Looking Everywhere But Here

Chapter 1

He awoke late, content to stare at a cobweb in the corner of the ceiling rather than get up and get on with his life. She'd let him down easy. He didn't mind the break-up so much, at least not breaking up with her. It was the fact that he couldn't make it work that bothered him.

His heart wasn't broken, but his spirit was. Janine hadn't meant any more to him than his last six girlfriends: companionship, a good lay once in a while. She was nice and all, he could have stuck it out with her, but somehow, it wasn't enough. He'd played all his cards right, and she'd still dumped him.

What Bobby couldn't figure was: if he could be content and stick it out with someone who was nice, and fun, and relatively honest, why couldn't she? He'd been as kind as ever, he'd had a few laughs with her, he'd made love to her on a cold winter night. He hadn't seen anyone else in the last 3 months, since they'd been together. Yet it wasn't enough for her.

The ringing of the phone snapped him out of his thoughts. He fumbled through his discarded pants on the floor and withdrew it from his pocket. "Goren," he managed to say just before it went to voicemail.

"Bobby? You coming in today?"

"Oh, shit! I'm sorry, Alex, I…" What excuse did he have, really? "I forgot what day it was."

"Monday, Bobby. Last time I checked."

"Shit," he muttered again. "I'll be in as soon as I can. Uhm… make up some excuse for me with Deakins?"

"Sure, Bobby."

Alex was dividing her attention between the monotonous monologue of the man on the phone and Mike Logan. He was still relatively new to the squad, and she still hadn't made up her mind about him yet.

Mike was sharpening pencils and lining them up on the top of his desk. If he kept it up, he would have enough pencils to last him the rest of the calendar year without ever having to sharpen one again. She saw Bobby step off the elevator and saw an opportunity to bring the painful phone call to an end. "Okay, thank you Howard. That was really, really helpful. I'll call you again if I need anything else. Thanks again," she said and hung up. She kept her eyes on Bobby until he stood beside his desk, dropping his binder with a thunk.

"You okay?" She asked.

He nodded, but his expression didn't jive with that sentiment. Bobby flopped into his chair and opened his desk drawer, pulling out an old yellow pencil. He wagged it nervously between his fingers, then used it to practice his magic tricks.

"Fill me in?" She asked.

"Oh, uh… you remember Janine?" She nodded. "She, uh, well… we're through."

"Oh, Bobby, I'm so sorry."

She couldn't mean that. He looked up at her and was surprised to see that she did. "W-why?" he asked.

"Why?"

"Yeah, why are you sorry about it? I mean, it shouldn't matter to you one way or the other."

"It matters to me because you're my friend."

He maintained the eye contact with her and blinked twice, before he finally looked down and said, "Oh."

He put the pencil away and pulled out a file out of his lower drawer. Alex gave Logan another glance before she got busy on a report of her own. The new detective had placed all the pencils in a cup, point side up, and was now busy working on his laptop.

"I didn't do anything wrong," Bobby volunteered.

She glanced back up at him and waited for him to continue.

He shrugged. "I mean, she… she just thought it was best, and…" With that comment, he spilled what was left of yesterday's coffee all over the paperwork in front of him. They both jumped to their feet and got busy rescuing the file.

"Maybe she just… wasn't ready," Alex suggested.

"No, she told me early on what she wanted. I thought I was giving it to her."

Alex frowned. "Look, it's almost lunch, and it's slow as hell around here. Let's get out of here for a while." She looked over at Logan, who was sucking his finger after inadvertently stabbing himself when he reached for one of his pencils. "We'll take Logan. He's having a hell of a day, too."

"Barek's out sick," Mike explained, sipping from his soda straw.

"What's she got, the flu?" Alex asked. Glancing over at Bobby, she saw he was more interested in the people filing by on the sidewalk outside.

"Yeah, something like that," he said. "Last night, we had just finished interviewing this guy, and she damned near puked all over my shoes." He ate a stray French Fry that had fallen off his plate. "Kinda put our investigation at a standstill."

"Well, Bobby and I are in between cases. We could help you out."

"There's more legwork to do, not safe to do it alone," Logan explained.

"Bobby," Alex said, drawing his attention back to the table. "Feel like a little legwork?"

His expression was less than enthusiastic, but he shrugged and said, "sure."