A/N: Only four chapters left of this story! Thanks so much to everyone who is still reading. I've been really excited to post the Ricky scenes in this chapter.

Turning Tables

Mistakes Were Laid

Ricky was leaning against the wall when the last bell of the day rang. Seconds later students came surging out of the doors almost simultaneously, like levies busting. However, his attention was focused on the door he was standing three feet from. He waited like a crouching tiger and when a familiar head of brown hair walked out, he grabbed Ashley by the arm and pulled her down the hallway to a classroom that had just been evacuated. "We need to talk."

"I have nothing to say to you."

"I've been trying to pin you down all day!"

"What a coincidence: I've been ignoring you all day!" Ashley snarled back. "Can't you take a hint?"

"What happened on Friday-"

"Was a mistake." Ashley's voice was firm and short. She refused to meet his eyes as she spoke. "You've made plenty of them before so you should know."

"You're right," he agreed. "We're friends."

"Just friends," Ashley agreed. "I think friends-with-benefits is stupid. I'm stupid. I don't know what came over me that night. You've never felt that way about me, right?"

Ricky shook his head. "You're a beautiful girl, Ashley. But you know that already and you know I know that already. But you're fifteen and I'm seventeen."

"So you're saying you would have a romantic interest in me if I was sixteen?"

"No! I'm just saying that-"

"Look, I can handle it if you say you've never felt anything for me beyond friendship, but don't throw a two year age difference in there when it's irrelevant."

"We're just friends," he repeated.

"Good. Then we have nothing more to talk about."

Ricky grabbed Ashley by the arm again. "I want to know what prompted you to kiss me in the first place?"

She shut her eyes. "I don't know. I don't want to be part of that cliché that says girls and boys can't be friends. I really like being your friend. Maybe it's just that you were the first guy to ever really pay attention to me and treat me like I'm not invisible. I guess I just got caught up in the moment. I–" she seemed to choke on her words "–I'm sorry."

"Me too," Ricky replied, releasing her arm. "If I did anything to imply that we were anything other than friends, I'm sorry too. I deeply appreciate the relationship – friendship – that we have and I don't want to ruin that for anything."

"You mean anymore than we already have."

"Yeah."

"Then maybe it would be wise to just give me some time alone; away from you."

"Is that really what you want?"

"Yes."

Ricky bowed his head. "All right."

"I have to get to my bus." Ashley lingered for a minute longer and when Ricky didn't try to stop her again, she made a beeline out the door.

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"What's all this?" Adrian inquired as she stepped into Ben's bedroom. The cover was littered printouts and pamphlets and the desk was cluttered in books. She shifted to the desk and picked up one of the books, noting the label on the spine. "Did you hold up a library?"

"I've been doing some research," Ben said, puffing up like a chirpy little parakeet.

Adrian ran her hand across the surface of the books. "On…relationships and counseling? Am I suppose to take from this that you think we need relationship counseling?"

"No!" He grabbed a handful of papers from his bed and thrust them at his girlfriend. "They're two different things. I was looking up books on relationships and books on counseling."

"And?" she asked, looking down at an NYU pamphlet.

"And what do you think of me becoming a counselor like Mr. Molina?"

Adrian stared blankly at him. "Uh…is that something you want to do?"

"I don't know, maybe! That's why I was researching it!" He skipped around the room like a child on sugar. "What do you think?"

"I thought you said you had a solution to our problem?"

"Yeah!" Ben grinned. "Don't you see?" He opened up the pamphlet in her hands. "NYU has a counseling program. We could both go there together: you could work on becoming a lawyer and I could go get my Master's in counseling."

"Okay," she sighed, setting the pamphlet down on top of the books. "I appreciate you taking the initiative to look into this, but how does that help us after I graduate?"

Ben moved close to Adrian and took her hands in his. "I was thinking we could move in together."

"That would be a given. We couldn't just live in two separate places in New York."

"No," he shook his head. "Not then. I'm talking about now."

"Now? What?!"

"Yeah!" Ben cried eagerly. "We could move in together this summer. It would be like prep for living together in New York!"

Adrian scoffed. "First of all, there's absolutely no way that you could move into my condo. My mother would never allow it and besides, that would be way too awkward and cramped! It was bad enough when George was living with us. And secondly, no offense, but I am not moving in here with you. I know that your house has plenty of room – and hell, your father may even allow it, he lets me stay over enough – but I am simply not comfortable with that. Besides, how would living in your father's house help us at all?"

