Life had moved both quickly and sluggishly ever since she came to New York. The career was looking promising, work was stimulating, but at the end of the day she usually went home to read by herself. She could go out and find a date any time she wanted, but friends were harder to come by.

Christine had been a blessing in disguise, at first just a cumbersomely timid girl who shared her apartment building and was nice enough to have over for lunch now and then, but over a couple years she'd come out of her shell into the kind but sometimes brilliantly blunt woman who managed that rare skill of knowing exactly when to ask and when not to, about anything. But she had a night shift at the university hospital that was starting to clash constantly with Nyota's routine, and within the past year most of their friendship had been done over the phone or the occasional two AM comedy marathon in one of their rooms when Christine had the night off and couldn't sleep.

The thing that had kicked Nyota right into her spell of crying right when she got off the plane was the thought that she wouldn't even get to really talk to anybody, see anybody, until late into the next day. This had spilled right into the guilt, that same old weight on her shoulders of choosing to be thrown far away from her family so that this grief had to be a sudden shock to be taken care of in a hurry, and sure, it served her right that she had so little time, so little love in her life. She knew all that thinking was no good, but with the week she'd had it was thought with a kind of binging on irrationality after countless years of powering forward with no room for anything like that. It was far from a cathartic indulgence. The rain had been no consolation, and minutes later there had been Jim, and her mind had changed and reached for him so naturally that it wasn't even until much later that she realized it, how it had seemed he came along at just the perfect time for both of them in just about every possible way.

The bar they went to had a slow college crowd, but she didn't mind too much that she was overdressed. He tossed bar nuts up in the air and caught them in his mouth while she gave him bits and pieces about moving around a lot when she was a preteen, how she later learned it was mostly her parents trying to send her to the best schools. He told her about being restless and fractious as a kid in Riverside, how his mom had decided he wouldn't make so much trouble if he had a bigger place to bounce around in and firmly suggested he go finish high school living with an aunt from his father's side of the family in Brooklyn, and even though he'd thought this was coldly sudden she'd made it clear she'd fly him home whenever he felt like it, and as things turned out he barely had any chance or reason to miss Iowa at all.

Winona Kirk had died of the most sudden cause, still relatively young, after a patch of ice on the highway made what would have been a mere fender-bender send an SUV three cars ahead of her spiraling down a drop-off. There was a line of petroleum bleeding from the scrapes and a kid screaming down below, and neither his mother nor fate had been willing to wait for assistance, so she went up in the explosion along with the passengers.

Nyota was searching sadly for what to say when the bartender plunked down Jim's third beer. "God. What did she do?"

"She was a navy vet who took up a job in animal control, after the family happened."

"And your father?" Nyota stammered, hesitating to ask.

He swigged down a drink and shook his head. "Never knew him. I was a newborn when he died...So, you know. Add that to your psychoanalysis."

She looked at him directly, then back down at her drink. "I wasn't doing that."

He looked back, weighing this, then nodded again.

After considering for a moment she asked, "Aren't you standing up Callie?"

He broke into a snigger. "Oh, she's probably contacted some back-up bootie call by now."

Almost laughing at that, she said, "Yeah, but shouldn't you at least text her?"

"What for, to recommend somebody? Anyway, I don't carry a cell phone."

"What? Okay, is this some kind of hipster thing? Applied archeology, or what?" They were both laughing now.

"Nothing, I just use a land line," he said innocently, shrugging.

"But what if your car breaks down?"

"I use a car, what, once every couple years?"

"Okay, well," she gestured in frustration, reaching for, "what if you get beat up in an alley or something?"

"You say that like it's never happened."

Resisting her laughter, grabbing for his hand before he could raise it up as if he was most definitely not permitted to order another drink before he could provide a reasonable excuse for this, she demanded evenly, "Jim, how can you not have a mobile phone?"

"I just..." He waved his other hand in the air. "It's resenting the expectation that goes with it, that you're supposed to be available to anybody at any given time. I hate that."

