Emma stood on the deck in Tom's garden, bent over at the waist, gassing the entire area with dry shampoo as she got the smell of cooking turkey bacon off herself. She flipped her head up, combing and fluffing. No sleek, red carpet styling today, just herself after a shower, trying to restore her smell to that of apricots instead of hickory smoke. She felt natural, honest, open to anything, exactly what she needed to be today.

She glanced up at the frosted glass in the window on upper floor at the back of Tom's house, where he would be getting himself ready for their day together. He cleaned up so nicely - ridiculously nicely - but she hoped he wouldn't make a fuss today. Maybe a shave, but nothing out of the ordinary. Normal - she wanted to get a proper sense of what it would be like for them to be together while being normal, not as movie star kids at work, not as adults at an event, not even as friends, but as people who might have what it takes to be in love, moving through their daily lives.

And what did it take to be in love? Who could answer that? Maybe it meant something different for every pair of people in the universe.

Walking back into the house, Emma pulled a clean blouse out of her gigantic handbag and went into the main floor powder room to change.

Stop, Emma, she told herself even as she rifled around for her makeup bag. You wanted natural, girl. Take your own advice. Don't make too much of a fuss yourself.

But she couldn't help it. She could hear the water running in the bathroom upstairs. She could hear him, and she was nervous. This wasn't actually a low risk experiment. They had both raised the pitch of what each of them had at stake so incredibly high. If the day went badly, he wouldn't hate her, but he'd already said he wouldn't be able to keep her in his life as a mere friend anymore. Those stupid excuses she'd heard before about remaining friends being too painful, or some rubbish - wasn't keeping something of a relationship always better than losing everything? Hadn't it always been enough for her, all those teenaged years not with Tom but near him?

Whatever Tom did with their friendship, if the day didn't go well, she'd have to press on with the baby project somewhere else, somewhere unknown, somewhere without him. At the thought, she reached for her lipstick, as if cosmetics were an anti-anxiety treatment.

By the time she finished her makeup, the water upstairs had run dry and Tom's footsteps were sounding on the floorboards above her head. She jammed her supplies back into her bag, frowning at the mirror. The lipstick - it was too much, but she was stuck with it for now.

She stepped out of the powder room to find him arriving at the foot of the stairs.

His eyebrows lifted when he saw the bag clasped in her hand. "Oh. You want to go somewhere?" he asked.

She leapt at the excuse. "Yes. Yes, it's so nice and sunny here. Let's drive out of the city, to somewhere quiet. No pictures - maybe some scenery, if we happen upon something nice."

"Scenery. Got it," he said. "I'll get my keys."

The freeways out of the LA area were not at all scenic. But once they cleared them, they were driving into the California version of a countryside, following high, twisting roads along the Pacific coast.

"It gets more and more beautiful the further north we go," she said, leaning toward him to see out his window, into the west as he drove. "As soon as I think it can't get anymore breathtaking - voila! If we go all the way to Canada, does it turn into heaven or freeze solid?"

He laughed. "Depends on the time of year, I'd reckon. Have you never come this way by car before?"

"No, there's never any time when I'm in LA," she said. "The most scenic things I ever see are those dry, scrubby hills and palm trees growing out of the pavement. When can we get out and set foot in it?"

"In a bit," Tom said. "There's a lookout I like just about half an hour from here. The view is amazing - life changing."

But as they drove, Emma got quieter, laid back in her seat and shut her eyes to the cliffs and trees and sky outside her window. Tom assumed she'd had a difficult night, like he'd had, and he let her sleep. Only she wasn't sleeping, her head had started to spin and she was feeling sick to her stomach. Their heavy breakfast, the dipping, curving road, the bright sun, even the apricot scent in her shampoo was making her carsick.

By the time they arrived at Tom's lookout, she threw her door open almost before the car stopped moving, staggered to an oil drum converted into a rubbish bin, and spewed sick into it.

"Emma, Em." It was Tom, hurrying up behind her, gathering her hair in his hands to hold it out of the way as she finished shuddering over the bin. She was too weak and wracked to push him away, to make any excuses. He cooed his sympathy at her, his hands still in her hair. "It's alright. Let it out. There we go. Aw, love, I'm sorry."

Her hands were white-knuckled and clinging to the edges of the bin, her shoulders heaving. She drew in a huge breath and managed to say. "No, it's me who's sorry. No one knows my propensity for carsickness as well as I do. I should have taken a travel tablet before we left." A shiver shook her entire body and she spit into the bin one final time before standing up straight. She wiped her mouth with a tissue from her pocket, her lipstick now completely gone. "I've ruined everything."

