It hasn't been this hot in the state of Massachusetts since 1967. It's the end of July and record-breaking temperatures have soared all the way from DC up through Maine. The people of Boston, who are still recovering from a long winter, don't know how to react. They seem to be afraid to move, afraid their bodies will collapse into heat-exhausted puddles if they expend too much energy. Their children sit in air-conditioned houses playing video games and eating ice cream. They melt their brains instead. Parks are abandoned. The mall is empty. The streets are nothing but mirages for the few business men brave enough to drive their air-conditioned beamers to the air-conditioned offices.

The city is even more still at night. The sun sets, but the air remains thick and humid for hours. Last night, Jane had joked about skinny dipping in the Charles River Basin, and if I hadn't done an experiment in undergrad about the sediment and chemicals that live in that body of water, I may have let her buy me a beer and talk me into it. That's how hot it is.

I don't mind the silence. In fact, I focus better when there is nothing happening around me. But sometimes, when I let myself stay awake too deep into the early morning, the silence creeps up, deafening, and my body betrays me. The world around me is asleep. The air hovers in stillness. And all at once, an ache surges up into my chest and I fear that I am empty and alone.

Tonight, it's not just the night's fault, or the heat's fault, or my own tired body's fault. It's my father's fault.

I had fallen asleep on the couch with my computer on my lap. I may have slept through the night if one of my earbuds hadn't remained in my ear, allowing the email notification to bloop straight to my ear drum. My eyes flutter open enough to make out the blur of my father's name in my inbox, and then I am wide awake, adrenaline pumping, and clicking on the email. I sit up and unstick my laptop from the tops of my thighs, which are slick with sweat. I glance at the slightly ajar bedroom door before looking back to the screen.

Maura,

Thank you for updating us on your progress in the medical school application process. No doubt every Ivy League in the nation will be grasping for your resume once they see your MCAT scores. Your mother is doing well. Big gallery opening in Prague next week. I'm sure you read about it in New York's Contemporary Art magazine. She is simply exhausted, or she would write herself.

Jonathan Isles, PhD

I read it three times. His signature at the bottom of the email is the default footer that shows up on every email he sends. Did he mean to end it there? It feels incomplete. My eyes well against my will. The screen blurs in front of me. I feel like a child, empty and alone. Instead of a heart inside my chest cavity, I have numbers and figures and encyclopedia facts and definitions. I have the distance from the moon to the sun and the proper ways to care for a third degree burn to minimize scarring and decrease the chance of infection.

It's an old, familiar feeling that used to weigh me to my bed at night. I would stare at my dolls' silhouettes in the darkness and wonder if they felt as solitary as I did, if they too had parents whom they missed all the time, if they too used knowledge and science to fill in the void. I don't feel like this often—not anymore, at least. You see, in college, I met a curly-haired girl who taught me that I could be more than the two versions of myself that kept me up at night. I could be the strong person that numbers and facts make me and I could be the soft person that fear and loneliness and love make me. I didn't have to fight either. I could be both. And, she'd said, that would be better. I'd be more real that way. More Maura. The true Maura. The Maura she loves.

I close my laptop, and the light is sucked from the room. I use the faint orange glow that seeps between the ugly vertical blinds on the living room window to tiptoe across our small apartment.

The linoleum kitchen floor only feels cool on my bare feet for a second, and then it is warm like everything else. I pull a glass from the cabinet near the door and then open the refrigerator. I have to close my eyes for a moment, waiting for my pupils to adjust to the light, and then I pull out the milk. My fingers are sweaty. The carton slips. Cold milk splashes my bare legs and pools around my feet. I stand for a moment, stunned. The tears spring back to my eyes as I turn to grab a sheet of paper towels. And, as I crouch to the floor to soak the puddle, I break. My throat is tight and achy from holding back the tears, and I let my body collapse into itself, shaking. Tears fall in steady streams from both of my eyes. My honey blond waves dangle inches above the mess. My hands still as I squat there and cry.

The bedroom door creaks on its hinges. I quickly wipe my nose and cheeks with the back of my wrist and stand. I dump the sopping wad of paper towels into the trash and pull my hair into a bun atop my head. I grab more paper towels and take a deep breath in before she appears.

"Maur?"

Jane squints at me from the doorway, one hand covering her eyes from the refrigerator light. Her long, dark curls are tangled in every direction. I look at her from the other side of the kitchen, and then bend to finish cleaning up my mess. She watches for a minute.

"Are you crying over sp—"

"Jane Clementine Rizzoli." I lift my hand to stop her.

She presses her lips together, rolls them between her teeth in a vain attempt to stop the smile that was forming. I try to stop mine too, but instead let out a half-chuckle, half-sob, and then wipe my nose on my sleeve. I feel ridiculous. I feel too much.

