A/N: We are firmly in the Kama Sutra portion of Boston Kama Sutra. LOL. I am posting this chapter a bit early because I am on vacation and have the time. Thank you all for reading and reviewing; I appreciate it!

Jane recognized her error as soon as Maura had opened the door. She had thought that perhaps things between them were starting to improve when Maura had asked her to return the toolbox she had borrowed many weeks before: it was a boring reason on its face, but the fact that Maura had asked her to come by at all had signaled progress to Jane. She had shown up early, requested an early time, and barely had enough hands for the fancy toolbox, the donuts, and the flowers she'd brought.

But, Maura was clearly uninterested in all these things. Even the fancy toolbox. To the untrained, un-Jane eye, she looked like she had recently woken up and had decided to lounge on a Saturday morning, in a black silk robe and maybe something underneath. But Jane noticed the way her hair fell in a stylized mess. She saw the barely-there but still-applied eye makeup and the artful way Maura had tied the sash of her robe to accentuate the open expanse of skin just above her breasts. And suddenly Jane felt a little foolish for what she had assumed would be a chance to talk and maybe have some breakfast together. "I admit I was a little surprised when you asked to come over at eight," Maura said, taking the bouquet from Jane's hand anyway, smelling it with a soft, teasing smile.

"My uh, my brothers are comin' over for lunch today," Jane told her. "I wanted to, well I wanted to make sure we had enough time to talk. But I guess that talking wasn't really what you had in mind."

"Not really, no," chuckled Maura. "The toolbox was a ruse." She winked.

"I see that now," Jane admitted. Her insides jolted when Maura tugged her in by her hoodie's sleeve. "I brought you donuts and everything. Because I know you like them."

"I like flowers, too," Maura said, shrugging. "But donuts and flowers don't take the place of an apology."

"Neither does what we're about to do," Jane responded pointedly. "But we're gonna do it anyway."

"You can say no." Maura paused, folded her arms, gave Jane an out.

"Why the hell would I wanna do that?" Jane griped as she sidled up to Maura and rubbed the material of her robe at her hips. "Do you remember a couple days ago? I almost spontaneously combusted."

"That's not a real thing," Maura laughed and blushed at the compliment. "But I agree with the sentiment."

"Hence why I'm here," Jane finished.

"Yes. I want you to do the same thing you did then," said Maura. She couldn't help but run her open palms over the baggy sleeves on Jane's arms. "But I don't really want to look at you while you do it."

Jane only raised an eyebrow higher than Maura thought anatomically possible.

"Do you know what I'm asking you?" Maura pressed. She searched Jane's eyes for understanding.

"Face down, ass up. Got it," Jane said firmly with a nod.

Maura wondered how such a crass and to-the-point phrase captured everything that she wanted, but when Jane said it, she nearly groaned. "You're surprising me each time we do this," she confessed. Jane moved a gentle hand to her back and rubbed her thumb in small swipes between Maura's shoulder blades.

"Because I'm not totally lost when it comes to sex?" Jane laughed. "I get why you might think that. But sex and love are different."

"Because you keep teaching me things," Maura closed her eyelids and allowed herself the indulgence of Jane's touch.

"Should be the opposite, shouldn't it?" Jane asked. When Maura opened her eyes as if to agree, she continued. "The next person you sleep with is gonna wonder where you got all the blue-collar dirty talk from, you know."

Maura gulped because Jane's statement stomped on her heart. It was easy, it was flirtatious, it was kind in the way it didn't assume anything. And Maura would wither away if Jane found out what she had just found out about herself: that she didn't want there to be a next person. She told herself it was possession, that if she had a next one up, then so would Jane, and she wanted Jane to want her like this forever. But then she realized that that was just as damning a feeling. She needed to banish whatever was bubbling up in her by wiping out her brain, even just for a couple of hours. "We're wasting time down here," she said grumpily, and then she turned on her heels toward the stairs.

Jane remembered what it was Maura had just asked her to do and then bolted up the steps after her, two at a time. She nearly barreled over Maura when Maura stopped in the doorway to push into the bedroom.

"You're going to have to work on that impatience," Maura said, voice layered with lust, when she felt Jane press into her back.

"Then you're gonna have to work on bein' less sexy," Jane whined, pushing at the door with her hand above Maura's head. They spilled into the room, and the bedclothes were still pulled back from when Maura had awoken.

