Alexandra Eames hadn't been unemployed since she was big enough to borrow her older brother's bike and take over his paper route when he broke his arm.

So waking up without a job the Wednesday after she left her badge and gun neatly on the Captain's desk at Major Case was an odd experience.

She rolled over and looked at her alarm clock. 8:31 a.m.

First came the confusion: Why hadn't her alarm gone off? Was it Saturday?

Then the realization: No, it wasn't the weekend; she just didn't have any reason to get out of bed.

She pulled the covers back over her head and tried to go back to sleep. That's what you did when you lost your job, right? You stayed in bed?

After a while, she gave up. Apparently she couldn't treat a Wednesday like a Saturday even if she didn't have a job.

She climbed out of bed, showered, dressed, and found herself sitting at her kitchen table with a cup of coffee 30 minutes later staring at the clock on the microwave. 9:47 a.m.

She should call her Union representative about paperwork and her pension.

She should call Logan and Barek and Falacci and Deakins and give them the news and see if they knew anyone who was hiring. Wheeler already knew; she had been Alex's ad hoc therapist and designated driver last night while she drank away her doubts about her decision.

She should call Goren and…

Call Goren and what, exactly, Alex? she thought to herself, turning the coffee cup in her hands. Apologize, again? Request another hug (and another and another)? Talk about the weather?

When all was said and done, without the job, did she have anything to talk to Goren about? Any reason to see him? Any reason other than the feelings she had never told him or anyone else about?

That thought drove her up out of her chair and to the closet where she kept her cleaning supplies.

While she scrubbed toilets and wiped counters and folded towels and tucked sheets, she refused to answer the more and more frequent rings of her cell phone. She checked the screen every single time, but none of the calls were from Bobby, so she ignored them. Family, coworkers, ex-coworkers, the Chief's office, they all wanted to talk to her. All except the one person she wanted to talk to.

Then she avoided thinking about why she only wanted to talk to Bobby, since she had established that she wasn't sure they had anything to talk about.

It was 11:56 a.m. (according to her cell phone display) when the phone lit up with the number she wanted to see.

"Hello," she answered. She wondered when the last time was that she had answered her cell phone with anything other than her last name.

"You quit?"

Wow, that was pretty close to a Goren roar, she thought.

"Good morning to you too, Bobby," she said sarcastically.

"What? Oh, yeah, okay, 'good morning.' You quit the force?"

That was definitely a Goren roar. The corner of her mouth quirked up and she leaned one hip on the edge of her dresser.

"Yep."

"Eames…!"

"Alex," she interrupted firmly.

There was a pause, and her smile got wider. She could imagine him rubbing his neck in confusion.

"What?" he finally asked.

"My name…is Alex. I'm no longer your partner, senior or otherwise. So you don't need to use my last name….Bobby."

"Are you alright….Alex?"

"Of course, Bobby," she said in the well-practiced, long-suffering, reasoning-with-the-Captain-pissed-at-the-genius tone she had perfected during their partnership. "In the last 24 hours, I let my Captain's killer go free, I got promoted, I fired my partner of 10 years – who incidentally is my best friend, and I quit the NYPD, otherwise known as the family business. I am fan-freaking-tastic."

Pause. "Eam…Alex….Are you drunk?"

Alex laughed. "No, Bobby, I'm not drunk. I'll admit, I had a few last night and even cried in some of them, but right now, this minute, I am not drunk. Why, are you offerin' to buy me a drink?"

This time the pause was so long, Alex would have suspected they had been disconnected, if not for the sound of Bobby's breathing. When Bobby responded, there was a smile in his voice.

"I'm your best friend?"

"Well, yeah, of course you are."

"Really? I would have thought…I don't know, one of your sisters?"

"Bobby, seriously, they're both stay-at-home moms. More power to them, but they don't understand my life, a cop's life. Even the girls I grew up with don't understand me. Practically all my good friends are cops, and you, Bobby, are clearly the best of all of them."

Bobby chuckled on the other end of the line. "Well, I'm honored," he said softly.

"As you should be," Alex said with a laugh.

"Are you busy right now?"

Alex looked around her bedroom, at the vacuum cleaner standing idle and the dust rags piled on the dresser. She thought about the kiss on her cheek and the hug, and she looked at herself in the mirror. She was smiling, phone pressed to her ear by her shoulder, hair swinging in a pony tail.

"No, I'm free."

"How about that drink then?"

They set a place to meet, Alex's only requirement that it not be a cop bar, and she hung up the phone.

Who knew? They did have things to talk about. Maybe even things that had never been talked about before.

At the least, maybe she could get another hug.