She scrutinized him in a playfully drawn-out consideration, still clamping her hand over his forearm, and then lifted back, letting his arm go. "Okay. I kind of hate that too."

He scoffed and tapped his bottle against hers. She took hers and ripped the label off to write her phone number down on the white side.

::

The first restaurant they came up with that they both knew the location of was a small diner, amusingly similar to the one they'd eaten at all those years ago. It had been almost a week before Jim decided to finally call her, feeling unsure about where exactly this was going to lead the longer he let it lie there, but she'd asked him if he wanted to grab a bite to eat that very day and a couple hours later she was sliding in across from him.

The waiter said he'd be back to take her order in a minute after she looked at the menu, but she flagged him back, saying, "You know, just whatever you think is good, anything you're trying to get rid of."

"I like the berry waffles and they're on special, if you're into breakfast."

"Sure."

After Jim added a coffee to his order and the waiter took off, he looked at her a little intently, stirring his straw around in his drink.

"What?"

"You're not very picky about your food, are you?"

She rolled her eyes, straightening her hair back into a ponytail.

Jim cocked an eyebrow. "What?"

"No, I just...I'm used to getting the whole 'You're not all high-maintenance like other girls' thing." Her voice imitated the statement in a mock baritone of one drooling frat boy who had tried it on her a couple years back.

He sniggered a little. "No, I was just saying."

She was smiling vaguely at a couple kids who were carding through the options on the jukebox on their tiptoes, probably mainly enjoying the flip of the covers as they pressed the button again and again. "I was going to tell you, I got a message from Gaila a couple days ago. It seemed weirdly contingent with me just running into you, I wondered if you might have mentioned it to her."

"No, I hadn't."

"I've been meaning to ask. How exactly did you work everything out with her?"

Jim blinked, thinking far back. "...Oh, that's right, we had some kind of misunderstanding?"

She scoffed. "And you barely remember?"

"Well, yeah, I remember you being pretty pissed about my supposed insensitivity." He saw her expression and raised his eyebrows. "And maybe I was a little...you know...but between me and Gaila, I think the long distance just kind of worked it out for us."

For a moment she just eyed him in doubt that was mostly teasing.

"Was I just the most depressing person?" Jim suddenly asked after a few seconds. "I mean, why did you even talk to me again?"

"Well, I didn't think it was possible for someone to really be as cynical as you liked to come off as? I think? My memory isn't perfect, but...well, I might have been right. You are dating now anyway."

"Yeah, but what definition of dating are we working from here? I'm definitely still not into dating my friends..."

With a pursed little smirk, she shook her head. "So tell me about Callie."

"She's a girl I'm seeing. Was seeing."

She made a little slow snicker. "'Seeing.'"

"The word is pretty nebulous, isn't it?"

"But three years ago you said you don't sleep with people you like, so what, you just find somebody you consider annoying trash to bang a few times, cause..." She made a cringing expression.

Laughing but also sober about clarifying, Jim slowly said, "I really don't think I would have implied that. I may have said it would be the ideal to never mix up any kind of affection with people you sleep with, but sometimes that's just not possible."

"So, you and Callie..."

"Let's not make it about Callie, just...the relations are usually temporary, often deliberately." He shrugged. "But if I wasn't willing to get to know them in the least, I wouldn't call it a date. And yes, I know that doesn't set me apart from a lot of other not-so-nice people who treat taking somebody out as a means to an end, but I at least try to be sure the other person is the same way."

"And then what do you do? Just drop them after one too many dates? After they start to get too emotional?"

"...And I'm not at risk of getting emotional?" he protested a little abruptly, his eyes searching hers.

"Well, I don't know, you never said...how it is for you," she stammered. She found herself unable to look back at him for more than a couple seconds.

"Look, everybody has their little emotional defenses, mine are just a little too meditated for your taste. I mean, damn, if the tables were turned you'd be giving me a hell of a lot of shit for trying to tell you how to live your life or who to sleep with or—"

"No, I..." Serious now, she shook her head. "Look, I'm not criticizing. I'm just curious."

