Tuesday put a cloth over the work she’d been doing and slid the tray into a drawer. “I’m still processing it. I feel fine. He’s...well, you know.” She threw her hands up, frustrated that he was so appealing. “I don’t know. We haven’t even actually fucked yet. We barely know one another.”

Natalie washed out the coffee stuff as she spoke over her shoulder, “You and Ezra know each other. You have since that first meeting. I see the way you look at each other, the way you circle and get all flushed. I’ve been going out with Paddy since July of last year and in all that time I’ve never seen Ezra with a woman. Or talk about a woman. Other than you.”

“Pause the lecture.” Tuesday turned off the interior lights except the security ones and then hit the alarm before returning to gather her things and lock up.

“I’m sure you walked so I’m up here.” Natalie pointed to her car.

Natalie started in again once they got on their way home. “And you, well you’ve built a wall around your heart.”

Tuesday held up a hand Natalie couldn’t see because she was driving. But her friend would know it was happening anyway. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Too bad. I’ve let you avoid it for way too long.”

“Natalie, I can’t do this right now. Everything is fine. We will eventually have sex and I will fill you in on it and that will be that. We’ll do it awhile and it’ll wear off and we’ll be those people who fuck every once in a while when they need it from someone they can trust to be a good time but not develop feelings.”

“Oh god. Seriously? This is how you’re going to play this thing? You and Ezra are fuckbuddies? You bang awhile and then you see each other all the time and it’s totally hunky-dory?”

“I’ve seen people I’ve had sex with in town or around and I don’t burst into tears that I never bore their children, Natalie.”

“Don’t get defensive with me. I know your tricks. When Paddy first came around, you told me to let him in because I didn’t have anything to lose. I’m saying that to you now. Let this be good. You deserve that. You can’t just let that part of you die.”

“I’m not some sort of defective goods, Nat.”

Natalie parked and they went into the house, heading to the kitchen, where they began to ready for the pancakes Tuesday had promised.

Neither of them spoke as they moved through the kitchen, washing hands, tying on aprons, getting the griddle heating and then mixing up the pancake batter. Natalie was a horrible cook so she gathered ingredients and then cleaned them up when Tuesday finished.

As they did all this, Natalie put out all the items they’d need with just a little too much force because she was pissed off. Normally, this was the place Natalie had stopped when the topic of Tuesday beginning to date again came up.

But things had shifted over the past year or so and it seemed pretty apparent to Tuesday that Natalie was going to push some more.

The problem was that Tuesday could lie to herself better than she could lie to Natalie. Which was also a testament to the friendship they’d had since the first day of college. They’d celebrated so many things together, grieved others, like the unthinkable when, four years prior, Tuesday’s husband had been diagnosed with cancer and had died three months later.

Through it all, through grief so deep it was simply inescapable, through that numb place she’d floated into, it was Natalie who’d grabbed hold and gave her roots. Friendship that saw everything and loved because of it saved her over and over.

So she couldn’t lie to Natalie because Natalie understood Tuesday’s grief and her avoidance behavior, too.

Once they’d settled at the table with a heaping platter of pancakes between them and two big glasses of orange juice, they began to talk again.

“He’s sexy. I like him.” Tuesday poured warmed-up boysenberry preserves on her pancakes. “Before you get huffy over there, I know it’s more than that. There’s this intensity between us that...” That she’d never in the entirety of her life felt with anyone. “I get caught up in it. It’s like he gets near and all my parts samba. He’s powerful. He takes up oxygen and space. He’s big and sexy. So. Sexy. I can’t even with how sexy he is.”

Tuesday put her face in her hands a moment before she got back to her pancakes. “Anyway, it’s not like I don’t enjoy sex. He and I are clearly compatible. He’s a grown-up. I’m a grown-up. We do our thing and at some point we don’t. Stop arguing with me on this right now.”

Natalie huffed but held her tongue. For a minute or two.

“I’ll stop for now. But you said it was like right as you were putting a condom on so that means he was naked and really I have to know.”

Tuesday guffawed. “He is one of the universe’s finest creations. I didn’t get to study as much as I wanted to because we were busy getting it on. Next time I’m going to make him stand still and just circle him slow so I can take it all in.”

“He’s so broody and emo and protective. It’s scary and hot all at once. Paddy is hard enough to manage. I can’t imagine how tough a job it will be to keep Ezra out of trouble.”

“Ha. Not my job. He’s a big boy.” Boy was he ever.

Natalie and Paddy both had a lot of scars and hot buttons, but they both seemed willing to confront them when they came up and deal with working things out, which was how to make a relationship work.