She'd been trying.

It was different in the garage. Paige had almost forgotten what it was like to have fun with the geniuses. Cookouts on the roof, card games, movie nights. She had an awful lot of free time lately, and she'd been spending the majority of it with the team, partially because she got tired of being alone with her thoughts at home but mostly because it made Ralph happy, and that always felt like a sign that she was doing the right thing.

There wasn't a selfish bone in her son's body, and she knew he'd tried to support her, to put her happiness first. But once she finally drew the truth out of him—over milkshakes in a booth at Kovelsky's—everything that had seemed so blurry suddenly came into focus. He was her most important thing. All she really needed to be happy. At least until the day that what made her happy and what made him happy were one and the same.

"Ralph, honey." She tucked a loose tag into the back of his shirt and pointed to the Proton Arnold screen in front of him. "Finish your game and get your stuff. We have to leave soon."

Toby leaned against the machine and made a loud hmm noise, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. "Why such a rush, Miss Dineen? Does someone have a hot Skype date tonight?"

"Idiot," Happy contributed, jamming her elbow into his side and rolling her eyes as he coughed, winded. "Jordan is ten hours ahead of L.A. It's like four a.m. there."

"Are you suggesting that our lovely liaison isn't worth waking up early for?" the psychologist asked with mock offense on her behalf. "Because I would argue that—."

"We're going to an event at the art museum," Ralph interrupted matter-of-factly before hopping off the stool and crossing over to pick up his backpack from its position near Paige's desk. He frowned as he glanced over at his mother, who was logging off her computer. "Don't they know you and Tim broke up?"

Five pairs of eyes whipped to her simultaneously and the garage fell abruptly silent, save for Sylvester's choked cough. Paige closed the laptop and pressed her lips together. "Nope."

The young genius winced. "Sorry. I didn't know it was a secret."

"It wasn't."

"Kind of seems like it was."

"Yeah, I agree," Toby piped up unnecessarily. "When were you going to tell us?"

Paige could handle the scrutiny coming at her from all angles in the garage—she'd gotten used to that years ago—but there was one gaze she couldn't bring herself to meet. She kept her eyes down as she closed her desk drawer and dropped her cell phone into her purse. "There's nothing to tell, now you know, and we're late." She wrapped her arm around Ralph's shoulders and steered him toward the door, escaping Toby's audible whining about his failure to figure it out first and a chorus of other scandalized mumblings.

But Walter didn't say anything.


"How long?" Paige asked for the fifth time.

"They're twelve minutes out," Walter muttered, checking Cabe's GPS location on his phone for her benefit even though the team's progress since she last asked was hardly worth mentioning. She slumped back into her seat, pushing her hair off her face with both hands. It was hot, almost ninety-eight degrees, and she'd already removed her long-sleeved shirt, leaving on the gray tank underneath. He was trying not to stare.

Granted, there wasn't much else to look at when they were stranded in the middle of the desert in a broken-down truck. No air conditioning and no use walking to get help when the team was in close proximity. Perhaps not close enough. Paige was growing restless in his company and he seemed to be agitating her even though he wasn't saying anything.

He wanted to say the right thing. If he'd been holding back in the couple of days since Ralph let it slip that the interloper was out of the picture, it wasn't because he didn't care. Paige had made it abundantly clear that his role in her personal life was limited. Things were…better, he guessed, since she and Ralph were staying at the garage more, but that wasn't exactly clearing a high bar.

"I need some air." She kicked her door the rest of the way out with her foot, slamming it behind her and creating a refreshing but temporary breeze. Walter considered advising her to stay in the shade, but determined that a few minutes in the sun was unlikely to cause any lasting negative effects.

Paige mumbled to herself, under her breath, and kicked absently at the dirt before resting her weight against the front of the truck and crossing her arms. He tried to force his eyes down to his phone, but they kept drifting to her of their own volition, to the curves of her bare shoulders and the strands of hair that had fallen out of her elastic and were clinging to the back of her neck. She was beautiful, even when she was sweating and obviously irritated. Walter didn't allow himself to study her this way much, anymore, but it was too tempting when she was oblivious to his attention.

There was a time they both would have enjoyed being together like this. They'd delivered the software, the mission was over, and if things were good, she would kill time by playing music on her phone and singing along. Or he would offer up a riddle to test her. Or they would just sit and talk about Ralph, how amazing he was, how much their lives revolved around him.

