The restaurant was alive with the sounds of conversation, intermixed with the clattering of china and the scratch of cutlery against plates. Walking through a cloud of smoke I spied Abby seated at a booth with a cigarette, practically smoked down to the tip. She locked eyes with me and waved, in what amounted to excitement from my old dear friend. She had always been such a calm, poised, person, her intensity of emotions only evident in the darkening of her eyes.

"What kind of time do you call this?" She asked, presenting me with her profile as I kissed her cheek in greeting.

"Don't you know by now that I'm one of those fashionably late types?"

"Hmm" She hummed. "Don't you know by now I'm one of those long suffering impatient types?" She countered.

I sat down with a chuckle, taking my hat off and setting it to one side. "Well then I guess we'll just have to compromise"

"I took the liberty of ordering you a manhattan" She remarked, scanning a menu in front of her despite knowing that she would order the exact same thing she always did.

"Wonderful" I thanked her and lit a cigarette allowing myself to relax in to my chair. The journey here had been a nightmare with traffic piling up in every direction. What a relief it was to be out from behind the wheel of the car.

"So how are things? I'm surprised you've managed to tear yourself away from Therese and grace me with your presence" She teased with a look of mischief. "What is this Carol? The honeymoon phase?"

I couldn't help but smile back at her. I thought back to this morning. The alarm had punctuated the calm of the room, its insistent drone rousing us slowly from sleep. Therese had pulled the covers up and over our heads, submerging us in her self-imposed cocoon. "I'm not moving" She insisted, snuggling closer to me and enveloping me in her warmth. I had chuckled in to her sweet smelling hair.

"You'll be late" I had warned with my voice still thick and heavy with sleep. Despite my protests I too had moved impossibly closer. All of her our mornings seemed to begin like this.

"Perhaps" I finally said with a shrug of my shoulders.

"Well you can't live on love alone" Abby suggested with just a hint of disbelief. I wondered, at times, if there were ever a trace of jealousy behind her words or if she ever thought of what we had shared and wondered why it had never been the same.

"I'd like to give it a good try" I commented with a smirk. "No it's more than that. We have much in common and we enjoy spending time together. We're learning from each other all the time"

"I bet you are" Abby huffed. "You've got yourself quite the pistol. I doubt if I'd let her leave the bedroom"

I gave her a cautious glare. Abby was quite the romancer and sometimes had a tendency to talk about women as if she were one of the businessmen we occasionally dined with. It was all in jest but I didn't want to float the notion that Therese was some floozy, some sort of kept woman, not my Therese.

"Come on Carol. She's a spitfire" She crowed, thanking the waiter who brought our manhattans. "Cheers" She saluted clinking her glass against mine with a chime. "No I'm horribly jealous. Good for you I say. Keep her while you can"

"What's that supposed to mean?" I challenged, feeling myself bristle at the insinuation.

Abby chuckled under her breath. "It's a joke Carol. I'm just teasing you. Therese is a beautiful, intelligent girl and as I said I'm horribly jealous"

I laughed it off good-naturedly but inside I blanched at the thought. 'Keep her while you can' Keep her while you can? It seemed to strike an unfamiliar chord in me. Truth be told I was not used to feeling the sting of jealousy. Nor was I used to feeling such an overwhelming sense of insecurity. I drank down my manhattan and ordered another in quick succession dwelling miserably on my own thoughts.

"Want me to walk you to your door?" Abby called out of the opened car window. I could see the concern in her face and I batted it away with a false smile.

"That'll teach me for passing on breakfast" I explained. "I'll be fine" I assured her. "I shouldn't have had that last manhattan"

Abby nodded her head but I could tell by the look on her face that she was chewing on something. She bit back the thought. "I'll call you" She told me before speeding off in her car.

I navigated the steps to the apartment complex unsteadily. The rush of air had gone to my head and I was beginning to feel the effects of the drinks I had consumed over lunch, or what little I had consumed of lunch. Was this me now? Drinking to excess? Brooding and miserable?

I turned the lock in the key and stumbled in to the apartment, its warmth wrapped itself around me with welcome arms. The apartment was shrouded in darkness indicating that I was alone and that Therese was working late again. At this point I didn't know whether to feel relief or despair?

I took off my coat and looked at my reflection in the mirror. The darkness muted my sight but I could still make out my features in the glass. Where had my composure fled to? Hadn't I always prided myself on keeping a cool exterior even in times of great difficulty? Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that this wasn't about Therese. It wasn't about my fears of her leaving me for a younger model or my worries that we were destined for rocky roads ahead. This was about my inability to admit that my heart was breaking for Rindy. That I was torn with grief, missing a limb, hurting for something I feared would never be fixed. It made me cling to the love I had for Therese, attaching myself to it with a sense of foreboding. In my drink addled brain it seemed perfectly plausible that losing Rindy made it all the more likely that I would also lose Therese.