Author's Note: Sorry I haven't been around for a while - I don't really have a good excuse except that in my family we have four birthdays between Thanksgiving and mid-January, plus we celebrate Thanksgiving (duh), Solstice, Christmas, and New Year's. I also had finals to contend with, including a huge ugly paper about Emily Dickinson (and just try finding something relevant to say about Emily Dickinson that hasn't already been said before, I dare you). Anyway, this chapter isn't as long as some of them have been so to apologize for being gone so long I thought I'd give y'all another little present. At the end there's a preview - a trailer, if you will - for something that's coming later on in the story. Just in case you thought this wasn't going anywhere. ;-)

"Where's Phil?"

"What did you say?" Mrs. Diffy turned and eyed her daughter. "Are you sick?"

Pim blinked her eyes in an attempt to look innocent. "Can't a girl wonder where her big brother is?"

"Not this girl," her mother said, handing her a cookie. "Not without a good reason."

Pim held the cookie away from Curtis and sighed. "Look," she said, "I think my bug jumped to his computer when I sent him an email the other day."

"Not Pim bug again." Curtis rolled his eyes and stole a handful of cookies.

"Curtis! Those aren't for you. They're a welcome-home present for Mrs. Teslow." Barbara shook her head as he crammed the cookies into his mouth, speckling the clean floor with sugary crumbs. "Pim," she continued, raising an eyebrow at her daughter, "tell me again. How exactly did your bug get into Phil's computer?"

"Fine. I jacked some pieces from his computer the other day when I was looking for the stupid bug, but I put them back! Now I think it's in his hard drive, because it's not on mine."

"I think you're taking this whole thing a little too seriously, don't you?" her mother asked. "You're talking like it's alive now. Electronic bugs might be malicious, but they're just code. Robots are more alive than they are." Her mother arranged several tiers of cookies on a plate. "Isn't that pretty? I really hope Mandy Teslow and I can learn to be friends. Something tells me it might be a little difficult. Hand me the plastic wrap, will you, Pim?"

"Make Curtis do it."

"Pim."

Pim heaved a deep sigh and slid off the kitchen stool, trudging to the cabinet to get the wrap. "What good is having a caveman if he's not useful?"

"Curtis is plenty useful," Mrs. Diffy said. "And if you snuck into Phil's room to steal computer parts to begin with, why don't you just sneak back to look for your bug?"

Pim handed her mother the box of plastic wrap and took another cookie. "Because," she said, "Phil was so sick of people waltzing in and out of his room that he bribed Simon to booby-trap his door."

"I thought Simon liked you."

"He does, but I was stupid enough to tell him that he'd never be up to Pim standards when it comes to pranking. He took that as a challenge."

"As he rightly should," Barbara said. She tied a curl of ribbon around the wrapped plate. "Sweetie, maybe this is finally the lesson you need."

"Lesson in what?" Pim demanded.

"That you don't always have to win. Sometimes you have to let the other person win—that's what friendship is about."

"I'll file it away for future reference," Pim promised. "Now, will you tell me where Phil is?"

Barbara put the gift plate aside and ran a sponge over the crumby countertop. "It's Friday night, and he's with Keely at the movies."

"Well, when will he be back?"

"When the movie is over, I would presume."

"When will that be?"

"How should I know?"

Pim shook her head. "You're really not so good at this parenting thing, are you? Simon's dad won't let him out of the house unless he knows exactly where Simon will be, and with who."

"Whom." Lloyd corrected, coming in the back door.

"And when he'll be back," Pim finished.

"That's certainly one way to do it," Barbara agreed, "and we could try it with you, if you'd like."

"That's not what I was implying," Pim said quickly.

"We could try it on Phil," Lloyd said, sitting down at the counter with a spray can of popcorn. He sprayed a bowlful, and the smell of melting butter brought Curtis back into the room. "Of course," he said, pausing with a handful of popcorn halfway to his mouth, "if we did, he and Keely would just probably spend all of their free time here. On the couch. Kissing."

"All right!" Pim snapped. "You made your point. Can we not dwell?"

Barbara kissed the top of her head and smoothed her long hair with an absent-minded touch. "That's my girl."

"Speaking of Blondie," Pim said, taking a handful of popcorn, "what was all that screaming about just after the sleepover? I forgot to ask."

"Keely was having some bad dreams," Barbara said, glancing at Lloyd, "and we tried to use the Medic to stop them. Unfortunately, her system reacted adversely to the cellular intrusion."

