So...hi (please don't throw things). My apologies for my general terribleness — at writing, but especially at following up on reviews. I'm still working on this (I, naturally, have the last two written! Points?) and on TTF, and very much appreciate your continued eyes and brains. I am now officially out of school for forever and ever, and am looking forward for a relaxing summer that will hopefully get writing done, followed by a fall full of inspiration in the form of a new season.

So if you're still reading this, please let me know! I super appreciate the reviews, and will respond to them - when it's no longer 1 a.m. on a work night. And if it makes up for it, this is incredibly cheesy (not all of them will be. Just most of them.)

Lyrics from Smashing, by, of course, RLM.

~Jo

May

She's getting prepped for News Night when Don pops his head in. "You remember when we discussed going to a beach over Memorial Day?"

She perks up. "Yeah?" she replies, images of Miami and mojitos dancing in her head.

"What do you think about Cape May?" he asks.

"Cape May, as in New Jersey, Cape May?" she asks, confused, then immediately puts it together. "Cape May, where your family has a house and goes every summer, Cape May?"

He stops, momentarily derailed by her excellent, near-didactic memory. "Yup, that one," he finally says.

She leans back. "You want to spend two days with your family in Cape May? Think of the bikinis I could wear if we went to, say, Miami."

He smiles. "Three days, actually. My mom wants to meet you in person. She and Michael invited us down." She's talked on the phone with his mom a few times, as they've gotten progressively more serious, and she met his brother last month, but still. This is A Step.

"She wants to meet me for three days? We can't start with lunch in New York?"

"It's Memorial Day, we'll grill, she thinks I haven't had a vacation in four years …"

"You haven't had a vacation in four years."

"And neither have you," he points out.

She's not really in a position to say no. "Is there where you want to go then? With our first three days off in forever? Our last three days off in the foreseeable future?" He shrugs a little. "I'm serious. Do you want — do you want us — to go?" And by that, she of course means, do you want me to go?

"Yeah," he finally says. "I would like you to meet my mom in person. If you don't want to do three days we can go down for a lunch—"

"No, it's fine," she says, even though three days sounds completely stressful compared to the two dinners she's subjected him to with her parents. "Is your mom, um, …"

"Um what?"

"Is your mom going to be … old-fashioned … about sleeping arrangements?"

"What? Oh. God. No."

"Thank God for small favors," she mutters. Not that she's sure she's going to be having any sex with him there. She has to see how big the house is first.

"She's going to like you," he says unexpectedly. "She likes you already."

She smiles slightly. "Yeah. Because one can ascertain that based on two five-minute phone conversations." They had been accidental, as well; within a few minutes, his mother had simply sighed and asked for Don.

"And she's heard about you from Mitch. And she watches your show."

"Well, I love all my regular viewers," she says.

"And, hey, Mitch and the kids will be there too, it sounds like. So there'll be plenty of buffers. They're cute, we'll make them do cute-kid shit."

She stares, because that sounds even more stressful. "So we've got your mom, your stepdad, your brother, your sister-in-law, your niece, and your two nephews? Just so I'm clear. The step-siblings? Cousins? Porny uncles?"

"Just immediate family," he smiles. "I haven't been down there in forever. It's a big house. Right on the beach. We'll swim, there's a few restaurants, a nice bookshop, we can play tennis … It'll be a good time."

"Counting on it, mister," she smiles, and holds up her script. "I gotta go talk to Kenzie."

"Just so I'm clear, you're going to talk to her about actual, ACN stuff and not freak out?" he says.

She leans forward to peck his lips. "Eighty percent ACN, twenty percent freakout," she assures him.

Three weeks later, when it's finally time to drive down, those ratios would be flipped. A lot of that is simply nerves, but they — she and Don — also had A Talk late one night, where they kind of decided to get married. Soon. (Soonish.) So if this thing, this meet-his-mom thing, goes badly, she's screwed. For many, many years.

"I don't understand this desire to drive down tonight," Kenzie sighs, next to her, as they wait in Hang Chew's for Don to wrap up.

"If we leave at midnight, it's still a three-hour drive. But if we leave at 10 in the morning on Memorial Day weekend, it's a six-hour drive. We would kill each other in the car for that long."

"And to think you're at the stage where you meet his mom," Kenzie remarks. "Cheers." She holds up her glass, and Sloan clinks it with water, since she fully expects to drive for at least an hour.

