"So, what do you want to eat tonight? Pizza?" Jane grinned at her friend with a hopeful smile on her face.

"Pizza, again?" Maura whined just a teensy bit, just as Jane had known she would.

"We haven't had pizza since–"

"Monday, Jane. Two days ago."

"Well, how about Bucky's? We haven't been there since last week."

"Burgers? Jane, I cannot keep eating like this! You might be able to stay skinny no matter what you eat, but I am going to get fat pretty quickly eating pizza and hamburgers every day."

"Are you kidding me? You look perfect, you don't need to worry about your weight at all."

"No, Jane, you don't need to worry about your weight. I'll have you know I've put on five pounds since we've started—" Maura paused just in time before she finished her sentence, and corrected herself. "Since we've been eating out so much."

She had almost said dating. She quickly began rummaging through papers on her desk, hoping that Jane hadn't noticed the blush creeping across her cheeks.

Jane didn't seem to catch on to her friend's embarrassment, and continued trying to persuade Maura to accept her choice for dinner. "Okay, they have salads at Bucky's. You get a salad and I'll have my usual."

"Have you ever had a Bucky's salad? I think the last one I ate there had been in the back of the fridge for a couple of days, the lettuce had clearly been frozen."

"Okay, that's gross. So Bucky's is out. Maybe we should just cook something, if we can't agree on a place."

"Ugh." Maura wrinkled her nose. "I hate cooking, especially after a long day at work. The last thing I want to do after an autopsy is stand over a stove."

"Well, let me make you dinner then. I had a slow day today, I don't mind."

Maura looked dubious, and squinted at Jane, shaking her head slightly. "You can cook?"

"Of course I can cook, I'm Italian, aren't I? I know just what I can make for you, and if we stop at the store there can even be salad, with never-been-frozen lettuce."

"How come I've never heard about your culinary skills before today? How do I know you aren't just teasing me, and trying to trick me into ordering pizza anyway?"

"Maura, I swear, I can cook for us! I wouldn't tease–"

Maura cut her off with an indignant look. "Please, don't even say you wouldn't tease me. You tease me all the time!" Jane put on her most innocent look, so Maura swept by her on her way out from behind the autopsy table and smacked her lightly on the arm. Jane responded by poking her in the stomach and then jumping out of reach before Maura could retaliate.

"I'm not teasing about this, I swear! C'mon, let's get out of here, I'm starving." She held the door open with a grand gesture. "M'lady, your dinner awaits."

"So you can cook, huh. What else do I not know about Jane Rizzoli?" Maura smirked as the two women got into the elevator.

"Oh, many things, Dr. Isles. Many, many things." Jane's voice was low and almost seductive, but then she giggled playfully and poked Maura in the stomach again.

Maura felt a little flutter somewhere inside of her, and it wasn't just because the elevator had begun its jerky ascent to the main floor.

"So, do you admit that I can cook now?"

"Oh, Jane, absolutely. That pasta was fantastic." Maura settled into Jane's couch, still holding her glass of white wine. "I can't believe I didn't know that you could cook. Did your mother teach you?"

"Yeah, I had to help in the kitchen a lot when I was growing up. Frankie can cook too, if he wants to. I told my mother that if I had to cook, so did he. Amazingly, she agreed with me. I think it's the only thing we've ever agreed on." Jane laughed, and then got a mischievous look on her face.

"So, now that you know I can cook, what's something about you that I don't know? Do I get to know one of your secrets?"

Maura looked thoughtful for a minute. Then she sat up, pushed her hair away from her face, and said, "Watch this." Then she wiggled her ears.

Jane looked at Maura incredulously. "Okay, that's cool, but you're going to have to give me more than that."

"I can wiggle one at a time, see?"

Jane laughed and put her hands on either side of Maura's face, covering her ears and stopping her little performance. "No, no, you have to do better than that. Something like . . . old boyfriends. Real secrets."

Maura playfully pushed Jane's hands away. "Old boyfriends? Really? That's what you want to know about?"

"Yep. I want all the juicy details."

Maura sighed. "Well, there aren't really any juicy details because I haven't had many serious boyfriends. In college I dated a guy for about a year. His name was Garrett, we met at a fraternity party, he had blond hair, and . . . really straight, white teeth."

"Those are the only details you can think of? You dated him for a year—it must have been pretty serious."

"I was 20; everything felt serious. Actually, I was pretty much head over heels in love with him. You know when you're so in love, it feels like you took some kind of substance? That's the way it was with Garrett. Sometimes I still miss him, even now."

"So what happened to him?" Jane's voice softened, as she realized that this was actually a difficult subject for Maura to talk about.

"Oh, you know, we broke up. It just wasn't meant to be, I guess."

"Oh, no, he broke your heart, didn't he? Maura, sweetie, I'm so sorry." Jane put her arm on Maura's shoulder.

"No, I broke up with him actually. We just weren't . . . compatible."

"What do you mean—he didn't like science?"

"No, nothing like that."

"Well, come on, tell me. What was wrong with the guy?"

"I don't want to say, it's embarrassing."