"Complete shutdown?"

"You sound way too happy about this."

Pim shrugged. "I hear it's painful."

"Quite." Her mother raised an eyebrow. "Would you like your entire system to suddenly shut down on the cellular level?"

"Not really."

"Well, then."

"Don't look at me like that!" Pim said, holding up her hands. "I assume everything is fine now, since she's off macking on my brother—a fact I'm still not okay with, by the way. In case anyone was wondering. Or cares what I think."

"Sweetie, we care," Barbara said. "And yes, as far as we know everything is fine now."

The doorbell rang, and Barbara jumped up. "Oh!" she said. "That's probably Mandy now. Curtis—into the garage! Pim, behave." She grabbed her plate of cookies and strode to the front door.

"Dad," Pim said, gazing after her mother and shaking her head, "tell me the truth. Are we ever going home?"

"Eventually, kiddo." He took his bowl of popcorn and peered around the corner. "Let's make a break for it and head upstairs. If there's any fireworks, I don't want to be a part of it."

"Right behind you, daddykins."

Keely blinked. Phil had said something, but she couldn't hear him over the crescendo of music inside the theatre. She raised her head from his shoulder and he put his lips next to her ear. "Do you want to go get ice cream after?" he whispered.

She considered. "Isn't it kind of late? I think the parlor's closed."

"Keely, Keely, Keely." He took her hand, turned it over, and kissed her palm. "It's morning already in Amsterdam."

"Does your mom expect you home?"

"No. Yours?"

She opened her mouth to remind him that her mother was gone for the week, but closed it again just as quickly. "Oh," she said, "I completely forgot she's coming home tonight."

Phil smirked. "I didn't. I have a great memory. It's part of what makes me so adorable."

She was about to disagree when the full import of that statement hit her and she slouched miserably in her seat. "Shit," she said, with feeling.

"What?"

She covered her eyes with her palms and dug her fingers into the fat, loose curls at her hairline. "My mother told me I was supposed to tell her where I was going from now on, when I went out with you. I didn't bother while she was gone, but I forgot to leave a note when we left tonight."

"Oops."

"You have no idea. She's going to kill me."

"Come on, Keel," he said. He slid his fingers around her delicate wrist and pulled her nearest hand away from her eyes. "It can't be that bad."

"I don't really know how bad it's going to be," she said, surrendering to the fact that she was going to be in trouble and there was nothing she could do about it now. Her mother had likely come home hours ago; it was too late to correct the mistake. She nestled down against Phil's shoulder again, firm and warm, and closed her eyes. "She's never been like this before."

"Like what?" he murmured, his voice vibrating in his throat against her skin. The theatre seats had the kind of armrests that couldn't be raised out of the way, and Keely felt the sharp plastic hard against her hip as she tried to press herself as close to Phil as she possibly could.

"It's hard to explain," she said.

"Try."

"I don't know how." She let one of her hands slip under his thin t-shirt, resting against the smooth skin and taut muscle. "She was always cool, you know? But not like your mom. It wasn't like she ever understood how I felt or even wanted to. It was more like we had this unspoken agreement that we wouldn't bother each other and neither of us would rock the boat. So I never threw a fit when she had to work late or go off on business retreats and training trips, and she never asked where I was going on Friday nights or when I'd be back."

"So what changed?" Phil was trying very hard to pay attention, but the distraction of her hand against his skin, her thumb moving slowly back and forth against his side, made it very difficult to concentrate on anything else. He glanced at the movie screen, but he hadn't been paying attention to it for quite some time and couldn't make sense of anything that was happening.

"I don't know!" She shifted restlessly against him, and Phil placed his mouth against her hair. "It was that day, when she came over during your un-pool party. It was like somebody had replaced my mother with someone else's. The way she looked at me…" Keely stopped talking abruptly, remembering the bewildering look in her mother's eyes when they had spotted each other across the expanse of the Diffy back porch that afternoon.

Was it betrayal? Was that what she had seen in her mother's eyes? Disappointment? Certainly there had been a dim kind of recognition there, a realization of something long denied. She had felt like a little girl again, under those eyes, like she had done something awful without realizing it and her mother had seen it happen. "She asked me if we were sleeping together," she said quietly, her voice barely audible in the noisy theatre.

"What did you say?"

"I said no, of course. I'm still not sure she believed me."

"Is it so awful that she thinks that way?"

