He takes her back to his apartment, and they don't leave for three days.

Well, that's not entirely accurate. They spend some time on the deck (standing, her belly pressed against the railing; on the lounge chair, him flat on his back). But that's it; otherwise, they just hang out. They talk. They fool around. They order in for every meal.

Finally, they run out of beer.

They also run out of condoms, which is the real reason Ray goes to the store.

"Want me to come with you?" Neela asks. She's sitting on his couch in his Rolling Stones t-shirt, reading last month's Q, and frankly he'll be happy if she never moves again.

"Nah, go ahead and stay here," he tells her. "But if I get back and you boosted my TV, I'm coming after you."

"It is a nice TV," she says, considering the plasma mounted on the far wall. "Very manly."

"That's just the kind of guy I am." He lands a kiss on her upturned face as she burrows her feet in between the couch cushions. She'll toe off her socks down there, he knows, then wander around the house complaining when she can't find them. He forgot the little things about living with her--her weird, fanatical obsession with the BBC World Service, how she climbs on the counter like a monkey when she can't reach something in the cabinet. When they were sharing the apartment--God, this makes him sound like such a shit--sometimes he'd put the really good snacks up on the top shelf just so he could watch her go for them.

He shakes his head a little once he's gotten himself into the car. It's been a weird couple of days.

Couple of years.

Truth be told, Ray had sort of reconciled himself with the idea that maybe he was going to spend the rest of his life alone. Not in a pathetic, eat cat food out of the can and pay for sex kind of way--legs or no legs, Ray had never had a problem getting a date in his life--but in a debonair, tuxedoed, James Bond kind of way. Like maybe he just wasn't meant to settle down with one person. He'd thought he could do it once, okay, fine, but it hadn't worked out.

Maybe he'd just buy himself a bunch of gadgets (actually, medical marvel that he was, he already had a bunch of gadgets) and spend the rest of his life having flings with hot international women.

He was thirty-one. It wasn't out of the question.

Lucille, unfortunately, thought that was a bullshit plan.

Ray had to see Lucille twice a week for a year after the thing with the Vicodin. She was huge and she chainsmoked and was completely unimpressed by him, which Ray sort of appreciated because it meant he didn't have to feel guilty for acting like a douchebag, which he occasionally (usually) did. He didn't mean to, really. It wasn't Lucille's fault. He was just so pissed. At everyone. At himself. At God. Whoever. Whatever.

Mostly he was pissed he hadn't done it right. He was a fucking doctor, was he not?

He had been, at least.

Christ.

But Lucille wasn't interested in throwing him a pity party, nor was she distracted by his plan to become a covert double agent.

"Who's the girl?" is what Lucille wanted to know.

Figured.

So now the girl is here. He's not gonna lie, there was a moment at work when he thought maybe he was making her up, that his brain was doing something screwy. He used to have fever dreams a lot, right after the accident, weirdass hallucinations brought on by the pain and the drugs and whatever other shrapnel was banging around inside his head. Strange, creepy shit. That's pretty much over now, but the truth is that when he asked her if she was really here it wasn't entirely rhetorical.

He gets back with his bags, groceries and Newcastles and some bathroom stuff, and finds her asleep on the couch, predictably barefoot, the magazine open on the floor. He's going to let her be for awhile--they haven't done a whole lot of actual sleeping since she's been here--but the sound of his keys wakes her up. She opens her eyes and smiles at him and it's idiotic to pretend he hasn't been wrecked by this woman, that he's been anything but ass-backwards in love with her since he doesn't even remember when. He moved a whole country away and it didn't fucking matter. She's half asleep and smiling at him and it's like a bonfire in his chest.

"You're still here," he says, and it comes out more surprised than he meant it.

Neela shrugs, stretching a little. The t-shirt rides up; she's got that boy-short kind of underwear on, her middle long and smooth. "TV was too heavy. I nosed around for some jewels or cash or something, but the guy who lives here's a cheap bastard."

"Jerkoff."

"Completely." She tilts her dark head to the side. "Did you really think I might not be here when you got back?"

Well.

Not really.

He guesses not.

But honestly, this thing has been over before it started so many times at this point and things are so--different than they used to be that he wouldn't have been totally shocked to walk in and find the apartment empty, no. He's lost her before. It's a thing that happens. He's not bitter. He's just a little gun shy. "No," he says, after a moment.