"Don't tell me, you diagnosed him with some sort of weird-ass disease."

"No, this was before med school, so I hadn't made the mistake of diagnosing friends and dates yet."

"So . . ." Now Jane shoved Maura's shoulder, just a bit, hoping to get her to continue.

"Fine, Jane, if you must know, he was . . . kind of selfish."

"Selfish, like, he wouldn't share his french fries with you?"

"No, a different kind of selfish." Maura paused and looked down at her hands for a second, before looking Jane in the eye.

"I had to . . . fake it . . . with him."

Jane's eyes got wide and she nearly snorted wine up her nose.

"You mean, fake it, fake it?"

Maura nodded.

"All the time?"

"All the time."

"The whole year you dated, you never had an orgasm?"

"Nope."

"Wow. I can't believe you stayed with him a whole year."

"I really didn't know what I was doing back then, and I didn't want to discuss it with him. I had never been with anyone else before him, I was pretty clueless—"

"Wait a minute, Maura, you can't lie. You hyperventilate if I try to get you to stretch the truth just a tiny bit so that we can trip up a suspect. How could you fake orgasms . . . for an entire year?"

"I don't know, I was just really nervous about it, and I didn't know what else to do!"

Jane shook her head. "Do you, uh, still have to fake it now?" Jane couldn't believe she was asking that question, but she looked Maura in the eye as she said it.

And Maura stared right back at her, meeting her gaze evenly. "Oh, I know how to ask for what I want much better now, thank you very much." A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, but she didn't look away or drop her eyes.

Jane smiled back, with a goofy grin, suddenly finding that she was having a hard time concentrating on anything except Maura's eyes.

It was Maura who finally looked away. "So now do I get to hear about your first boyfriend? Shall we continue this little game of secrets?"

Jane groaned. "I guess I had this coming. The story of my first time is much more embarrassing."

"More embarrassing than a year of faked orgasms?"

Jane laughed. "Well, maybe not more embarrassing, but it's just so cliché."

"What do you mean?"

Jane rubbed her face with her long fingers. "I wasn't the prettiest girl in school, as I'm sure you can imagine—"

"As I can imagine? You're gorgeous now, I can't imagine that you were anything less in high school."

Jane looked wide-eyed at Maura again. "You think I'm gorgeous?" she said, softly.

Maura tried to cover her tracks. "Of course, everybody does!"

"Everybody?" Jane shook her head, like she was trying to understand, but decided to just go on with her story.

"Well, in any case, I was already 5 foot 10 by the time I was fourteen so not too many guys were interested in me. By the time I was a junior in high school I think I'd been on two dates, and they were both disasters. So then this new guy moved into the neighborhood, and he was really tall, and pretty good looking. So when he asked me out I got this idea in my head that he was "the one," and so when he started . . . you know . . . pushing things I didn't want to say no. We ended up in the back seat of his car, parked behind some bushes just off the interstate. It was over before I knew it."

"Oh, Jane, that's awful. That's not the way your first time should be."

"Well, apparently neither was yours! I didn't even bother to fake it though, and I doubt he cared. That was the only time we went out. The worst part of it was he didn't use a condom, and I was terrified for almost an entire month that I was pregnant. I went to church and prayed so much, and lit about a thousand candles at the Virgin Mary altar that my mother got suspicious and she ended up dragging the whole thing out of me. Thankfully I wasn't pregnant, and my mother had the sense not to tell my dad, and things turned out okay."

Maura put her hand on Jane's knee, in what she hoped was a sympathetic gesture. "So, was your second time better?"

"Oh, no, Dr. Isles, you aren't getting another sex secret out of me tonight. That's it, the vault's closed." She held up her hands in a way that left no room for negotiation, but then continued, in a low voice, "Unless, you want to tell me at least two more of your secrets . . ."

"Hmm, maybe that's enough secrets for today." Maura smirked a bit, and finally removed her hand from Jane's thigh. "I should really be going anyway. We're running tomorrow morning, remember?"

"How did I ever let you talk me into training for a marathon? I really hate running."

"Now, Jane, you are always happier after a run, you know that."

"Yes, that's what you tell me anyway." Jane sighed as Maura got up off the couch, but then she got up too and walked her friend to the door.

Maura had her hand on the doorknob, but she suddenly stopped and turned around to face her friend. "Thanks so much for dinner, Jane, it was really nice." She leaned in on her toes and placed a soft kiss on Jane's cheek, and then ran her hand down Jane's arm and squeezed her hand. "Thanks for being such a great friend."

Jane felt dazed at the softness and intimacy of Maura's touch, but she managed to stammer out a reply. "You're welcome, it was fun. Thanks for coming." Maura didn't let go of her hand immediately, though, and they just stood there in the doorway for several seconds. Finally, Maura smiled and reminded Jane again about running in the morning, and then she was gone.

Jane replayed that moment in her head about a hundred times that night, and about a thousand times over the next several weeks, cursing herself for not taking things a step further, for wasting the perfect opportunity.

How was she to know that there would be no running the next morning, and that the only man Maura had ever been in love with, would suddenly be back in her life?