Don'tgetmadatme. Trust!

Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha.

Life Goes On

Part 34

Kagome knew something was up the moment Inuyasha started to twiddle his thumbs. What grown man on earth actually twiddled his thumbs?

"Okay, spill it," she ordered, setting her fork down beside her plate so that she could give her troublesome husband her full attention. Under her intense blue-eyed gaze, he fidgeted even more.

Finally, he decided to Man Up and just told her. "I have to go on a business trip."

Confused, Kagome's look of intense scrutiny dropped into one of total bewilderment. "So…" she prompted, waving one hand to indicate that he should continue. She wasn't exactly seeing a problem—since they'd first started dating years ago, he'd been on several business trips. None of those had made him act this squirrely.

"I'll be gone two months."

Ah.

Ah.

"Ah," Kagome said aloud, her voice very soft. "I see." With careful poise, she picked up her fork and forced herself to continue eating as calmly as she could, even though her appetite has disappeared somewhere. "Where are you going?"

"Canada."

There was a moment of awkward silence as they continued eating, the utensils clinging against their plates; the silence between them felt heavy. It made Kagome feel uncomfortable, like she lived in one of those awful movies where the couples were so fake and didn't really love one another.

"Sesshoumaru told me this morning," Inuyasha said, his voice a little insistent as if he feared she thought he had been trying to hide it from her.

Kagome smiled at him in a reassuring way, understanding what his tone was getting at. "I've always thought Canada sounded really nice."

"Do you want to come?"

Inuyasha regretted it the moment the words were out of his mouth. Sure, it was nice to offer, but they both knew that Kagome couldn't just take off from her job for two months. Plus, what would she do in Canada while he was working? He didn't even know what he would be doing in Canada. What was it his company did again? Really, he was beginning to think everyone just wore suits and conducted meetings about nothing. At one point, he wondered if they were architects, but then he thought maybe all the scale models meant they were a scale model company, and then he thought maybe they made toys! (How cool would that be?) One day, he'd have to actually pay attention instead of listening to his headphones that he hid under his long hair.

"No thank you," Kagome said in an overly polite kind of way. "I can use that time to get us moved into the new house."

Oh, shoot. Was that next month? Whoops.

Her husband chuckled nervously. "At least you'll have Sango and Miroku to help you. Speaking of, keep an eye on Miroku. He has sticky fingers."

"I've noticed," Kagome muttered with a grimace, remembering how the last time she'd visited Sango she'd a crock pot she could have sworn was a wedding gift from her mother. Miroku was such a klepto.

"Are you mad?"

"…Yes."

Inuyasha twiddled his thumbs again. "You want to go play paintball, so you can shoot me in the face? ...With pink paint?"

"…Yes."

"Oh, Kagome," Sango said in a fluttery, sad type of voice that did not sound like her at all. "I'm so sorry. Two months!"

With an only slightly strained grin, Kagome waved away her best friend's worries. "Exactly, it's only two months. Inuyasha and I have been together for a long time; we can survive two months apart!"

Sango folded her arms across her chest, jutted one hip out, and eyed Kagome very seriously. "Do you really believe that?"

"Yes," Kagome replied immediately without any hesitation at all. "In fact, it might do us some good. We've been together for years; this way, we can't get stuck in a rut, right?"

"I guess so," the brunette murmured thoughtfully.

"We're still in our mid-twenties; it would be super weird if we started acting like an old married couple already," the blue-eyed woman pointed out logically. The two women were walking aimlessly around the shopping district downtown. So far, they'd been very good and hadn't bought a single thing. "With Inuyasha in Canada, I can also get a head start on decorating our new house without him being…"

"Him," Sango concluded her sentence with a wry smile. "I can only imagine how annoying it would be to try to move in with Inuyasha being Inuyasha. He'd probably want to make it just like his old bachelor pad, complete with lava lamps."

Kagome rolled her eyes good-naturedly. "Exactly. And this way, I can paint half the house pink, and he can't even complain about it."

"I thought your favorite color was green," Sango muttered, pausing to window-shop at a shoe store. Everything on display was wildly out of her price range, which just made her want it more.

"Hot pink walls will do us both some good," Kagome countered wickedly. What she really meant was that she could put up with it while it was driving her husband crazy. After a few months, she'd give in and let him repaint the walls. "Also, I was thinking about it this way: We can start texting each other again. I kind of miss it; we had a good thing going, you know?"

"You mean like how you texted back in high school? Before you guys even knew who the other was? I remember that… Inuyasha was almost witty back then."

With a giggle, Kagome bumped her shoulder into her best friend playfully. "Exactly. I think it's time we got back to our roots. Plus, you know what they say… Absence makes the heart grow fonder."

A beat passed, and then Sango blurted out, "Maybe we should send Miroku with him then!"