Only Maura would be worried about damaging the eyes of a would be attacker. Jane couldn't help but roll her eyes as she tried to teach her prim and proper best friend some self-defense techniques. It was cute though, the way Maura worried about things like that, the way she threw a punch, and the bounce she had going on. A lot of things about Maura were cute to Jane; little things that would make her smile even on her worse days. The silly way Maura had gotten excited over the punch bowl and jello mold at her high school reunion. The way she looked when she tried to roll her eyes the way Jane did. Even the way she corrected Jane's grammar was cute, even if it did drive her insane. Jane tried to keep the cute, and she had to admit sexy way Maura looked in work out clothes, in mind when Maura asked about her dad. Jane still didn't like talking about her parents divorce. The only person she even let mention it was Maura, but lately she just didn't want to face it. She didn't want to face that her Pop could have a girlfriend, or that from across the room the way her mother looked at Korsak made her fill ill. She didn't want to admit that seeing her brothers enjoying a new girlfriend or meeting someone new gave her the urge to slap them upside the head. It wasn't that she was trying to keep them from enjoying life and finding someone, it was that it just irked her that she couldn't have what, who, she really wanted.
Thankfully she had her work to keep her busy, to keep her mind focused on other things, before she ended up saying or doing something stupid. For days after her reunion Jane would flinch every time she thought about how many times she'd touched Maura's breasts or rear end in the space of just a few hours. Until now she'd never really given any thought to the how much she touched Maura, or how not touching her left Jane feeling adrift and kind of lost. She realized that there had always been a lot of totally gratuitous touching, but lately that touching had become rather overtly gay. Seriously? Who cops a feel of their best friend's breasts in a gym full of former classmates? Who ideally runs their fingertips up and down their best friend's arm while they're watching a movie? Jane Rizzoli did, super badass cop who's to much of a coward to tell her best friend how she felt about her, that's who.
After the call came in about a new murder Jane and Maura changed clothes and headed over to scene. A new case would give Jane something to get lost in, something other then her newly acknowledged feelings for her best friend. After the murders of her classmates Jane had really wanted something she could detach from, so of course her new case would be a murdered mom. When Jane asked for something to keep her busy she hadn't meant for the universe to dump so much on her. Not only was she working the dance mom case with Frost but she was worried about Korsak and his son too. She needed to vent to talk things out so she'd headed for Maura's office, stopping when she saw the blonde with her former partner. Jane smiled as she watched. Maura cared about Korsak as much as she did and that meant a lot to Jane.
"Hey Maura." Jane said while she watched Maura eating her burger after the cases were closed.
"Hmm?" Maura replied as she picked up her napkin.
Jane smiled. "Thanks for helping out Korsak."
"Vincent is a good man, Jane." Maura replied. "I like him a lot and I would do whatever I can to help him, but all I did was point out the evidence."
Jane shook her head. "No you did a lot more then that. You were someone he could lean on without making it look like he was leaning you. You gave him a way to help his son. Ya know you underestimate yourself a lot. You're a pretty amazing person to have as friend."
Maura's smile was radiant. "Thank you, Jane."
She'd meant what she said about Vincent, she considered him a close friend, but Maura knew how much he meant to Jane so it was only natural that she'd want to help him for Jane. She'd been feeling kind of weird since Jane's reunion. She was starting to wonder if maybe she was seeing certain signals from Jane. Or did she just want to see them so badly that she was making them up? Shouldn't Jane have been more disappointed about Casey not returning from the Middle East? Had her touches become more intimate? Had that been a smirk on Jane's face when she touched her breasts? Twice? Maybe she was just seeing what she wanted to see. Jane had always been touchy feely with her, though she'd noticed she wasn't that way with anyone else. But Maura was starting to notice that Jane's touches were a little more daring, a little more familiar then they use to be. She had after all slapped Maura on the rear end a few times in a playful manner and that was certainly a very familiar way to touch someone.
Thought she was smiling on the outside while she continued to share dinner with Jane, she was sighing on the inside. She was being delusional. Jane wasn't in to her that way. And yet she couldn't stop thinking about it, about Jane. So much so that she was distracted at work, and that said a lot. It took a lot to knock Maura off her game and it used had to do with her emotions and her relationships with the living that distracted her from the dead.
"Are you alright darling?" Constance Isles asked her daughter a few weeks after the dance mom murder and the trouble with Korsak's son. "You seem preoccupied with something."