"Liar." Neela looks sad, which makes him feel like garbage. "I'm not going anywhere." She gets up and digs through the bags, pulling out tortilla chips and bananas and a brick of cheddar cheese. "I was thinking maybe later we could--" She stops. "Ray."

He's flicking through the cd changer, and when he glances up at her she's holding a bottle of shower gel he threw into his cart at the Publix. "What?"

"This is my soap."

"Well, yeah." He keeps hitting the skip track button on the remote; there's a song he wants to hear, but he doesn't know what it is. "I mean, don't get me wrong, Axe is a good smell on you, but--"

"No, I mean, this is the same soap I always use."

"Yeah?" He doesn't get where she's going with this. "I guess it is."

"You remembered what soap I use?"

Oh. That's sort of embarrassing, now that he thinks about it. Way to play it cool, Barnett. "We shared a shower for a year, Neela. I don't know. I just saw it and I thought--"

She's across the room in two quick movements, efficient like the surgeon she is, cool hands and warm tongue and soft body flush against him. She's not wearing a bra. "Want to share a shower right now?"

Fuck. Yeah, he does. He really, really fucking does. But the legs aren't showersafe and he sits on the bench in there and he's sorry, but that particular venue is just not up there anymore on Ray's List of Places to Have a Good Time. He hesitates.

"Sorry," she amends, half a step behind. "That was stupid."

"No, no, it's not stupid." He leans her forehead against hers. "It's just...really unsexy."

Neela laughs at first, a nervous bark that doesn't sound anything like her normal laugh, but then she gets this look on her face like she's about to burst into tears. She pulls back, shaking her head a little, blinking fast. "Sorry. Sorry."

"Don't apologize. Why are you apologizing?" He reaches for her, but she moves away again, the backs of her thighs bumping his kitchen table. He wonders if it's all hitting her now--the prosthetics and whatnot--if it's wigging her out. He wouldn't blame her. It's objectively a thing that wigs people out. "Neela."

He says her name, and she starts to cry. "Sorry," she says again, wiping at her face with the heel of her hand. He thinks of that day on the roof at County--just stay the hell away from me--and he doesn't like the feeling that settles in his chest. "It's just that I'm--I'm so bloody--late."

That is not what he was expecting. He must get a look of abject panic on his face because Neela shakes her head, and she does smile a little which is something. "Not late like that. I just mean that I put you through all that rubbish in Chicago and I was this awful person to you and it took me so long to figure out my ass from my elbow. It took me so long to get here and your life is so different but still you remembered my soap and here I am and you just--you should be with someone--more thoughtful than me."

Jesus fucking Christ, he is in love with this woman. He loves her so much he almost wants to laugh, like it needs to leave his body somehow, like how he used to feel when he first started writing songs. Like there was too much to hold inside him. His lips twitch.

"Don't smirk at me," she tells him. "I'm being serious."

"I know," he says, closing the gap between them. She smells like his shampoo but under that like herself, the sort of spicy vanilla smell that stuck to that black shirt for months after she moved out. "But I don't want to be with anyone else."

She looks up at him. "Then you're dumb."

"No shit." He kisses her then, hands on either side of her face, applying a little pressure with his chest until she scoots backwards, up onto the table. This is a good height. He bites at her lips--he's not aggressive with her, he just--he wants to show her--something. After a minute she hooks one bare leg around him and he slips his hands under her t-shirt, over the long expanse of her back, feeling for her heartbeat like a good doctor. Her face is still a little wet, and he can feel it on his neck.

They've done this a lot over the past couple of days, enough so he's starting to get a feel for what she likes, how her body works. He skims a nail over the elastic at her hipbone and slips one finger inside her, then two, until she makes that little gasping sound she makes. Ray fucking loves that sound. It gets to him like nothing else in his life. She's tugging at his shirt, nipping at the skin on his chest, pulling at the buttons on his jeans: she gets restless when he makes her wait, so he usually doesn't. Making up for lost time, and all.

He slides inside her and she gets very still for a moment, then shifts her hips to accommodate him. She rocks back and forth and it's shallow until she's ready and she pulls him as close as she can. The motion sends one of the shopping bags falling to the floor; a carton of Haagen Dazs rolls forlornly across the tile and they are laughing in the moment before it suddenly isn't funny at all. He reaches down between them, and when she comes she says his name.

Later, they're sitting in bed watching Leno and sharing the ice cream (melted and refrozen, but it gets the job done), when Neela straightens up and looks around. "Ray," she says, and he turns to her expectantly.

"Yeah?"

She frowns. "Have you seen my socks?"