Chapter Fourteen
These were an awesome couple of chapters, Nonky! I loved them! HOW do you manage to combine humour and heartbreak within the same sentence. I kept laughing, and then sighing in sympathy for Chloe, and then laughing again… it was a very weird cycle.
I really appreciated how the chapter began with Chloe berating herself for not confronting Lex when she believed he was trying to get rid of her because he was entertaining another woman in his apartment. I liked how Nonky showed it was part of a pattern that Chloe has indulged in whenever she felt rejected… Confrontations were the last thing she did… she would mostly run off, cry and brood, and then greet the heart-breaking bastard the next morning with a big friendly smile.
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He was a chronic womanizer, and for all she knew a habitual philanderer as well. It shouldn't surprise her as much as it was. She had believed she knew him, and she did; she knew he was ultimately an insecure man traumatized by every intimate relationship he'd ever had. He might only be able to carry on a normal courtship for so long before he either had to have a disastrous marriage or a spectacular breakup. He craved power and she didn't let him boss her around. He wanted control, though to be fair he had never tried to control her. He wanted a woman who could live in his world full-time, replete with manners from Victorian England and an ability to ignore any controversy surrounding his dinner guests. She had never fit, would never get the chance to try.
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Chloe knew Lex could confide in her and she would never tell anyone else what had been said, but she didn't think he knew. He didn't like to see her reading his bad press, even when she was critiquing the writing and finding it biased. He hesitated before saying he'd be in a meeting, as if she would accuse him of being the evil CEO caricature running a plot to take over the world.
It was both funny and sad seeing Chloe moping as she kept finding reasons on why she and Lex were never as serious a couple as she might have initially believed. She’s seriously trying to convince herself about how she should have ‘seen it coming’ and how it was ‘inevitable’ for Lex to dump her and move onto someone else… Poor dejected Chloe! I would have thought that dating Lex would have been GOOD for her ego.
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There was a divide between his life and the life anyone else might lead whether they were rich or poor. She did her best to work around it, but had found only Lex's effort could allow her to understand how he was feeling and what he was thinking. Successful couples needed to be able to pry into each other and find the hurts so they could make it better and lend support. She had missed him moving on to another woman, so it was unlikely she ever knew Lex that well.
I really liked this observation about relationships and what makes them work. I think it’s true that nosiness is another feature of being in a strong, honest and open relationship… If you’re not interested in your partner’s dealing, chances are that you will never get full disclosure on what your partner is up to.
I liked the picture painted of Bobbo! I was ROTFL at the nick-name… poor guy! But I liked him, he seemed like a nice, average guy… nothing spectacular and impressive about him, but nothing offensive or weird either.
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He laughed. “Our rooms are okay. The bathrooms are arctic. You step in and the water from the previous shower is frozen in drops on the tiles. It's getting to be a bit rank while maintenance puts off fixing it. The only guys showering every day are the ones getting laid.”
She and Robert ate pizza and traded college stories, and he walked her to her car before going back to the newsroom. She had told him there was no need, but he had grinned.
“I'll probably just play internet poker, but if anyone else asks I was typing that story on scholarship funding,” he said, bumping her shoulder with his own.
LOL! He might not have been capable of Lex-like witticisms, but he was amusing and charming in his own way, and I enjoyed the conversation between the two of them. Nice wholesome fun dialogue :D
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She had smiled and as she was driving away she realized she had tried to pay for her half of the pizza and been refused. Robert had paid, and he had been friendly. She didn't know if he thought it was a date, didn't even know if he had a girlfriend.
It had been nice, and one of her options, but she didn't feel any better. She suspected when she woke up she would feel guilty of something. She had run out of anger and was filled with self-pity.
I should have gone drinking, she thought. Dancing stupidly with Lois isn't cheating.
ROTFLMAO! Oh poor obsessed, pathetic, pitiful Chloe! She’s been driven to new lows where she can’t even hang out with some guy ina purely platonic way without becoming obsessed about Lex in a whole new way. She’s concerned about CHEATING?! Because she split a pizza with some guy?! ROTFLMAO! I guess Lex is not the only one who cracked this December, LOL!
Chapter Fifteen
I was really pleased that this chapter started with Lois mocking Chloe’s concerns about ‘accidentally cheating’ on Lex. I was really happy with Lois throughout this entire chapter because she gave Chloe some heave-handed, upside the head slaps to reality. Chloe has been floating in this obsessed paranoid haze for too long, and she needed someone to boot her back to real life… And Lois fulfilled that need perfectly. YAY Lois!!! LOL!
