Author's Note: Once again, thank you so much for the reviews, faves and kind words of encouragement. This is the best fandom ever. Well, one of them :D
Three chapters to go after this, I think, and hey, it only took about four weeks for me to update this time :)

Chapter 10

"Met any nice girls lately?"

"Met any nice girls lately?"

"Met any nice girls lately?"

Her words echo in your head as you toss and turn and hate yourself.

"Yeah, you."

Two words.

You should have just said them. You wanted to say them. But you didn't.

And let's be real here – there's not a chance in the world that you, nervous rambler extraordinaire, would have been able to tell Gail that you liked her as more than a friend with only two words. Anything other than a word vomit of epic proportions would have been extremely out of character for you. Plus, you didn't say anything, at least not anything you wanted to say.

What did you do? You blurted out something about medieval archers for Merlin's sake. Ugh. No wonder you're single.

You force your eyes shut and immediately bits and pieces of your evening starts replaying in your head.

Gail, doing a very unique imitation of a sports announcer when you beat the two random cops at The Penny in pool.

Gail, telling you random stories of her years at 15, most of them ending with Dov, Chris or both of them in some sort of trouble.

Gail, shyly asking if you could hang out at your place for a while, not really wanting to go back to the frat-flat quite yet.

You, walking into a streetlight while trying to explain an article about quarks that you'd spent your entire lunch break reading, which by the way was very far from your usual scientific readings. You had nothing else to read, okay. And Gail was somewhere else and not available for lunch break companionship.

Plus there was something strangely cute about mini-miniscule particles called strange quarks and charm quarks, and that topic lead you headfirst into a ramble about the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva that you had read about like ten years ago after a friend had talked you into reading that awful book Angels & Demons.

Then, bam! Streetlight – meet Holly Stewart.

And she giggled, and even though you pouted quite a bit for good measure, nothing hurt. How could it, when she was laughing at you, but in the sweetest way you'd ever been laughed at?

You open your eyes and stare at the roof above you, wanting to fall asleep but that's a hard thing to accomplish when your thoughts are racing at 200 kilometers per hour. Which, by the way, is a saying and not an accurate scientific fact.

A few days ago you'd been texting back and forth with Rachel, who was persistently questioning you about your "new bestie slash inappropriate crush". You can recreate the words on the screen by heart.

[..but what's interesting is that it doesn't feel awkward. I'm not awkward, at least not compared to how I can be, you know how I can be. Fine, I wouldn't exactly mind kissing her, or.. well.. you know. But us hanging out? It's great.]

[Just make sure you don't get hurt. Also, Lisa says hi, frowns at you for choosing overtime work over drinks and says that I should tell you to get over yourself and that she knows someone who's actually into girls that she thinks you'd like.]

[Hi Lisa! :) ]

And now this tentative friendship with Gail has entered the uncomfortable realm of awkward. Splendid. You can hear their voices in your head already. Rachel being reasoning and somewhat comforting, Lisa telling you to get over yourself and stop falling for straight girls.

The best plan of action is probably to ignore them, and avoid Gail. At least for a couple of days. You can just bury yourself in work.. it's not like you haven't done that one before.

You can't read her. She's chewing on her straw like her life depended on it but you can't tell if she's bothered by the fact that you're meeting someone or if she's just being Gail. And you don't have any time left to think it over, since your "someone" just walked though the door.

"Thanks for the drink," you say and walk away, your back turned on Gail so quick that you can't make out the words in her mumbled reply. But you feel her eyes on you for the rest of the evening.

Lisa was right, your blind date – Amelia, is someone you'd probably like. If it wasn't for the fact that you're crushing hard on a snarky cop and Amelia is not the cop in question. She's an online editor for the Toronto Star, an avid fan of the Blue Jays and the Leafs and enjoys painting and mountain biking in her spare time. You would make a great match – two sorta nerdy, sometimes outdoorsy types, but as the night goes on you feel increasingly bad for playing along. It's not that you don't enjoy talking to her, you honestly do. It's just that you know this has zero chance of going anywhere until you get over Gail.

The second you think that you hear Lisa's voice in your head "get under someone else", but that's not your preferred way of handling these kinds of situations. The risk of hurting someone involved is usually to big.

"This has been great but I have an early start tomorrow so.. I better get going," Amelia says.

"Right, of course. I should leave too, " you say and start putting your jacket on. You want to throw a last glance at Gail, just to see if she's still staring at you or if she's too drunk, but you would feel rude for doing so. Instead you follow Amelia out.

There are no cabs outside so you decide to share one since you both live in the same direction. While waiting for the cab to arrive the two of you are slowly surrounded by an unavoidable and uncomfortable silence, and both of you decide to break it at the exact same time.

"Look.."

"Listen.."

Amelia laughs and you look down and kick a small gravel with your right foot.

"You go first," you say, looking at her again and calmly watch her fidget for a second.

"Alright. Uhm.. I don't know if Lisa told you, but I had a really rough breakup recently and, well.. I'm nowhere near ready to start dating again. I just thought you should know because I honestly had a good time, but I can't see this going anywhere right now."

The sudden relief that rushes through you feels like taking a deep breath after swimming under water for too long. It's followed by a hint of compassion for Amelia, but you can't help being glad she's not feeling it either.

"Oh. That's alright, tonight was great but I'm not exactly emotionally available right now either," you say apologetically.

She smiles at you then, and when the cab arrives a few minutes later you're laughing and swapping stories about how Lisa always wants to meddle with other peoples love lives.

Your place is closer and when you've paid your share of the fare and are about to say goodbye Amelia interrupts you.

"Thanks for tonight Holly, and.. it's probably not my place to ask you about this, but the blonde that was staring at you for most of the night, you should probably just woman up and ask her out. I'm not easily scared but if you go on any more blind dates and she knows about it, I have a feeling things might get ugly."

Once again you have trouble sleeping. Because of course your brain would spin into overdrive after Amelia's quiet observation.

What if Gail's not just fiercely possessive of her friends.

What if she actually feels something more. Granted she might not, and if she does she may not want to act upon it but you fall asleep while rewinding the coat closet over and over again, and the more times you do it, the more you focus on the look in her eyes when you got up and left.

Maybe it meant something.

This was kinda short, but I accidentally wrote the most part of an extra chapter yesterday that will be up soon too, so.. :)

Also, thanks for reading.