After enjoying another delicious dinner at the restaurant, we had already visited the previous evening, Jane asked me for a walk. "There's a gay party at the beach club tonight." She wiggled her eyebrows and grinned.
We arrived at the club after a 15 minutes' walk along the shoreline and took a seat at the bar. After studying the cocktail card, we both went for a sex on the beach and glanced around while waiting for the bartender to finish our cocktails. I was surprised by the amount of people dancing around and shaking to the music.
The mood was light and carried us away easily. It was another joyful evening which made us forget our problems at home. If it was for me life could go on like this forever. But I knew that we had to talk about our problem – namely Angela - sometimes.
One of the things bothering me was the living arrangement. I had literally screamed at Angela to move out of the guest house if she couldn't accept me and Jane being together. I wondered if she was already looking for a flat or if she had taken me serious at all.
Had she even taken some time out from work or was she still spreading her poison against us? I didn't like the idea of her still being around the precinct. Cavanaugh had made us leave and I hoped for everybody's sake that he had done the same for Angela.
All these thoughts were running through my mind during my yoga session the next morning. Jane had gone for a 5k run and the house was silent except for the sounds of the wave coming from the ocean. Later we would go and have breakfast before spending a relaxing day at the beach.
I sighed and gave up trying to relax by doing yoga. Instead I went to shower and packed some stuff for our trip to the beach. I was just folding one of the towels when I noticed Janes phone buzzing its way along the nightstand and saw that Frankie was calling. After a short hesitation I decided that Jane wouldn't probably mind if I picked up. Maybe I would get some answers to the questions which had been bothering me I thought.
"Hey, Frankie. This is Maura." I greeted him, sitting down to the bed. "Jane is out running." I explained feeling suddenly like an intruder.
"Hey Maur. How are you?" he asked, appearing as if he didn't mind nor that he was surprised that I had picked up his sisters phone. We chatted away for a while, me mainly telling him about our holiday and he laughed when I told him about our excursion with the Quads. "Man, I wish I were with you." He said joyfully.
I offered him to spend the coming weekend with us. There were enough bedrooms in the house after all. And I was sure that Jane would like it. Excitement was sifting through his words when he promised to check his shift table. "You can also bring Tommy and TJ." I added with a smile.
We were twenty minutes into our chat when I finally dared to ask about Angela. A deep sigh made me fear the worst. Frankie told me that she had come to work Monday, only to be sent home by Cavanaugh. Obviously, she had then decided to visit some relatives in New York. "I check on her every day, just to make sure that she doesn't make any nonsense." He stated. "She is still pissed about the family dinner thing. But she sends me short texts. So, I know she's okay." I could hear that he was still mad at her, but also worried at the same time.
So was Jane. Even if she didn't say so I could read it in her face sometimes. The situation was frustrating and straining to say the least. And the fact that Angela did act so irrationally made it hard to take the right steps.
"You know, its okay if you want her out of the guesthouse. Everybody understands." He said as I told him about my personal worries. It hit me that I hadn't taken the possibility of a permanent crack in the relationship between her and us into serious consideration until now and frowned.
To me it felt like she was acting like a spoiled brat who was stomping with her feet and pouting for not getting the desired sweets. All in all, it was ridiculous but also scary. Her actions mirrored the ones of a child, but they still had the consequences of an adult's doings.
This almost made my stomach turn. "Hey, its going to be okay." Frankie said, sensing my discomfort. "It has to be one way or the other you know?" he said and I silently nodded into the phone until I realized how he couldn't see my reaction and expressed it verbally.
"How's Jane holding up with the situation?" he asked, directing the conversation towards his sister. It was a good question I thought. Despite being very open about her feelings towards me since we had started dating officially, I wasn't entirely sure if she always told me everything.
"I think she's doing fine. But it nags at her." I thought about little hints like when she came up with the question about if it would have been differently if Angela had found out another way. These things appeared in our conversations at least twice almost daily. Just one or two sentences which let me know that despite having all this fun she couldn't forget about it which was only naturally.
"You know what makes me the angriest?" he suddenly asked. "That she outed you everywhere and keeps doing it. It makes me angry, because its your story to tell." This wasn't the first time I thought about how sweet the Rizzoli siblings were, not knowing how Angela's upbringing played into this.
Jane walked into the room with a sweaty face just a few minutes later. "Its Frankie." I whispered and wanted to hand her the phone. "Just put him on loudspeakers." She waved while dropping onto the bed. "Hey Frankie." She greeted her little brother. All the while I gauged her reaction to the fact that I had picked up her phone. But she didn't seem to mind.
"Hey big sister." He said, his grin audible in his voice. "Heard you are having a lot of fun out there."
"Yeah. I'm surprised Maur hasn't dropped me out on the street yet for my leisure time planning or just being myself." She smirked and came closer to me to make up for her joke by wrapping her arms around me. "Oh man, she's too much in love with you. But if you should ever do that Maur, there are more Rizzoli's." He chuckled. "But lord knows, Tommy and I tried, and we stood no chance against you and we all know why." Frankie said and chuckled.
We made ourselves comfortable in each others arms while continuing the chat for some more minutes before hanging up.
"The run was super great." Jane replied when I asked her about the 5k while we were getting ready for breakfast. In order to be quicker, we had decided against a shared shower. But her passing naked in front of me, searching in a pile of clothes for some shorts and shirts made it hard for me to focus on my own getting dressed.
Especially when I recalled her dancing last night. How she had swung her arms over her head while moving her hips. Oh god, I had to stop going down this track I thought as I grabbed my summer dress.
At the beach we settled into a nice spot close to some rocks which cast a bit of a shadow onto our shared blanket. Jane took out a book while I tried to read the latest medical journal. I emphasize try because my mind kept wandering back to the text of I'd love you to want me. The first slow dance we had shared weeks ago. Back then I had been too mesmerized by the circumstances to listen to the text. Therefore, I hadn't noticed how well it matched our lives.
But I had listened to it after Jane had asked me too last night. She had asked the DJ to play it for us and I had voluntarily accepted her request to dance with her.
"You know what bothers me most?" Janes voice interrupted my memories from the previous night. I glanced at her to see how she rolled to her side on the blanket and took in her favorite position. "What?" I cautiously asked.
"First, we lost dad to the bimbo. Im not ready to lose ma too." Her fingers were drawing circles, following the patterns of the blanket.
"Oh Jane." I sighed, reaching over to caress her cheek. It had never occurred to me that she could think of her father in this relation. But it made perfect sense now that she had mentioned it. "This really sucks, you know." She continued with a smirk. "I know." I said gently and watch her turn around to her back again. Her pulling her baseball cap into her face was a sign that she wanted me to leave her alone. And so I did.
At least for a while. "Have you ever thought about writing her a letter to tell her how you feel?" I asked as we walked down the beach while the sun set. It had cooled down remarkably and I was glad that I had taken Jane up on her offer to wear one of her hoodies.
She paused to face me and let her hands run alongside of my arms. "No. Do you think it would help?" she asked. "I don't know. But one can try."
"It would at least help you sort through your own feelings." I added with after a small kiss. "How did I get so lucky to be with the smartest woman of the world." She sighed, kissing me again. "I am the lucky one to be with such a smart and loving woman."
We smiled at each other and continued our walk along the beach, this time towards the house.