Maura turned around and grabbed Jane's jaw in her right hand. "I want you to sound like North Boston when you're inside me," she demanded.

Jane flushed deep red. "I can do that, but I don't think I'm gonna be doin' much talkin'," she said in response.

"Well, whenever you do, just make it you. I want to hear you," Maura said, for the first time inviting Jane into her bed and not Detective Rizzoli, and Jane wanted to cry. She kissed Maura instead, one arm around her shoulders and the other between their bodies to undo the loose knot of her robe. Jane's suspicions from the front door were confirmed when that hand floated into the now open space of the garment, roaming Maura's clothesless skin any place it could reach. Maura placed her own hand over it and guided it between her legs, waiting for Jane's response. She wasn't disappointed when Jane's pupils blew open. "You, uh, you ready for me?"

"What do you think?" Maura asked coyly. "What do you feel?"

"I feel like we should not let that go to waste," Jane said shakily as she nodded to where their hands still played.

Maura stifled a laugh at her best friend's forthright humor. It almost felt like home again. "Well, you know what to do," she said as she dropped her robe, walking slowly to the bed to let Jane drink all of her in.

Jane pulled hastily at the collar of her hoodie and yanked it over her head. She kicked off her shoes next, danced around until her joggers were off and all she wore were her undergarments and socks. Once she divested herself even of that, she walked over to the side where Maura had laid down. "I know I got marchin' orders," said Jane, "but let me have a kiss first?"

Maura looked Jane up and down as though she were weighing the options. She nodded finally, but when Jane went to lay on top of her, she held a hand to her chest. "Don't get comfortable," Maura warned. They kissed slowly and sweetly.

Maura could tell that Jane had ordered some coffee at the donut shop and downed it before she walked in the house; she tasted like every morning they had gone to that shop, squarely in Jane's part of town, before arriving at any crime scene out that way. Maura secretly adored those excursions, seeing the stuffy manors in Beacon Hill morph slowly into apartments and single-family homes, watching boutiques turn into delis and dry cleaners. The people walking down the street stopped being stay-at-home moms and dog walkers, and changed into commuters, school kids, old men sitting outside of establishments reading the newspaper, and street vendors already hustling at the start of the day. She pictured Jane this morning, hopping out of her car and stuffing her hands into her hoodie pocket, pretending to be bothered by the cold morning air when really it was just that she didn't want anyone to know her hands hurt. She imagined that Jane had struck up an easy conversation with the woman who owned the place, who had taken over the shop and known Jane since she was fifteen.

"Just letting you know I care about ya before I make ya cry," Jane countered wickedly, with one more kiss for good measure before she flipped Maura onto her stomach. Maura was glad for it because there were already tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. She heard Jane preparing, opening the nightstand drawer, inching closer to her on her knees. She felt the mattress shift as Jane straightened her back and cleared her throat. "All fours, please," she said, saying fours like fahs in just the way Maura had asked her to. It was quick, it was subtle, not exaggerated or braggadocious.

Nothing like the swift entrance once Maura did as she was told.

The sobbing came fast - Maura had started so valiantly, offered her body, the wet prize between her legs, to Jane so arrogantly, but Jane wasted no time and Maura had instantly crumbled. She fell to the pillow below her, now up against her face, as Jane grabbed her by the hips and went to work.

That wasn't to say that Jane went quickly. Not at first. No, the pounding felt like paradise because she was slow and Maura wondered if she kept such a tidy rhythm because she used to play the piano. "We're gonna start nice and easy, a'right?" panted Jane, "'cause you've had a little more time to fantasize about this than me. I'm gonna need a few seconds to catch up."

Seconds turned into minutes, however, and they both started to sweat, Jane from fucking and Maura from how easily Jane had just decided that they would orgasm together again, apparently. "Mmhmm," was all she could manage, the hum bouncing jaggedly on waves of air as Maura bounced jaggedly, too. She yelped when Jane shifted her left leg from a knee to a foot planted on the covers just outside her own calves, the sensation dipping deeper into her and more to the right, making a wet clicking sound. Jane wrapped her right arm around Maura's waist and shifted her, hard, and that was when the acceleration began in earnest. Jane went from slow dancing to rapid fire and Maura wanted to break in half.