"What are you doing?" she finally asks.

I stand in a huff, grab more paper towels, and finish wiping up the milk. "Did you know that studies have proven that milk actually helps us sleep? It contains an amino acid called L-Tryptophan, which helps the body to produce melatonin and serotonin, two chemicals that make the body drowsy."

As I talk, Jane wets a rag at the sink and uses her foot to rub it over the sticky area at the base of the fridge.

"I fell asleep at my computer, and when I woke up I had an email from my father. I got upset. I felt dehydrated. The heat from the laptop didn't help. Plus, the window is not letting in any kind of a breeze tonight. I thought milk would be a good idea before I came to bed."

I toss the towels into the trash. I feel like a robot who has to switch between maniacally sobbing on the kitchen floor and maniacally spouting off random facts and figures. I don't want to be a maniac. I want to have balance in my brain. I want to be normal.

Jane picks up the milk carton, pours what is left into the glass I had set on the counter, and tosses the empty carton into the sink. I watch the muscles in her arms flex as she lifts herself onto the counter and pats the spot next to her. She's wearing a sports bra and exercise shorts. Her legs are long and lean, even more so in the shadows. That hardcore police training is really paying off.

I put my hand on the refrigerator door.

"No, leave it open," she says.

"But the electricity bill…"

"Fuck the electricity bill."

"Jane…"

"It's the hottest summer since 1967 and you're going to deny me the right to use my fridge to cool me off for a few minutes?"

"Our fridge."

"Yeah, our fridge. Come here." She pats the counter next to her.

I leave the door open and roll my head a few times, sighing. I'm not as tall nor as strong as she is, so I have to hop onto the counter. She steadies me with her left hand, and then hands me the glass with her right. I take a few sips in silence. My heels bump against the cabinets.

"Your neck bothering you?" she asks. Her voice is deep and raspy in a way that it only is in the middle of the night and early in the morning. I let my body respond to it.

"It usually does after I fall asleep on that futon. We really should get a proper couch."

"Turn around."

I look at her, and she wiggles her fingers at me. I smile a thank you before pulling one leg onto the counter and turning in the other direction. Her hands roll into my neck, my shoulders, down the tops of my arms and back. I let my head loll, my chin falling to my chest.

"I will never leave you so long as your fingers keep doing that," I mutter.

"Oh, I see how it is."

"Mhmm."

"Police work is dangerous, babe. My hands could get chopped off and then what would you do?"

Her thumbs work a knot behind my shoulder blade. My eyes close and a soft sigh of pleasure escapes my lips. "Leave you."

Her hands pause on my deltoids and I feel her lips on my hairline at the base of my neck. She exhales heat before she speaks again. "What was that?"

The cool air from the fridge has made its way across the kitchen, but my body is melting in heavenly bliss as she continues to trail slow kisses along the collar of my t-shirt. I whisper, "I'd leave you."

Her mouth is below my ear. "You'd love me?"

I grin, my eyes still closed.

"Hives, Maur."

I turn my head and capture her mouth with my own. The kiss is slow, sleepy. Jane breaks it to speak.

"I take that as a yes," she says as her hands begin to work again. "So you gunna tell me what your dad's email said?"

I shrug. "It was nothing important. They are in Prague for mother's art gallery opening… He didn't even sign his name, though. I mean, I haven't heard from them in four months and I don't even get a proper signature block?" My voice rises at the end, and I can feel my heart rate speeding. I take another sip of milk, swish it around my mouth before I swallow.

"You've gone for much longer without hearing from them before."

"Yes, but that was before. Now, I'm applying to medical school and I would really like my father the doctor to support me. You'd think he'd be at least a little bit interested in where I'm applying, or what I want to specialize in."

"You wanna tell 'em we broke up? You'd get access to your trust. They'd buy you a bigger place with air conditioning. Heck, your dad would probably even pull some strings to get you into Harvard, and then you really wouldn't have anything to worry about." I feel her shrug. "I could still live with you. They wouldn't be around enough to know any different."

"Differently." I can't stop myself. Adverbs are my nemesis.

"Differently," she repeats, and then adds, "It would solve all your problems."

I'm quiet for a minute, though not seriously considering it. We've had this conversation before.

"Not all my problems," I say.

"No?"

"Not if you keep forgetting to tighten the lid on the milk carton."

I say it with a straight face, proud of my joke. Jane gasps in faux shock, and then pinches my side as punishment. I try to inch away, but my legs stick to the tile and I don't get far. She pokes all the sensitive spots around my ribs until I'm yelling, "Okay! Okay! You're going to make me spill again!"

After we've settled, I add more seriously, "Besides, it's the principle of the matter."

"Yeah, I know," Jane sighs.