Ben fervently shook his head. "You're still not getting it! I'm not talking about moving in with your mother or my father, I'm talking about getting a place of our own, together!"

Adrian pulled her hands out from under Ben's. "We're still in high school."

"But like you keep saying: you're only in high school for another year."

"How could be possibly afford a place in high school if we can't afford a place when we're out of high school?"

Ben held up his finger and wagged it excitedly. He flipped open his laptop and held it up to Adrian: the picture on the screen was the front of a quaint looking condominium with Leo, a bushy brunette, and a five-year-old Ben standing in front of it. "That's me and my parents. Any guesses on where this was taken?"

"Why don't you just tell me?"

"This was my parents' first house together, before my dad had the mansion built. He never sold it after they moved, he just rented it out. He renovated it when I was five, which was when this photo was taken, and it had renters in it until two years ago, but after their daughter went off to college they moved to Florida, and it's been empty ever since."

"I thought I made myself clear about not wanting to take anything from your dad!"

"Just hear me out! What if, what if, we moved in over the summer and tried living together during your senior year? During that time I could see about increasing my hours at the hours at the butcher shop, maybe get a raise or something…and we could work together to save up for New York?"

The frustrated look on Adrian's face was beginning to lift. "And that would give us a whole year to get familiar with each other. Living with someone isn't a picnic," she said slowly. "And then I could do my first year of college through the online program like we talked about. Maybe I could even look into getting a job again…so long as it's not a Francis Lentz redux."

"And if we're living together, wouldn't that be much easier than toting Mercy between our houses? We would have more privacy and we could work on apartment hunting and daycare research together."

Adrian pressed her hands together, palms facing, and touched her index fingers to her lips. "You really think this will work?"

"It's the best thing we've thought of so far, isn't it?"

Adrian tossed her arms around Ben's neck. "You thought of it."

"But you pushed me to."

"I'm willing to work with this."

Ben kissed her nose. "Good, because I wasn't about to take any other answer."

Adrian stood on her tip toes to nip at his lips. "So does this mean we're not fighting anymore?"

"You tell me."

Adrian grabbed the flaps of his jacket and tugged it down his arms. "I believe we're officially in the 'makeup' stage."

Ben wriggled his arms out of his jacket and it fell to the floor behind his feet. "I love making up," he whispered, kissing her ear.

Adrian quickly jerked Ben towards the bed and pushed him backwards. Papers and pamphlets went fluttering as he landed with a bounce and she quickly jumped on the bed with him, straddling his chest and giving him a highly predatory stare. She seductively leaned over him, reaching for the drawer on the nightstand.

Ben leaned up and kissed the bare flesh that was exposed on Adrian's stomach as her shirt fell over his eyes. His lips found her belly button and he kissed that too.

Adrian tried not to shudder as she pulled a condom out of the box in the drawer and sat back up, her stomach no longer within the reach of Ben's mouth. She looked down at him and slowly lifted the condom to her mouth, slid the edge of the wrapper between her teeth, and seductively tore it open.

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"Hey, Heather," Grace chirped brightly when the redhead opened the door. "You're looking good!" She held out a Tupperware container filled with cookies. "They're Snickerdoodles, I hope you like them!"

Heather accepted the Snickerdoodles glumly. "Thanks, Grace." She nodded to Amy. "Hi, Amy." The usual spark in her attitude was nonexistent and she limped when she walked. "Did you drive over here?"

"I can't drive anyone under eighteen for a while since I only just got my license," the blonde explained.

"Lauren's brother dropped us off," Amy filled in.

"Oh, yeah."

The brunette noted the odd way Heather was walking. "Did you hurt your leg?"

"I'm just in a lot of pain from the tearing during the birth." Heather set the cookies on the counter. "Not that I'm not grateful for you guys coming by, but do you mind if I go lay down while you're here?"

"Of course not, whatever makes you comfortable!" Grace happily trailed Heather back to her bedroom and hugged herself a little as she watched the other girl hunch down and climb under the sheet on her mattress. She noted a Wal-Mart pharmacy bag by the mattress along with a mug of water.

"Have you heard from the Viceroys?" Amy asked timidly.

"No. I signed on the dotted line Sunday and that was that. It was a closed adoption. Besides, even if they wanted to call, I don't have a phone."

