A/N--I make no false promises. This chapter is 90 percent dialogue, as per the title. I've rated it PG, even though there's nothing objectionable in here--slight references (in dialogue) to mature behaviour and some drinking, I suppose. I'm just not Corrupting the Children fast enough. Curses!

It was working, this vacation. For the first time in months, I slept hard and dreamless. I didn't wake with my arms twined round a pillow, clutching as though to a lifeline. Perhaps it was the distance, or maybe the fact that it wasn't my bed. The sleepy tenor of my thoughts changed at the rap on my door. "I'm awake, I'm awake," I called before Rachel could open the door or call my name.

"Dinner's going to be ready in ten minutes, so whatever you're doing, be quick about it."

I sat up and shook myself. "Ten minutes? Way to give me time to shower." I'd been so tired earlier that I hadn't even thought about it, but now that I was rested, the idea was too appealing to pass up.

"You don't have to put on makeup, Sara. It's only me." I snorted, picturing my friend smirking on the other side of the door.

"Well, in that case I'll forgo my Luscious Lemon lipstick so that I won't keep you waiting."

"All right, I'll leave you alone then. And Sara? Yellow isn't a very popular lipstick colour."

I was sitting at the table, hair still damp, thirteen minutes later. "That's too bad. I was thinking there could be a whole line of products...Jolly Jaundice?" Rachel mimed throwing a breadstick at me. "Be nice, or you'll never get the dirt from me," I said between bites of vegetarian lasagna.

"You have dirt? My stars and garters, day is night and night is day! So what's this big secret?"

I took a sip of wine, "It isn't a secret, Rachel." I shrugged, "I just needed to get away from work for awhile."

"Sara, that's like me saying 'I need to get away from oxygen for awhile'. What happened? I suppose you didn't get tired of dead bodies. Trouble with your boss, then? Or is it a guy? Did they promote someone younger and prettier over your head?"

"Two out of three."

"Your boss promoted soemone younger and prettier?" I shook my head, trying not to laugh. Rachel could always tell when something was bothering me, and she was making it easier for me to talk about it by not being deadly serious. "A younger, prettier guy was promoted over top of you?"

"What's with your obsession with people who are younger and prettier than I am? Are you calling me a hag?" My glass and lasagna were both over half done.

"Of course I am, dear. So which isn't it?"

"Nobody was promoted ahead of me." 'Yet', I thought but didn't say. And I'd never really given thought to whether or not Nick was prettier than me. I wasn't about to start now, at any rate.

"Ah, so it's your boss and a guy?" Her eyes lighted, "Your boss is...secretly sleeping with the mailroom boy, you caught them, and he bought you off so that you wouldn't tell anyone. Now guilt is eating at you from the inside out, because you know that your boss has lovers in twelve states. I can see it now! 'The Check Is In the Mail Guy--The Sara Sidle Story'. Now which actress would you play you..." She pretended to be giving this question serious consideration.

"Rachel, that pun doesn't even make sense," I grumped. "It's not by boss AND a guy. My boss IS the guy!"

Her eyes widened, "You didn't!" She kindly refrained from adding that this would make an even better movie of the week than gay blackmail, in her books.

"That's sort of the problem. No, I didn't. I just made an attempt in that direction."

"You tried?! Did you try to seduce him? Details! Start from the beginning!"

"No, I--uh, this is kind of a long story. Maybe we should move into the living room." The chairs in the kitchen were even less comfortable than those in the police station waiting room, and I hadn't thought that was possible. Rachel might have impeccable fashion taste, but she could use some help in the decorating department.

We cleaned up and relocated quickly. "Please tell me one thing. Is he married?"