Her bare foot finds mine, and they tickle each other for a while, dangling mid-air. Then, she slides off the counter. I shift to face her, let her hips push between my knees. Her fingertips trace patterns up my legs. I watch what I can see of her shadowed face in the faint blue light as I finish the milk and set the glass aside.

"You woke me up from a dream, you know."

"Did I?"

"Yeah." She grabs me around the waist and lifts me to the floor.

"Jane!" I can't help but squeal a little. She is getting so strong. She surprises me sometimes.

She wraps one arm around my waist and holds the other out, like she wants to dance. I give her my right hand and raise my eyebrows, questioning. She grins that goofy grin, and so I put my other hand on her shoulder and let her lead the way.

"We were dancing" she says.

"In your dream?"

"Yep."

"Is this the step we were doing? What is it?" We're not quite doing a box step but not quite doing a waltz, either.

"Don't worry about it, just follow me. I'm the man."

"That's a very heteronormative way of thinking. Two women can dance together quite elegantly without one having to pretend to be the man."

Jane stops abruptly and drops her arms. "Woman, I am trying to dance with you. How many times have you tried to get me to dance with you?"

I purse my lips.

"Yeah, that's right. A LOT."

"Sorry," I mutter. "Do I get a second chance?"

She puts on her Jersey accent and says, "A second change? For you? Always." She grins, and offers her hands again.

We begin again, this time to the tune of her hum. We move in circles. Eventually, my hand wraps around her back and my head finds the space on her chest between her shoulder and neck. I let my body relax against hers. We dance around the kitchen in the refrigerator light.

"You don't hate everything that's heteronormative, do you?" Jane asks. I feel her chin near my forehead.

I'm not sure what she's getting at, so I go with a safe answer. "Well, I try to be aware of the societal effects and implications of heteronormative forms of thought…"

"What about marriage?"

My chest drops into my stomach, my stomach to the ground.

"Are you anti-marriage?"

I'm sure she can feel my heart beating out of my chest. I try not to move. I try to let her lead. My feet stick to the floor and my toes bump into hers. I try to answer. "Sorry. N—no. I'm not anti-marriage."

"Good," she says simply. Her hand comes up to smooth across my forehead, and then she kisses the top of my head. "You know I love it when you throw your hair up like this. Gives me more of you to kiss."

"Mmmm," is all I can manage. I close my eyes against her chest. Her hands roam the expanse of my back under her Boston Police Academy t-shirt. We're moving slowly, now. I feel like myself, like the most whole, complete version of myself. The right one. The good one. The one that is capable of both loving and being loved by the most beautiful, deceptively complex girl on the face of the earth.

"Jane?"

"Hmmm?"

"What if I don't get into Harvard and I have to move away?"

She takes a moment to respond. "We'd be okay, Maur. I'll pass my PAT and make it through the probation period. Then once I make officer, I can request to transfer units. But you'll get in. I have no doubt about that."

"What if all the kids in medical school are snotty and all the professors just want to sleep with me?" I reference an earlier conversation about a professor from BU who Jane was convinced was trying to seduce me.

Jane chuckles. "Well, you'd be naïve to think that there won't be at least a handful of professors who will have a hard-on for you the second you walk into their classrooms. And they'd be blind not to. And you do realize that all the students will probably think that about you, right?"

I pull back to look at her. "That I'm sleeping with professors?"

"No, that you're… I mean, you're not… snotty…" She struggles for a way to fix it. "But at first, you can come off as…"

I raise my eyebrows.

"Oh, come on," she admits defeat. "You know I love you. And they will too, once they get to know you. Besides, you won't be there for them. You'll be there for yourself."

I know what she means, so I roll my eyes and lean back into her. My fingertips trail the concave of her spine. She wraps her arms tighter around me.

"You know I actually have to wear this shirt to training, right?"

I pout my lips into her chest. "But you have four of them. It's so comfortable, and it smells like you. I like wearing it when you're not around."

Jane hums and shifts her body a little, pulling away from me. Her hands clench into fists around the fabric on either side of my waist. She leans down, exhales into my lips before I strain my neck and close the gap. I'm on my tip-toes. I want more. We kiss until I have to come up for air.

"By that logic," she says between kisses along my jaw, "you don't need to wear it right now. Because I'm right here."

"Ah," I say. "Excellent deductive skills, officer." I lift my arms over my head and Jane pulls the shirt up and over.

"Detective," she corrects.

"My apologies, Detective." I wrap my arms around her neck and she grabs my thighs, hoisting me off the floor. I hook my ankles behind her back and nuzzle my face into the crook of her neck.

"Close the fridge, babe?" she asks. She turns her back to the door and I kick it with the ball of my foot.

"That's Doctor to you."