"Oh."

Grace rubbed her shoulder nervously. "Is now a bad time?"

Heather shook her head. "I just feel pretty crappy, but I appreciate the company. It's always a pleasure when you spread your sunshine, Grace. And I mean that in the least sarcastic way possible."

Grace tapped her lips in thought. "Well you know, I just had a thought." When Heather and Amy looked expectantly at her and smiled sheepishly and held up her index finger. "I'll be right back!" The blonde scurried back into the living room and peeled her cell phone out of her purse, dialing her mother.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Mom, it's Grace."

"Isn't it a little early for a call? I thought you and Amy were visiting Heather after school today?"

"We are, but she's not feeling so hot. So I was wondering if you could pick a few things up from the store for me and drop them over here? I would do it myself, but I really don't want to leave her."

"What kind of things?"

Grace's face brightened and she covered the mouthpiece conspiratorially.

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"Margaret said you're grounded." Nora was seated beside Ricky on a city bus.

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"I'm just wondering if that's the reason you opted to go to my NA meeting with me."

Ricky folded his arms. "It's not."

"You sure? It's a pretty convenient way to escape the house for a couple hours."

"Yeah, to go to a meeting where people share their stories about drug addiction. It's a barrel of laughs," he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

"So is that why Margaret suggested I come down here? As punishment?"

"No." Ricky tried to stretch his legs out but his knees hit the back of the seat in front of him. "It was my idea. Before I was grounded. I was thinking of going up there to see you; go to a meeting with you or something. Afterwards Mom decided that was too far to let me drive on restriction, so she suggested seeing if you wanted to come down here instead."

Nora nodded. "So what did you get busted for? Drugs? Alcohol? Cutting class?"

"Bad grades."

Nora snorted. "You make a lousy bad boy!"

"Well if that's how you rate the quality of your child, it's too bad we didn't see each other two years ago."

"You're my child now?"

Ricky shrank further into his seat. "You know what I mean."

Nora smirked. "Yeah, I do." She dropped her head back to stare at the ceiling of the bus. "For whatever it's worth – and whatever reason you're doing it – I'm glad we're finally going together. I've always wanted you to be a part of my recovery, Ricky."

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There was a quick rapping on Ben's door and then it drifted open revealing Leo. "Hey, Ben, I just wanted to let you know-" The middle aged man stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the bare back of his granddaughter's mother draped over his son on the latter's bed.

Ben felt Adrian freeze above him and inhale sharply, holding her breath. He, too, was holding his breath as he wiggled his head around Adrian's shoulders to look at his father. He had no idea what to say in that moment. What could he say?

Leo stood shell shocked in the doorway. All of the sudden he pushed his hand up, revealing a baby monitor. "I just came up here to let you know that I found the baby monitor down on the kitchen table when I got home. I thought you might be wondering where it was." He promptly set the monitor down on the dresser, realizing only afterwards that it was sitting by a ripped condom wrapper, and quickly left the room, shutting the door behind him.

"Oh my god!" Adrian hissed. She rolled off of Ben. "I cannot believe this! I have never been more humiliated in my life!"

"Adrian-"

"No! No, I am going to get dressed and hopefully sneak out without having to look your father in the eyes again!" Adrian hunched over the side of the bed, hurrying to grab her clothes that were scattered around on the floor. "God, Ben, I thought you said he wasn't going to be home until late tonight!"

"He wasn't! He was supposed to be at a catering job with Bunny in Cathedral City!"

"Well apparently it fell through!" Adrian clasped on her bra, pulled on her jeans, and quickly slid into her shirt. "Look, I'm just going to leave Mercy here with you tonight, okay? I don't want to risk waking her up and running into your dad."

Ben nodded from the bed. "Call me?"

"We'll see." Adrian snatched up her purse and quickly surveyed the room to make sure she wasn't leaving anything behind and then carefully opened the door and peered out the hallway looking left to right and back again like she was a spy in a James Bond film. When it was clear she took one glance back at Ben and then slipped out into the hallway, shutting the door as quietly as possible behind her.

Ben grabbed the pillow from the other side of his bed and smacked himself in the face with it a few times. He moaned. "If I'd only locked my door!"

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"I hope I remembered everything you asked for," Kathleen said. She stood outside Heather's apartment with a large brown paper bag in one arm and an at home foot spa box tucked under the other.