Jane's hands, the hands that ached every fall morning, the ones that Maura pretended to hold out of intimacy when others were around just to imbue them with a little bit of relief, the hands that had sent her countless good morning texts and had killed Charles Hoyt for her, now anchored onto her ass with bruising intensity - maybe fully intending to break her in the best way possible. It was her Jane meeting her body's needs, it was her Jane giving her the detached sex she wanted, and suddenly Maura crashed back into her own body with delight and urgency. "Wait, wait!" she cried, still into her pillow.

Jane had only heard muffled semi-words. She kept going and her breath fell out in ragged puffs. "What?"

"Wait," Maura pleaded, her head up just a little now. "I changed my mind."

Jane was confused and her body raged at the idea of having to stop when it had started to feel so close to the edge. She tried to quiet it. "'What're you talkin' about?"

Maura heard Jane's hoarse voice weave around her dialect like a tight dress and she knew she was making the right choice. "I changed my mind," she whined as though she struggled to get any words out and needed Jane to just get it. "I want to see you, I need to see you," she called back over her shoulder.

Jane pulled out without warning and her weight on the mattress disappeared. Maura wondered if she had dreamed it all until Jane spoke. "C'mon then," she said, standing at the side of the bed. She helped Maura scoot to the edge and put her legs on her shoulders. Jane slipped in again, so smooth, and Maura groaned at the way it looked.

They established another frenetic rhythm between them, Maura holding Jane in, Jane pretending she wanted to retreat. Soon, Jane's belly was clenching with pleasure. Maura saw it and watched, felt, the way Jane kissed her calves as she thrust in and out, the visual getting her to the same spot on the crest as Jane. Once her climax buzzed against her thighs, she put a hand out and reached for her. "Come closer," she croaked, her voice sore from alternating bouts of screaming and disuse.

Jane could not pretend to gallantly decline, to preserve Maura's pride, when she herself was ready to explode. She pushed Maura's legs out and climbed on top of her hungrily, kissing all along her jaw, her ear, her shoulder.

The affection, the singularity of it and the personalization of it, being exactly what she liked and what she needed in the moment, sent Maura high before bringing her crashing down. She sucked on Jane's pulse for the entirety of her orgasm, not intending for the blood to rise just below the surface of her neck the way that it did and in the magnitude that it did, but it did.

Either Jane didn't notice or didn't care because she kissed Maura hard enough to hurt while her body shook. She kissed her again soon after, this time soft and full of apology, before getting up to slide the straps from her legs. This gave Maura time to right herself on the bed, and she collapsed long ways on the mattress, against her pillow. When Jane returned, she laid her head on the soft curve of Maura's belly.

Maura's hand went to her, and she ran it over Jane's temple and into her tied-back hair. "You should stop," Jane said in response to the gesture, but the petting continued, slow and unending. "Or I'm gonna sleep."

"Would that be so bad?" Maura hummed, eyes closed, attempting meditation to tie back together her frazzled nerves.

"You tell me. Time is it?" Jane asked, barely in English. Her words slushed together, as gelatinous as the muscles in her legs.

"9:30," Maura answered, turning her head toward the clock on her nightstand. "When are your brothers going over?" she asked. She crossed her ankles, flexing her feet forward in satisfaction.

"Twelve," Jane sighed. "I recorded last night's game so we're gonna watch that. You should come. I wanna keep spendin' time with you today."

"Jane," Maura admonished. "That's… that would not be appropriate. But I wish you would let your mother come back."

"She'll be happy to hear that. So, you don't wanna be my friend yet, huh?" Jane snarled in return, darting forward to kiss Maura's open palm when it started to pull away from her scalp. She caught it and her lips smacked wetly against it.

"I would love to be your friend," Maura propped herself up on her elbows, causing Jane to fall to her thighs. "But you squandered that away."

Jane didn't move lest she break the rapidly waning spell. "I came here this morning hopin' you would wanna talk, Maura."

"No, you brought me presents hoping I would forget what you've done," Maura argued. "Hoping I'd forget what you refuse to say."

"What do you want me to say?" Jane snapped, as though she truly didn't know.

This shocked Maura, the fact that Jane could have torn them apart so handily and then not understand how. "I wanted you to apologize for doing something that hurt me. Then I wanted you to tell me why you did what you did. And after all of that, you should have said sorry for calling me names in my office. You did none of those things! You still haven't done any of those things."