They were both stilled in a kind of confusion, possibly realizing how the premise of this conversation had looked totally different on either side.

"Really," she said, laughing a little, "I swear. I'm sorry, Jim."

Their food came. She started right in and was chewing her first bite when Jim finally recovered from his thoughtful surprise and picked up his silverware.

::

Bones let out a sharp curse from the other side of the mahogany dresser as it thudded down one step.

"I'm fine," Jim yelled, bracing forward. "Give me a sec."

They finally got this last component of the McCoy furniture heirlooms moved into the second floor of the new apartment, which Jim had cheerily noted was a little bit closer to where he lived, then cracked open a couple beers to sigh their sweat off out on the balcony.

"How are you doing out here? Any different?" Jim got a confused cock of an eyebrow for asking this, then shrugged. "I hear it helps to change your surroundings. I kind of wish I could do it right now. I still sometimes think about that Thanksgiving when Mom visited every time I forget to turn off the oven light."

Bones took in the view for a few seconds, pensive. "You still would even if it was a different oven, I bet."

Jim stretched to set his beer on the concrete railing, his voice scratching with the strain of the movement when he said, "Yeah, you're probably right."

"I don't know, maybe it does help to move around. It is the reason I left Georgia in the first place. Something about the idea of getting stuck out there just makes me think I'd feel old and sad."

"Well, as long as you're not feeling old and sad..." Jim got a fleck of ice water flung in his direction for that as Bones got into the cooler again. After a minute, Jim abruptly looked around, asking, "Hey, what time is it?"

Bones checked his old and sad wristwatch, said, "Bit after six."

"Six already?" Jim shot up. "Damn, man, I gotta go."

With a resigned sigh, Bones watched him rush back into the apartment. "You blowing me off for a pair of long legs like the same old?"

Jim laughed happily, finding his boots next to the door. "Yeah, but it's not for the legs."

"Oh. Nyota again?" He leaned forward now, looking in around the threshold. "Who is this woman?"

"Didn't I tell you, she drove me back to the city after I finished that summer job several years ago?"

"And now she's your friend, right out of the blue?"

"We just ran into each other a few weeks ago."

"I guess it's true what they say about New York..." Bones cracked into a smirk. "So is this the girl who lived with the girl who ended up marrying the guy who can fellate himself?"

Jim almost tripped out of the process of shoving one of his boots on, wide-eyed. "When did I ever tell you about that?"

"Jim, one of these days you're gonna manage to remember that you gossip worse than a southern grandmother when you get drunk enough."

Jim shook his head and just said, "Huh," wondering if he might have also colorfully divulged the fact that he and Gaila had once had a very memorable threesome with that fine gentleman, but decided not to ask.

"Gaila, that was her name...What is that, Hebrew? Anyway, it was after you came back from the wedding that you told me about her. And you also happened to mention that her roommate had proven to be her polar opposite in almost every way and also, I believe it was, the only person you've ever met who could easily keep you up all night without laying a hand on you."

Jim had gotten on the other shoe and straightened back up, and now he stood as if trying to get his head to chew on what Bones had just said. When he looked straight back, it was with some resignation from having any reply to that he didn't feel almost superstitiously reluctant to say.

"So," Bones drawled, "when do I get to meet her?"

::

There was one lunch or dinner after another, after another. Jim and Nyota were seeing each other at least a couple times a week by the time autumn started falling away to brittle cold, and talking over the phone almost every day as the lights of the city pierced through a frequent fog outside their windows. Nyota tended to be up in the late hours and would always pick up when he was sleepless from being punchy and inevitably watching the B-movies that aired late at night.

One night it was Planet of the Apes, until Jim found the last half hour or so of Reservoir Dogs was on a different channel and she turned her TV on too.

"'You beat him hard enough he'll tell you he started the Chicago Fire; that don't make it fuckin so,'" Jim muttered along, then thoughtfully said, "I bet you could do undercover."