"Yes!" Keely snapped. "You've got this great family, Phil—weird, but great—that doesn't think it's the end of the world that we're going out. My mom isn't like that. I thought we had a good don't-ask-don't-tell policy worked out, but something changed. She doesn't trust me, Phil, and I don't know how to make her see that I'm not some terrible kid."

"I'm sure she doesn't think you're a terrible kid," he said, smiling against her hair.

"I'm not so sure."

Phil had nothing to say to that. He held her and let her hide against his shoulder, knowing that there was nothing else he could do to help her. Nothing he could say would make her feel any better at this point. This was something she was going to have to work out with her mother, and it was better if he didn't get involved at all. Interfering was a sure way, he had learned, to screw things up. That didn't mean, he thought as he gazed at the blond head tucked against his arm, that he didn't wish he could.

"She's going to be grounded until graduation," Mandy growled, pacing before the windows in the Diffy's living room. "College graduation."

"I'm sure she just forgot to leave a note for you," Mrs. Diffy said, trying to soothe the irate woman. "New rules take a little time to get used to, you know."

Mandy Teslow dropped into a chair. "I just don't know what to do anymore!" she said, clasping her hands together tightly. "I never thought I'd be having these problems—not with Keely. She's always been so responsible, so good…"

"Whoever said she wasn't anymore?" Barbara said. "Children grow up, Mrs. Teslow; that's what they do. Arguments about what kind of cookie goes into their lunchbox turn into different struggles. It's our job as parents to make sure that they have the freedom to make their own decisions—and mistakes—and the assurance that we'll always be there to help them when they need it."

"But she does need it!" Mandy snapped, and jumped to her feet again. She was too unsettled to sit still. "She needs me to set limits because she obviously can't do it for herself."

Barbara stirred sugar into a cup of coffee and tried to calm the anger she felt rising inside. How this woman could sit there and accuse her sweet, cheerful daughter of not being responsible she couldn't fathom. "I know all you want is for Keely to be safe," she said, though in truth she wasn't sure at all that Keely's safety was Mandy's primary concern. "But when you hold teenagers too tightly, all you do is push them farther away."

"That's a risk I'm just going to have to take." Mandy paused in her pacing. "You can't know what it's like."

"Oh?"

"I mean, it must be different with boys. I know you have a girl too, but she's younger and you're not having this same struggle with her yet."

"How do you think it's any different with Phil and I than it is with you and Keely?" Barbara asked.

"I don't know! It's just different. It's always been different with boys."

"Not having one yourself," Barbara said, "how would you know?"

"Boys have less responsibility," Mandy said, coming to perch on the loveseat. She took her cup of untasted coffee in her hands. It had gone cold. "They have less to lose."

"How so?" Barbara was trying to keep hold of her temper, but it wasn't easy. She was usually very difficult to bother, but this other woman's constant insinuation that all boys in general—and Phil in particular—were irresponsible vagabonds was wearing her cheerful nature down. "Phil's a good boy, Mrs. Teslow, and I'm not just saying that because I'm his mother. He's always been special to me, and it's just as hard for me to see him growing up as it is for you to see Keely doing the same. But I take pride in seeing what an amazing person he's growing into, and I know that my job now is to guide, not to hover. Don't you think I sometimes wish he were still running around with his underwear over his jeans, pretending to be a superhero? Of course I do! Sometimes when he comes through that door after school I want to give him graham crackers and peanut butter again, just like I did when he was five, and help him wash his hands and his little freckled face afterwards. But I can't do that! Time doesn't work that way."

"Are you trying to tell me you think Keely's too old to punish for breaking the rules?"

"Yes!" Mrs. Diffy threw her hands up in the air. "Punishment should have gone out the door when she was twelve! Consequences, however, are a different story. The world is full of consequences; they're not just parental inventions. Teenagers respect consequences much more than punishments."

Mandy Teslow dropped her head into her hands for a long moment. She didn't know how she felt about this other woman yet, this mother who seemed to love her children deeply and yet let them run about with a much freer rein than she wanted to give Keely. It didn't help that they were almost forced to interact, since their children were dating. She didn't think Barbara Diffy was the kind of person she would ordinarily have chosen to be friends with, had she the option.

But…in a strange way, this notion of consequences made sense. And if trying to look at it from somebody else's perspective might make Keely listen to her mother instead of running off with that dark-haired boy, Mandy was willing to try. She looked up at the taller woman. "What do you suggest?" she said finally.

