Arguments of a Nerdy Couple : Long Distance

Rose was bored. She was generally one to keep herself occupied, but her boredom was less to do with her activities and a bit more to do with where she was.

It wasn’t that she disliked living with her aunt in Montana. It reminded her a bit of her childhood home in Glasgow, where she had grown up as a child, and she liked going to the parks and hiking around the mountains on weekends with her friends Jen and Mick. They were dear people and she loved them to pieces, but it still made her alternate between melancholy and aggravation whenever she went out with them.

It was simpler when we were just kids, she thought moodily as she lay on her stomach, chewing on the end of her pencil. She scrolled through her emails, sighing when she came up with nothing.

“Rose?” Her aunt poked her head into the room, glancing at the odd combination of fairy lights and origami butterfly mobile with her Sandman and Batman wall posters. “Are you sure you’re not hungry?”

“I’m sure, Auntie Ailie,” she replied. “Jen’s mum had made meatloaf. She’s determined to fatten me up.”

“Quite right,” her aunt agreed with a decisive nod. She spoke in the American accent that Rose had never been able to pick up. “You’re really too skinny for your own good, Rosie.”

“Oh, don’t call me that, Auntie!” she groaned.

Ailie Connors sniffed from her place in the doorway, crossing her arms. “You let that John McDonald call you ‘Rosie’,” she complained. “I’m your aunt! Aren’t I allowed a sweet little endearment?”

“Anything but Rosie.”

“Specially reserved, is it?”

Rose frowned. “Auntie…” she began in a warning tone.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t like how you get so mopey whenever you come back here after your holidays! It’s as if you don’t even like living here and you know how much Uncle Dave and I love you! What are we supposed to think?”

“Oh, Auntie, it’s not like that,” she protested, sitting up and swinging her legs off her bed. “I love you guys and I love living here. I just miss him, that’s all.”

Ailie stepped in and held Rose’s face between her hands. “I love you too, sweet. I can’t believe you’ll be gone next year.”

“I won’t be gone, Auntie, just…displaced. Come on, you like John!”

“He’s a little too old for you,” she complained, threading her fingers through Rose’s hair.

“It’s only four years. That’s not so much! And don’t tell him that, please. Lord knows I’ve had to beat that out of his head with a cricket bat to get him to ask me out. And you do like him. You said so yourself that time when he fixed the radiator in your car and named every constellation in the sky.”

“I don’t dislike the boy; I just get scared at how attached to him you are. Jen and Mick miss you here and even when you’re around, it’s like you leave a piece of you with him.”

Rose looked down at her slippers, feeling immeasurably guilty then. She, Jen and Mick had been inseparable ever since she moved to America after her parents’ deaths. They had done everything together, but as the years went by, Mick had started spending more time with Trisha Hill and Jen had become attached at the hip to Lizzie Night. Rose had had the occasional boyfriend, but nothing had ever been concrete until she had met John.

“I’ll talk to them in school tomorrow,” she promised. “Mick’s out with Trisha tonight and Jen’s studying for English.”

Ailie raised a brow. “And you’re not?”

“I don’t need to study that rubbish,” Rose snorted, crossing her legs on her mattress and rocking back and forth. “I know it all.”

“But you were having trouble understanding that bit in Hamlet…”

“John explained it to me last night.”

“Oh, did he now?”

Rose shrugged. “Apparently, he played Hamlet once in a school play. It was a one-off theater gig, but looks like he was a hit. He’s a closet Shakespeare nut.”

Ailie shook her head. “No wonder you like him so much. Anyway, if you get hungry later, there are leftovers in the fridge. Don’t stay up too late.”

“I won’t.” Ailie threw her a small and a quick goodnight before exiting. “Much,” Rose muttered under her breath.

Exhaling in a sigh, she flopped onto her back and kicked off her slippers, wiggling her toes. She had known that John would become a fixture in her life the day she met him. He had tagged along with his best friend Jack, who had been visiting his cousins, one of whom had conveniently been Jen. She still remembered barging into her house with a banged knee and messy hair, professing loudly about how she was never going to trust Mick ever again and that if he dared to bring her three feet within range of a skateboard, she would pound him. Jack had chortled merrily and thrown her a flirtatious wink, for which Jen had promptly smacked him upside the head. John had introduced himself with a bright grin and had quipped that even he had tried skateboards once and had decided that not everyone was made to be Marty Mcfly. She had responded to that with, “Great Scot!”, making a delighted pun on his accent.