Nyota had been setting her studying away to settle deeper into bed. "That's rich."

"I'm completely serious. You miss nothing. And you'd be good under pressure..."

"Better than this little comic book nerd cop, anyway."

Jim chuckled in surprise. "That was obscure, Nyota. Do you actually like this movie?"

"It's funny, I remember watching this with a friend about a year ago and for a second it reminded me of you. Do you remember...?"

"I vaguely remember a conversation about why it was a good thing we weren't lit majors, yes," he replied, making her laugh lazily.

After a long pause between any words, she asked, "What was wrong this morning? Didn't you take off work?"

Jim sighed, hesitant to get into it. "It feels weird to talk about now; I kind of overreacted. I was just having a really hard time over my mom."

This surprised her. She'd thought Jim was well out of the woods when it came to that, and with both of them sunk into their beds softly talking to each other, she felt something in her buckle back into that sadness. Though it was in a comfortable, safety-netted way.

"It's weird, I know, but it's like...I have days where I think I'm handling it surprisingly well, and then every once in a while, I feel like I can't even get out of bed." They both went quiet for a while, and then he added, "The guilt is the worst. It's like, we weren't even particularly close, at least I don't think we were; I think most people know better when they have a second parent to compare it to, you know? I'm guilty for being so distant and then I'm guilty for that making it hit me a little harder and then I'm guilty for being guilty because this was my mother we're talking about. I'm sorry," he suddenly said, "this is still kind of fresh for you, the last thing you need is me still moaning about my grief a whole year later."

"Don't say that, you know I don't mind." She let a pause settle, frowning. "And...well, God knows I know all about the guilt."

They fell back into vaguely watching the movie, until in a heavy afterthought, she spoke again.

"I was close to my dad; at least I thought I was once, when I was younger. You have this person who used to sing you to sleep, but then you take off somewhere in your twenties and then things become harder to say...I don't know why that is."

::

Nyota did eventually meet Leonard and Christine did eventually meet Jim, the latter expressing some surprise later on about Jim not being quite what she expected. One weekend when Leonard's daughter had just been packed off to spend Thanksgiving with her mom and Christine had finally started working a less nocturnal schedule, they planned to get all four of them together for what half of the party counted on being a quiet night in. Nyota and Christine were the half who showed up with two bottles of wine, donning high heels and skirts after their stop at one of the singles bars they considered to be the fun kind of trashy. Leonard was the one who answered, and something in his gaze stuttered over Christine as she was just finishing up a call on her cell.

Looking at Nyota, he teased, "Well, you ladies know how to make a guy feel underdressed, way to go."

"We were out doing girl things."

"What's girl things?" Jim was muttering as he appeared on the stairs behind them, just now arriving.

"The same thing you guys do," Christine said, "but with more blood and sharp objects involved."

"Ah," Leonard remarked in vague satisfaction, as if talking to himself, "that's nurse humor."

"Oh, that's right, you're a surgeon, Leonard?" Christine fell in at his side to properly introduce herself while Jim teased Nyota about wearing those shoes again, and the evening proceeded in low-key college fashion until Joanna's game system attracted Jim over to the TV and he and Christine ended up betting the next beer run on who won Mario Kart.

"She's killing you, Jim," Leonard supplied. "By the way, we were talking historical crushes while you were in the can."

"Ah, yeah? What did everybody else say?"

"Mine's boring," Christine said. "I always say Nikola Tesla."

"Hey, I thought Tesla was fabulous," Leonard interrupted. "I said Hedy Lamarr. Nyota still hasn't decided."

"I'm gonna go with Cleopatra. Ah, come on," Jim exclaimed, leaning back after his cart fell off of a bridge. Christine doubled her efforts with a slight snicker and beat him across the finish line.

"Isn't anyone going to mention Tiberius?" Nyota teased as the two set their controls down and sat up.

Jim flicked her off. "Yeah, you know how much I love being indirectly named after a total psychopath when they could have at least gone for Caesar or something."

