Jones pushed the door shut with her thin body. "Do you think I should leave it unlocked for Derrick?" she asked with a slightly drunken smile.

Travis hung his coat up and skipped down the hall as he tried to take off his shoes. "He'll probably bring her back here; you'd better leave it open, especially if he's as drunk as we are."

Jones laughed.

He rounded the corner into his room and sat down in the chair presented in front of his several computer monitors. After successfully taking off his second shoe, Travis pulled his shirt up over his head. When it was half off, he paused; he didn't hear the familiar click-click of Jones' heels on the floor.

"Jones?" he asked into the emptiness of his room.

There wasn't a noise or a call back, just returned emptiness.

"Jones-y? Cathy Jones?" His eyes shifted from side to side, now slightly alarmed. He stood up and managed his way over to his doorframe, peering down the entrance hall. "Jones?"

She was sitting with her back against the door, completely unmoving, save for the swirling cigarette smoke around her face and over her head. "You know, Travis, I was thinking," she said as two lithe fingers pulled the cigarette from her mouth, "Why don't you come sit with me here for a bit."

Obediently, he strolled down the narrow hall, pulling his shirt back over his head, and, with his back against it, slid down the corner near Jones.

She blew out a cloud of smoke that crowned her with a halo.

"That's such a filthy habit," he said, "give it here." He gently took it from her and inhaled himself.

"Hahaa, you're such a hypocrite."

He smiled as he handed it back to her. "I know."

She paused in her speech to sigh and close her eyes.

"What did you want to talk about, Jones-y?"

Her eyes peered at him from their corners as a smile danced on her lips. It took every ounce of moral fiber to keep himself from putting his hand to the side of her face and-

"I was thinking about Derrick."

No more thinking about Jones' body.

"You know that he gets around. Like, girls just throw themselves at him, and he sleeps with them, all of them, and they never speak to him again, how do they do that? I mean, I'm not a virgin, but I don't know how women could have sex so casually-"

"Jones, you never told me you weren't a virgin."

He could tell that he caught her in something she didn't want to admit to. The more he'd gotten to know her the more often it'd happened. He took this as a sign that she was more and more comfortable with him.

Her mouth opened; it was almost a verbalized thought. "Anyway…"

Travis laughed to himself. He'd inquire about this later.

"He has all these girls dying to sleep with him, and why? What makes him so attractive? I mean, yeah he's rather good looking, and yeah he comes from a completely rich family, just look at the loft, and yeah he has a way with words that make your insides feel toasty and warm, but…"

"I think you just explained it yourself, Jones," said Travis quietly.

She gave a slight frown. "But the whole multiple partners thing is such a turn off. If he didn't sleep with so many girls…"

Travis waited for her to continue. "That was a conditional; if he didn't sleep with so many girls, then…?"

Jones looked over at him, then forward to a far-off point in the kitchen further down the hall. "If Derrick Webb didn't sleep with so many girls, then…" She ran her tongue over her lips, and the man who couldn't take his eyes off her mentally noted the way the light played on them. "Then I think I would be positively crazy for him."

Travis felt his chest cave in like a baseball bat to the heart. He even bent over a little bit. One thousand and one words ran through his head and he couldn't focus on a single one of them. He didn't even know what to do.

He stood up. "Goodnight, Jones," he heard in a voice that wasn't his own.