Seth knocked on the door, patiently waited for a moment, but nobody told him to come in. But he knew that Renee was inside. Maybe she didn't want to be bothered, but Seth cared little about it. He then let himself in without formal invitation.

Renee looked to the left, where the sound of the screeching door came from. Her hope for pretending to not be there was gone.

"Am I interrupting?" asked Seth. He noticed the busy appearance of the desk that she was sitting behind; the papers, documents, laptop. She had been writing something but now she stopped to start paying attention to the uninvited guest.

"Work," she replied with a casual sigh implying how uninteresting the activity was. "What do you need?"

"I wanna ask you something."

"Yeah?" Renee was not alerted by the steadiness, slow pace and low tone of Seth's voice. The only effect of Seth's presence was a slight irritation because she imagined not to be disturbed by anybody there so that she could work.

"It's a . . ."

Now she noticed the serious look. Seth's closing the door and moving closer to her were another signs of the discomfort that the conversation would probably bring.

"Advice or information?" asked Renee.

"The latter." Seth decided to skip the introduction. "You and Nate . . . is that serious?"

Renee shut the laptop and the book to her right. She gave Seth a quick suspicious glance. "Who's asking?"

"I am."

"Who sent you?"

"Nobody."

"Dean?" Renee guessed, and she was pretty sure about it.

"No."

"Really?" Renee continued having her doubts.

"I just wanna know. Dean has no idea that I'm here asking you that."

When she looked him in the eye, she understood that Seth was probably telling the truth. Or he was a good liar. "It's a bit strange that Dean asked me that question just a couple days ago." And Renee had just as little interest in answering now as she had then. But Dean at least had the right, or something, to ask. Seth, on the other hand, that seemed a bit out of place, gossiping or digging into something that was none of his business.

"I'm not saying that he has nothing to do with me being here right now. He had said some things . . . about you two. . . ."

"Oh."

"It doesn't make sense to me. So I came here to get your point of view."

Somehow she forgot to be reluctant to talk about it. Renee sighed. As Seth sat down in close distance to her, and when he looked at her, he noticed guilt. "It's not like that," Renee said to him. Her voice was quieter now. Even though the door was closed and nobody could hear them even if that person was standing right behind the door trying hard to find out what was going on inside, Renee kept her voice low because she didn't want to risk it. The conversation had to stay private. "Look, Seth, I don't know what's going on. I mean, nothing's going on. Dean and I . . . it just happened. It wasn't right, I know that," she said, "but it helped us get over it. Go back to normal."

"What?" Seth expressed his confusion, and either that or the perplexed expression in his face should have hit her.

"I'm saying that it doesn't mean that I'm getting back together with Dean."

"I have a feeling that we're not talking about the same thing."

"Oh. Oh, shit." Renee automatically put her hands up to cover her mouth in order to prevent revealing what was supposed to never leave her mouth.

"But now I'm curious," said Seth. "What were you talking about?"

Renee, embarrassed, looked into her papers again. She had a desire to bang her head against the desk. This was awkward. It was terrible. Why did she even think that Seth knew about her and Dean? Dean had as much interest in keeping it a secret as did she.

"Renee?"

"Nothing." In an instant of panic, for necessity to leave the topic of her sexual encounters with her ex, Renee decided to answer Seth's original question. "Me and Nate . . . I wouldn't say that it's serious. We haven't got there yet."

Seth chose to play along – although he didn't have to – pretending to have forgotten about the conversation going wrong. "Dean thinks you're falling in love with him."

"And you're here to tell me not to do it?" Renee took the offensive stance; she didn't even know why.

"No. I'm here to tell you to reconsider what you're doing. Whether you still love Dean and want to be with him, or you've drawn a line under your relationship with him and want to move on for good."

"I don't know," Renee honestly replied. She avoided thinking about it too much. And when she did think about it, she never found a solution. It all seemed temporary and all decisions depended on decisions of others. Sometimes she wished to get inside other people's heads to know what they were thinking. But most likely they were as indecisive as was she right now.

"Well, you better figure it out quickly 'cause Dean's willing to give up on you if you stay with Nate."

"Neither he nor I are doing anything definite. We're not together now, and we couldn't be, but that doesn't mean it won't happen in the future."

"I'll be honest with you, Renee." The serious tone worried Renee. She started to expect bad news. "I'm not so worried about Dean's intentions to be with you, now or later, as I'm worried about his actions. He's not the same guy when you're not around. And if he believes that the door's closed, that you are falling in love with Nate, that's gonna do some damage."

"He'll be fine," Renee said. Her slightly trembling voice made it hard to believe that she believed that sentence.

"He'll do some shit and, well, in the end, you'll be the one refusing to get the relationship back together."

"It's gonna be okay."

"Dean . . . he needs a reason to be a good guy. You're that reason, Renee."