“You know, Rosie Rose, as lovely as you are and as happy as I am that you finally installed that webcam, it is rather frustrating that the first view I get of you is that of your feet.”

Rose rolled over immediately and scooted forward to her laptop screen where John was throwing her an amused smile from the Skype window.

“You’ve got a problem with my feet?” she asked, pretending to be offended.

“Oh, no, of course not. Your feet are very much…feet-ish. I just prefer your face.”

She laughed merrily and found herself glowing at the sight of him, freckled face, messy hair, brown eyes, big smile, gangly body, all of him. They had ditched the idea of phones early on seeing the resulting bills and sent emails and chatted as often as they could with their respective schedules, but she had not seen his face in nearly two months.

“I prefer your mug to your toes as well, Indy,” she beamed, “speaking of which…” She reached to one side, grabbing something off her table. “Thanks for the hat!” She dropped a fedora atop her head.

“I knew it was with you,” he grumbled.

“I was waiting for the webcam to tell you,” she grinned. “You’re not getting it back.”

“Yes, I am. That hat is on rent to you, missy.”

“You wish. I keep the hat, you keep the name.”

“Shared commodity?” he offered.

Rose raised a brow. “You’re in a generous mood.”

John’s eyes softened at that behind his half-rimmed reading glasses. “It’s a special day, so I’m willing to be generous. I’ve missed you.”

“Jack and Ian aren’t keeping you entertained?” she joked.

“You’re prettier than they are.”

“I won’t argue with that.” The corner of Rose’s mouth tilts up a bit higher as she touches the mildly pixelated face smiling broadly at her from her laptop screen. “I’ve missed you too, you idiot.”

“Such tender endearments,” he chuckled. “It’s a good thing I know your code.”

“My code?”

“You know, the one you use on me: the one where you call me an idiot when you actually mean ‘I love you’.”

“You’re a genius detective, you are,” she replied. “You’re wasting your time at college. Quit, get a mild-mannered flatmate, a pipe, violin and a deerstalker hat and change your name to Sherlock.”

He wrinkled his nose. “I don’t like deerstalker hats. It flattens my hair and makes it look like a mushroom cut.”

Rose copied his action. “Don’t ever wear deerstalker hats. They’re evil. And the name Sherlock isn’t for everyone.”

“You just like my hair.”

“Yes, yes, I do, and not one word from you, or I will puncture your ego.”

“You exist to wound me, love.”

“We’re both masochists in this relationship,” she shrugged, breaking off with a big yawn.

“Go to sleep, insomniac. You have an English test in the morning. Did you even study for it?”

“No need to. I got Hamlet to explain the whole thing to me.”

“Nice bloke, is he?”

“The best. Bit of a royal pain in the arse, but he’s also a complete nerd and a pathetic fanboy, so I’ll forgive him anything.”

John raised an amused brow. “Should I be worried, Rosie Rose?”

“Never,” she said confidently before blinking sleepily. “I’m tired, but I’m not tired enough to sleep,” she complained. “Talk to me?”

“Are you insinuating that I put you to sleep, Miss Carmichael?”

“I just want to hear your voice. Talk to me?”

“Alrighty then. Let us conduct tonight’s debate on the age old dilemma: a TARDIS or a Delorean?”

“TARDIS,” Rose muttered.

“You’re right,” he muttered. “Hands down. Star Wars or Star Trek?”

“I want to be awake for that.”

“How about I read you some Shel Silverstein?”

Rose smiled sleepily at John’s face. “Have I ever mentioned that I love you?”

“Occasionally,” he beamed. “I could always stand to hear it again.”

“I love you.”

“Good. Close your eyes, study slacker.”

“Give me good dreams.”

“Yes, ma’am. Invitation by Shel Silverstein. ‘If you are a dreamer, come in…”

Rose fell asleep with a smile on her face. The next day, she aced her test.