So you like Bones? He's a good guy, just a bit confused, perhaps. Thanks SO much for all the love on the last chapter! I'm glad you found it enlightening!

Sookie

When Eric called after he got into Paris, I could tell there was something weird going on from the tone of his voice.

"What's going on?" I asked, after I shuffled the kids off to the living room. "You're being weird."

"I'm fine," he mumbled. "Just tired."

I guess it was a long flight. "You didn't sleep on the plane?"

"No. But I should sleep now. I'll call you tomorrow morning."

"Okay," I said, unsure what the tone in his voice meant, but not feeling great about it. "Well, I love you."

He sighed. "I love you too. We'll talk tomorrow."

I slept restlessly, happy for one more day until I had to go back to work when I woke up with Ce in my bed, still exhausted.

I'd been thinking a lot about what Eric said about what people thought about us, and I had to admit, it kind of bothered me. I could see how people could reach those conclusions, and Niall had known Eric when he was mooching dinners off of Maudette before I came along.

And he had had that reputation then.

It's funny, how oblivious I was to things sometimes. I did work at work, which was something I was quite proud of. I attributed that to why I'd gotten where I was, and why I was able to go home at a reasonable hour and have a personal life as well. It also meant that I wasn't terribly involved with the social aspect of work, which Sam had always said made me a good manager, since I wasn't personally involved with the people that worked under me, besides a casual dinner here and there.

I knew people were pissy about Sam leaving, but I was surprised that that was the way it came out. And there wasn't a thing I could do about idle gossip. I guess I was the girl that got divorced at twenty-seven, the girl that had was knocked up, technically, and the girl that slid into a very senior position when someone well liked was given the boot unexpectedly.

I probably would have gossiped about me too.

Eric called around eleven, and we talked again for a little while, before the kids practically forced me out the door on the way to the Met. He still sounded a bit weird, but wasn't budging when I asked him about it.

I called him again when the kids went to bed on Skype. I figured the voice combined with the face meant he'd be quite unable to keep whatever was wrong under wraps. That, and after two days of weirdness, I was willing to fight it out, if that's what it took to figure out what the hell was wrong with him.

He answered after a couple of rings, and he looked exhausted. "Hey you," he answered, a forced smile on his face.

I crossed my arms, the laptop on my lap. "Will you just tell me what's wrong?"

"I'm just getting used to the time change again."

"Bullshit."

He sighed, and I noticed that he had a beer in his hand. In bed. "I'm working it out. Just let me work it out, and then I'll explain."

"That's not how we operate."

"Well, it's not going to do much good getting us both worked up when you're thousands of miles away now, is it. I'm dealing with it. It's more of the same."

With the grad student. Shit. "What happened?"

He looked down, his lip tight. "We've just been to a lawyer. I'm handling this properly."

That wasn't a good enough answer. "What's going on?"

"There's some pictures of her coming and going from my place, and someone attempted to pay her off to say we were involved. I had to write her a hell of a letter of recommendation, but she's going to deny we were involved, despite what it might mean for her here."

I looked at him, hard, and tried to imagine him lying to me, in a situation like this, and I couldn't, not really. But he had been away for a long time, and quite lonely, and this was unknown, and something we hadn't faced before, and I was feeling insecure. I had to ask though, to see the look on his face, to know for sure. "Is there anything else you want to tell me?"

He looked at me, hard for a minute. "Are you asking me what I think you are?"

I stared at him back, for a minute. "I'm just asking if there's anything else."

"Good night, Sookie." And with that, he hung up on me.

And I didn't call him back.

I went about the motions the next day, even though I felt sick from the moment I woke up from another shitty night's sleep. I avoided everyone for the whole day, keeping my email correspondence to email, my door closed and my blinds down. I'm sure the office gossips were having a field day, but I didn't care.

Before I realized it, it was time to go home, which I wasn't looking forward to. I wasn't sure how to fix whatever had happened, or fake it around the kids when he called. If he called.

He'd call. He was just angry, and upset about what was happening.

And I'd been a complete and utter asshole.

But then again, so had he, by not wanting to tell me, and then expecting me to just be alright with that. I'd asked a simple question, and I knew he'd been insulted, but I'd been insulted too. And he'd been really rude on Thanksgiving, criticizing my behaviour.

A little knock brought me out of my head, and I got up and answered it, to find a rather dapper looking Bones in a suit. "Just heading out. I hadn't seen you all day. I thought you might have played hookie and just left your light on for good measure," he said, a smile on his face.

I managed a weak smile. "Why are you all dressed up?"