"Let's think about this rationally," Barbara suggested, hopeful that she was at last finally getting somewhere. "You're upset with Keely for not letting you know where she was going to be when she left the house. That's a rational argument."

"Well at least we agree about something," Mandy said. She sipped at her tepid coffee and made a face.

"The obvious option would be, as you suggested, to take away her freedom to leave the house for a while since that was what the broken rule was about. But I think we can do a little better than that. Making kids stay home only makes them upset, it doesn't really teach them anything."

"At least I'd know where she was," Mandy argued.

"For a little while, certainly, but you can't keep her grounded forever."

"Watch me."

Barbara pretended she hadn't heard that last comment. She tapped her lips thoughtfully with a finger. "You know, Phil told me a few days ago that you were worried he and Keely were having sex."

Mandy colored. "And why shouldn't I be?" she demanded. "Are you going to next try and tell me I should let them do that, too?"

"Mrs. Teslow, if Keely wants to have sex she's going to do it no matter what you tell her—and it has nothing to do with my son, either. It's about her growing curiosity about herself and her body, and it's natural."

Mandy narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "Is your son sleeping with my daughter?" she asked.

"Not as far as I know," Barbara said, relieved that she could truthfully answer the question. "And Phil talks to me about more things than you might expect."

"But you're not positive." Mandy jumped up and began pacing again. "Good god, what if they are? What if he gets her pregnant? Her future will be ruined, and he'll just run off like teenage fathers do, and—"

"Whoa there!" Barbara put up a hand. "Mrs. Teslow, they're not even having sex and you're worried about a pregnancy that hasn't even happened. Are you listening to yourself?" She bit back her next words as an idea occurred to her. "Is that what you're really so upset about? That they might have sex and then get pregnant?"

"Yes!" Mandy snapped. "What have I been sitting here telling you all night?"

A slow smile spread over Barbara's face. "I think I have an excellent consequence," she said. "It's unusual, I admit, but it addresses your fear and, best of all, it'll be for both of them."

Mrs. Teslow paused. "What is it?" she asked suspiciously.

"Phil has a cousin in college. She has a new baby we haven't met yet, what with everyone's schedules being so busy. I'm sure she'd love a few days off—what would you say if we brought the baby down for a while and let Phil and Keely see what hard work it is to take care of a baby full-time?"

"She had that lesson in seventh grade," Mandy said, but her voice was thoughtful.

"A bag of flour isn't much of a baby, and seventh grade was a long time ago in teenage years," Mrs. Diffy argued. "We can set Keely up in our guest room for a few days and Mr. Diffy and I will be here to make sure the baby is taken care of properly. What do you think? After a couple of nights with no sleep, I bet they'll think twice before doing anything that might get them stuck with a baby for real."

Mandy considered. "You know," she said slowly, "that actually sounds like a pretty good idea."

"Excellent!" Mrs. Diffy beamed. "Why don't you go get a bag together for her, and I'll call Phil's cousin and let her know what's going on. I'm sure she'll be so happy to have a few days of vacation!"

And, as promised, a preview of things to come...

Keely slowly opened her eyes, and Phil stilled his hands to watch her. She breathed in, filling her lungs with a breath he could almost feel against his own skin. Very deliberately, eyes locked with his, she drew her shirt over her head. Phil swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. He was having a very difficult time not breaking eye contact to look down, but he was determined not to ruin the tension Keely was building.

"Are we really going to do this?" she whispered, and in her voice he heard the uncertainty he had heard in her breath, an uncertainty that didn't translate well to her hands.

"We'll never get a better chance," Phil said, his gaze flicking back and forth from her cloudy eyes to her mouth. He was close enough to feel her breath on his cheek, close enough to see the sweep of individual eyelashes as she blinked. "But that doesn't mean we have to."

"Do you want to?" There was no volume to her voice, nothing but air formed by her lips. He saw the words more than he heard them.

"Do you?" he asked quietly. He wondered if she really expected an answer to her question, wondered if there could be any doubt at this point that he wanted her. Careful not to startle her, he reached up with one finger and traced the delicate line of her bare clavicle. He could see quick, tense breaths fluttering under his fingertip. She was warm, her skin pink and cream, like the fragile blush in the very center of a strawberry.

"I…I asked you first," she said, fighting to keep her eyes open.

"Actually," Phil said, running his fingertips over her smooth breastbone, "I believe I asked you first. Months ago."

TBC...