I laughed. "Married? No, it's more that he's possibly even worse when it comes to dealing with relationships than I am." I held up a hand, "*No* sarcastic comments!" I put my hand over my eyes for a minute, "I can't believe that I'm telling you this," I groaned. For so long I'd been hyperconscious of anyone guessing. I treated it like a deadly secret, and to be talking about it now was a relief, but harder than I'd anticipated. Rachel was watching me inquiringly, so I coughed and continued. "I might've mentioned him to you--we met not long after I got out of college, at a seminar. Gil Grissom?"

She thought for a moment, "Mm--the name doesn't ring any bells." I was obscurely relieved that I hadn't gushed about him at the time and forgotten it.

"Right, well, he was the one who got me the job out here--I think I told you a bit about that."

"Yes, you said that a CSI there was killed so the supervisor there knew you and called you in, but you never said his name." She paused. "Or that you had a thing for him."

I flushed. "You're making it sound like I'm fourteen! I wasn't interested in him then--didn't think about him like that until I came back. We were--we were friends at first, you know?" I leaned my head against a fluffy couch cushion. "I liked him, he liked me, and we got along very well. But then I started to--well, you know." I didn't want to verbalize 'I started to get the hots for my boss'. "I guess he picked up on something, because there was tension there, and we couldn't talk like we used to. That just made it worse. We'd get into stupid arguments, or I'd take something that he said too personally. Oh, I'd rationalize it, but suddenly--everything he said to me took on this--this importance that it hadn't had before."

I was about to make a self-deprecating remark, but Rachel just nodded. "That makes sense. So did you do anything?"

I smiled wryly, "Mm--not really. It was just--tension in our friendship, and I hoped it'd go away. At first, it seemed like it'd be too hard to do anything about it even if he did feel the same way. He was my boss, and usually--well, you remember. The guys that I've dated have generally been the opposite of me, or else nothing would ever have happened. It's like Grissom and I--we could stare at each other across a blood sample for hours, but neither of us would ever do anything."

Rachel poured me another glass of wine.

I shrugged. "So, I figured--I like this guy, but it'd be too hard, with the work situation and everything. It'd fade. So I dated a paramedic for awhile. Once that ended, I--well, it was worse." I spread my hands in a gesture of resignation. "All of a sudden I didn't have an excuse anymore. It didn't fade. It's not that I was spending every moment thinking about him, but it was always there, like a wart."

"Your talent for romantic metaphors continues to amaze me." I smiled a little.

"Yeah, well, that's me." I left out the hours of agonized analysis I'd done on the subject. "So I asked him out. He said no." Her mouth twitched in what I presumed was empathy, and to her credit, she didn't say something like 'Any decent guy would jump at a chance to date you.'

"When was this?"

"This was a few months ago. After that, things got even worse. He didn't put us on the same cases, and he acts like he's afraid that I'm going to jump him, rip off his shirt, and tell him that I can't live without him."

"Can you?" she asked gently.

I was about to answer, but considered this. "It's not that I can't live without him. It's just...I'd rather...not. It was...a couple of weeks ago, I realized that the more I saw him, the worse it was. I needed a break. And someone to give me some advice, I suppose. So visiting you made sense. And that's why I'm here," I finished, feeling emotionally exhausted by this point.

"You've got it. Now--we're going to figure out what to do about this." She grinned in a way that I found mildly unnerving. "We're going to get that guy for you, Sara. If he's as socially stunted as you--" I flung a pillow at her. "Ahem. I said," she continued, delicately setting the pillow next to her, "that if he tends to be *awkward* in social situations, then he probably isn't indifferent to you."

"Maybe," I muttered. After four glasses of wine, it was easier to believe that he was harbouring a secret passion for me. "But I've made the move. To do anything else would make me look like a stalker."

"You're not going to have to do anything else," she said, as though it were simple. I still didn't like the look in her eye.

"What--oh, Rachel, *no*, I absolutely forbid you to get involved." She assumed an innocent 'Moi?' expression. "Promise me that you won't call up Grissom or contact him in any way."

"I promise you that I won't call Grissom or contact him in any way," she promised instantly. Too instantly. I was not reassured.