"Interviews for a couple of new sales reps. Calvin asked me to sit in. Everything alright Luv?"

Did I look that distraught? It was probably a good thing I stayed in my office. "Yea, I'm fine. Still getting over my cold from last week." Or my awful hangover. Whatever.

He nodded. "You look better than you did on Thursday. You got your husband off to Paris again?

I nodded, and before I knew it, an errant tear escaped my eye. "Yep, I should get home to the kids. It's their first day with Claudine in a while."

"That fucking perfect wench," he chuckled. "She'd drive me batty."

I smiled, "Thank you. She does drive me batty."

He smiled warmly. "Want to grab a quick dinner?"

I froze, for the first time realizing exactly what Eric was seeing when he saw Bones and I. It was blatantly obvious. I was such an idiot. "I, well, I can't. I should get home."

He looked at me for a minute. "You're obviously upset. I'm happy to listen."

"I just, I'm having a bit of a bad week. I'll be fine." I sniffed, trying to stop from full on crying, which I felt seconds away from doing.

And then he did the worst thing he could have possibly done. He hugged me, and the floodgates burst loose, and I sobbed and sobbed into his suit, for ages. He held me in place, gently shuffling me into my office and closing the door behind us, a move I was grateful for, since there was still the odd straggler left in the office.

I cried for my stupid fight with Eric, for my insecurity about what my co-workers thought about me, my fears about being in over my head at work and at home, for my unfounded concerns about being married to someone that was larger than life in so many ways, but who loved me in every way, big and small.

Eventually, I pulled away. "Expense your dry cleaning, please," I choked out. "I'm sorry. That was ridiculous."

He stepped back a back and leaned against my door. "Not at all. You're dealing with a lot right now, and I don't think you have too many shoulders to cry on."

That wasn't untrue. I hadn't seen Tara since the summer, and it wasn't as though Pam was a great shoulder to cry on. And Eric might as well have been on the moon, when he wasn't part of the problem. "You're a good friend, Bones," I smiled, weakly, as he leaned over and grabbed me a tissue off my desk.

"It's nothing Sookie." He looked down at his feet. "You've been really great for me here too. It's nice to be able to reciprocate in some way."

And then it happened, in a split nanosecond. I felt my hands on my back, unfamiliar, as his lips met mine. I pulled away instantly, like he'd slapped me. I stared at him, in disbelief for a minute, although when I had a minute to process, it hadn't been all that unexpected. "I have to go," I whispered, grabbing my purse and pushing past him.

I walked around for an hour, unable to go home, but unwilling to go back to the office and face what had happened, either in person or in memory. After calling Claudine to see if she could stay for an extra couple of hours, I ended up at Pam's.

She answered in a silky robe, and eyed me critically. "You look like shit."

I shrugged. "Thanks. I have a favour to ask."

She escorted me into her living room, handing me a linen kitchen napkin. "I don't have tissues because we don't cry in this house." She grinned. "What's happened?"

"I need to see Eric. For a few days. We've having some problems."

Pam furrowed her brow, as much as her dermatologist recommended, anyway. "With the grad student."

I nodded. "Yea. I need to be there, and help him sort it out. It's not right, me leaving him to deal with this all alone."

She raised an eyebrow, Northman style. "That's not why you're crying."

"Bones kissed me," I whispered. "We need to talk about it, and I don't want to do it over the phone or over Skype, or anything. We need to be a team, instead of playing on separate teams like we've been relegated to. I never should have been okay with him going if he didn't want to go. Why did I let him go?"

Pam rolled her eyes. "He just kissed you, now?"

I nodded, blowing my nose into her tissue. "Yea."

She shook her head. "He held off longer than I thought he would. I'm surprised Eric didn't kill him at dinner. You realize he'll probably kill him now, if you tell him."

"I need to tell him."

"Yea, you do, but just be prepared to deal with the fallout from that. Eric's a caveman when it comes to you." She reached onto the coffee table and grabbed the most flawless Granny Smith apple I'd ever seen, and took a bite.

I blinked at her. "I can't stop working with him. What am I going to do? I just left after he kissed me."

She shrugged. "My advice? Discuss it with your husband, the sex and relationship expert. And I'll watch your kids, but you have to call that ghastly nanny of yours and tell her that she's not allowed to speak to me. You know my Aeroplan number."

