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Over the past few days, America often wondered, with a sort of unhappy wryness, if this was how Taym had felt after getting her letter and realizing the misunderstanding. It was just so ********> frustrating to have him claim that she shot him down when it was always, always him that rejected her in dozens of ways, both small and large, right from the beginning.

Knocking on Maebe's door, she had a vague hope that it would be easier get Maebe to understand, once the truth of matters was laid out. Taym probably tried to tell her his version, so no ******** wonder he'd asked America to explain instead. Getting a straight answer from Taym was worse than pulling teeth because he could draw it out for ******** weeks given half a chance.

America hugged the smaller girl with a laugh, "I'll have you know I'm high maintenance, so you better be prepared to feed me on the regular." Maebe, as always, was made up of inviting curves and curls, and of course, smelled very nice. Cami and Otto were lucky indeed, no matter what drama hit Twitter.

"Taym asked me to explain the...thing with me n' him. I figure he must've done poorly trying to explain it himself."

Planting a kiss on top of Maebe's head, America let go only to grab the blonde's hand an pull her inside the room with a sigh. "This may take a bit," she admitted and then paused, "or maybe not so long at all because that's the thing. Me n'Taym have tried to sort out the s**t between us more than once, and somehow it always comes out the same but different but the same, and a day later it's back to square one."

She made a small, frustrated sound at the back of her throat, "And he's an idiot sometimes, and can't give a girl a straight ******** answer, and is way too eager to paint himself the ******** failure or victim or whatever. But I think he probably believes whatever bullshit he tried sending your way." A roll of the eyes.

"The short of it is: it's complicated, it's no one's fault, but it's hard, even if we're trying our best to make things work." She shot Maebe a small smile, wry and uncertain and painfully fond, and it was one that often accompanied the subject at hand, "Do you even want the long version?"

Curling into Maebe's side, the redhead chuckled, "Well I think the longest version starts was back in January, so it's on you, Maebe honey, if you get bored." She hummed quietly for a moment before beginning, "You know that HOT list deal I had going for awhile? I should hope so, since you're the one that shot Caelius in the a** with a dart gun." America had not forgotten that, not one bit.

"Well one of the things I asked Taym was what he liked in a woman, and the tl;dr I got from his answer was along the lines of: for the short term, easy as pie; but for the long term you'd best be willing to read a book or two for him, and like it."

She laughed again, a little bit incredulous at her past self, "So I figured, if anything ever happened between us, it's just be a casual thing until Miss Long Term came along. And after that I actually," a helpless little giggle, "...I thought he might actually have a thing for Konstantin." Lifting her head, America shot Maebe a ridiculous grin as she confessed, "I tried to play wingman."

The giggles were contagious and it was hard to get out the next part, "So for awhile Taym would be like, hitting on me while I was thinking he was buttering me up to help the situation with Kon. There was also," America admitted, "the fact that when I was asking him questions, he said he'd like to opt out of any future relationships anyway. Then he tried to have Kon give me a message and well...Kon's English is great," she insisted, "...but sometimes words get fussed, and the message sounded like a sort of...second rejection. It might have been," she confessed, "a bit galling."

Setting her head back down with a thump, America continued, "And that was the start of it all, really. We went to that sensitivity seminar thing together and he cried on me, and...there's things, about Taym that are really ******** endearing, you know? Even if he's getting you all wet with his manly tears. So maybe I was starting to get fond, and he and Kon had already been friends for awhile, and Kon? He doesn't ask for things often, but he got worried about Taym, about his eating getting worse. So I ummm..."

The humor drained out of America, "I confronted him about his eating disorder and made him go to the infirmary. They said if he didn't get his weight up in a couple months, he'd be shipped off to the Sahara where he'd probably die. A little while after that, he got flagged for that mission anyway and was ordered to actually ******** lose more weight so he could go to the Sahara and probably die."

Idly she plucked at Maebe's bedspread, "Things went from getting to know this person I'm starting to really like to life and death intense really ******** fast."

A soft huff, somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. "Yeah, he is. But before he left a lot of things happened, we got closer and I grew to love him a lot and...it's ******** awful, you know? To love someone who's gonna die soon, and even if they survive, there's every chance they plan on just dying slow in front of you anyway." She paused to swallow that down, to swallow all the bitter, hurtful little pills that were well past, that didn't need to be a part of her life any longer.

"And Taym's not as easy as he seems, you know? It took months to coax him into the briefest bits of touch." She considered explaining further, the was he was afraid he'd forgotten how to be normal, how to touch another person. But that was Taym's, and when he'd told her it had been under a compulsion of sorts. "But one day he kissed me, and the week before he left we started having sex."

Glancing shyly over at Maebe, America added, "I've had...all sorts of sex, you know, but feelings sex has always been kinda rare. And he was a bit different, too, relaxed, like he was...happy."