Jane put her arms out to her sides in indignation as Maura looked down at her. "I already told you, Maura. I'm not sorry for shooting Doyle. I did what I had to do to protect my partner, because that's what protocol calls for. And that's what I've been trained to do - neutralize the threat."

"I don't want you to be sorry for shooting him!" Maura groaned, rolling her eyes at having to explain this for at least the third or fourth time. "I want you to be sorry for doing something that made me feel awful."

"Maura, I never want to hurt you," Jane rubbed her hands over her face to temper her frustration, "but given the choice, I'm gonna shoot Doyle every single time. And I'm not gonna be sorry about it."

"You know what? I think you need to go," Maura said icily as she shoved Jane off of her lap.

Jane yelped. "What the hell?"

"I really think you need to leave until you can actually listen to what I'm saying," Maura said, snatching the covers around her naked body. "Because you're clearly not."

Jane finally sat up, but she still wasn't ready for what was clearly happening anyway. "Hey, c'mon. I'm listenin'. I'm ready to listen."

"Get your clothes and go," Maura sighed, putting her hands to her head and rubbing her own temples. When Jane stepped into her pants and disentangled her shirt from her sweatshirt so that she could get it on, Maura continued in a quiet voice, "please tell your mother she can come back home."

"Yeah, yeah," Jane growled, grabbing her shoes and carrying them all the way to the door.

"Oh! What happened to you?!" Frankie, with Tommy right behind him, furrowed his brow and shouted at his sister when she opened her apartment door. "I thought that Dean guy skipped town!"

She furrowed right back. "The hell are you talkin' about? You gonna come in or not?"

Frankie pulled the hood of her Patriots sweatshirt away from her and gestured his whole other hand to the wide burgundy mark on her neck. She jumped back, but not before Tommy had started laughing. "Whoa, Janie. You must really like this guy to let him do that."

"There isn't a guy," Jane warned, and both of them put their hands up as they sat on the sofa. "And we're not talking about this. You," she pointed between the two of them, "are not talking to me about it."

"Alright, sis," Tommy said with a mischievous grin, "What're we eatin'?"

"Yeah," Frankie agreed, "is Ma cookin'? Where is Ma?"

"She was out shopping, and when I called her to tell her Maura wanted her to go back to the guesthouse, she went straight there," Jane shrugged. "She said, 'enjoy ya day with your brothers but if I have to watch one more inning of baseball I'm gonna jump in the Charles.'" She exacted an extreme imitation of their mother complete with sweeping arms and rolling eyes. "She'll be back for her stuff tonight."

Tommy and Frankie giggled. "So we gotta figure it out?" Tommy asked. He commanded the remote for Jane's TV with way more comfort than should be plausible for someone who didn't live there. When he had queued up the Sox game, he got up to rummage in her kitchen for the family size bag of potato chips and a mixing bowl.

Frankie stayed put, and he and his sister shared a poignant look. After a few moments, she threw her head to the side as if to say gimme a break. "I'll make us burgers, a'right? Just drop it."

He smirked. "I didn't say anything, Janie. I said nothing. Burgers sound good."

"Did I hear 'burgers'?" Tommy returned, squeezing by Jane to get back to the couch. "Sounds bomb."

"Yeah well, wait for the finished product before you start complimenting," Jane snarked, she shook her hair out of its tie and it fell around her back over her hoodie.

She moved about her tiny kitchen, setting about mixing ingredients and heating up her skillet while her brothers watched the recorded telecast. Count is full, Porcello winds up and delivers… the broadcaster narrated Rick Porcello's first batter, and Jane resented the way her kid siblings got to sit down and take it in uninterrupted.

She implored the sizzle of the hamburgers in cast-iron to distract her from the events of the early morning, repeatedly flipping and pressing her spatula into them. It was purely out of routine, out of having made them hundreds of times, that they survived her wool gathering, because images of she and Maura writhing together came to her anyway. They looked cooked enough after about eight or so minutes, and she wrapped her hand around the skillet after shutting off the burner - without an oven mitt or towel.

"Ouch - mother fucker!" Jane shouted, recoiling in pain and embarrassment. Her dog, Jo Friday, trotted over as soon as she heard food hit the floor. "No! Jo Friday, off! Hello!" She shouted at her brothers, who stayed glued to the TV, "a little help?!"