When I got home, Claudine had the kids in bed reading. I sent her on her way and explained that my sister-in-law was incredibly rude, and that she'd be watching the kids for the next week. She said that Eric had already called and spoken to the kids a couple of hours ago, but had left no instructions for me to call him. I called Niall and told him I was taking some personal days since my kids were having a hard time dealing with Eric's absence, tucked the kids in, booked a ticket, and sent Eric an email, apologizing for being an idiot the night before. I didn't want to have another awkward phone conversation, not when we really needed to talk in person.

After that, I threw a bunch of stuff in my suitcase, and settled into another uneasy sleep.

I left for Paris around ten, after dropping Max off at school and making sure all was good with Pam watching them. They knew I was weird, and I felt awful about that, but I needed to sort things out with their dad, or things were going to get a whole lot weirder. These were the kind of rifts that created problems later, the kind of half sharing that had sent Bill and I on the road to ruin. Eric and I were better than that. We shared everything with each other, all the time, and we'd been so off kilter with not being together on a day-to-day basis. We could pretend it wasn't a problem all we wanted, that everything was fine, but deep down, these weren't the kinds of issues we had.

But we were having them. That was undeniable.

I got off the plane, and of course I was overdressed, and it was pouring out. And late. I'd completely lost track of time until we landed and they made the local time announcement. I changed my watch, and got in a cab, the scrap of paper I'd jotted down with Eric's address on it clutched in my hand.

I had awful thoughts on the plane about this being a terrible idea, him not wanting to see me, or worse, me finding something that I was completely unprepared for.

It didn't much matter though, I thought to myself as the cab dropped me off in the rain in front of a lovely building, I was here now.

The front door was unlocked, and I made my way upstairs, until I was in front of his apartment. I stared blankly at the door for a few minutes, my heart pounding, before I raised my fist to knock. I heard his footsteps a few minute later, and I gasped, slightly as he pulled the door open.

"What now?" he said, his eyebrows raised. "Oh." He examined me for a few seconds. "Pam said you'd talk to me later, but this wasn't what I envisioned."

He didn't have a peephole. He hadn't seen the TA when she'd come by that night. She'd caught him completely off guard. I don't know why I'd somehow thought in my mind that it was a calculated thing in any way, him letting her in. That he'd thought it over before opening the door.

That he'd be that stupid.

"I needed to see you," I said, hardly recognizing my own voice. I sounded so sad and broken.

He shook his head, remembering himself and grabbed my bag. "Get in here. You're soaking wet."

I followed him in, and he passed me a towel. It was a lovely apartment, just what I would have imagined, had I had the time to think about where he was staying. Parts were familiar from Skype, and I smiled to myself at the collage of Ceci's artwork on the wall. "Bones kissed me yesterday," I whispered, as he pulled my coat off.

"It was bound to happen eventually," he muttered. "The grad student had an abortion about six weeks after I arrived. That would have been quite the thing for me to tell you over Skype. Appius via Victor financed it. It was some well-known politician's baby, and they thought they could pin it on me. There's no real record of how far along things are; it's kind of a black and white thing. Pregnant, abortion. I didn't even notice. She was always in loose, sloppy clothing, and the huge breasts should have given it away. I wasn't paying attention."

I stood there, kind of shocked. "Oh."

"You didn't need to think about that, not after everything. She's got no money, and had no interest in a baby. The timing couldn't have been more perfect for Appius. I'm sure Victor mentioned the political connection and he just jumped on the idea of sending me here."

I sat down on his couch, and he handed me one of sweaters, and I pulled off my soaked one and tucked myself into it, pulling my knees up to my chest. It smelled like him, which was comforting. "So what now?"

"She's signed something saying it wasn't mine, and that we never had anything but professional contact in case Appius tries to come back with this somehow. I can't imagine he thought this would this would have done anything terrible professionally for me, since I'm sure this happens more than you'd think, but I can see how he imagined this turning the rest of my life into a bit of a tailspin."

"I wasn't paying attention either," I said, leaning into his shoulder as he wrapped an arm around my shoulders.

He nodded, kissing my forehead, which brought tears to my eyes. "You had lots of other stuff to be paying attention to. Is there anything else you'd like to tell me?" He raised an eyebrow, and gave me a smirk. Even in jest, it wasn't a question that felt good when it was directed at me.

"I'm staying for a week?" I smiled up at him. "I love your place?"

He looked at me, unimpressed. "Did you kiss him back?"

I shook my head. "No. I can honestly say I didn't."

Eric shrugged, wiping a tear from my cheek. "I don't want him in our house. You'll have to sort out the rest with him. But I don't want to talk about that right now."

I nodded. "I understand."

He nodded, a smile on his face, but not a boastful or arrogant one. Simply a smile. "I knew you would eventually."