"Wait, is that your middle name?" Christine asked, and then gave an almost genuinely soft look of sympathy and said, "Oh, I am so sorry." This response seemed to tap right on something that was privately very amusing to Leonard; when he started laughing she caught his smile and looked down, grinning shyly.

"Well," Jim said, rising back up, "I guess I'm running out."

"Do either of you mind if I tag along with him?" Nyota asked, catching Christine's eyes briefly.

"Fine with me," Leonard said, after a flicker of hesitation, and Christine nodded with a shrug.

As soon as they were out on the street Jim asked, "Did you just do what I think you just did?"

"Shush. I don't want to jinx it so we just won't talk about it, okay?"

"I'm just saying...you do know Bones just got a divorce, right?"

"Yes, I do know, and we don't need to talk about it."

"...He does seem pretty sweetened up on her, though."

Nyota smiled. "I think it might be the first time I've seen her pay much of any attention to anybody who's looking back at her."

"Oh yeah?"

"I almost don't want to tell you because of how it makes her sound, but...she's been really hung up on the guy who supervised her internship for forever, and I'm pretty sure this guy must be asexual or something; even she knows it."

"She's never bothered to just find out?"

"The thing is, I think she knows deep down that there are other ways they'd be incompatible, and she can't seem to take that step to admitting it's just all-around not meant to be. That's an old story, isn't it? The type of person who finds it easier to love the people who can't love them back?"

Their talk had slowed their progress to a stroll. Jim zipped his jacket up a little higher, considering. "I was thinking, you'll say predictably...about how there aren't a lot of social norms that make it easy to at least start talking more with someone you admire from a distance. It's hard to find a way to, like, platonically ask someone out. And if it wasn't like that, I doubt it would be so hard to be so into someone who could never love you back. I don't know, it's just strange to consider the fact that unrequited love has to not just be an unfortunate thing, but an actual humiliation. Somebody could love a person irrevocably, for years and years and never expect anything back, and that's shameful, but once the affection is returned, we upgrade it to the much more desirable descriptions like 'unconditional.'"

She looked ahead, slow to respond. "I just think it gets precarious to nurse too much of a fantasy life over somebody else; your idea of how they fill into your life can get really overblown, and maybe a little creepy."

He gave her a friendly scoff. "Well, I think that's awfully cynical."

"And it's just wasting love that could really be growing on someone else who could give it back—I just..." She shook her head, making a face as her train of thought went hazy.

"But that's always the dead end, isn't it? That's always the disagreement."

"What is?"

"Of..." He made a gesture of mild frustration. "The whole definition of what it means to love someone, you know, like why can't it be inert, why can't it be invisible?"

"Because any little asshole can love somebody. It's what you do with it that matters."

"Okay, but that goes back to how we talked about it in the first place. You could have serious feelings about somebody and you could be willing to humiliate yourself to make them feel better, or quit your job for them or take a bullet for them and like, you're saying that's less than when you could be fucking them into a mattress on a nightly basis and—"

"Jim, Jim. Jesus. I never once said those other things couldn't mean anything, I just think...maybe you get there a little faster when romance is in the picture. And that's not shallow," she interrupted something he was getting to, hurriedly and half-awkwardly explaining, "it's not. What's the difference between making somebody laugh hard, or making them feel good in any other way, and making them...well. You know? I mean, have you ever considered that having that with somebody you're also close to in those other ways could be worthwhile to people because it's far more intense than anything else, that it actually is greater than the sums? You know, at least for some people?"

They'd reached the store front, and Jim turned in to face her, both of them stopping as he looked at her with some now vaguely unhappy sort of concentration. Finally he asked, "Is it like that for you?" in honest curiosity.

Years ago he couldn't have dragged this truth out of her if he'd tried it all night, and yet she only realized it just then: The equal ground was felt like the bottoming rattle of an elevator, and her honesty surprised both of them. "I don't know, is the thing. My longest relationship was less than half a year."

