The next night Gabi stayed in the penthouse was three days later—a Monday, and her day off. Josh got up before her, even took the risk of going for a run. Patience, he thought. If she was gone when he got back, there would be another day.

But she was still in bed when he got in the shower, and was just sliding on last night's jeans when he came out of the bathroom in only a pair of boxers and a towel he was rubbing briskly over the top of his head.

"Hey. You can leave clothes here, you know. I cleared out a drawer and there's plenty of room in the closet."

"So you've mentioned." She smiled tightly. "Well, gotta get off to my busy day. TV to catch up on, potential donors to stalk on social media, Alan & Eliott's adoption application acceptance celebration dinner to prepare. Pacific rockfish doesn't grill itself. So…"

"Gabi. Stay for breakfast."

"Can't, champ. Remember? Scandal, tech mogul Joe Murray's cat's Instagram feed, adopt-a-thon 2016?"

"It can wait a half hour. Let me make you pancakes." He saw her hesitate. And he hadn't gotten to his level of success without learning when to press an advantage. "My Nonna's recipe. With a coconut and mango compote. Please."

"Josh…"

"Extra homemade rum-kissed whipped cream," he bargained.

There was some faint gleam of… of pleasure, he thought… in the back of her eyes. She made his day: "Deal," she breathed, barely audibly.

He beamed. "Excellent. Now shower while I defrost the compote. You smell like a thirty-one-year-old tech tycoon."

"Funny. I thought I smelled like a thirty-one-year-old monkey with delusions of its own grandeur."

He swooped in and kissed her, peachily, more wet than he intended. "So you do. Let the monkey keep his delusion, huh? See you downstairs."

His first order of business was to hang a note on the door for Yolanda and Elliot to make themselves scarce until after 10. And he was humming, actually humming, as he whipped the batter together. As she came downstairs, he was a little chagrined to find that it was Rachel Platten's "Fight Song," of all things; a bit too on the nose. He was just pouring the first set of three cakes onto a hot buttered griddle when Gabi hoisted herself onto a stool out the counter, clad in a black tank top and pale blue shorts, her hair blown only partly dry.

"Honey." He'd been thinking about what he wanted to say for the last fifteen minutes. He took a breath. "I'm gonna give you three things this morning and I want you to take all of them without fighting me on it. Please."

"Sounds kinky, boss."

"I'm not your boss," he reminded her.

"Wow. You finally realized."

"This," he slid his Nonna's spiral-bound recipe book, all the pages hand-written, ingredient-stained, sometimes lovingly annotated, across the table, "is the first."

"Oooh. Nonna's recipes? You wouldn't share before. Greedy Josh. Oh. Wow," she ran her eyes over the recipe for the pancakes she was about to consume. "A quarter teaspoon of nutmeg? That's interesting, Nonna. And—wow, these liquid proportions are surprising—she didn't stint on the buttermilk, did she? Sly old lady…" She flipped a page. "My God, I didn't know they'd even invented crispy green beans back then, and what was your Nonna doing calling it polenta and not grits….?"

Josh let her stream of commentary wash pleasantly over him as he flipped the first batch of pancakes straight into the trash. "I always ditch the first ones," he responded to her raised brow. It was true, although 'always' consisted only of the four months since he'd started cooking at all.

"Your griddle probably wasn't quite hot enough," she offered quietly, seemingly unable to stop herself, and then turned determinedly back to the cookbook, cooing softly to it as she made new discoveries.

Ten minutes later, he flipped the last of the cakes he'd cooked onto her plate, set the maple syrup on the bar, and grabbed a spoon for the whipped cream.

"OK. Number two. Breakfast is served."

Trying to keep the tone of the whole event casual, Josh had set their places along the breakfast bar instead of at the table. He didn't want her to suddenly notice they were sharing a meal at no cost and freak out.

So he also affected a cool disinterest he was far from feeling as he watched Gabi butter, add compote, pour a small amount of syrup, and heap a healthy dollop of whipped cream onto her stack of pancakes. She used her knife and fork methodically to cut out her first bite—perfectly well-cooked in the middle, he was relieved to see.

But then she just… looked at it, on her fork, from one angle after another, a sort of baffled expression on her face. She finally, much to his relief, chewed, and swallowed. Sat a long moment. Did it again. When she put down her fork for the fourth time without speaking, Josh drew his line.

"Well…?" he asked.

"These are…"

"Yes?"

"They're… God. You must know."

"Gabi. You're actually killing me."

She smiled at that, almost proudly. "They're delicious," she concluded. "It's pretty shocking. I mean, they could use a pinch of salt and you let the batter settle just a little too long before cooking them, but… how did you learn to cook like this, Josh?"

Josh smiled. "I've been… practicing… over the last few months. I started with Julia Child but I balked at all the cow brains and so on. I dug out my Nonna's cookbook… and I started reading some food blogs and, well…"

"Wow."

"It's actually a lot like coding. The details are not just important… they're the whole ballgame, the whole point, and when it all comes together and works right…"

"You've created something much more than all those technical little parts."

"Yes. And it's satisfying. Very satisfying." He took a swallow of his coffee, considered the question of whether it was too weak, tied it to a balloon. "Don't get me wrong—I don't have 'delusions of grandeur' here. Really. It's really not like coding, because, well, I'm not that good at it. I'd be lost without a recipe. But it's really made me appreciate what you can do."

Gabi shook her head ruefully. "I didn't know how much I needed to hear you say that." She took a much bigger bit and, mouth still full—pure Gabi—said, "Maybe I should learn something about coding."

"I can…" Josh let himself trail off before he offered to teach her. The whole point of this whole exercise was to level the playing field between them. Teacher-student was no better than boss-employee. "I've got a friend. Julia. Lady coder. Very hip, lots of tattoos. Lesbian—I think. But don't get any ideas… anyway, she teaches CSS and HTML for beginners."

"Cool." She seemed, visibly, to relax and he let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding.

Breakfast, from there, had many topics—Joe Murray's cat's Instagram chief among them. It was… easy. He left his hand on her leg without thinking about it. She leaned—almost fell—into him laughing when he pulled up Guggenheim the cat's thought-bubbled photostream on his phone.

He tried to stop her when she stood up to clear, but then she said one of the most healing sentences they'd ever heard between them, kissing away his objection. "Whoever cooked didn't have to clean—that was my parents' rule," she told him easily.

He waited until her back was turned to pump his fist triumphantly in the air, at that. God. This was working. God, God… Thank God.

He let her load the dishwasher and she let him put away was left of the whipped cream, syrup and mango compote.

"OK. Now I really gotta go. Shonda Rhimes. Strategically using Guggenheim's point of view to extract a donation from his owner. Adoption-themed fancy food." She crossed to him, put her hands flat up against the front of his shoulders, and looked as deep into his eyes as she ever had. Then she kissed him, slowly and thoroughly. "Thanks for breakfast, honey. Except… what was the third thing?"

Josh, sometimes, tried to feel the vibrations of the universe, and they were strong now, warm and strong, and telling he needed to wait on what he'd intended to give her—to let today's victories settle. So he made a last-second play switch. "Just this," he said, scooping her off her feet and lugging her toward the couch. "A half hour more."

"You think thirty minutes naked with you is a 'gift'?" she dimpled, pretending to be miffed. She hit him on the arm playfully.

"These will be." He whipped off her tank over her head and had to bite his lip. God damn, but she was beautiful. "I promise."