The Sun defines your personal identity, your ego and your unique self expression. It represents what you are trying to become. It's the core of who you are - your spirit, your soul, your consciousness, your basic drive are all represented by the Sun.

She loves sunny days in New York. Not the hot, sticky, dog-days-of-summer kind of sunny (those days she hates, because they will melt your frappuchino before you even get halfway done, and then, all she can think about is how the rest is caramel backwash) but the gentle, warming kind that comes in early spring, with just enough breeze to carry the scents of street food and cherry blossoms through the normally acrid streets. The sun, peeking out after a long, cold winter has always given her hope. He knows this from the too-chipper stream of chatter that used to annoy him on their subway rides. He knows, and the knowledge only serves to make him feel like more of an asshole when she comes sneaking into the office on a particularly beautiful April morning with her eyes focused squarely on the floor. He wishes that it had snowed, the way the weatherman had predicted, so that her cold, stricken silence isn't so at odds with the golden rays spilling in through the blinds, cutting accusatory patterns across his desk.

The small wedge of a view that his partly open office door allows him shows little beyond the normal morning operations of the office, but Danny can feel the difference. She doesn't come bursting into his office with plans for another team-building excursion (trust falls in Central Park had only gotten them escorted from the premises when a patrol cop had caught Morgan trying to liberate a pair of dressed-up chihuahuas from their "oppressive master"), she doesn't send him e-mails with links to Who Wore It Best articles (he's gotten really good at defending his opinions on color block dresses), and she doesn't lean in his doorway with made-up, work-related excuses to be invited in, waiting with her eyes wide and fixed on his mouth, waiting for him to be the one to cave and say the words, low and soft, so they won't be caught.

Get in here.

Those eyes, they were the ones he had put tears into just three nights ago, and that face, it killed him that it was not shining dazzlingly upward, plastered with a smile so bright that it rivaled that big, burning ball in the sky. He heard her office door close, and he felt alternating urges, each equally strong – to go to her, to apologize, to take back everything he had said and beg her to look at him, speak to him the way she did before this whole mess. I'm sorry, I was a fool. I'm sorry, I was scared. I'm sorry, please just love me again. This was his first inclination.

The second warring impulse was to get up from his desk, cancel his appointments and slam the door on his way out of the suite. He could hit the gym, call up any old flame (despite her attempts to prove the contrary), go out and get wasted in the middle of the day. He didn't need her forgiveness, because she was wrong to not see that he was only doing what was best for them. How could she take this so hard, when they hadn't even been dating that long? How dare she make him feel this way, shoulder this guilt? It wasn't like they had taken vows, promised to love, honor and cherish each other until Kimye decided to call it quits. Scratch that - they would need to stay together to get her through something that devastating. He fought the small, sad smile that threatened the corners of his mouth. His second inclination was complete and utter self-serving bullshit, and he knew it.

You're my best friend.

That's what cowards say when they want to get out of something but they still want to seem nice.

He didn't want out. He had made the biggest mistake of his life, a knee-jerk reaction to other people's perceptions of him, coupled with his own deep-seated insecurity in the wake of Hurricane Christina. As much as he had heard it lamented that a woman shouldn't be defined by a man, and as much as he agreed, he had sure spent a hell of a lot of time letting the tragedy of his marriage and the misremembered virtues of his ex-wife dictate the way he fell in (and out of) love. And it wasn't just Christina's opinion of him that had warped things.

His stomach turned at the memory of Brooke's overly-lipsticked smile as she'd purred at him, If I know you, you'll be single the next time I'm in town. He had once found the rail-thin brunette alluring, worth the dinner date that had cost several hundred dollars just to keep up the pretense that they weren't falling mindlessly into bed, convinced that since he'd taken her out beforehand that their coupling was something besides a desperate act to try and fill the empty spot in his chest. He'd added to the total cost of what more or less amounted to paid company when he'd passed some cash to the cab driver who'd taken Brooke to the airport. As he'd watched the taxi pull away, he'd realized that he felt worse, and emptier, than he ever had before. If I know you... She didn't, she couldn't. They were strangers who had once slept together, nothing more. He should have reveled in Jeremy's backslapping, in the knowing glances the next day. He didn't revel, he hadn't felt proud.