He missed that so much it made him ache.

Maybe it would never be like that again, but it certainly didn't have to be like this. The buttons on his shirt had long since been opened, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, but he decided to keep it on over his undershirt for added protection from the sun. He got out of the truck, coming to a stop silently next to her.

He heard her exhale, but she didn't move. "You're upset," he said quietly, knowing there was likely a better way to start but clueless as to what it might be.

"Not at you." Paige kept her eyes ahead, but her body softened and he felt himself relax in response. "It's just been a long day and I'm tired. And hot."

He was sure Toby would have a witty remark about that.

Walter cleared his throat. "Paige, uh…" He knew he shouldn't ask, he should just keep things light until the team came to get them, but it slipped past his lips anyway. "Are you sure you're okay?"

Her eyebrows furrowed. "Yeah, I just need water and a shower—."

"N-no," he interrupted nervously, consciously bypassing any thoughts of Paige in the shower. "Um, I meant…" Walter paused, choosing his words deliberately. "What Ralph said the other day. I want to know if y-you're okay. About it. But I don't want to overstep, so can you…can you just tell me whatever is acceptable for me to know?"

Paige was quiet for a long moment. He was trying to respect her boundaries, but lately it seemed like everything he did set her off. He didn't want to alienate her entirely. That outcome was too difficult to consider.

But she just dropped her gaze to the dusty ground and bit her lip. "It happened a couple of weeks ago. It, uh…it wasn't right for Ralph. And that was really the only factor I needed to consider." Her eyes met his, just for a second, before she tore them away. "I'm fine."

She didn't seem fine, but she didn't seem devastated either. Though maybe she was and hid it well. Walter couldn't read her like he used to. "I'm sorry," he murmured, blowing out a breath as he hunched his shoulders. She looked at him curiously.

"Are you?"

The question caught him off guard. He thought it would be a polite thing to say. Did he mean it? That was…harder to answer. It was no secret that he'd tried to win her back from the trainee, but...

"You were happy with him." The words tasted bitter on his tongue but Walter shrugged as if they didn't bother him. "You d-deserved that. Someone normal."

The genius hadn't meant it as a dig, but Paige immediately pulled away, backing up several steps with her arms still crossed. She shot him a glare. "Don't do that, Walter. Don't act like that's what this was about."

He swallowed, God, they were finally talking and he screwed it up again. "It's okay, Paige. You're normal, it's logical that you would gravitate toward someone who was also normal. And that you would expect such a relationship to be successful…"

Her fiery stare made it clear that his attempts to smooth over his blunder were wasted on her, and the rest of his sentence died out in his throat. "Is that what you think? That everything just works out for people like me?" Paige pushed back on her heels, shaking her head. He'd borne the brunt of her frustration before, but this was more intense than usual, like she'd been holding it in. "That's your problem. You blame everything on being different. You think it's inevitable that things will go wrong for you because you're not normal, instead of accepting that you've made a bad decision."

Walter cringed at the venom in her words.

"There is nothing wrong with the way you are," she snapped, and he probably would have appreciated the sentiment more if she wasn't barking it at him. "Sometimes things just suck. And sometimes you mess up and you need to live with that. I'm tired of all these passive-aggressive comments when you had the power to make this play out a lot differently."

She was talking about them now. Even Walter couldn't miss the subtext. He intended to apologize, to calm her down, but what came out instead was, "You can't say that." His fingers curled under and dug into his palm. "You chose Tim. You can't say there's nothing wrong with me when you chose someone who is everything I'm not capable of being."

"Because you rejected me!" Paige countered, her tone incredulous. "That's human nature, Walter. When someone hurts us, we run to the opposite end of the spectrum." She breathed out a humorless laugh. "That solved everything, didn't it?"

The genius opened his mouth and promptly shut it, momentarily stunned into silence. Objectively, he knew he'd pushed her away, driven her toward Tim, but…deep down, he hadn't thought he could hurt her. Because that would mean she cared, as much as he did, or at least more than he let himself believe.

She was staring at her feet, refusing to meet his eyes just like she'd done after he found out about the breakup. There were so many things he needed to say and they all convalesced into one word, her name, and it seemed like she was about to look up when they were both distracted by the loud screech of a horn.

"Time to go. I need a beer," Cabe shouted out of his open window before his face contorted and he gave them a strange look. "It's hot as hell. Why are you both standing out here?"