You didn't just get over somebody like Sharona Fleming. Well, okay, obviously some guys did, considering the string of them she'd dated, but those guys had all been jerks. And Randy might be an idiot, sometimes, but he wasn't a jerk. Mostly. Everybody was a jerk occasionally.

The point was, he didn't just wake up the next morning and find out he was over it. But then, he didn't wake up catatonic, either, if that was a thing. (Could you wake up catatonic? Was catatonic like being in a coma?) So he wasn't flippant, but he wasn't…well, Monk. The worst that happened is that he rambled a little more than usual for a while, and honestly, he didn't think the captain noticed, because the captain was worried about Monk, who had woken up catatonic, or mostly, and only if that was a thing.

"Randy," he could hear her saying. "Cut it out."

He had noticed how much she could distract him, but hadn't realized until after she was gone how much she had focused him, too. No wonder she had been so good for Monk.

Soon, Monk had Natalie to help pick himself up and get his life moving again. Randy had to do that alone, and it was weird to see Monk at crime scenes again because it was weird that the woman with him was not the woman who should have been there.

Randy tried to keep from showing how much he hated that it was Natalie, not Sharona, who he saw on a regular basis. Natalie, not Sharona, who answered Monk's phone. Natalie, not Sharona, who teased him now, unaware that her casual friendliness was reminding him of something that was—or was almost—more than that. He tried to hide it because it wasn't her fault she wasn't Sharona. But she wasn't, and whether or not he succeeded in hiding his feelings, it still hurt.

He was rather offended that time hadn't come to a screeching, catastrophic halt when all his hopes derailed, but time, like certain women he could name if it didn't hurt too much, took no notice of him and went on moving forward.

He marked the first anniversary of Sharona's departure by staying in his apartment and ritualistically deleting every message he'd ever received from her—voicemails, texts, the occasional email. They were all dated over a year ago, and it was stupid to hold on so long, especially considering she hadn't just stopped returning his calls, she had gotten married.

When he pressed the delete button for the last time, he felt a sense of weight and release simultaneously. It was going to be tough to move on, but he was moving on. A whole year had gone by without his permission. Now he wouldn't be able to replay her voicemails ("We're on our way now, sorry we're late but there was a butter emergency…you don't want to know") or re-read her texts ("Still no check from last case and you know SOMEONE would rather let me starve than ask you, but what he doesn't know won't hurt him…help a girl out?"). None of them were exactly ever just for him, anyway. They all related to work somehow. Even the joking ones.

It had been a good working relationship. A really good one. But that was all it ever had the chance to be, and now it was over.

The next week he was digging through his sock drawer and his fingers touched something that wasn't fabric. He pulled out a birthday card and flipped it open.

It was dated a year and a half ago and had a brief handwritten message inside: "To Randy, living proof that another year older doesn't have to mean another year wiser. Happy Birthday!" Sharona's name was signed at the bottom.

Leave it to Sharona to write him an insulting message in a birthday card, and to him for grinning like he had the first time he'd opened it. The card should definitely be part of the message purge.

It went back to the bottom of the sock drawer instead.

He tried putting the whole thing out of his head by dating other women, but the most distracting one was the first he dated after Sharona left, and once Hayley turned out to be trying to kill Monk, Randy had had to call the whole thing off. None of the others were homicidal, but they weren't interesting, either. He kept meaning to sign up for one of those online dating things, but his description of the ideal woman kept coming out as a variation of "petite blond, no-nonsense, kids okay." Which is probably why for a while he thought Natalie was in love with him. Some woman fitting that description might be. It could happen.

What with his dating profile difficulties and his career and keeping an eye on his mom's relationships, he never got around to being in a relationship himself.

Which meant that when Sharona Fleming waltzed back into his life with as little warning as she left it, he was ready for her.