Grace stepped into the hallway and lightly shut the door. She took the bag from her mother, bent down to the floor, and set it down so she could go through everything: a jar of a pedicure scrub, a nail file, several quick dry nail polishes, and a battery operated hand massager. "It's perfect! Thanks, Mom!"

"No problem. You girls have fun, okay? Let me know when you need me to pick you up."

"I will!" Grace waved to her mother before skipping back into the apartment. "I have a surprise!" she chirped, poking her head back into Heather's room. "Who's up for a Grace Bowman pedicure?!" Once she was done dumping out the contents of the bed beside Heather's mattress she picked up the pedicure product. "I've been eyeing this in the store for months just waiting for a good opportunity to try it. I'd say now is as good a time as any."

"What do you think of this one?" Amy asked, climbing on to the mattress beside Heather. "I think teal looks really good with your hair and eyes." She held it up beside Heather's face.

"You don't have to touch my stinky old swollen feet," Heather laughed self consciously. "But I do like that color."

"This is what girlfriends do," Grace protested. "We help each other feel better and you deserve some spoiling right now. I just need to go fill this up with some warm water," she said, indicating the foot spa. "I regret to say, it's nothing too fancy. It says it massages, but really it just has a switch that vibrates. It probably wasn't worth near as much as I paid for it, but it should do the trick. I've only used it once, but I cleaned it out, so don't worry about it being unsanitary."

"It's a plastic vibrating tub," Heather laughed. "It's no worse than moving into a dingy apartment where who knows how many people have lived and then using the bathtub, right?"

"Hopefully it's better than that!" Grace shook the foot spa out of its box and ran it down to the bathroom to fill it up in the sink. She waited a while and eventually grew impatient for the water to heat up. After it did she gave the foot spa a quick rinse and then turned the water off at the fill line. It was much heavier than she remember, like carrying three of her school backpacks in her arms, so she had to walk literally one foot in front of the other to keep from dropping or spilling. As she approached the door she heard Amy talking. She wasn't trying to listen, but with the pace she was walking at, she couldn't help but overhear.

"…found these movie tickets. Were you planning to go to the movies with Ashley on Saturday? Before you went into labor I mean?"

"I'd been having horrible Braxton Hicks all week, I had no intention of going anywhere this weekend. But, I do recall Ricky saying something about the movies. Maybe he and Ashley planned to go before his mom busted him? Yeah, the more I think about it, the more that sounds right, because it was rated R, right?"

"That's what it says on the stub."

"Yeah, 'cause he was complaining last week about how he couldn't buy tickets because he wasn't eighteen. I think he asked someone else to buy some tickets for him. I don't remember what her name was. Dawn? Shawn? Something like that."

"But I thought Ricky was grounded?"

"I guess that's why you found 'em then, huh?"

Grace finally reached the doorway. "So far so good. Now if I can just get this over to the bed without spilling anything…" A few steps later she set the foot spa down at the foot of the mattress.

Amy busily tucked something away into her purse and dropped it back down next to Grace's. A moment later what sounded like a church hymn began to emanate from that general direction. "Uh, that's not me."

"That's actually mine," Grace said sheepishly. Her hands were wet as she was fiddling with Heather's feet and the foot spa. "Do you think you could answer that for me?"

Amy opened up Grace's purse and quickly found her cell phone. She watched as Grace attempted to dry off her hands on her skirt. "Grace Bowman's phone, hello?"

Grace flicked her hands back and forth until they were mostly dry and then held her hand out to accept the phone. "Who is it?" she whispered, covering the mouth piece.

Amy shook her head. "It sounds like it might be a wrong number. Or it got disconnected. Nobody was there."

Grace quickly looked down at the caller I.D. and realized it was blocked. She abruptly hung up.

"Something wrong?" Heather asked, her curiosity piqued by Grace's hanging up the phone without even saying hello.

"I don't like to answer blocked calls who can't even say hello."

"Maybe it's a prank caller?" Amy suggested. "Ashley and I used to dial random numbers to prank call when we were little. There was this one old lady we called mercilessly until our parents got the phone bill and realized we'd been calling her long distance. I don't think I've ever seen my dad so mad!"

"I'm sure that's all it was," Grace lied, feeling guilty even if it was only a white lie. She turned off her phone and chucked it back over to the spot where hers and Amy's purses were sitting. "Anyway," she said, returning to her typically sunny demeanor, "where were we?"