Her mother surprised her with a visit and it had been wonderful. Maura never did figure out what had caused this shift between them, what had made her mother more attentive, but she had a feeling it had been Jane. Maura had been beyond happy when her mother said she would love to see her work that morning. She'd been babbling like a little girl the whole way in and over coffee with Angela at the café. Then Jane walked in, she'd leaned into Maura reaching for something behind the counter. Jane's hand had been on the small of her back, her breasts pressing into Maura's shoulder, and it had sent Maura's mind wheeling. She was once again reexamining every touch between them looking for meanings that weren't there, or at least she didn't think they were there.
"No, I'm fine." Maura said as she shook herself from her thoughts and smiled at her mother.
"Believe it or not darling I know you better then that." The elder Isles said as she watched her daughter closely. "You've been lost in thought since we ran into Jane earlier. Is everything alright between you?"
"Between me and Jane?" Maura asked, her eyes a little wide. "Yes, of course. Everything between me and Jane is fine, Mom."
"Mmhm." Constance replied as she gave her daughter a look that said she wasn't buying it. "I know you can't lie Maura so I know that things are fine between you two but there is still something. What is it darling?"
"Isn't noting Mom." Maura repeated. "Jane and I are just fine."
Constance looked at her daughter for several seconds before asking, "Is this about your feelings for her?"
Maura's eyes went even wider as she stared at her mother in disbelief. "My… My feelings for her?"
"Yes dear." Constance said with a knowing smile. "Maura, darling, you've been in love with her for quite some time now." The look of surprise on Maura's face made her mother chuckle. "Do close your mouth darling. It isn't the right time of year to impersonate a jack-o-lantern."
"My… My feelings for Jane…" She cleared her throat as she tried to collect her thoughts. How did her mother? And why was she acting as if this was perfectly fine and ordinarily normal? "She's my best friend, Mother. Of course I love her."
"Are you concerned that Jane doesn't feel the same way?" Constance pushed, ignoring her daughter's attempt to bypass the conversation. "Because I don't think you should be. I'm fairly sure her feelings are the same."
"She's straight, Mother." Maura replied a little to quickly, a little to forcefully. Maura never snapped at her mother until now.
The fact that Maura had switched from Mom to Mother let Constance know that Maura was nervous and uneasy about this topic. Maura had never been the type to take risks, and she had a hard time expressing her true needs, wants, and desires. It had taken Jane to make Constance see what Maura couldn't ask of her herself. Now she felt that it was her turn to repay the favor. "Is she?" Constance asked. "Does it matter either way? The way she acts around you, the way she looks at you, the way you take top priory in her life; Maura, Jane loves you."
"She's my best friend." Maura said with a shake of her head. "Yes, of course we love each other and we look out for each other. That's what friends do."
"Yes." Constance agreed. "But there is so much more between you and Jane than that. I would certainly do a lot for my best friend but I'm fairly sure the only people I'd step in front of a gun for are you and your father."
"That's just who Jane is." Maura argued. "She's brave and honorable and would take a bullet for anyone."
"Well," Constance said. "I certainly know I would never confront my best friend's mother, a total stranger, the way Jane did."
Maura looked at her mother carefully as she asked. "What did Jane say to you?"
"She told me in no uncertain terms that she didn't like it that I'd hurt you." Constance began and then held up her hand to stop Maura from interrupting. "You're father and I did hurt you, Maura, and I'm grateful to Jane for confronting me about it. Not only did it help me to see that I needed to fix things between us, it showed me that someone loved you as much as I do."
"Mother." Maura protested.
But Constance cut her off. "Life can't always be safe and sensible, Maura. Sometimes it gets kind of topsy turvy. And sometimes you need to be brave and take a risk." Constance took her daughter's hands in her own. "Talk to her about the way you feel, Maura. Tell her."
"I can't." Maura said sadly as she dropped her head to hide the pain in her eyes.
Constance sighed. "Oh my darling." She titled Maura's head back up. "If you don't you'll regret it. You'll spend your whole life wondering what if. And that's not the kind of life I want for you."
Jane walked in to the kitchen of the guesthouse her mother was living in and over to the freezer. Grabbing a bag of frozen peas, which she wrapped in a clean cloth, she pressed it to the side of her face. She'd been running down a suspect who put up a fight when she caught him, leaving her with a bruised cheek and busted lip.
"You're never going find a husband if you keep coming home looking like that." Angela said with a shake of her head as she continued making dinner. "All bruised up with a puffy spilt lip. What's any respectable man suppose to think?"
"Don't really care what a respectable man would think, Ma." Jane replied as she snatched up a meatball before her mother could stop her.
Angela gave her daughter a hard look. "So you'd settle for a disrespectable man?"
"I'm not going to settle for any man, Ma." Jane replied.
