The weeks took on a patternless pattern. Josh would go into the diner for lunch, as many days as he could. "Will I see you tonight?" he would ask when he got up to go. She would say 'yes' or 'nope, got plans,' or 'maybe, I'll call you later.' Regardless of whatever she said, she came as many nights as she didn't, but not any more than half. She would come late, watch TV, do some reading or write emails for the Board, play video games. They had sex in every room of the house, in the tub, and once, mostly under their blanket, out on the terrace.

She never came early enough for dinner—and although she didn't always wake up or get up before he did, she never stayed for breakfast.

It was this last that left Josh permanently on edge. He had Gabi's company, her dizzying conversation. He had her body. But in the engines of his own body, there was a rock clattering down in the deep, echoing around a kind of hunger and a kind of fear.

Gabi was withholding food from their relationship. At least, food that was freely shared.

She sold him food at the diner, and he was careful not to violate her silent boundaries by ordering anything with too many special amendments, anything she'd have to cook herself. He had board meetings catered, as he always had, and she ate, alongside everyone, with her usual gusto. She'd grab already-prepared food out of his kitchen if she was hungry when she came over—a granola bar, an apple, some yogurt—but she wouldn't so much as microwave popcorn there.

He offered to take her to dinner and she refused, implacably. He asked her to stay in the morning for bagels—omelettes—French toast—freaking Poptarts. She demurred.

He tried to meet her for lunch on her days off, anywhere but the diner, and she fobbed him off with hollow excuses in a bright, cheerful tone that asked him to ask no questions in order to keep the peace.

He kept the peace. Most days, the peace was worth it. He thought as much when he got a text from her with a picture of a winking parrot and a caption that said "See you 2nite, matey." He thought it was worth it on the night he woke up at three in the morning to find her crawling into bed beside him, mumbling about how she couldn't sleep at home.

It was just… there was that rock, rattling around down in the machinery of his body, echoing, reminding him that something here was, fundamentally, empty.

So he helped Logan poach another friend's marketing director in order to buy Sofia's freedom for coffee one afternoon in the middle of November. "I think she's trying to When Harry Met Sally me," he told her, in dead earnestness.

"That's not what I heard," Sofia's eyes danced with mischief. "I heard she didn't fake that orgasm in the diner at all."

Josh fought a blush. Christ, these two really did tell each other everything. "That's not what I meant." He rocked his chair back, contemplatively. "She's—slow-rolling me. You know. Keeping me within arm's length…"

"Within genital's length," Sofia corrected. "I hear you've got nothing to complain about there, either."

"What a comfort." Josh rocked forward this time. "What I mean is, she's giving me friendship—and sure, sex—but no real intimacy. And I don't know how to change that without spooking her, Sof. I'm afraid we'll keep up this hot-and-cold stuff for twenty years and somehow never go on an actual date—never talk about anything real, anything about us—never make any promises or plans—never have children or—"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." Sofia held up her small but commanding hand. "Rein it in. Give her a minute, big JoJo, before you plan the next sixty years. We're twenty-five over here. And you two have earned your lack of trust, the hard way, with other people's tongues down your throats. And finally… she's trying."

"Is she?" Josh rocked back again, farther this time. "It feels more like she thinks of me like—like an addiction she's managing as long as she gets me in small doses. Not as a partner—or… or confidante. Barely as a friend. Like an acquaintance with benefits."

"Stop rocking, dude. You're seriously gonna fall over, and since you're everyone's favorite neighborhood tech half-billionaire, it'll end up as a gif that'll haunt you for life."

"Right." He planted his feet. "Right. So I think I have two options."

"Yep." Sofia took it as obvious. "Patience. Or—the grand gesture."

"I keep going 'round in circles on it. I feel like I could lose her either way."

"Of course you could. Or some other way. That's life. And you're talking about life with Gabi, who courts unusually weird disasters."

Josh started to rock back and forth again without thinking about it, and it was just as Sofia had predicted—he fell backwards with a crash, directly into the woman sitting behind him at a table with her two well-dressed indeterminately ethnic children, who were perfectly composed as they watched every liquid around them tumble toward him onto the floor. "Oh, God. Whoops. Yep, I'm OK. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Let me me buy you a round of replacement drink? Juices and… what kind of coffee, miss?"

While Josh spent the next ten minutes buying mugs and coffee cake and gift cards for the whole family and making conciliatory conversation well beyond the amount most people would have found necessary, Sofia sent Gabi amusing texts and pics of the whole scene. If it ended up on the internet, it would be her doing, after all.

Finally, she sent Gabi a text of the two children, Camille and Rogan, hugging Josh while he promised to come see their school play. It's #sojosh, she wrote. Gabi wrote back with a single, eloquent emoji, of a frog on a lilypad, wearing a gold crown and the traces of a smirk.

He was pretty committed to the knight in shining armor routine, if nothing else.

"Sorry about that," Josh finally returned to their conversation. "But Sofia—I just want to know—do you think she could ever… love me again?"

Sofia knew that it had been hard for him to say out loud, but she didn't have much patience, herself, for their dithering anymore. She drained the dregs of her latte with a noisy slurp. "I don't know, dude. Here's what I can tell you." She glanced back at her phone, and then shoved it in her purse. "You have a tendency to over-compensate, and to over-reach." She stood, grabbed her keys, and turned to go. "It's just… she needs the frog more than the prince."

Josh took his replacement coffee to go. And he walked around with that pronouncement ringing in his ears for a long while.