She turned to go inside, and there was a heaviness to the way Jim seemed to be watching for her mood as they picked out and bought the beer with half of their usual flippancies. When they left, each of them now carrying a six-pack, Jim said, "It's just that people give into it so quickly, and I wonder how much it's really worth the risk. You say greater than the sum of its parts, I say there's no sum, it's not substance, you can't just compare it to..."

"Yeah. I understand that. I guess we just listen to completely different instincts, you know, but I can understand." Nyota sighed. "You know I'm not trying to convince you of anything."

He shifted the bag up under one arm, nodded. "Okay."

A little tired on her feet now, she looped her arm through his so he would slow his pace down to hers.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, just getting sore."

"You wanna trade shoes?"

"Ha-ha," she intoned.

They were approaching a thirty-something woman who was taking the trash out in a matching sweatsuit and cradling her cell phone into the shoulder, talking not loudly but quite discernibly as they went by: "...no, I told him, I said that I've fucked at least thirty-nine bass players with condoms and his was definitely the smallest, so if he thought he was gonna pull that—"

Nyota's hand clamped tight over her mouth as Jim squeezed her into picking up the pace, both of them barely managing to tamper in their explosions of laughter before they were a few houses down.

When they arrived back, Christine and Leonard were on opposite ends of the couch facing into each other, her legs loosely crossed around her water glass and one hand animatedly explaining something. They barely seemed to have noticed the other two coming in until Leonard looked over at Nyota almost tripping on an uneven wood panel and got apologetic about the state of the apartment.

Christine said, "Hey, Nyota, we never heard about your dead-guy crush."

Laughing a little, Nyota stalled for a second and said, "Bruce Lee."

Jim made a face like he'd lost a game. "Damn. Not exactly ancient history, but who can argue with that?"

Leonard and Christine resumed some story with flitting easy interjections from both of them while Nyota opened a beer and went with Jim next to the balcony window, where they just stood for a moment, as softly wordless as the first snow coming down outside.

::

He was flipping through the newest Time when the phone rang.

"Hey, I need an opinion," she said without greeting. "Pretty formal date tonight, what should I wear?"

"Um, how about that green one, the kinda short one with the—"

"You know what, I knew you were gonna say that. It's like why do I even call?" And she hung up. Jim put the phone down with a chuckle, read a couple more pages with loose concentration, then called her back.

"Which one have you got on now?"

"That red one I wore for graduation. I think you've seen the picture."

"You can always work red. With the little scalloped collar?"

"Did you have a crush on your home ec. teacher or something? I didn't even know it was called that."

"You should see how fast I crochet. So who's the lucky guy?"

"His name's Avery, and really it's more like a networking date. He's going to this banquet with all these investigative big-shots and he knows full well I need to get some connections out there."

"Using the men to get ahead," he teased, "you bad girl."

"He and I had a good laugh about it, actually, but he said he'd take me out to dinner and he is pretty cute, so. We'll see. Hey, are you going out with that girl you picked up at Carly's?"

"Hmm," Jim hesitated. "Possibly. We keep missing each other's calls, hopefully she doesn't think by now that that's on purpose."

"God, Jim. Get a cell phone."

"I happen to like being able to screen calls."

"Everyone screens calls on their mobile."

"Once, maybe twice. After a point people know they're being blown off. And I don't even know why you're the one who complains more than anyone else, I mean, you're literally the only person I never screen."

"Really?" She cocked an eyebrow, trying to hold onto her phone while unzipping out of the dress. "What about Leonard?"

"Bones gets screened a lot, actually. Usually cause I already know what he's about to say, so it's like the call itself is all the reminder I need. And I think he almost enjoys being able to do one-sided chiding on my answering machine."

She chuckled, finding that easy to imagine.

"Oh, I've been meaning to ask you, you've got some hot date for New Year's, right? Some kinda plans?"

"I've got a date with my television and the Slavic languages."

"Nah. Come on, we should go out. Christine told Bones she could get us all into her office party without a hitch."

"Christine told Leonard, huh?"

"I thought we weren't jinxing it."

She laughed.

"But what do you say?"