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“Do you leave a hairbrush at his place, because that's probably where he got your DNA,” she said. “Maybe he's using your clone to breed. That's it! He's cheating on you with a pregnant copy of yourself!”
ROTFLMAO! Oh dear me! Am I the only one who thinks this would make an AWESOME fanfic on it’s own?! I can very easily imagine Lex going to these levels of crazy, LOL!
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Lois spent biology classes in high school flirting with a classmate, and she wasn't much of a student during her short time at Met. U. Chloe forgave her for not understanding the difficulties of cloning a functioning being and the impossibility of Lex having a clone of her older than six. Unless Lex liked vacant gazing into the distance a clone wouldn't work.
LOL! I suppose this was meant to be a poke at the ridiculousness of the clones that keep popping up in canon SV, LOL! If only the producers and writers could also appreciate this little dose of reality :P
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“Well, he's not at it with some brunette bimbo, because he's all glowy and smiley when you're around. He held your hand through dinner and neither of you could cut your food!”
ROTFLMAO! No wonder Lois is so sceptical of Chloe’s theories about imminent dumping. I imagine it must have been absolutely sickening for everyone else to see the saccharine sweetness of the Chlex couple during the Thanksgiving dinner, ROTFL!
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“I don't feel like that's what I'm doing. He's different around me, and I have no idea how he spends his time,” she said slowly. “He used to make a bigger effort to call me and meet up even if he was traveling or busy. I've never had a normal boyfriend, but doesn't lack of interest mean there's a problem?”
“Chloe, is it possible you're sending him a vibe that he's not welcome. I hate to be a member of the Woobie Lex Club, but he's kind of sensitive for a guy,” Lois said. “If he felt you wanted space he'd probably move to Cleveland. You've been sort of crabby for a while now.”
squeeee! I love how Lois is driving these home-truths straight through Chloe’s paranoia. It’s fantastic seeing someone talk Chloe down from insanity and back to rhyme, reasons and sense again. I liked the comment Lois made about Chloe searching for excuses to announce herself broken off from Lex… She IS doing that!
And I was ROTFLMAO at the comment of Lex moving to Cleveland if he thought Chloe needed some time and space to herself. LOL! Lois really knows Lex REALLY well. How wonderful, he really has become part of the Sullivan-Lane family.
LOL! Woobie-Lex! Nonky, you actually used that awesome term, ROTFL!
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“I'm going to feel so stupid if I've done this to myself,” she muttered. “Okay, so do I call him? I call him, right?”
It’s miraculous! she sees the light! And all it took was some well-phrased sarcasm and mockery from Lois. I should have known that Chloe would have responded better to snark rather than sympathetic reasoning, LOL! Actually, MOST people respond better to mockery of their melodrama rather than gentle reason and sympathy.
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She wrinkled her nose and slapped herself on the forehead. Her brain was stuffed with schoolwork and there was no energy left to think of personal things. She was either a huge, masochistic moron or she was being cheated on and about to be dumped.
EXCELLENT! We have made tremendous, wonderful, amazing progress in this one chapter. Chloe bubble of self-pity has been punctured, and now she’s ready for reasonable explanations and/or confrontation. Fantastic attitude adjustment, and it happened perfectly and naturally.
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“His name is Bobbo,” Lois reflected. “Maybe you should just not mention him to anyone else.”
ROTFLMAO! Oh dear me! Hilarious! So mean, and hilarious, ROTFL!
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Chloe let her head thump onto the desk and her cousin made an uncertain noise in her ear. “Chloe, unless you want out, I think you should do you best with Lex every day. If he's setting up to leave you can't change his mind by whining, but you can show him what he'll be missing. At least you'll have another Christmas with him, and that's a pretty good deal if you love him.”
The blond put her hand under her forehead and thumped it on the desk several more times to beat back tears. She hated this but she knew she was going to wait out whatever Lex was doing because she did want another Christmas in his arms.
“I already bought his stupid present, so I guess I'm hanging in for whatever stupidity is next. Boys suck."
YES! Now THERE is the proper attitude to be approaching this with, Chloe! Yay Lois for digging Chloe’s head out of her self-pitying behind. Heh, the scene is set for reconciliation, but I think Nonky is just teasing and yanking our chains with ‘hope’ for reconciliation before she finally destroys the Chlex relationship. Hold onto your hats everyone! LOL!