A long, slow sigh passed from Angela's lips as she shook her head. "You're not getting any younger, Janie. You need to start putting some of your focus and attention on your personal future rather then your professional one. You need to start thinking about getting married, settling down, having babies."
Jane groaned and rolled her eyes. "Ma."
"Did you know that after thirty your fertility starts to go down?" Angela said, ignoring the tone of her daughter's voice. "Than after thirty-five even medical aides like IVF become less and less effective with each passing year? Plus, the risk of miscarriage and having a baby with Downs goes up. Women, who have babies naturally with no help, live longer but do you know how hard it is to have a baby at that age without help? Less then one percent, Janie, that's how many. And after forty you could be dealing with faulty eggs, which has a whole bunch of risks for you and the baby, if there's even a baby to be had."
Jane blinked as she listened to her mother and then suddenly laughed. "You really need to stop spending so much time with Maura. You're starting to Google-speak."
"Janie, I'm being serious here." Angela pleaded.
"So am I, Ma." Jane said. "I'm not doing the whole husband and babies thing."
Angela pouted. "Why not?"
"Because I'm not, ok?" Jane replied. She was starting to get a little defensive. She was really tired of her mother, though she understood that her intentions were good, trying to marry her off.
"No, it's not ok." Angela argued. "You don't want to end up alone, Jane. You need someone to take care of you, someone you can take care of in return."
"I can take care of myself." Jane argued back. "And I have a dog to take care of. I don't need a man."
"You need love, Jane." Angela shot back. "You need a person to come home to, someone to share your life with, someone you know always has your back. Oh! I know! What about George Vaughn? He's cute, has a nice job, newly widowed. Or there's Chris Delgado, he just recently left the priesthood. Or Bobby…"
"I don't want a man, Ma!" Jane shouted as her mother rattled off names of single men. "I don't need to fall in love with anyone!"
"Why not Janie?" Angela pushed.
"Because I'm already in love with Maura!" Jane yelled back. Big brown eyes grew as wide as saucers as Jane's hands flew up to cover her mouth. She hadn't meant to say that out loud, ever! And especially not to her mother! The room grew quiet as Jane and Angela stared at each other. Jane's heart was pounding in her chest and she felt as if she might throw up. After several long seconds passed Jane finally let her hands drop and she whispered, "Say something Ma. Please."
Another few seconds passed before Angela finally smiled softly. "I didn't think you'd ever admit that."
Jane was in shock. That was not the response she was expecting. "Excuse me? What?"
"Janie." Angela said gently as she moved closer to her daughter. "You asked for bunk beds to build a fort because you wanted to be John Wayne. You tried to wear baseball cleats to your dance classes. And the entire time you were dating Carmine you were making eyes at his sister Carman."
"What are you saying Ma?" Jane asked in a soft, uncertain whisper.
"I think I've known for awhile." Angela answered. "And I didn't like it at first, I didn't want to believe it. That's why I pushed so hard ya know? Why I was always on you about picking a man to be with. But then I started watching you, Janie. I watched the way you were with the guys you dated and it was like watching you breaking in a new pair of boots. The boots look good but they don't fit right. Joey, Casey, Dean, well maybe not Dean, something about him gives me the creeps, but anyway, they looked good, they looked right on the outside, but they didn't fit." Angela smiled reassuringly at her little girl. "After I moved in here and started working at the café, I started watching you with Maura, and it hit me wither I wanted it to or not. Maura fits. Watching you with her it was like Cinderella finally finding her glass slipper."
"Shoe metaphors, Ma?" Jane asked her voice laced with the tears that were beginning to sting her eyes. "Seriously, you are spending way to much time with Maura."
"My point, Jane." Angela said firmly. "Is that when all is said and done, you're my daughter, my little girl; I love you. And the most important thing to me is that you're happy."
"But Ma." Jane said softly. "The Church…"
"Has its options and I have mine." Angela replied. "The God I have faith in, the God I brought you kids up to have faith in, wouldn't turn his back on one of his children for loving and being loved, and neither am I."
Jane jumped to her feet and threw her arms around her mother as tears rolled down her cheeks. "I love you, Ma."
Angela smiled as she held her little girl tightly in her arms. "I love you too."
Late that evening after Angela and Constance had returned to the guesthouse after spending the evening together with their girls, settled in to talk. "Did you get a chance to speak with Jane?" Constance asked.
"Yeap." Angela said with a smirk. "I had to push a bit but I finally got her to admit she's in love with Maura. Did you talk to Maura?"
Constance nodded. "You can't really push Maura, she doesn't quite get it, but I made sure to give her something to think about."
"Good." Angela said with a bright smile. "Because it's time our girls got to be happy and we both know that's only going to happen if they're together."