Trish was hesitant to ask Chris anything that even pertained to Stephanie. Maybe it was the fact that she didn't want to hear if they had done something or maybe she just didn't care. She wasn't even fooling herself though. She didn't want to know if anything had happened between the two of them. Why would she? She knew something probably had happened. A girl and a guy couldn't just stay friends forever, she didn't believe that.

When she found Chris packing later, she walked up behind him and laid a hand on his forearm. "Chris, can I ask you a question?"

"Yeah, sure, just call me Mr. Answer," he said cheerily.

"Have you ever slept with Stephanie?"

Chris froze in his packing, a red t-shirt falling limply from hi hand, an unfolding itself. Trish froze too, thinking the worst when Chris wasn't answering at all. Trish wanted to take the question back. But then Chris did something she wasn't expecting him to do. He burst into laughter.

It wasn't even just a chuckle, or a guilty laugh. It was a bust-your-gut kind of laugh, deep and filled with humor. Chris actually fell down, laughing so hard that he had tears running down his face. His side was aching as he continued to laugh, leaving Trish nothing less than confused.

"You…thought…oh my God," Chris said, gasping for breath. "Stephers…and me…sex….oh God!"

"I guess that's a no,' Trish said nervously.

"Of course it is! God, talk about awkward! Steph and I…naked…oh God…I think that would traumatize the both of us."

"I was worried," Trish said, trying to be serious.

"Why? Stephanie and I are just friends."

"But you're so close."

"So?"

"So you know…they always say that guys and girls can't be 'just friends.'"

"Have you ever met Stephanie…or me for that matter?"

"But still…you've been friends for more than four years, you've never gotten the urge to experiment with Stephanie?"

"NO! That's just gross!"

"Oh, well, I guess I was wrong then."

"Very! Come here Trish," he said, holding open his arms for her. She came over and sat down in his lap, settling herself against him. "Stephanie is my best friend. I know her better than anyone and she knows me the same way, but we're friends and that's just the way it's going to stay."

"Good, it's just you two are like…like you're with each other, and its so frustrating to try and break through the barrier."

"I know this isn't what you want to hear, but you can't. You can't work your way in. Trish, I'm going be completely honest here. Stephanie means everything in the world to me. She's my rock; the one person that I can count on forever. And nothing will ever change that. Not when it comes to her."

"Well thank you for being honest with me…go have fun and tell her a 'Happy Birthday' on me."

"Thanks, and I will."

Before they knew it, Stephanie and Chris were on a plane headed for Hawaii. They were playing a card game that was sure to be annoying all the other passengers in first class. They had already gotten three dirty looks from the uppity lady in the seat across the aisle. Stephanie and Chris had just ignored her, they figured they could spill a drink on her later.

"You cheated!" Stephanie said indignantly.

"How could I cheat?" Chris said.

"You probably have cards shoved up your sleeve or something!"

"I'm wearing a short sleeve shirt," Chris said.

"Well…you could have invisible sleeves or something, you know, I'm sure that you found the technology before we came on the flight and used it to cheat at cards."

"Then wouldn't I just be invisible all the time, and then I'd spy on you when you're taking a shower just to creep you out, and I'd pour cold water on you, and you'd get scared and run out screaming, only realizing later that you were naked."

"Then I'd strangle you while you were invisible Snooks, and you'd die, and then nobody would ever find the body," Stephanie said with a gleeful, yet decidedly evil laugh.

"You would never strangle me Stephers, because then you would have nobody that would put up with you all the time."

"Ah, my wise friend, that's where you're wrong, I have the Dreamboat remember? And he would love and adore me forever and ever, and I wouldn't need you Snooks, you would just be a passing ship in the night."

"Do you think I could take the Dreamboat?" Chris pondered.

"Like a cat takes down a mouse," she responded. "Unless the mouse has mutated into like a giant mouse. Ooh, or like Splinter from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, because he had a black belt, and I don't know any cats that have black belts, do you?"

"Oh yeah, my neighbor down the street, his cat has a black belt…or is that a red hat? I think it's the red hat, I have weird neighbors."

"Come live next to me, and then you wouldn't have to say you had weird neighbors."

"But you can be weird."

"But see…who else would you talk to your neighbors about unless it was your best friend, and who is your best friend Snooks?"

"The person who invented marshmallow fluff," Chris said without hesitation. "I don't even like marshmallow fluff, but when someone can take your ordinary marshmallow and make it into fluff, that's gotta be someone special. And fluff…just the name is cool…'I want some fluff,' 'Get me some fluff,' 'Where's the fluff, I say!' See, all good lines."

"I'm your best friend Snooks, so then you wouldn't have to complain about your neighbors, because I'm your neighbor."

