes never left hers, and he knew the exact moment she finally realized what he was about to do because he own eyes widened in alarm.
“No, I think I’d rather not know,” she denied, and her sweet breath brushed against his lips a second before he touched them to hers, gently, lingeringly, his whole heart carried within the kiss and into hers.
“Too late, you’ve already found out,” he said thickly, after reluctantly releasing her lips and smiling tenderly into her eyes. “My most important dream now is the one where I get to spend the rest of my life with you.” Tears filled her eyes at his sweet words, and he took it as a sign to go on. “I love you, Kat.”
She looked stricken at his words, and she frantically moved away from him. “I – I…” she began, her voice breaking. “Oh, Zach, why did you have to say that?”
“What?” he asked, beginning to feel the stirrings of alarm himself, “That I love you?”
“Yes!” she exclaimed, angry eyes shooting green fire. “We were doing so well as friends – why did you have to say that?” She turned on her heel and strode towards her dorm and leaving him to stare after her. He strode after her, his long legs allowing him to catch up with her easily.
“Because that’s what I feel, dammit!” he shouted, finally losing his temper. “And I thought it was right!”
“Well, it isn’t,” she sobbed, refusing to look at him. He grabbed her elbow and turned her towards him, and he saw that tears were running down her face. “I have to – I have to go. I need time to think… and I don’t have time for this right now.”
“There’s no reason for things not to go on between us as they are now,” he argued. He let his breath out in a frustrated whoosh. “I’m willing to wait,” he continued, taking her face in his hands. “Kat, please give this a chance, okay? I know you have your plans and your dreams – and I’m not going to get in the way of any of them. I just wanted to let you know how I feel – and ask you to give me a chance to convince you that this dream could be just as right for you as your other dreams are.”
She shook her head, still looking like a cornered rabbit, and he hated himself for doing this to her. And a part of him also hated her for being so afraid. Finally, she shook his hands off and turned away. “I – I can’t accept your love, Zach,” she said again, her voice ringing with finality. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s it, isn’t it?” he said softly, his voice ringing with pain. “You can’t handle the thought that for the first time in your life, there’s someone in this world who actually loves you, so you hide behind your plans and say that it’s not the right time and that you’re not ready.” He paused, groping for the right words to say. “You can’t hide away from my love forever, Kat, or pretend it doesn’t exist – because it does. I love you, Kat. Even if you choose not to accept that.”
“It’s not like that at all,” she cried heatedly, turning around to face him. But he didn’t see her because he had already begun walking away, his footsteps drowned by the sad whispers of the wind through the trees, whispers that just a few minutes before had been alive with love, beauty, and dreams.
A Christmas Waltz -- Katherine - The Open Heart