No more chances, Stanley.

I promise you - look at me, Karen - I PROMISE you that you're the only one.

For now.

For always. I don't want to hurt you.

Then why did you?

Karen…I promise you. Beat. Now let's go get you a new ring.

Karen replayed the conversation from the previous year in her head. That was it - the exchange of a few quiet sentences, a kiss, a loving gaze. And then it was done, all was forgiven. That was how it had always been with Stan. Everything had been more implied than explicitly stated or shown…a thousand sentiments were always lodged behind every painful word spoken. Perhaps it was because neither of them were very good at expressing their emotions, so that whenever an issue arose, the surface was only barely scratched. She did love Stan, she always had, but something was missing. She wished there was a way she could tell him that. She wished that they had the kind of relationship where they didn't have to keep secrets. She wished she had with Stan the ease of her relationship with Will, the implicit trust. She wished a lot of things.

"Where are you?" Will asked her gently, bowing his head to get under her gaze and bring her attention back to him. She put down her glass of wine and smiled at him faintly.

"Sorry…" she breathed, "just thinking."

"I like your quiet times," Will told her, clinking his glass against hers in a mini-toast. To what, she wasn't really sure. "I can see your soul in your eyes."

Normally, Karen would've scoffed at such a disgustingly poetic statement, but oddly, she kind of knew what he meant. Her eyes darted from left to right to ensure that their fellow bistro patrons weren't listening to the conversation before she leaned into him.

"I see yours when you're writing." She smiled shyly.

"When I'm writing?"

"In your journal."

"I haven't kept a journal in…"

"…a year. I know. But when we were on the beach, sometimes I would just watch your eyes as you wrote. At the time I didn't know what you were writing about, and sometimes I would try to guess based on the color of your eyes. You know - not the literal color…the way they sometimes pierced the page, like you were writing about a top secret government assassination plan. Or the way they danced like you were writing about…" she trailed the nail of her index finger along his palm and wrist in the middle of the table. "…a lover."

Will let out a surprised chuckle. He didn't know she had ever paid as much attention the intricacies of his existence as he did hers.

"Who are you, Karen Walker?" The smile in his voice matched the one on his lips as he looked at hers. She entwined her fingers with his.

"You know who I am," she almost-whispered, "I'm everything you deserve and nothing you need."

"Mais oui!" Will romanced. He adopted a faux-French accent. "And you are most certainly everysing I want." The round table for two they were seated at was just shallow enough in diameter that he was able to lean forward and brush his lips against hers without turning it on its side.

A waiter appeared, as Karen smiled against Will's mouth, and produced a large piece of lush-looking chocolate cake. Karen and Will parted as the waiter placed the plate between them, a fork for each other them angled across it. Karen poked at the big brown triangle in front of her as Will took a bite.

"Will?"

"Yes?"

"Does it bother you that I'm cheating on my husband?"

Will swallowed hard and set his fork back onto the plate. He licked his lips before taking a drink of his wine. After he set it down, he wiped the corners of his mouth with his thumb knuckle. Karen just stared at him patiently, waiting for him to answer.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I feel like it's my fault."

Karen straightened up in her chair. This was not the answer she had been expecting. She frowned.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you wouldn't be cheating on him if it weren't for me."

"How do you know?"

"I guess I don't." He challenged her with his eyes. "Would you ever consider cheating on him with anyone else?" He asked her in a way that said he already knew the answer, but wanted her to arrive at the same conclusion he had. She bit her lip and looked at the ceiling.

"No…no, I wouldn't."

Will didn't say anything, just raised his glass to her, as well as his eyebrows. He took another drink.

"I thought…I thought you would say something about me - about my character."

"Why would you think that?"

"Well because how do you know that I won't ever cheat on you? I have been cheating on you, in a way. For the past year I've been thinking about you but sleeping with my husband."

"True."

"And I mean, what kind of a woman has an affair? With her employer's gay best friend?"

Karen was on the verge of rambling. The thoughts spilling out of her mouth were ones that had been bottled up in her head for a year. Now that they were flowing, like the wine from the bottle the waiter was holding over her class, they were hard to stop.

"It sounds to me like you're the one that has a problem with it."

"Well of course I do!" Karen nearly shouted the words. It was a relief to say them. She had tried to pretend, when she was around Will, that her conscience didn't ever bother her. Will didn't need to be as smart as he was to see this masquerade. "Do you think I like feeling like an adulteress? Do you think I don't wish every God damn day that things were different?"

"See." Will's voice and demeanor were calm, despite Karen's growing agitation.

"What?" she snipped. "See what?"

"This is why I'm not worried about it. Because I know this isn't who you are. I know you try to fight this every minute of every day. And I don't blame you for it."

"So why aren't you…" Karen's voice was softer and calmer now. She knew Will's temperament and reactions very well, but wasn't quite sure where he was going with this one.

"These circumstances…us…" Will pointed back and forth in a rapid motion in the space between their hearts. "…is a different. It's this crazy thing that nobody say coming and nobody can explain."

"It doesn't count," Karen finished for him. He shrugged, nodding.

"Yeah."

Karen finally dug into the cake in front of her and pondered the sweet, rich taste of the flour and sugar in her mouth. An old Edith Piaf standard lilted to their table from the cabaret stage on the other side of the room.

"Can we talk about something else?" Will asked. Karen looked at him. "We always talk about such heavy stuff," he explained. "Can't we talk about something a little more…lighthearted?"

Karen smiled and nodded. It was true that in the past few days they had been making up for a lot of missed conversations over the past year that should've been had about what was happening between them.

"Sure, honey. What do you want to talk about?"

Will bit his lip as he thought.

"How fabulous my ass looks in these jeans."

Karen rolled her eyes.

"You are such a 'mo."