"It was wonderful and then he left to go die, and he would message me every week and it was like having this horrible, delayed, too little too late back seat view of it." She didn't mention Lawr's deal, offering Taym's safety in exchange for sex. The guilt still lingered too bitterly from saying no, from later being helpless to do anything when Taym had actually needed it. "But yeah, he lived and came back. And he wanted to get better, to not die, and it was like letting go of a breath I'd been holding for months. And for a little while things were really nice. And maybe nice doesn't seem like much but it's the kind of nice you want to be...everyday. The sort of nice you want to hold onto and put in your pocket."

And obviously that had ended, and Maebe might have caught the edges of it from time to time on Twitter. "And then one day he said, let's not do this anymore. That is was a mistake and he'd been telling himself all along that things were okay when they weren't. So...I got mad but it only lasted a bit, because staying mad with him is...well I don't even want to be mad most of the time anyway, but he makes it harder than he has any ******** right. But after that he said it was to preserve our friendship and that just...it didn't make any sense, because things seemed better and not worse, and his timing was shitty as anything. But I tried to accept it because I love him and I don't want to ruin what we have."

After a pause, she admitted, "Tried, but...I goaded him into sex later. And demanded he make good the promise of a date that was supposed to have happened a couple months before. I really liked that date, never had one like it, and it started out kinda badly but really it was..." America's voice went from enthusiastic to subdued in the space of a sentence. "But in the end he told be that I made him stupid, and that he needed me to tell him that we weren't together, and that he wasn't proud of...of, well later he insisted that he didn't mean it that way, but at the time I took it to mean he wasn't proud of us. Together."

And the memory of that hurt welled up, even if he said it wasn't so, it had been a wound and it had left a mark. "I had thought, because the man can't give a straight answer to save his ******** life," and she remembered the desperate texts from the desert, and the silent manhandling when they'd com upon one of the things that had kept him as some sort of pet, and gave a small, unhappy laugh, "...sometimes literally, I'd though he meant that his Miss Longterm, that pretty girl who loved the books he did and who would talk to him about Russian writers with stupid long names and actually know what she was talking about, I thought she'd finally come along. I thought I was tripping him up, insisting on dates. Dragging him out in the middle of the night to trade stories. Messaging him nearly everyday and sending him pictures of me all the damn time. How could that not trip a fellow up when he's trying to focus on someone else and get her interest in return?"

With a snort, America gave Maebe a small hug. "Something like that. I was just...devastated. For days after, it was right before my birthday and I didn't want to distance myself from him, I didn't want to just become hi-bye friends. He didn't come to party, but he left me a gift in my room and it was this huge box of books, of course, the ******** nerd. But they were the complete set of this one book I had, and he probably didn't know it, but it was like opening up an entire summer from my childhood. Getting part of my old life back and in my hands after thinking it was gone for good. And it just made it so much harder to try and restrain myself, until I wrote him this huge ********, an honest to god letter, trying to explain and sort out my feelings without him there to interrupt me."

Taking a deep breath, America paused and then took another before continuing, "Next time he saw me he explained, that it was me. He wanted to be with me and have a life with me, and that he knew I wouldn't want the same, and that's why he broke things off." She laughed then, incredulous, "And that's where things should have been fixed right? That's where things get fixed in movies n'such. Because I love him and of course I want to build a life with him. So I told him just move in with me and Kon and we can all just make ourselves a happily ever after."

There was a pause, and America clarified, voice going low, "There's things, Taym won't or even can't give me. And it's not even about sex or romance or anything, but about...he's a bit stingy with himself and I'm a whole lot greedy, and with just the two of us...I don't think it could work, but since Kon's my best friend, an other half who doesn't so much complete the picture as expands it, who fills in all my little gaps and who I can just...hold hands with, whenever I want," America's voice held an almost pitiful sort of awe at this, that she could take that contact for granted in this one, special person. "Because I have Konstantin, I thought maybe I could be with Taym, like in a real relationship, long-term lovey-dovey and everything."

Obviously she'd been wrong. "For me Kon was the solution, he pretty much always is. But for Taym? He was the problem, even though it's not romantic between us and we don't have sex or anything, Taym said he doesn't want to share. I got real mad then," America admitted, "...and started throwing s**t. Eventually we got to some sort of agreement that wasn't really any sort of agreement, because we're still best friends, Maebe, and we still love each other. We just can't give what the other needs, not without hurting ourselves in one way or another."

Another sigh, and the redhead buried her head against Maebe's arm, "Some days things seem okay, some days we're crying at each other over our old lives and future lives we'll never have. And sometimes I see him and I just want to cup his face and kiss him stupid, because he's such a sweet ******** boy even when he's also acting like the world's biggest a*****e. But we don't touch even a bit anymore and I try to be careful. I try not to tell him I love him too often or point out the ways he's special to me. I try to make sure there's always a reason to visit him in person, and never just because. And we're both just trying to...get past this."