"Ah c'mon! The play's at second!" Frankie shouted just after, with Tommy groaning next to him, totally ignoring Jane. Jo Friday carried one of the burgers toward the living area and set it down to enjoy right by Frankie's feet.

"Off, Jo Friday!" Frankie whined, "Jane, what the hell are you doing?"

"Why'd you give the dog our burgers?!" Tommy shouted, finally keyed into the situation at hand. He looked at Jo Friday like she personally ate his burger.

Jane came around the back of the couch and sat on it. "You want food go hunt and gather a'right?"

Tommy leaned back into the couch and folded his arms petulantly until there was a knock at the door. Both Jane and Frankie shot up. "Okay, if that's a pizza, I'm sorry for everything I've ever done. Especially, Tommy, when I locked ya out of the house and pretended like I didn't know who you were," said Jane, walking over to the door.

"She did that?" Frankie asked his baby brother.

"Still cryin' over it," Tommy griped as he shoved potato chips into his mouth.

Jane's hand still smarted on the doorknob when she twisted it. When it revealed her father on the other side, she gasped. "Daddy?"

Frank Rizzoli, Sr., in his slicked back black hair, Members Only jacket and sunglasses, flashed his daughter a winning smile. One that would have looked much like her own had he been thirty years younger. "You gonna invite your old man in or what?" he asked her, nodding to his other two children on the couch.

"Yeah, yeah," she stepped aside for him, already hating the way he made her feel - small and still wanting to please him. He took the middle cushion between Frankie and Tommy after he embraced all of them, and they turned the game back on once Jane had moved back into the kitchen to clean up her mess.

The three men in the apartment chattered at the TV, the ricochet of their sub-announcing of the game sounding like her childhood. Now, though, those sounds were spoiled by the recent actions of her father. She tossed the burgers in the trash, swiffer mopped the last of the grease off the floor, and rinsed the pan in the sink, and then she couldn't take it anymore. She bounded over to them and snatched the remote off the arm of the couch. She zapped the TV off. "Sox lost 8-7. You disappear for a year and then you show up to bro-out with us over a day-old DVR'ed ballgame?"

Frank Sr. put up his hands in defense and stood. "Actually, I came here to give you this, ok?" he removed three pink envelopes from his jacket's interior pocket and handed one to each of the Rizzoli siblings.

Jane looked down at the envelope and tore it open. "'Once upon a time, two wonderful people fell in love…?'" she read the awful script on the invitation in her hands, and hurt flashed across her face when she finally stared up at her father.

"You're gonna love Lydia," Frank said to the kids, "she's a dynamite lady."

Tommy paled at this and tried to hide from Frankie and Jane. "Tommy? Somethin' you wanna say?" asked Frankie, leaning on the couch toward his brother like he wanted to throttle him.

"Tommy?" Jane pressed when he didn't answer.

"No. I- I mean… look," Tommy stuttered.

Frank grabbed him by the shoulders and squeezed him tight. "We see each other when I'm in town, a'right?"

"When you're in town?" Jane interrogated, temper needing no excuse to rear its head given the past week. She took a few steps toward her father.

"You know, Tommy's the only one of you who never judged me," Frank said.

Both Frankie and Jane scoffed. "Yeah because Tommy's always been so flexible about what's right and wrong," said Jane sarcastically.

"Hey, hey, hey, I don't want you bullying your baby brother," Frank warned, but the threat was idle.

"That don't work anymore, Pop," Jane replied, talking like him, adopting his accent, his tone, his posture. She was the adult in charge now. "Talk, Tommy," she ordered.

"I introduced him," Tommy said quietly, "to Lydia."

"Ugh, are you kiddin' me?" Jane exclaimed in disbelief, "you're marryin' some girl that Tommy set you up with?!"

Frank's face soured. "You really should keep ya mouth shut about things you know nothin' about, Janie. If I were you, I wouldn't be sittin' on your high horse judging me, walkin' around indiscreet like you're back in high school."

Jane looked at him in confusion until she remembered what her brothers had noticed on her when they walked in. "That is not the same thing, Pop. I don't have a wife I'm cheatin' on or a family at home to be hurt by my indiscretion. I'll be indiscreet all I want until I do have those things." She was petrified to be having this conversation with her father, but she didn't show it in her body language or her serious features.

