Greg came limping to the table freshly shaved and wearing his light blue turtleneck. I pretended to ignore him and read the paper. He saw through me in about a millisecond.

"Go ahead and say it. You know you want to."

I peered over the headlines. "You get to wear a turtleneck and I don't?" I said, making a mental note to go shopping for some damn turtlenecks at lunch.

"I never said you couldn't," he said, pouring a bowl of Cheerios. "I just said you couldn't borrow one of mine. Besides, you can't sit there and say you expect me to play by the rules. Not with a straight face, anyway."

"Do you always change the rules whenever it suits you?"

"No, I just make them up as I go along. It's more fun that way."

"How am I supposed to keep track?" I asked.

"That's not my problem," Greg smirked.

"Gee, thanks."

"You're welcome. You haven't run screaming into traffic yet so I'm guessing you're not all that shaken up about me and my rules," he said, then chowed down on his cereal.

"Can't say that I am."

"Of course not. You can't sit there and say that with a straight face if you didn't actually mean it. That's one of the things you like about me, or rather love about me."

"You think?" I finished off my toast and cold coffee.

Greg smiled and gave me one of his patented laser-beam stares. "I know. All those years of trying to be a good husband to your good little wives didn't work. Now you hook up with someone like me, the rules as you knew them have gone out the window, and I'll be damned if you can't get enough of it. The good girls couldn't satisfy you so now it's up to the bad boy to give you what you want."

He polished off the cereal and set the bowl aside.

"So...what do I want?" I asked, forgetting about the newspaper and everything I read in it.

"You don't want to be the husband and provider anymore. For now you're perfectly content to be the partner. What's yours is yours and what's mine is mine and all we share is the bed." He paused to pour himself some coffee. "Feel free to deny anything," Greg added without looking up.

I couldn't deny any of it because it was all true.

"So how did a nice doctor like you and a crippled middle-aged jackass like me end up together?"

"I can't explain it, Greg," I replied, leaning on the table. "But I'm sure you have an idea or two."

"Hmmm...I can't list all the reasons why you do what you do, however, I think I've narrowed down at least one reason why you're sitting at my table." He sounded very nonchalant and rested his chin in his hand.

"Let's hear it."

"It's the same reason why you came here after all your divorces, Jimmy."

"Let's hear it."

"You can't stand to be alone."

Greg may hate people but that didn't diminish his ability to read them in any way. His sharp insights never failed to astonish me.

"You're right," I said quietly. "I can't stand to be alone."

"Why not?"

"Living alone makes me feel alone and I hate feeling like that."

"You always came here because you knew I'd never turn you away, and because you knew I'd always be home when you came by."

"Yes."

"Just having another living breathing human being under the roof with you makes you feel better."

"Yes."

"Okay then," he said, chin still in hand, looking amused at his ability to read me like a take-out menu. "As long as we're on the same page here."

"Do you always have to cut to the bone like that?"

"Don't you want a lover who understands and knows the real you?"

"Just as much as you do," I said. "I can't stand to be alone and you were tired of being alone. So I guess we are on the same page."

Greg didn't flinch. "Don't start spouting off that we're soulmates and how it was meant to be or I'm going to have to whack you across the shin with my cane."

"But that's exactly what our horoscopes predicted," I teased.

"Jimmy, your shin and my cane. When you least expect it, expect it."

"I'll have to take back the heating pad," I said.

"And I'll have to make sure you wear band-aids and turtlenecks all summer," he countered stoically, meaning every word of it.

"All right, all right." I held up my hands. "You win. Truce?"

"For the moment," he grinned. "We'll see how it goes tonight."