He let her hair fall back against her neck. "No, it's me. I should have driven more carefully, more slowly. I don't imagine today's breakfast was your usual morning fare anyways."

She shook her head once. "No, I usually start off the day with a smoothie - something with bananas and kale and seeds."

Tom faked a gagging sound of his own.

She moved to swat at him but he caught her hand and held it. "Come sit over here. There are benches and that view I promised you."

She let him lead her. "I won't be able to enjoy anything until I've brushed my teeth. Can you bring my bag from the car?"

"Sure," he said. "Let's just get you sat down first."

"Fine," she said, with a slight roll of her eyes.

He turned to face her, still holding her hand, walking backward, a smirk beginning to form. "Say, Em, you're not pregnant already, are you?"

She swatted weakly at him again. "Shut up, you."

He was laughing. "Just asking."

"You're horrible," she said, though she was beginning to smile, because it was perfect - cutting the immense issue between them down to size with a little teasing.

Once she was sitting, he brought her bag and stood a little way off, at the edge of the cliff, behind the guardrail, looking out at the sea while she cleaned her teeth. She felt almost too embarrassed to call him back. She took a moment to look at the back of him, standing at the end of the world. Life changing view indeed...

"It's safe to come back now," she said. "I'm clean and decent again."

He was walking toward her, still strutting, but somehow more carefully than usual. When he reached the bench, he sat down but not too close. His hand was on her back, gently pressing her down. "Rest a bit," he said. "You can use me as a pillow."

She didn't resist, letting the side of her head rest on his legs. "I'm not really this pathetic," she said.

"No, of course not. This is special," he said. His fingers were in her hair again, his touch light, combing gently through the hair at her temple.

She settled in, her cheek nestling against his leg. "Tell me I'm still elegant even when I'm vomiting."

He laughed. "Sorry. You're still cute when you vomit, but not quite elegant."

She swore. "You don't like me cute."

He breathed a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. "There's no way in which I don't like you."

Pleased, she rolled onto her back, the curve of her skull fitting into the groove between his thighs, her face turned up to look at him. "So much for our perfect day."

He shrugged. "How is this not perfect? You want to rehearse for the possibility of family life? For babies and kids? I reckon this is precisely perfect for that."

She raised her hand to shade her eyes from the sun. "So if this is as bad as it ever gets, then it's really not that bad at all."

He was laughing again, his skin crinkling around his eyes, over his forehead. There was a loveliness to it - maturity, even fatherliness. He was almost forty now, and this was just what English grownups look like. But she was still sitting up, clawing at her bag anyway. "Sunscreen," she said. "We're both out here unprotected. Don't worry, Tom. I've got something - "

"Emma - "

"Don't complain," she said. "What's the harm in a little preventive medicine, anyway?"

"Medicine," he muttered as he grimaced. She was twisting the lid off a jar. "It's so greasy," he said. "Like that breakfast you just vomited into the bin, only whipped up and spread all over my face."

"Bloody poetic, that was," she said. But she wasn't deterred and sat up on her knees on the bench beside him. "Now hold still. This is the very best sunscreen. Handmade in Bulgaria. It smells like roses."

"Just what I was after," he said from between lips pinched closed to keep from tasting Bulgarian roses. With his eyes closed, he sank into the feeling of her fingertips moving over his face, massaging the sunscreen from his hairline to the base of his throat.

"You have a lovely skull," she said as her fingers traveling in mirror images toward each other, along his jaws, descending from just below his ears and meeting at his chin. "You know that."

He snorted. "Thanks. I work hard at it."

"I'm not joking," she said. "It's a sign of good genes. Natural gifts. Something for your posterity to proudly inherit."

He opened his eyes to look at her, not speaking a word.

"You've never really thought about my skull, have you?" she smirked at him.

"No," he admitted. "I don't think of you in pieces. I think of you as whole." His arm was around her waist now, pulling her chest against his, her hands still on his face. "Thanks for the protection," he said, and it was him this time, moving to meet her, kissing her on the bench at the lookout. It was slow, leaving her room to escape if she was still too woozy, or still too - anything.

Their first kiss was a dare. Their second was a mistake. The third, in his house the night before, was to confirm their attraction. The fourth, in his kitchen, was to confirm their willingness to try this. And this fifth one - it was nothing but affection. It was the two of them, alone, caring for each other, feeling around to see if there was enough between them to sustain anyone else.