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The Narcotics Anonymous meeting took place in Grace's church. Ricky wasn't entirely sure what he'd been expecting, but knowing it was in a church made him uncomfortable. The fact that it was Grace's church made it even more so. Even though he didn't recognize any of the members at the meeting from his personal, everyday life, the setting felt wrong to him: the last and only time he'd ever been there was for Marshall Bowman's funeral. Not to mention, the cavernous room and vaulted ceilings made him feel tiny and exposed, especially in the dark.

This particular meeting was something called the Candlelight Meeting, where the lights were left off and the room was lit only by candle flame. In this instance bowls of white floating tea lights were interspersed around the room – on the pews, on the floor, on the tables, lining the aisles – like white rose petals. As far as Ricky was concerned, they looked like they could be setting up for a wedding. As Nora had explained to him, the Candlelight Meetings were always held at night and done to reinforce the anonymity of the members: principals before personalities.

"Thank you, Jane!" the group responded – not simultaneously and some even uttering "thanks" or "gracias" instead – when one woman had finished her personal share.

Nora immediately straightened up against the step she and Ricky were sitting on below the pulpit. "Hello, I'm Nora. I'm an alcoholic addict."

"Hello, Nora," several voices echoed back.

"As you can probably tell, I'm not a regular face here. This isn't my home group, but I chose to come here tonight because this is where my son lives and he agreed to come with me." Nora looked to the group. "I've made a lot of fucking mistakes in my life and as a result, I lost Ricky because of them. In fact, you could say I got him in the first place because of one. But I didn't protect him like a mother should have. When things got bad, I sought comfort in drugs and alcohol. That's something I'm not proud of. In fact, it's still something I hate myself for daily. When I look back on all those years I spent drinking myself until I blacked or getting high enough to distract myself from what was going on in my son's bedroom every night, it makes me sick. Literally sick. There have been nights I couldn't even keep a Snickers bar down..."

Ricky looked down at his lap. Even in the poor light, if he kept his head up, he could see people's eyes on him. Worse, he could feel them. All he wanted was to fade into the flickering shadows.

"…but you – having you – was probably the one thing I did right."

The conviction saturating her words – the way her voice was cracking as she spoke them – imbued Ricky with the courage to look up. First at the group, then at Nora. He could see the real tears in her eyes, glinting off her cheeks. The flames reflected in the hot, sound raindrops as they punctuated her face and fell off the ledge of her chin, hitting her jeans and leaving dark round blots that only he was close enough to notice.

"The day I heard you got your father sent to prison was the day I decided that I would become clean, no matter how long it was going to take. It wasn't easy – and I relapsed so many times – but I knew that if you could succeed, then so could I. You gave me hope and inspiration. So thank you. And I love you, Ricky. I just want you and everyone to know that. Thank you. That's all I have."

"Thank you, Nora," came the reverberating reply. But this time it was entwined with a few sobs, sniffles, and cracking voices.

Ricky felt his heart falling and shattering like all those teardrops.

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"Did you girls have fun?" Kathleen asked, looking at her daughter and Amy from the rearview mirror.

"I think we helped Heather loosen up a bit," Grace said. "She was looking pretty bad when we got there, but she was talking and laughing by the time we left."

Amy nodded quietly. She sat on the right side of the car, while Grace sat behind her mother. She had her hands in her lap and was alternating between looking down at them and looking at the window.

"That's good. Recovering from childbirth is no picnic, especially after going through everything Heather has had to go through this year. I'm proud of you two for recognizing that and making time to go cheer her up today." Kathleen stole another look into the rearview mirror and cleared her throat. "So I know we were just planning on meeting back at my house so your dad could take you home, but George was thinking it might be nice to go out to dinner tonight. What do you the two of you think?" she asked cautiously.

Grace and Amy looked at each other and simultaneously asked, "Where?"

"Geoff's!" Kathleen replied rather quickly. "I know Grace likes Geoff's, how about you, Amy?"

"Is my dad bringing Ashley?"

"He picked her up at school today."

Amy raised an eyebrow. "She said she was taking the bus."

"It was a spur of the moment idea."

Amy and Grace looked at one another again and shared an expression of suspicious disbelief.

"George is bringing Ashley and Tom," Kathleen added.