"Could we get a secret underground tunnel between our houses so we wouldn't have to walk from my front door to your front door? Or one of those moving walkways like in Las Vegas that extends from my bedroom to your bedroom. Ooh, or Stephers, how about a train! Like one of those little trains and we could ride it to each other's houses."

"With a train whistle?"

"And a railroad crossing sign," Chris said, because who could have a railroad without one of those?

"My real neighbors would never go for that…and I don't think they'd like me to poke through their floor with a shovel when I dig the underground tunnel," Stephanie said with disappointment in her voice. She yawned a little, and Chris patted his shoulder. Stephanie laid her head on her shoulder. "I wish you lived next door to me."

"I'm over your house enough."

"Yeah, so I guess that you can call it your house too, except you don't pay for anything. Maybe I should start charging you rent whenever you visit."

"Then I would just call the landlord and complain all the time," Chris told her.

Stephanie laughed and then put her head on Chris's shoulder. It was a long flight, and she was starting to get a little bit tired. Chris leaned his head on hers and thought about what Trish had said earlier. He didn't want to bring it up now because the people on the plan already thought they were crazy, and he didn't want them to see Stephanie erupt in a fit of laughter, and think them even more strange.

But what Trish had said was so off-base it wasn't even really that funny. Were he and Stephanie really giving off that kind of vibe? Is that why everybody thought they were together? Maybe that was the explanation for people being nuts when it came to theories on their relationship. They simply got a vibe. But he didn't think that he was putting off any kind of vibe. He didn't think that at all.

He fell asleep as did Stephanie, much to the relief of everyone else in first class with them. They pretty much slept through the entire flight before they landed in San Diego. Stephanie was the first to wake up and she noticed they were just about to land. She squealed and grabbed Chris's arm, shaking him awake.

"I'm up, I'm up, don't shoot!" he said groggily.

"We're here, I'm excited," Stephanie said, her tone of voice reinforcing that very sentiment.

"Well, we're not going surfing today, it's too late," Chris said. "So no reason to be overly excited or anything."

"Anything, ANYTHING that gets me away from my parents for any extended period of time is good enough to warrant me acting like a buffoon. Not that I'm not a pretty buffoon, cause I really am."

"I know that you're pretty," he said, pretending to sound smarmy.

"Well, I do declare Snooks, that you are the most charming man that I have ever come across," Stephanie said, pretending to be like a southern belle.

To say they were ready to get off the plane was an understatement. They were practically bouncing in the aisles ready to get off that plane. Everyone let them go out first, since they couldn't wait to be rid of them. When they walked out to their rental car a short time later, Stephanie took a deep breath of the dewy late summer/early fall air. It was quite warm that evening and she just wanted to stand in it a little longer, but Chris pushed her into the car.

"So what are we going to do first Snooks? Are we going to rent a boat and then attempt to sail around the world? We'll have to stock up on food until we get to Hawaii, then we can just fill the boats with pineapples. Unless we go in a rubber raft, then the pineapples might puncture the boat and we'd sink, and then we'd get stuck on a deserted island, and I'm not sure I know how to make a coconut phone," Stephanie said.

"I'm sure that I could make a coconut phone, but you would have to be ready and pack for a three-hour tour."

"Which basically means I should pack up my entire wardrobe right. Oh, and maybe a few evening gowns. Not that I would be 'The Movie Star,' but she did always get billing. She wasn't stuck with, 'And all the rest,' for most of the show."

"So who am I? The Professor."

"You'd be…Gilligan," she told him, as Chris pulled up to their hotel.

They were checked into their rooms, and they went up to them. First thing that they did was open the door between the adjoining rooms. The rooms were set up nicely, there was a little seating area, a bed in each room, television. The bathrooms were pretty spectacular though, definitely worth the money for a marble Jacuzzi bathtub.

"You want to go for a walk on the beach?" Chris asked her. "It's almost sunset, it would be nice."

"Yeah, I've always wanted to see one of those…wait, that's a sunrise. Oh well, I guess I can just picture it going backwards when it's over, that's the same thing right?"

"No, but if you want, we can tape it, and then you can rewind it to help out with that visual."

"That's very sweet of you, but I don't have the patience for that kind of thing. Let me just get changed out of these airplane clothes. There's nothing worse than smelling like an airplane. Unless of course, you smell like a horse or something."

"Why did you choose a horse, there are worse smelling animals."

"Yes, but you ride horse, they're a mode of transportation. Like planes…see that whole connection that I was going for right there?"

"No, but I never get you, you know that."

"Well learn," she teased as she went back into her bedroom.