"Look, I don't know, Jim." She sighed, already inexplicably starting to change her mind. "You really want me to?"

"I'll come get you at eight."

::

The party turned out to be totally worth getting into and out of the cold for. The high-ceilinged ballroom rented out of the convention center had a perfectly stocked bar and echoed vibrantly with swing and motown numbers which the guests actually made no bullshit about moving to. Jim and Nyota were getting windswept to Aretha Franklin while he occasionally pulled her in to say something snarky in her ear about the other couples around them. He made the most fleeting pause to wink over her shoulder at the woman he'd been chatting up while Nyota was in the bathroom earlier, but went back in to turn her under his arm in a fluid snap. Jim had always been a blast to dance with: Unlike most guys she knew he genuinely liked it and didn't just do it for the social peacocking on the way getting between somebody's legs, though he undoubtedly could have easily used it for that purpose with other people.

At one point they retired breathlessly to the bar, resuming a conversation they'd been half-having during a quieter song. "I was, yeah, I was a little wounded," Jim was admitting.

She consolingly patted his forearm, amused.

"I mean..." He made a hesitant gesture. "Well, I'm sure you don't exactly think I'd be awful, do you?"

Nyota could only laugh, and she turned her attention to the bartender who was making a questioning gesture about her order, yelling, "Just on the rocks, please!...I'm sure you're somewhere from fine to exceptional. I don't know. But if you thought she was faking it, you're probably right."

Jim leaned his back into the bar a little grumpily after he reached for his drink.

"Just think of it as the female equivalent of losing an erection or something. Sometimes we just can't get into it."

"Well, how is that fair?" Jim demanded animatedly. "Either scenario would have been embarrassing for me."

"You're forgetting that there are plenty of stupid men out there that wouldn't consider it any failure of theirs that she didn't have an orgasm, and some women are very used to those guys. Not that I understand the type of woman who puts up with that," Nyota said, gesticulating with her slightly slurred emphasis in a way that would have given off that this was hardly her first drink tonight. "I mean, isn't this girl in communications? How can you trust a woman who's supposed to excel at talking to other people and can't even tell a guy how to make her come?"

Jim lost it for a good two minutes over that, surfacing from his sniggering as they went to get some fresh air at the far fringes of the crowds to say, "You are unreal. I swear to God, you're spectacular. I love you."

She hadn't even realized the countdown shouting had started, and she said, laughing, "I love you too."

"Come here." He slung her in around the waist and kissed her firmly, once on the cheek and then on her temple, said, "Happy new year, hon."

"Happy New Year, Jim," she said back, hugging him tight.

::

A couple months later Nyota was spending a couple months in China, the timing overlapping a little with a dig tour he was attending in Scotland before hopping to a couple other seminars in Europe. Throughout a given week they'd exchange several emails, some of which he'd leave open on his laptop and click over to with a sad smile before thinking of something else he meant to tell her about. A few days into his stay in Ireland he was totally infatuated with it, but couldn't stop imagining how much fun they'd both be having if she was there.

A good deal of his last week there was spent with a Trinity student named Laura, who woke him up with a nice hard bite on his hipbone and then with something else nice the morning he had to get up and pack. She'd left him and his body with the lulling impression of hard wit and soft thighs while he fell asleep every night, and he almost wished he could take her back with him.

His laptop chimed at him, alerting him of a new e-mail, and he bent over to glance on it quickly while he was pulling his shirt on. From where Laura was stretching out and brushing her hair out of her face, she muttered, "You don't have a girlfriend back home, do you?"

He looked quickly over, surprised.

She laughed. "Okay, I guess not. You just seemed kind of..."

"Maybe I am kind of," he interrupted in playful mockery.

She chuckled and finally rolled up to sitting and putting her own clothes on. Later they kissed goodbye at the door, exchanging nothing else.

At the airport later, he had a hard time spotting her as soon as he got off the plane, and she snuck up to his side hissing, "James Tiberius!" and hopping into his hug as soon as he turned.