Sex should have done that – banished the feeling of inadequacy that he'd had since his divorce. It hadn't. The ease with which women had passed through his bedroom should have made him feel proud - the satisfied smiles in the morning, the promises to call if they ever needed no-strings fun and someone who remembered that they only ate egg whites for breakfast, because they were counting carbs, because of how all commercial wheat was GMO, because of hypoglycemia. He tries to recall little details like this about each of them, tries to make the hookups seem less sleazy in his mind. He fails. Each encounter was as physical as a man could get with a woman, but what every single one lacked was intimacy. It wasn't just Christina. He was doing plenty to warp the way he loved, too.

"People seem to be having these awesome sex lives, and I'm just trying to find a life partner to go apple-picking with. What's wrong with me?"

Nothing was wrong with her. It was true that she could be a bumbling, ridiculous mess. She could get herself into scrapes that rivaled I Love Lucy episodes. She could yank his patience down from saint-like heights and make him say the cruelest things. He thinks, sometimes, that she tries him just to see how far she can push, how fast she can make him lose control. He used to think that she just liked to fight with him, until one of his frequent sleepless nights had coincided with a cable marathon of romantic comedies. The hours had educated him- his and Mindy's verbal sparring was tantamount to foreplay for her, the adult version of children pushing each other down on the playground. These movies that she had so immersed herself in during her formative years had scathing, bickering men and women hurling insults at each other until, eventually, clothing and genitalia went flying about as well.

It had been a revelation, one that'd led to many more sleepless nights, long before their fateful plane trip. After attaching such physical significance to their bickering, he would leave each disagreement, no matter how petty, breathing a little faster and aroused beyond belief. Lying awake at night, his skin slick with sweat and his mind racing with fantasies, he couldn't help but think - Mindy would eat pancakes. Then, he would try to do what he always did with anything that felt too close to attachment post-divorce – push it down, shove it aside, try to forget about it.

Despite his dysfunction, something like friendship had grown between them, something that he grudgingly lets in, lying to himself and saying that they were colleagues, peers, and that all the little things he has no trouble remembering about her are a product of how frequently they are together. He lies to himself, says that her reliance on him for small, everyday things doesn't make him feel needed again (she really can't be expected to do things like kill bugs, or get on the no-call list so telemarketers won't engage her in hour-long conversations, or unclog her own toilet when she accidentally flushes a statement earring). Okay, so it had been nice to be needed again, even if it only was in little ways.

Like that time she'd texted him in the middle of a date because she had accidentally ordered goat at a Middle Eastern restaurant. She'd pleaded with him, accompanied by an overabundance of emojis, to call her and fake a patient emergency so she could "go throw up in private like a Victoria's Secret model." He had done it, of course, even though the blonde that he'd been having sushi with had given him the strangest of looks when he'd tried to explain. He couldn't remember the name of the blonde, but he remembered that she had asked him on a first date how much money he made, and after Mindy texted again with a "False alarm, it was lamb! And he just ordered dessert, so I have to go fake not wanting it!" he had taken the blonde home with him and slept with her anyway.

He can't think now of kissing, of touching other women without comparing them to Mindy, and they all come up short. There is still no noise from her office. His office is getting warm, and he knows he should get up and turn the air on, but instead he opens a blank e-mail draft and moves his fingers to hover uncertainly over his keyboard.

To: LahiriM

From: CastellanoD

Subject: Fashion advice?

Min,

I'm ordering dress shirts online. It's the only way I can find any kind of selection that is made in America. I'm thinking of branching out to a sky blue. Please advise.

D.

He hits send and waits. She always has the volume up on her laptop. He knows this because of the pop-up ads for erection pills that blast at an embarrassing volume when she tries to sneak and watch old episodes of Melrose Place on pirate websites. It isn't long before he hears the ding of her inbox alert. Minutes pass. Nothing. With a sigh, mind made up, he picks up his phone and punches the extension for the front desk. He asks Betsy to cancel his appointments for the morning. Then, leaning back in his chair, he closes his eyes and tips his head, letting the sun hit his face. And he waits.