Frank put his hands up for the second time that afternoon, unwilling to continue the argument. "Look kids, wait til you meet her. She's great."

Jane finally put two and two together after his statement. "Wait a minute. You're divorced, so how do you plan on havin' this big catholic wedding?" she pointed to the invitation.

"Yeah," Frankie said, sticking up for his sister, "the church kinda frowns on that. On all of it."

Frank Sr. shrugged and jutted his bottom lip out. "Just some paperwork I gotta fill out."

"What kinda… oh my god," Jane said, "you're gonna try to get an annulment, aren't you?"

Frankie and Tommy stood up to defend a mother that wasn't there. "What?"

"Janie, it's a piece of paper, it means nothing," Frank tried to placate her.

"Does Ma know she didn't mean to have kids?" Tommy, usually so timid around his father, spat.

"Look, I have no desire to hurt your mother, a'right?" Frank told them.

"She doesn't know, does she? You haven't even had the guts to tell her," Jane growled. She gestured to herself and her brothers and said, "so I guess that makes us all bastards."

"Jane," Frank pleaded, but he was interrupted by a key turning into the lock of Jane's home.

"Are you three done yet? I figured I'd make us a big late lunch since we were all gonna be in one place," Angela's thick North End cadence filled the room and sucked all the air from it at the same time. When she saw Frank, she greeted him coolly, walked into the apartment with grace. "Frank, I didn't know you were gonna be here."

"Just popped by," he said through another smile, "you look good, Ange."

She nodded, ready to accept the compliment, when she saw the fear on her children's faces. "What's going on? What's wrong?"

"Ma-" Jane said, reaching a hand out to her mother, but she was cut off by her father.

"Well, I'm actually in town because I met a nice girl. I'm gettin' remarried," Frank offered, and Angela seemed mostly unrattled by it.

"That's great news, Frank," she lied cordially, "so why do the kids look like they've seen a ghost?"

"We were just having a conversation," Frank said, pulling more paperwork out of his pocket, "my fiancée and I are getting married at St. John's."

Angela furrowed her brow at him. "But we're divorced," she said. "St. John's isn't gonna let you do that."

"Don't do this here, Pop," Frankie warned him.

"They will if we get an annulment, Angela. All I need you to do is sign the paperwork, ok? It's just a piece of paper. Just do this favor for me."

Jane shook with indecision and rage regarding the travesty unfolding in front of her. She was about to speak when Angela took the papers and flipped through them. "Oh yeah," she said with faux sweetness, "sure. Sure, I'll sign it."

"Ok great," Frank nodded, clearly relieved. All three of his kids winced at the coming storm.

"Over your dead body!" Angela screamed back. "All those years I had to put up with your snoring!"

"My snoring!" roared Frank, "what about your creams and your… your flossing. In the bed, you flossed!"

"Right! In our marriage bed where we made three children!" Angela countered, throwing the papers at his chest.

He caught them, clearly full of anger. "That's right, and you still treat 'em like kids. Move on, Angela!"

"Hey, hey! Back that shit up!" Jane stepped between them and yelled at her father.

"I will not dishonor our children! I won't do it!" Angela said, the tears beginning to flow freely. Tommy stood up to comfort her and Frankie started to walk towards his father.

Jane went to the door and motioned Frank Sr. to it. "You know, I idolized you," she told him quietly.

"Jane, c'mon I-" Frank started.

"No no. I don't wanna hear it. You need to go, Pop," her words were final, and she opened the door. He walked out without another word.

The Rizzoli smackdown at his sister's apartment tired Frankie out. He stood now, mid-afternoon, right outside Maura's back door, the one across from his mother's. He had offered to help her bring her things back to the guest house as a way to get her out of the warzone that was Jane's place, and she had accepted. Tommy had said something about needing to make sure he turned his oven off, but both Frankie and Jane knew he was going to check on their father. These were the sides they always took, and maybe their Pop needed someone in their corner, even if he was an asshole. Frankie had to admit that the quiet of Maura's kitchen sounded like heaven, though, so he walked in and decided just to have a glass of water at the counter before he excused himself. A breather of sorts.

