Previously on Lois and Clark:
She stood. “Well, then, now you’ll have to take a drop. There’s no way you can hit that ball. It’s what the rule book calls an ‘unplayable lie’.”
He laughed. “That’s ridiculous, Lois. There’s no such thing as an unplayable lie for Superman.”
He knew he was in serious trouble as soon as he heard her startled gasp.
*****
– no such thing as an unplayable lie for Superman –
Lois gasped. Did he really think like that? Did he really believe that the rules of normal human society didn’t apply to him? Did he really think that Superman could lie and get away with it?
Her vision refocused and she saw his face staring up at her. “Lois?” he called. “Are you okay?”
She dropped her clubs and stepped back. “Y-yes. I’m – I’m fine.”
He stood and stepped closer. “You don’t look fine. In fact, you look pale all of a sudden. Is the heat getting to you? Do you want to go back to the clubhouse?”
“No! Clark, I’m fine. Now let’s shoot some golf.”
“Wait.” He put his hand on her arm as she tried to walk past him. “I’d like to know what’s wrong.”
She didn’t meet his gaze. “Nothing’s wrong! Now let go of me!”
He pulled his hand back. “You’re lying to me, Lois.”
She turned on him and cocked her arm as if to slap him, but held herself back. “Don’t you – “ she hissed. She slowly lowered her hand. “Okay. I just lied to you. So what? You’re used to lying to me. It shouldn’t bother you if I lie to you.”
He dropped the hand he'd lifted to block her swing and stepped back. “I see. We’re back to that again.”
Her color began returning. “Yeah, we’re back to that, okay?”
“No. It isn’t okay.”
She clenched her fists and hissed, “You don’t get to call the shots with me, Superman! You don’t get to decide how I feel! You don’t get to set two different sets of rules, one for you and one for me! It’s all the same for both of us or it’s worth nothing!”
He frowned. “So when was I supposed to tell you? While you were dating Lex Luthor? While you were trying to decide how to deal with me? While you – “
“That’s not fair!”
“How about when you told Superman you’d love him even if he were an ordinary man with no powers?”
She sucked in a breath as if she’d been punched in the stomach. That was totally a cheap shot! It wasn’t fair! There was no comparison between what he’d done and what she’d done! Besides, she’d only said that to Superman because he’d done such a marvelous job convincing her that Superman and Clark Kent were two completely different individuals!
He crossed his arms in a heroic Superman pose and stood there. “Well?” she barked. “Don’t you have anything to say?”
“To what? You didn’t say anything.”
She suddenly realized that it was true. She’d thought all those things but she hadn’t spoken them. Why not?
Tears filled her eyes and her voice quivered with anguish. “I – you’re not being fair!”
*****
It wasn’t like Lois Lane to cry. He’d seen her shed tears before, but it was usually either during or immediately after a life-threatening situation. Since he’d met her, she’d never cried just to give herself an advantage in any situation. She just didn’t work that way.
So these tears were real. And she obviously wasn’t over his deception. She hadn’t forgiven him, not yet.
And it really bothered him. Didn’t she love him? She’d told him that she did. She’d insisted that all she needed was time to adjust, time to get her mind completely around the truth about his “other job.” And she’d told him she’d forgiven him.
He understood that she’d need some time to adjust, even if it meant he was left twisting in the wind. He didn’t like it a bit, but he’d live through it. He had to. He had Lois waiting for him on the other side of all this drama.
Or did he? Was she going to let her hurt and mistrust come between them? Was their relationship doomed by his mistake?
He had to get through to her. “Lois. I know that I lied to you. I had what I thought were valid reasons, but that doesn’t mean that you think they were valid. I get that, I really do. But you told me you’d forgiven me for it and what I had to do now was to earn back your trust.”
She sniffed and wiped her nose with her hand. He dug out a handkerchief and offered it to her, which item she accepted after a momentary hesitation. “Th-thank you.”
He waited while she wiped her eyes and blew her nose. When she tried to return it, he shook his head. “You keep it. You might need it again.”
She looked at him with doe eyes. “What does that mean?”
“It means that we need to get this out in the open, not sneak around it hoping it’ll go away on its own. This is the elephant in the room with us, Lois, and it’s not going anywhere.”
