Thank you for all your kind words and feedback. Writing this story is truly a pleasure. Sorry it took me so long. Writing does help me breathe... but it also takes my breath away every now and then.

Anyway, I truly hope you enjoy this!

Gail was blushing. She was blushing profusely and she was well aware of it. That was mainly why she had decided to go up to her room to freshen up before going to meet Theresa at the hotel's restaurant. She knew the other woman would read her instantly and she wanted to have some of her own questions answered first.

Get a grip, Gail. You are a Peck after all. Keep it together.

She couldn't, though. Not after having just told Holly that she was her very favorite person. Yes, she had dropped a probably there somewhere, but she knew that that had just been her brain looking for at least one last little string of control.

Lies. Lies. Lies.

Once inside her room, she finally allowed herself to raise her head from the floor, falling backwards on her bed, arms open, as if she were about to make a snow angel. She closed her eyes for a moment and felt the warmness return to her face as her mind took her through the moment she had just had with Holly.

Who am I kidding? She is my favorite everything.

That thought made her heart skip a beat. And another. And another.

Am I dying?

She couldn't remember the last time she had felt something like this. Had she ever felt anything exactly like this before? Had she ever been left completely speechless by someone's existence? Had her mouth ever gone entirely dry at the sight of someone?

Holly.

She reached for her phone and went through the conversation she had had with the brunette during the lecture. She scrolled up and down and up again. Her grin growing as she became familiar with their shared words. She brought a hand up and covered her eyes as she felt it take over her whole face. And then there was a giggle. Gail Peck was indeed lying on her hotel's bed giggling like a schoolgirl.

I am in love with Holly Stewart.

I am completely, utterly, irrevocably in love with Holly Stewart.

She almost didn't recognize her face when she saw her reflection in the bathroom's mirror. She looked happy. Well, she felt happy. There was this inner warmness... this energy, this glow coming from the inside... it was overwhelming but at the same time so reassuring...

She could definitely get used to this... to belonging somewhere, to making sense by someone's side and not just on her own.

"Would it kill you to sound any less corny in your head?" Gail asked out loud before shaking her head at herself, her grin still in place.

After fixing her makeup, Gail finally decided she was ready to meet Theresa for lunch. She was already inside the restaurant, she had actually just found where the other woman was sitting, when she felt her phone vibrating in her pocket.

"Lisa and Rachel are going out to buy dresses for tomorrow's closing ceremony. Apparently there's going to be a ball or something? Anyway, they are going to miss the next lecture. Come sit by me?"

She might have chucked out loud. She might have then looked around to see if anyone had noticed before rolling her eyes at herself and going back to the whole smiling like an idiot thing. This was something she was great at, apparently.

"Someone once told me that texts are meant to be short."

Too much for self-control.

Just seeing Holly's name on her phone made her smile. Ah, and it really hadn't been Holly's name but her nickname... she went by Lunchbox on her phone. It only made it worse, really. It brought memories from the day they met and everything that had happened between that day and where they were today.

She is going to be the death of me.

Little did she know that Holly was witnessing the whole reaction from the corner of her eye as she pretended to be paying attention to whatever her friends were telling her.

Gail was about to put her phone back in her pocket when it vibrated yet again, causing her to raise an eyebrow.

"Not sure your beautiful face can handle me calling. And are your knees going weak on you or something? There has been a slight change to your righteous posture..."

"Creep."

"Learned from the very best. Come sit with me?"

The slight change text-wise didn't go unnoticed by Gail.

"You sure that's sensible? Shouldn't you try and focus on this next one?"

"Well, apparently you can multitask well enough for the both of us, so... I would very much enjoy having you close."

Gail could almost feel the distance between them dissipating at every text.

"You are just after some hard evidence on my mad skills, aren't you?"

"Be there and find out."

By now Gail was already sitting down at their table but had yet to say a word to a Theresa that was watching her intently, as if she were her newest and most interesting case study.

When Gail finally moved her eyes away from her phone and found Theresa staring at her, she instantly cleared her throat and set it down.

"Well, hello to you too." Theresa said, tilting her head as if waiting for Gail to explain herself.

