Cross Is Back

*SPOILER*


It's true. Lee has now entered into her senior year and Cross has returned to her life. Quite randomly if I may add. He comes to her room (whether he was looking for her or Martha is unknown) in the middle of the night. He gets into bed with her, it's assumed that he is drunk, and proceeds to talk to Lee. Like myself, she is completely bewildered. The guy she has been loving/lusting after for 3 years is in her bed...in the middle of the night... with no explanation... shirtless. My first thought was WTH? I don't get how the characters jump from not speaking to eachother to in bed with one another within 5 minutes. Can someone explain that to me? Am I missing something? Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm a prude, I don't know, but laying in bed half naked with someone you've hardly spoken to in three years is weird.

To make things even more bizarre, he proceeds to hook-up with her. I'll let anyone reading use their imagination to fill in the blanks on what happened, though Lee does remain a virgin. I still think it's weird! A drunk guy crawls into your bed and you're like "Okay, whatever...totally normal." Lee was not as questioning or as bridled as I would have assumed. I understand that she is crazy about him, but I thought she would have considered herself worth more than a sloppy one-night stand.

Lee speaks with Martha about her not-friends-with-benefits relationship with Cross. Lee and Cross do not speak in public as though they are friends. No one besides Martha is assumed to know about the liaison. She is disapproving of course. She believes that Lee deserves better than what she is accepting. Lee disagrees, again of course, because she loves Cross. Their affair continues for many weeks in secret. Lee gives him everything she has, without expecting much in return.

It's sad how little she respects herself. At one point she says that she once heard someone say that one must be happy before they are in a relationship and that another person cannot make one happy. Her response was summed up in five words (page 319). I recognize with them and can understand Lee's loss of identity when she is consumed with her love and near infatuation. These five words have both disturbed and haunted me.

"I wish it were true."