Renee sighed. "What do you want me to do?"

"Be there for him. If he can't see how much you mean to him, prove it to him. I know he says now is not a good time for you to be together, but prove him wrong. Show him how much he means to you."

Renee looked to the ground to be able to better control her emotions. It took her a couple of seconds to be able to look directly at Seth again. "So I should dump my boyfriend to be with someone who doesn't want to be with me?"

When somebody knocked on the door, Renee immediately seized the opportunity to leave the chair and move away from Seth. It was somehow fitting that Dean was the person standing outside.

It surprised Renee that her natural reaction was to smile. She was glad to see Dean, and she was all ready for the confrontation. But there was actually no reason for it. "Your friend here thinks you need help," she said to Dean. Renee quickly glanced at Seth before telling Dean, "I think he's the one who needs help."

"What?" Dean got confused.

Seth, on the other hand, was irritated by Renee's attitude. She seemed ready to reveal to Dean everything that Seth had just told her. Fortunately, she chose to leave. And she left in surprisingly calm, and good, mood. On the way out, she patted Dean's shoulder.

As soon as she was gone, Dean got in and closed the door. He looked at Seth disapprovingly. Then it turned into concern. "What's wrong, Seth?" Seth looked a bit down, and Dean did not feel like poking into him.

"This is what's wrong. You and her not being together. Her relationship. Your whoring around again."

Dean laughed at it.

"Your attitude, Dean."

"What happened to your agreeing to moving on being a good idea?" Dean asked cheerfully.

Seth didn't answer.

"We're good," Dean tried to convince him. "I know it's not perfect, but me and Renee . . . we're working it out."

"You should be together. You need each other."

"That's not true," opposed Dean. But he accepted the concern. Dean occupied Renee's previous spot and pushed away all the files on the desk in front of him. Then he looked at Seth and sighed.

"Don't let her slip away."

Dean observed him for a minute before asking, "Why that change in attitude?"

"I'm worried that you might do something stupid."

"I'm counting on it," Dean joked.

"Be serious."

"Okay. Seriously, why do you care so much? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's none of your business, although it isn't," Dean added immediately. "I just don't get why you're so concerned about Renee and me."

"You and her . . . that's the way it's supposed to be. . . . That's the endgame."

Dean was failing to understand why this mattered to Seth so much. But he could feel Seth's concern, even pain it was causing him. "You wanna tell me what's really going on?"

"I don't want to see my two friends hurting each other. I don't –"

The door suddenly opened, and that prevented Seth from saying more. Renee returned.

"You got that thing I wanted?" The question was directed at Dean. Clearly that was why Dean came there in the first place.

Dean swiftly stood up and walked over to her. He nodded. "Yeah." On his way he took a piece of paper with something written over it out of his pocket and handed it to her. "Here."

"Thanks. Hey," she said, looking at both of them, "I'll be back in about ten minutes. I don't want to find either of you here. Take your business somewhere else." And she left again.

Dean turned around and looked at Seth, concerned and confused. He couldn't grasp what the real problem was. In the end, maybe it'd better not to analyze it, Dean realized. "Pull yourself together, Seth."

"Yeah," Seth sighed, and finally stood up. But he wasn't alright. And he achieved nothing. Neither with Renee nor with Dean.

"You're hungry? Let's grab some lunch."

"Yeah, okay."

When Seth came next to him, Dean laughed and put his arm around his friend's shoulder. "Come on, man. It's not the end of the world. It gives me new options."

"That's what terrifies me," Seth admitted.

"Leave it. I'm fine. She's fine. You accept that and move on."

"Alright. I won't mention it again."

Dean smiled. "Good."

"Just one more thing. Something happened between you two?"

Dean surprisingly wasn't irritated by Seth's ongoing questions and comments. "A lot of shit. Almost anything you can think of."

"Recently?"

"You have something specific in mind?"

"Maybe. I don't know. I think she was gonna say something, but then she realized I had no idea about it."

"Oh."

"So you know what I mean," Seth guessed by Dean's reaction. He hoped that at least Dean would explain it to him and give him that closure. . . . Or the gossip.

Dean stopped walking to focus on Seth. "What was it exactly that she said?"

"I don't know. Something about that it didn't mean anything. That you're certainly not getting back together."

"Huh."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that I have a date tonight," Dean told him, somewhat enthusiastic about it.

Seth opened his mouth – he probably had more questions; so many things were very unclear to him; Dean, however, shushed him.

"No more asking," Dean said, making it a command. "Not me, not Renee. And no telling us what to do. It's not up to you to decide what happens."

Despite orders from Dean, Seth did say one more thing. "That date tonight . . . it's not with Renee, is it?"

Dean just chuckled. He didn't say anything. If he kept saying things, the conversation would never end. Seth needed to learn his place. Accept that there are things he has no power over.