Grace clamped her mouth shut. She realized quickly – and suspected Amy had also – that it wasn't just dinner, but a faux family dinner that her mother and George were trying to coax them into. She didn't appreciate being tricked into that and, judging by the look on the brunette's face, neither did Amy. Even though she had begun to warm up to George somewhat since he'd helped her look for cars, she still wasn't ready to totally accept him as a replacement figure for her father.

"I don't know," Amy finally spoke up. "I – I, uh, h-have a lot of, um…h-h-homework."

Kathleen frowned into the rearview mirror disappointedly. "Well, okay," she sighed. "We were hoping to just meet at the restaurant, but of course your studies are more important." She came upon a yellow light and slowed to a stop. "Grace," she instructed, "can you call George and let him know we'll be meeting him at the house instead of the restaurant?" She produced her cell phone from her purse and passed it back to her daughter just before the light turned green again.

Grace crinkled her face as she looked up George's number in her mother's address book and hit the dial button. The phone rang twice before she heard George's voice on the other end.

"Heeey, Kitty Kat!"

"Kitty Kat?" Grace demanded, glaring towards the front of the car.

Kathleen's head bolted up, looking at Grace in the rearview mirror.

"Grace?" George's voice peeped back awkwardly.

The blonde teenager could see her mother's cherry colored reflection in the rearview mirror. "My mom asked me to call you," she explained, keeping her voice as tight as possible. "Amy says she has homework and can't go out to dinner tonight, so we're just going to come straight home."

"Put Amy on the phone."

"But-"

"Put her on the phone."

Grace sighed dramatically and held the phone out to her friend. "He wants to talk to you."

Amy reluctantly took the phone and turned away to stare out the window. After a few minutes she said, "B-but I have h-homework!" The noise secreting from the phone was getting louder. "No! I'm not and you can't make me!" She pulled the phone away from her ear.

"…and you're going to that restaurant!"

Amy quickly thumbed the button to end the call and shoved the phone back to Grace. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and quickly turned to the window to avoid looking at either of the Bowmans.

Grace looked at her mother through the rearview mirror, having no idea what to do.

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"Oh – ho man!" Henry's voice chuckled through the speaker on Ben's cell phone. "I can't believe your dad walked in on you!"

"I don't know how I'm supposed to talk to him about moving in with Adrian now," Ben groaned, pacing back and forth across his room as he spoke.

"And he really just set the baby monitor down and walked right back out?"

"Which makes it even worse. I just know he's up in his room stewing about this. But what can you say, right? It wouldn't be like him to try and embarrass Adrian, so what else could he do?"

"It's all the more reason for you to move out: no more chance of having either one of your parents walking in on you guys again."

"That would definitely be a plus."

"So what are you gonna do?"

Ben flopped down into his chair and spun around a few times. "I have no idea. Maybe I should give him a week to cool off and try to forget about this before bringing anything up?"

"He's not going to get that image out of his head in a week."

"You're right," Ben deadpanned. "Grace still tells Adrian how awful walking in on her mom and George was."

"What do you think is worse: a kid walking in on their parent or a parent walking in on their kid?"

Ben stared up at the ceiling. "Given that my dad was fully aware that Adrian and I have been dating, I think this round goes to Grace. But it doesn't mean this won't be just as much of a pain in the ass to deal with."

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Adrian stood in her bathroom wearing her white robe. Her hair hung loosely down her shoulders and she was staring at her reflection as she scrubbed her toothbrush back and forth across her molars, canines, and incisors. After a thorough brushing she spat into the sink, rinsed off her brush, dropped it into her tooth brush holder, and quickly poured a mouthful of green mouthwash into her mouth. The mint flavor was almost too hot to stand, so she began to look around the bathroom for something else to focus on while she swished the solution around in her mouth for the full minute that the directions advised.

Her dark eyes landed on the toothbrush holder and the vigor of her swishing decreased. She tried to recall what Ben's toothbrush had looked like back in his bathroom, but she'd never given that much thought before. But now she was trying to imagine what it would look like, especially what it would look like seated in the other hole in her own toothbrush holder, right beside her toothbrush.

Adrian spit the foamy green liquid into the sink and ran the water a few times, starting and stopping like a painfully slow stop-and-go traffic until all the foam had made its way down the drain. When she was through she grabbed her toothbrush from the holder again and held it lengthwise, staring at the tongue scrubber on the back of it. She lifted her eyes to stare at her reflection again.