Thinking she might have the right idea, Chris grabbed some shorts, and a nice t-shirt out of his suitcase and changed into them. They were appropriate beachwear after all. Stephanie came in a few minutes after he was dressed, and she looked really great. Her hair was pulled up with a few strategically placed sticks, something that would boggle Chris's mind when he thought about it. Her outfit was one he'd never seen her in before, and he thought that he had seen all of her outfits. She was wearing a long wraparound skirt, of which he tried to think of the name, but was coming up blank at the moment. And then a spaghetti string tank top.

"You look really great," he said to her. "I don't know how I'm going to keep guys off of you. I told the Dreamboat that I would take care of you, and now I'm going to have to get a big stick and fend off the throngs of guys that are going to come after you. It'll be like shooing away seagulls."

Stephanie just rolled her eyes and grabbed his hand. They walked downstairs and out the back of the hotel, which was right on the beach. They went down to the water's edge, where the sun was just beginning its descent beyond the horizon. They walked together, not really talking, which was unusual, except for the occasional blather about a shell or a rock, or how crabs like to scuttle along the bottom of the ocean.

"Trish asked me something today."

"What? The blonde bombshell asked you something? Like in the form of a question? Like something really important?" Stephanie babbled.

"Depends on how you look at it. It's like marshmallows. They're awesome in hot chocolate, but on yams, not so much…but they're still marshmallows. So the way we would look at it, it's going to look like hot chocolate, but to her, it looked like yams."

"Ok, but you are aware that I like yams," Stephanie said.

"I'm making an example that pertains to me."

"Oh, ok, I was just thinking that if you were to make an analogy or something, that you would use something that I would get, like chocolate, usually yummy, candy bars, and the like, but chocolate-covered raisins, yuck, don't want those. See how that relates to me, because I don't like raisins, they look like rat droppings. All shriveled and crap. Isn't it really just rotten grapes, that's how it happened you know, they left them out and they shriveled up, so they're rotten. And I don't want to eat rotten food."

"Yeah, rotten food is gross. Like chunky milk. The worst is having a nice bowl of cereal and then you have rotten milk and it ruins your entire day. I mean, what's a day without a nice big bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. That's the way everyone should start their day. Wait, wait, I'm getting off track Stephers, see, this is why you need to stop talking because then you get me off track."

"It's not my fault that you couldn't come up with a good analogy as to why this question is important to the blonde bombshell but not to me."

"She asked if we slept together."

Stephanie stopped, her feet sinking into the soft sand from staying in one spot. Chris looked back to her, giving her a smile. Stephanie face was still, and then she collapsed to the ground. She started cracking up, not even fully aware that she looked silly. But Stephanie hardly cared that she looked silly. She was Stephanie, she looked silly at least two hours out of every day.

"She asked what!" Stephanie asked as she sat down on the sand. "She asked if I had SEX with you! With YOU! Oh man, what's wrong with her!"

"I don't know, she thought we had 'experimented,' or something."

"The only thing we experimented with was whether or not caramel went with every kind of fruit, because it went so well with apples. We soon learned that caramel oranges taste like crap. But sleeping together, like THAT…um, sorry, no thank you."

"That's what I told her, but still, she actually seemed worried."

"Well, she doesn't need to worry about that Snooks. I'm not going to jump you. We aren't animals that go through a mating period where we do silly dances. I can choose who I want to sleep with, and the only thing I'd do in a bed with you is sleep…or you know, eat crackers so it bothers you."

"Yeah, that does bother me. Even if you eat it on top of the covers, those damn crumbs will get in the bed. Crumbs always find their way into your bed. I don't know how they do it, but they will always find a way. And then you're moving around and you've got crumbs sticking to your legs like you're sleeping on dirt."

"Why would you be sleeping on dirt?"

"I don't know."

"Maybe if you were camping, but then you would probably be in a tent. I don't think there's any instance Snooks, where you would have to sleep on dirt. Unless, you've slept on dirt and know first hand."

"Drawing comparisons here, but I guess that would go over your head like a small aircraft."

"Or a large aircraft," she told him. "I don't want to sleep with you like that."

"I know you don't, she was just worried."

"Maybe she doesn't trust you…maybe this is her way of saying that she wants you away from me. Maybe she's giving you a veiled ultimatum. Like she's trying to be subtle about it, but she's really not, and then when you don't do what she says, she'll pounce on you like a cat, though I always imagined Trish as that yappy, little puppy who wants to bite your ankles."

"I don't think that's it."

"But it might be. This might be part of her evil plan. This could all be part of her evil plan!"

"I don't think she's capable of an evil plan Stephers."

"You never know Snooks, she could be after you…or worse, after me."

"Why would she be after you?"

"Who knows, it's her evil plan."