She sighed and dropped her gaze. “No, I suppose it isn’t.”
“Me first, okay?” He waited until she nodded. “I thought you’d forgiven me. Yes, I left out some things about myself that made you think I was lying – “
“Left out some things? Don’t you think – “
“Hey!” he burst out. “My turn to talk.”
She leaned backwards as if surprised, then straightened up and nodded slowly. “Lois, when I met you, I fell in love with you. Ever since then I’ve wanted to get closer to you to see if there was any chance – even the slightest, most insignificant chance – that you might feel anywhere close to the same way towards me. But you kept backing away, teasing me without quite realizing you were doing it, torturing me with your flirtations and your disparaging remarks. You took so long to let me know that there might be something there, some depth of feeling for me that you didn’t want to release, that until you told me – the Clark Kent part of me – that you loved me and wanted to marry me, I wasn’t sure that you wouldn’t marry me just because I was Superman.”
He stopped and took a breath, then let it out, unsure whether or not to continue. But Lois’s glacial tone when she said, “Is that it?” convinced him.
“No. That is not ‘it.’ You told me forgave me, right?”
She hesitated, then admitted, “Well, yeah, I did.”
“Do you know what forgiveness means?”
“Are you going to pull that ‘forgive and forget’ garbage on me? Because if you are – “
“No.” He held up his hand to stop her. “I know that I hurt you. And I know that I have to earn back your trust. I don’t have a problem with that. But I do have a problem with your anger. Lois, when you forgive someone, you don’t forget the offense, but you do let go of the responsibility of righting that wrong. If you’ve forgiven me, that doesn’t mean you act like nothing happened, but it does mean that you shouldn’t hold it over my head.” He grasped her shoulders with both hands. “You have to let it go.”
*****
The anger in Lois’s heart threatened to burst forth once again. “Let it go? Just like that? After what you did to me?”
He dropped his hands away from her shoulders. “Yes. That’s exactly what I mean.”
She turned and began pacing back and forth. “How can I just let this go? How can I be sure you won’t pull something like this again?”
He sighed deeply. “Honestly? You can’t.”
She drew up short and almost fell. “What? I can’t – I can’t trust you? Is that what you’re saying?”
He frowned. “No! You’re asking for guarantees, Lois. You’re looking for a perfect relationship. But you know what? I’m not perfect. I make mistakes. I goof up for perfectly legitimate reasons and I do things with the best of intentions which blow up in my face later on.”
“You got that right, mister!”
He looked almost desperate. “Lois, all I can do is say the right things and do the right things. I promise you, the last secret I will ever keep from you is my dual identity.”
Her anger was bubbling back down, not forgotten, but no longer near eruption. “And how will I know? You’re pretty good at keeping secrets.”
“So are you. And you’re even better at ferreting them out. It’s one of the skills that makes you a great investigative reporter.”
Suddenly the effort of keeping the anger burbling became too much for her to maintain. It dropped away, leaving an acidic lining of despair behind. “But I don’t want to spend the rest of my life investigating you, Clark! I want to be able to trust my husband without having to interrogate him! I don’t want to have to check up on you, to follow you around and take notes, to send detectives after you! I just want to love you.”
He started to step forward, but hesitated. The poor super-baby, she thought. Maybe he does get it after all.
She closed the gap between them and pulled herself close to his chest. “I love you, Clark. And I do want to marry you someday. It’s just – “
“You have to learn to trust me all over again.”
“Well – yeah, that too.”
He leaned back and kissed her on the forehead. “What else?”
Her eyes bored into his. “I need to know that you take me seriously. I need to know that you don’t dismiss my feelings even if you think they’re unreasonable. I need to know that you won’t treat my heart lightly.”
He nodded. “I think I understand.” He pulled her close again. “All I can do is make an honest and sincere effort and trust you to let me know when I’m not doing my job well enough.”
She almost chuckled. “That’ll have to do for now, I guess.”
They stood there on the fairway, enjoying the mutual embrace, when a man’s voice called out, “Hey! Can we play through or do you two need some more time?”
They laughed and drew apart. Clark called out, “We’ll be done in a minute. I have to take a drop. I got caught in an unplayable lie.”
He didn’t look at her, but she looked at him and smiled softly. It was a start.
# # #