When he did enter, he forgot all about the water because Maura sat on her living room floor surrounded by four-foot-high stacks of books on every side of her. "Maura?" he called out. He saw the top of her head turn toward the sound.

"Frankie?" her voice said, and then she stood to find him. He walked over and gave her the customary kiss on each cheek. "What are you doing here?" she asked him.

"Just trying to clear my head for a sec, get a glass of water," he said. "What's goin' on here?"

Maura surveyed her piles. "Well, I guess I needed to clear my head, too. Organization helps me do that. A lot of my books were destroyed when Connors ripped through the house, so I pulled these out of storage to fill the shelves back up again."

"Smart," Frankie commented, putting his hands on his knees and craning his neck to get a look at the titles.

"So why do you need a breather?" Maura asked him, hands in her pockets.

"It was crazy at Jane's place today. Total madness," he said, smiling at her.

Maura frowned at him in confusion. Usually, if she and Jane were not fighting, she would know all the details. She was frighteningly out of the loop. "I'm sorry to hear that. Jane said this morning that the three of you would be hanging out. Did Tommy say something?"

Frankie raised an eyebrow at her, ignoring her question. "You and her talkin' again?"

"Not really," Maura said, which was the truth. "She came by this morning to drop off something she had borrowed, but we're not on friendly terms." Also the truth. Those had been Jane's intentions, even if they hadn't been Maura's.

Frankie's face lit up with epiphany. "You're the one she's sleeping with," he said, smirking.

Maura coughed. Once, in true shock, two or three more times to make it look more natural. "I don't think Jane is with anyone right now," she said, hoping to throw him off.

But clearly, he had the bone and he wasn't going to let it out of his mouth. "Uh-uh. It is you," he continued. "So, you aren't fighting. When did this start?"

Maura took refuge on the new sofa that had just been delivered. "Oh no, we're still fighting."

Frankie pursed his full lips. "But you are fucking?"

"Frankie!"

"Sorry," he laughed. "But you are, aren't you?"

"Yes," Maura sighed, "we are."

"I knew it," he said in confidence, "when?"

"Right after Paddy got shot?" she pretended to guess, as if she didn't know the exact date, time, and place. Her shoulders bobbed and her lips formed a flat line.

"Wait… after you started fighting?" He asked, flabbergasted. "And you're still fighting now? Even after you two… you know?" He couldn't find a sufficient euphemism for fuck so he just raised his eyebrows comically.

She put her head in her hands and moaned in shame.

Frankie belly laughed. "Oh man," he said, trying to contain himself. "She's got you doin' the Boston Kama Sutra, huh?"

Maura peeked at him from between her fingers, bewildered. "What? The Kama Sutra is an ancient Sanskrit text on eroticism and emotional fulfillment."

"Yeah maybe," he replied, "but you've never heard of the Boston Kama Sutra?"

When she shook her head, he laughed again. "Maybe it's a masshole thing. Italians are real hotheaded right? Well, there's kind of this idea about how good the…"

"Fucking?" Maura finally supplied for him, and he flashed her a megawatt smile.

"Yeah, how good the fuckin' is when we get… riled up, passionate," he said. "Hence the name."

Maura only threw her head back and hugged a throw pillow tightly, too mortified to rebut or explain.

"Fuck the water," he chuckled, though the ripples of his laughter were slowing. The way he said watah felt like he was rubbing it in. "We're both gonna need a beer."

"Frankie," Maura called over her shoulder when he had walked over to the fridge and pulled out two Blue Moons, "how did you know she was sleeping with somebody?" She prepared to marvel at his deductive prowess.

"Oh easy," he said, handing her a beer and playing into her awe of him for a moment. Then he smirked wickedly again. "It was the hickey the size of Ohio that gave it away."

Maura smashed the pillow into her face this time.

"Ma chi disgrazzia," Jane spat out in a rare moment of Sicilian contempt, "disgrazzia." She plopped down at the table and shook the cloth napkin in front of her before draping it on her lap. Her body ached with all of its recent anger and exhaustion; her long limbs made slow by tiredness. Even the water of her recent shower had pelted her with weight when it should have cradled her, renewed her. She'd had to blow dry her hair just to get rid of it all. She quite simply felt spent, the madness knocking all through her body the only thing she could offer now. Her mother had returned from her excursion to Maura's guest house with the ingredients for a home-cooked comfort meal for the two of them, and Jane didn't have the heart to turn Angela away after everything that had transpired earlier that day.