Her mind flashed back to that fateful night in October, when she'd stood in the same bathroom, before the same mirror, instead holding a little white stick between her fingers. Adrian turned her toothbrush over and studied the pink and white bristles. She couldn't help but think of the pink plus. It felt so foreign to her now, over two years later, as a mother and a girlfriend. It was hard to fathom how at that point in time she thought her life was over and she had been so dead set on an abortion to fix her mistake. Now, she couldn't imagine life without Mercy, and as she set the toothbrush back into its holder, she was also trying to imagine her future with something else she never thought of before: Ben.

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Grace trotted halfway down the stairs and stopped when she heard heated words emanating from the kitchen where she was on her way to steal a late night snack, having not gone to Geoff's after all.

"…so I dropped her off at home because I didn't think trying to push her into having dinner with everyone was a wise idea, George!"

"I am tired of my girls running my life!" George's voice responded angrily. "I'm their father. It's my job to tell them how it is, not the other way around! I've been giving them a lot of leeway lately because I know it's hard for any kid to adapt to their parents dating someone else, but at some point, something's gotta give!"

"I understand that and I agree with you completely, but tonight was not that night. By forcing Amy to go, it only would've caused more problems than solutions. You didn't see the look on her face, George."

"I just don't understand." George's voice was finally calming down. "Grace and Tom have been far more receptive of me lately than Amy and Ashley are of you. I don't get it! You haven't even done anything to them."

"I don't think it's me that's the problem," Kathleen's voice responded gently. "There are a lot of bad feelings between our families. You and I didn't help matters by bringing up Amy and Grace the way we did with our own little rivalry. Then look at how things between you and Anne ended up: you cheated on her, for a long time. Don't you remember the feelings you had towards me after you caught me cheating on you? Just imagine how your daughters feel; imagine how Anne feels…what they must talk about with each other. It's not as simple as getting everybody together for dinner. It's going to take time. Maybe a lot more time than you want it to."

"Are you willing to wait it out?"

"George, I haven't been this happy since Marshall was alive. The question is: are you willing to wait? I know how impatient you've always been."

"Impatient? Says the woman who wanted to get married just so she could attack my sexy body!"

"Well at least I wanted to get married first."

"The first time!"

"Shush! That was a one time deal and you know it! I got caught up in the moment, okay?"

"And the moment was pretty good too…until Grace walked in."

"Yeah, don't remind me."

Grace spun around and hurried herself back up the stairs. There was too much information to take in. She returned to her room and picked up her cell phone, realizing she had a missed call from Adrian. "Just the person I wanted to talk to," she said, hitting the button to return the call. As the phone began to ring she heard a telltale beep and looked down at the screen to see that she had a simultaneous incoming call from a blocked number. With a shaky finger she hit the Ignore option.

TSLOTAT TSLOTAT TSLOTAT TSLOTAT

"So that seemed like a pretty good group, huh?"

Ricky stood outside his front door with Nora. "I guess. I don't really have anything to compare it to though."

Nora rolled back and forth on the balls of her feet. "Maybe sometime when you're not on lockdown you could come up and go to a meeting with me at my home group?"

"Maybe," Ricky nodded. His hand was on the door handle, but he hadn't brought himself to open the door yet. "I, uh, appreciated what you said tonight."

Nora pressed her lips together and nodded. "And I appreciated you coming…but you already know that."

Ricky weaved his fingers through his hair. "So, um, I guess I'll see you later then?"

"Guess so."

"Be careful taking the bus back home."

"I will."

Ricky twisted the knob on the door and it clicked open. He stepped inside. "See you."

"See ya, kid."

He closed the door and leaned against it in the darkness of the house. He knew his parents had already gone to bed by this time, although they probably weren't asleep yet. He could just go straight down to his bedroom and hit the mattress, no questions asked. But he had an itch: an emotional itch that severely needed scratching. At the last minute he threw the door back open and saw Nora walking down the sidewalk. "Mom!"

Nora stopped and looked in Ricky's direction. Her mouth drew open into an oval shape.

Ricky darted out the door, across the lawn, and embraced Nora. So many emotions had been confusing his senses every since Nora's speech at the NA meeting. At this point he still wasn't sure if what he was doing was logically the right choice or not, but as he felt Nora's bony arms stretch around his back, it felt pretty damn right.