Kyle and L J

A "Crowd Hoot" story

By Thelma Mary Caroline

"You ever wanted to date a girl?"

The comment came seemingly out of nowhere.  Kyle looked up from her book, startled. 

Was the captain seriously suggesting something?  Did she expect something? 

Oh god.  It suddenly dawned on Kyle.  L J wanted to sleep with her.  Didn't she realize that she was with Otto?

But the woman just laid back on her couch, sighing world wearliy.  "Don't," she told Kyle.  "Girls are more confusing than Hell."

And then the very last thing Kyle might have expected happened.  L J burst into tears.

"Are you okay, L J?" she asked softly.

"It's just ... I miss Charley.  I didn't mean to make her mad.  I didn't want her to leave."

"You mean leave the E C C?"  Kyle tried not to show the confusion she felt.

"No, not the E C C.  No one ever leaves the E C C, even if they want to.  No, she left me."

L J's face turned angry.  "She left me because I thought she deserved to move up.  Not fucking Hannah."

And then she knew.  "It was because you punched her."

The captain threw her hands up into the air.  But then, just as quickly, she was quite.  "Yeah.  Because of that.  It was a mistake.  An accident."

"Just give her sometime.  She knows you didn't mean it."

"She won't get over it.  I know better than that."

She got up, and stood next to the window.  "She's so much younger than me.  And you know she looks older.  In a year, two years, a decade, do you know how much older she's going to look than me?  No, it's probably better for it to end now."

Kyle understood what the captain didn't say.  Someday she would see them die.  Every single person she had ever known.  If they died of nothing else, it would be old age, and L J would never age.

She wondered if L J was angry because of that, because Jeri had made her become immortal.

For a long time, L J stared at the window, lost in her own thoughts.