"Sure it is," Angela shrugged. She scooted her chair in at Jane's tiny dining room table, the legs hopping in a rough whine over the wood floor. She heaped a helping of mashed potatoes next to the chicken on Jane's plate, and then again on her own. "But I don't know if you should be talking to me about disgrazzias - including your father's. "Nn'ai abbastanza manciari?"*

"Yeah I got plenty - wait. What the hell is supposed to mean?" Jane pulled back, fork frozen in midair, eyebrows severe and plunging toward the bridge of her nose.

Angela pushed her lips outward, using her own fork to gesture up and down toward the florid bruise on Jane's neck. Jane's skin turned hot. "You know what the hell that's supposed to mean. What about all the disgrazzia you been having with Maura, huh?"

"Jesus, Ma," Jane shouted, "you gotta be so blunt?"

"You gotta be so discreet?" Angela shot back, clearly affected by Frank. "It's a disgrace to sneak around."

Jane didn't know how to process the now very clear fact that her mother knew about her and Maura. What there was to know, she still wasn't quite sure, but the knowing still sent her reeling. "Please tell me how that equates to Pop's shit in any way."

"It's the secrets. Why would you want to keep her a secret? Why are you treating her like this? Clearly she's trying to let everyone know because you refuse to." Angela gestured to Jane's mark again with wide eyes and angry pursed lips.

"Ok I get it, I get it. You think it's trashy. But're you gonna tell me you never got carried away in the moment? C'mon, Ma. I'm a grown-ass person, gimme a break," Jane huffed, and then stuffed a bite full of all the things on her plate into her mouth.

"You think that's what I'm bent out of shape about?" Angela scoffed. "I wasn't born yesterday either, Janie. I was young once, too. I've had my fair share of succhioti to hide. Just ask your lyin', cheatin' father. All I'm saying is you must have it bad if you're talking about sex to keep from talking about love. So?"

"So what?" Jane blushed, and it cut down on the threat of her scowl.

"So why don't you just be with her? Out in the open?" Angela shouted as though it were obvious and Jane were stupid.

For a moment, Jane thought, yeah, maybe it was pretty obvious and maybe she was pretty stupid. But things were never that clear cut. "It takes two people to be in a relationship. I can't just decide what's best for everyone involved and then make it happen."

"So you told her you want to be in a relationship and she said no?" Angela asked incredulously. The idea that Maura would refuse Jane in that way boggled her mind.

"Well, no," Jane said. "We're still fighting."

"But you said I could go back to the guesthouse! What do you mean you're still fighting?" Angela squawked.

"I mean we aren't on good terms, Ma. We just can't seem to come to an agreement. We keep getting mad and then making it worse."

Angela rolled her eyes. "But you can agree long enough to roll around in bed? I told you to apologize to her."

Jane's frustration rose with the temperature of her skin. "Ma, I already told you and I already told her that I'm not apologizing for shooting Paddy. I'm not," she said gruffly. "I did what I had to do."

"I get that. I told you I got that. But you could at least tell her that as her best friend, you're sorry that what you did hurt her."

"But then isn't that me admittin' to some kind of wrongdoing? Sometimes ya get hurt by things in life, but it doesn't mean an apology is needed."

"Ok, thickhead, but this does need one. You want to be with her but you can't even say 'sorry that you were hurt when I shot your father? I never intended for that to happen'? How do you expect a relationship to last if you can't even pretend to be sorry about that?!" Angela let her fork clatter to the ceramic plate below. "Ooh I could shake you!"

"I don't know, a'right?!" Jane shouted in a rare moment of vulnerability, "I don't have relationships that last, Ma. I don't know what to do."

"Janie," Angela closed her eyes, breathed in, pictured child-Jane in her mind before she spoke in order to calm herself, "you see how your father and I were today? That's what happens when one of you can't say sorry. That's what happens when neither of you can put your egos aside."

"Ma," Jane pleaded, "don't doom us before we start. That sucks to hear."

"I know it does," Angela agreed, "it sucks to live it, too. You are so much like your Daddy, sweetheart. And that can mean so many good things. But you get to choose if it means the bad things, too."

*Do you have enough to eat?