11:00 pm

I feel embarrassed, vulnerable and completely exposed.

I showed Max one of my poems tonight. I opened my book and revealed a part of myself I never thought I would.

After a very tense day, I finally felt at peace, happy just to have Max sitting safely beside me in the warm glow of candlelight. We talked about Cindy and Diamond. The way Max described their relationship, I understood how much love they had for each other. It is such a tragedy that Cindy lost Diamond the way she did. I can imagine the grief that she must be feeling, especially since Diamond was her first love. I mentioned to Max the lasting effect a first love can have on a person.

"I wouldn’t know," Max responded with yearning in her voice. It made me realize that she hasn’t had a ‘first love’ in her life. Then she quickly switched to a safer subject.

"When do I get to scroll through your lyrical pen scratchings?" She asked lightheartedly as she reached for my notebook.

Safer for whom? I could feel the panic rise up inside me.

"Why do you always get so embarrassed about this?" She complained when I took the book away from her. I gave her a feeble excuse about being intimidated by dad, but my explanation only prompted her to challenge me further.

"Since when did Logan Cale, man of letters, speaker of truth, let the Fred Flintstones of this world get under his skin?" She continued to tease me.

"Since I was three," was my too honest response, eliciting an exasperated moan from her. Take away Eyes Only and you will find a man who is easily intimidated by Fred Flintstones, fathers, uncles and beautiful transgenic soldiers. But Max’s challenge was too good to pass up. Despite my fear, I wanted to share a poem with her. I wanted to show her more about how I feel. I quickly flipped through the pages. I knew exactly which poem I wanted her to see. I wrote it just five days ago. Those three lines say so much about how I feel about her.

She grinned in anticipation, ready to laugh at my feeble ‘poetic’ efforts. But then she started to read and she stopped smiling. I searched her face, looking for some sign of what she felt. I can almost always tell how she feels about something. I can see it written all over her face, or I can at least find a clue in her eyes. But tonight, I couldn’t find anything. Then for a moment, she looked like she was about to cry. She hates it, I told myself.

"You wrote this about me?" She asked quietly.

Of course it’s about you, I thought. Who else would I write about? "It depends…" I began, I was going to be nonchalant with her. I had the words all planned out. If you like it, it’s about you. If you don’t, it’s not. I was going to grin at her jokingly. But the words didn’t come out that way at all.

"Do you hate it?"

What a stupid question. Do you hate it? You hate it, don’t you? I almost put those words in her mouth. I desperately didn’t want her to hate it. When she said it was all right, I felt like I had just received the greatest compliment in the world. It’s all right!

"Well then, yeah, it’s about you."

"Cool."

Cool! I couldn’t look at her any more. I knew that if she looked any closer, she would see right through me. I turned away for a moment and when I looked back, she was preparing to leave. She handed back the notebook and took off, saying she didn’t want to miss the curfew.

Then she left.

She didn’t say anything else. How could she leave without telling me what she was thinking? Maybe she didn’t understand what I was trying to tell her. Maybe it wasn’t as important to her as it was to me. I can’t believe I showed it to her. Why did I choose that poem to show her? She’s probably laughing at me right now, saying that she’s nobody’s angel. Not that any of the others would have been any better. They all reveal too much. Maybe I was hoping for some kind of answer from her today. Are you my angel? What a question to ask! How could I expect her to respond to that? I don’t know whether I should laugh or cry. I can’t even look at that page again. I can’t keep driving myself crazy with all the unanswered questions. Maybe I should just burn this stupid book of mine.