"Sharon? Answer your phone. Where are you?" Brenda demanded into the phone with a frustrated growl. She saw Agent Fritz Howard walking toward her and she turned to speak into the phone, "just call me when you get this message."

She flipped her phone shut and rubbed her eyes, "oh, for heaven's sake."

"Rough day?" Fritz teased.

"Don't even get me started!" Brenda whined. "This whole thing is a nightmare and I wish it would end… except I don't want to go home." She blurted, uncharacteristically sharing her feelings with her former boyfriend and FBI-LAPD liaison.

"Trouble in paradise?" He smirked. He'd taken it none too well when Sharon had successfully managed to snatch the blonde out from under his nose and was ready with the world's largest I told you so as soon as Brenda uttered those magic words: "we broke up."

Brenda pursed her lips, "no. We have the exterminator coming and the house smells like deet."

"Uh-huh."

"Fritzy, I don't have time to have this conversation with you right now!" Brenda huffed, "I have to figure out how to find Steven Hirschbaum and I need the world's largest Reese's cup."

"How's the transparency audit going?"

"I'm not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation." Brenda mumbled. "Don't y'all have something better to do? Like figure out how your security was breached so easily?"

She stared him down as he rolled his eyes and retreated. She pulled her cell phone back out and speed dialed Sharon again. After four rings it went to voicemail. "It's me… again… I'm sorry that last message was snappish but I'm just havin' a really hard case right now-"

"Brenda, I need you in my office right now." Pope bellowed, leaning out the door.

"Can't I just have one minute?" She cried, hanging up the call. She clipped up the hall toward the office.

"Don't you need to finish your call?"

"I hung it up, Will, what do you want?" Brenda narrowed her eyes.

"You need to control your squad. This business with Flynn and Provenza is a public relations nightmare that we can only push off on Taylor for so long."

"They were off the clock. I'm not their keeper." Brenda drawled. "If you want to keep them wrangled then you should look into fitting them with ankle trackers. Now, if you'll excuse me."

Back in the hallway she called Sharon again, "call me back when you get this message! I am worried sick about you and I am sick to death of your melodramatic stunts. Just come back to the house and take your time in the doghouse like a man!"

"That woman makes me so crazy!" Sharon snarled, closing down her voicemail and dropping her phone to the floor on top of her clothes.

"Shh… this is supposed to be relaxing."

"Do not shush your mother." Sharon grumbled and then groaned as her masseur pushed on a knot under her right shoulder blade.

"You hold a lot of tension in your shoulders." The masseur said apologetically, "they're just going to take a bit more work."

"I think you need to use some more of that lotion…" Sharon groaned again.

"Don't micromanage the masseuse because you're mad at Brenda."

"Angela, dear, we all de-stress in our own way." Sharon closed her eyes as her masseur squeezed more lotion into his hands, rubbed them together until it was warm and started on her knots again. This time she sighed with contentment. "That feels lovely, thank you. And male masseuses are called masseurs."

"I love you, too, mom." Angela smiled at Sharon's predictable need to correct everything.

After a few long, peaceful minutes passed with no sounds but the sighs of the two women and the sound of lotion and hands on flesh, Sharon's cell phone rang again. Sharon reached out for it.

"Mom, I swear to god, you touch that phone and I'm going to pinch you."

Sharon rolled her eyes and picked the phone up. As she was debating answering it she felt a sharp pain in her arm. "Damnit, Angela!" Sharon sat up, startling the masseur. She held the towel to her chest and scowled. "I was a lot more supportive of you when you were breaking up with Justin."

"Is that what this is?" Angela sat up too. The masseurs exchanged glances of uncertainty. "Are you breaking up with Brenda?"

Sharon bit her lip, "I don't know."

"You're welcome to stay with me for as long as you need to, you know." Angela said, "and I'll support whatever decision you make but you should make it sooner rather than later with the way she keeps blowing up your phone."

"All I really know is that as long as this audit is going on I can't live in the same house with her. Not if she's going to keep treating me like I'm doing this to her on purpose."

"You can't recuse yourself?"

Sharon sighed and rubbed her eyes with her free hand. "It's really complicated. Our boss used to be involved with Brenda and he's single again and they're still close so I don't really get a lot of fair treatment from him but the major problem is that he's interim Chief of Police so even if I wanted to complain, he's the highest up I could go. If I try to recuse myself, I'm afraid I'll get dismissed. He knows we're together but he's setting me up anyway."

"That sucks… and you can't tell Brenda all this?"

"I am legally prohibited from revealing to the subject of the audit the details of the request for the investigation."

Angela thought about this for a moment, "but I mean, you can't just tell her that you were ordered to do it? Like in the privacy of your own home?"

Sharon shook her head curtly, "I refuse to compromise my professional ethics. She should know I wouldn't do that to her. I shouldn't have to tell her."

"Christmas isn't going to be the same without Clay and Willie Rae." Angela sighed.

"I didn't say I'm breaking up with her." Sharon corrected.

"Oh, come on, you're telling me that you're totally okay with the fact that she believes you would completely fuck her over like that?" Angela demanded, "because I'm not. If she doesn't know that you love her we're all better off without her."

"But I love her so much," Sharon admitted with a wobbling bottom lip, "no one has ever made me feel as good as she does."

"Yeah, or as bad for as long as I can remember. Even dad never pushed your buttons this much and the divorce had nothing to do with distrust. If she thinks you're enough of a bitch to do the audit completely of your own volition then you need to have a little self-respect and tell that Georgia Peach what's what or I'm liable to do it for you."

"So, uh… are you going to finish your massages?" One of the masseurs asked timidly.

"Thanks, but no thanks." Angela said, making the decision for the both of them. "I think what we need is hard alcohol."

Brenda arrived at the house late. She put off the paperwork until the next day – something Sharon would shame her for doing – but she needed to get home to see if Sharon was there. The house was empty and dark and Brenda's heart sank.

She was still absolutely pissed but that didn't mean she wanted Sharon to leave. It didn't mean she stopped loving her. She wanted her in the house to ignore, not off doing lord knows what. Sharon had never reacted particularly well to any of their fights – Brenda suspected that it had something to do with her divorce – but she'd never stormed off for more than a few hours before.

Brenda dragged herself upstairs to the bedroom. She found that two of Sharon's drawers had been cleaned out and she picked up a blouse from one of the still full drawers. She brought it up to her face and inhaled deeply. After the day she'd had all she wanted to do was curl up with Sharon and lose herself in the older woman's essence but today she'd have to settle for sleeping cuddled up to a silk Armani blouse.

Lying down on the bed she laid her head down on the blouse. It smelled of laundry detergent and the sachet Sharon kept in all of her drawers. Brenda squeezed her eyes shut when she felt tears well up in her eyes. She'd soon soaked the blouse and cried herself into a coughing fit, not caring that she'd successfully ruined the blouse that she didn't really have the money to replace. It was all of very little importance as long as Sharon wasn't there with her.

After calming herself and starting to breathe normally again she put the phone to her ear and listened to it ring.

Across town the phone vibrated in Sharon's purse, which was sitting behind the bar of the nightclub Angela had dragged Sharon to. Sharon, drink in hand, was enjoying herself on the dance floor – thanks, largely, to two large Long Island Iced Teas. Brenda Leigh Johnson be damned, Sharon was going to have fun tonight. Well into the night, in fact, and, perhaps, the next morning as well.

"It's around midnight," Brenda spoke into the receiver, her voice was slow and despondent, "I'm still mad at you… but I still love you… and… I haven't gone an entire day without talking to you since forever and I… just call me? ….Good night."