"You told her we lived together." Gail blurted out, bringing her hands together as she rested her elbows on the table.

"Right. You were never the one for small talk..."

"Theresa. We lived together for 48 hours because you were moving flats." Her tone was so matter-of-factly cold that it made the older woman laugh. It only lasted a moment though as Gail threw her a look that, if licensed to kill, would have brought her down there and then.

"We still shared the same house for 48 straight hours... Everything I owned, except for my furniture, was at yours. That means that we technically did live together." Theresa justified, grabbing her fork to poke at the fruit that stood on a plate in front of her.

"That's beside the point! She must think we have had... a thing." Gail's hands went theatrically up in despair, coming to rest upon her lap as she looked down, trying to come up with a reasonable explanation for their living situation.

"Ooooh, she must think! Lord, it's worse than I thought." The redhead said, bringing some apple to her mouth.

"Wait, what do you mean by that? What do you mean by worse than I thought? And how come you were even thinking about it in the first place?" Gail's eyes shot back up so fast that they went blurry for a moment for the quick change of blood pressure.

"Huh, Gail...? I basically think for a living? And I must be quite good at it for they are paying me the big bucks." She replied when she finished chewing on her apple, a proud smile on her face as the idea of her job filled her mind. My one and only love...

"Theresa! Focus. I meant about Holly."

"Oh right. About your Holly, huh?" Theresa couldn't help but mess with the blonde. She had never been this easy to play with. It was adorable to see Gail all flustered. "When I called Holly's office for the first time to talk to her about this conference some guy from the morgue said she was out on a lunch-date with a cop. I then called you at the Station and you too were out on a date with the forensic pathologist. It was too much of a coincidence, you know? So I might have asked your colleague, the one that picked up, Chloe Price, I think? Well, I might have asked her to rephrase the whole date thing for you were never really the lunch date kind of person. That was when she told me the whole Holly and Gail tale... It was rather..."

"I ruined everything." Gail blurted out. Again. What was going on? She usually enjoyed having Theresa trying to figure her out, to read her... She usually enjoyed challenging her friend, but somehow now she seemed just too eager for the redhead to jump in with some advice that she would probably end up ignoring but that would give her the courage she needed to act.

"You are going to add more information to that confession, aren't you? Because you two look very much like a couple on their honeymoon stage...? You know, just the kind of couple you usually spent your days complaining about? Oh, and making fun of, too."

"Her friends said I was uneducated. And that Holly should just have her fun but to be careful not to get hurt in the process..."

"Wait there a sec. Why does that matter? Were you dating Holly or were you dating her friends?" Theresa couldn't help but raise an eyebrow in a rather suspicious manner. She didn't like what Holly's friends had said about hers, but what she was definitely not liking was the fact that Gail had allowed their words to affect her this much. This was not something she would expect from the old Gail.

My baby girl is in love.

"That's why I ruined everything. I didn't think... I just... I said terrible things and left."

"And she didn't come after you?"

"No. But who would, really? I mean, I was a cold hearted bitch. I didn't even give her enough time to explain."

"That's true. But still... you meant enough for her to want to introduce you to her best friends. Shouldn't she have stood up for her own feelings about your relationship? Then again, you did say that your choice of words was rather heavy..."

"Where exactly are you going with this?"

"You are both to blame. And the situation? It's called a misunderstanding. And quite a ridiculous one, to be honest. It usually happens when two people are so stupidly in love that context disappears... All they see is each other. So when things go bad? They never remember how it all started... or when... or who... all they know is that someone has to take the blame home. Hence the whole, it's not you, it's me. In this case, and according to what you have just told me, you two took the blame home... Even apart, you two seem to have decided to share. Interesting, huh?"

"Have you been dissecting relationships instead of dead bodies lately?"

"No. I am just a single woman - by choice, even if not my choice - living in the middle of a married field of people." Theresa said with a simple shrug before bringing another piece of fruit to her mouth. As she chewed she couldn't help but wonder if there was something she could do to help the two.

Suddenly there was a smile. Pride. A conspiracy, perhaps?

Oh, I know just what to do.