Dreamers (Original Text - Part Eleven) (1997)

     When I get around to rewriting this story (and I mean thoroughly rewriting it), I hope to avoid hammering a term into the readers heads like I unintentionally did here with "the group".  Can't be that lazy in my writing.  Fine for a first draft to get the idea out there (and all I really have is the rough draft), but it doesn't help if one wants their work to feel complete.
     Anyway, another incredibly short section. 

XI

     Nancy didn't like not getting together with the group, especially when it was everyone.  Still, she decided to follow through on her decision to explore a relationship with a man she knew and respected.  He wasn't from the group.  He probably wouldn't have much interest in the group.  It would be a shame to lose him because of the group.  Besides, Nancy could keep who she wanted from the group.  In the long run, she could deal with most of them being out of her life.
     Jason MacLeod was almost part of that subset.  He would have been if he wasn't going out with Melissa.  Nancy's discoveries about his sexual tastes, and the subsequent conversations they had engaged in had been enough to make her question the friendship he and she shared.  Well, that wasn't entirely true.  They were still friends, and they would probably stay friends for quite a while.  Nancy could, in Jason's terms, afford such a friendship.  She wasn't bound by work or school constraints.  She came from a family with less money than Vicki's, but unlike Vicki, Nancy wasn't encouraged to work.  Her parents liked giving her money.
     Not everybody was like that.  Not everybody was privileged or damned, and maybe more information should be had before she rushed to judgment on Jason.  He was, supposedly, in a faithful and satisfying relationship with Melissa.  He He had come so close to telling Melissa he loved her the night before.  There was a chance that he had said it at some point when Nancy was out of ear shot.  But he had spent the night on the couch, and Melissa slept in Jason's bedroom with Nancy.  It was a good thing because Nancy felt disoriented all night, and Nancy had something Jason was reluctant to call Night Terrors.
     Nancy wasn't out with the group, so she couldn't talk to anyone in it about how she was feeling.  She didn't want to draw her new interest into their ways, at least not as it stood.  Worst of all, she still wanted to know what had gotten her all rattled.  She instead decided to patiently wait for her man.  The patience helped.