Don takes one look at her, though, and won't give her the keys. At all. She admits she's had a few late nights but it's not nearly as dire as he thinks, so they get into a minor argument about him trying to be macho, which he counters (rightfully) with the point that he actually knows where the house is. She drifts off somewhere near Toms River, and he shakes her awake when they arrive. It's past two in the morning, so the colonial is cloaked in shadows, but she can tell it's pretty large, and close to the water — she can hear the waves breaking not too far away. He fishes the spare key out of the old-fashioned, false-bottomed mailbox nailed to the left of the door, and she quietly follows him up the stairs. "This is us," he mutters, showing her into a room and closing the door before flipping on the lights. It's larger, very square, and plain-but-pretty: dated, shell-pink walls; lace curtains and brown mahogany furniture; a jar of yellow flowers on a dresser; blue sheets. She peeks out the window and is pleasantly surprising to see the ocean waves rolling in. There's a large closet (a seriously large closet), and she dumps her suitcase in there, grabs one of Don's old NYU shirts, and curls under the covers. The last thing she hears is Don settling in beside her.

She wakes up ridiculously early (it's a blessing and a curse) and it only takes one look at Don to recognize that he's still in a deep sleep and she shouldn't disturb him. She slips out from under his arms, changes into shorts and a cropped black Lululemon tank, and swipes the key on her way out.

A five-mile run is what she needs to alleviate the anxiety, and forty-five minutes later, she's rounding back to his block. She's approaching the house when she notices a figure — female, dark-haired, slightly older — sitting on the porch steps. Shit. She briefly contemplates doing another five miles. Instead she wipes her hands on her shorts (her teeny-tiny running shorts. Christ, Sabbith, you are better than this, she chides herself) and takes a deep breath. "Um. Hi," she says, approaching. "I'm sorry that this is the way —"

"Shit. Sloan. You're up early," his mother says, taking off her reading glasses. She's got a large coffee on one side and the New York Times in her hands, and Sloan thinks, wildly, that she would probably like this woman a lot if she wasn't dating her son and getting introduced while basically wearing underwear.

"Hi. Yeah," she smiles. "I woke up — I think it was the fresh air and lack of noise pollution," she tries for self-deprecation. "So I went on a run. I took Don's key. I hope that's OK."

"No. It's fine. Alison Gerson. It's lovely to finally meet you," she smiles back and extends a small hand. She has Don's curls and nose, and wiry, tan arms and legs but a thickish middle. She looks like she plays tennis every day — Sloan remembers Don mentioning she was the one who taught him to play. "Would you like coffee? I'll have to make more; I didn't think anyone else would be up for another hour and a half so I only made one cup. I can make more, though." She has an incredibly pleasant smile.

"No, that's fine —"

"No. I — I always see you with a coffee mug on TV; and, if you're dating Don I know you must like coffee. Go on, go get changed and I'll make coffee. We have three newspapers delivered. And we have pastries. I insist."

She isn't going to argue with someone who insisted, so Sloan just nods and heads upstairs. Don is still snoring, damn him, so she simply showers, waves a blow dryer over her hair until it's not dripping, and pulls on black jeans and a gray, peach and red colorblocked silk T-shirt from Anthropologie.

"Do you take anything in your coffee?" Alison asks as she enters the kitchen. It's clearly been redone since Don's childhood and is now a gorgeous and modern space: views straight out onto the beach, lots of concrete counter space and stainless-steel appliances, smoked-glass-fronted white cabinets that lifted up like garage doors. She likes the sparse aesthetic.

"Just black," she says, lightly dancing her knuckles on the island in a rat-a-tat-tat rhythm. She normally puts almond milk in her coffee, but she doesn't know if that's a thing outside New York, and feels like asking for it would be rude. She doesn't want to be the high-maintenance girlfriend even though she knows that's exactly what she is.

Alison cocks her head patiently. "Don said that you liked almond milk. So I bought some."

"Oh. Then yes, if you have it. That would be great."

"Excellent. There are pastries in in that cake stand. I like the Nutella croissant quite a lot; Melanie — you've met Melanie — got me quite addicted." Alison is crisp and businesslike, warm but distant. She's very soft-spoken and almost seems to fade into her own unoccupied kitchen, but Sloan supposes she must be stubborn and sarcastic; she raised Don, after all. "And I have the New York Times as well. Don tells me I'm ridiculous for getting print and I should just do it on the iPad he got me for Christmas, but I like doing the print version. Writing down the answers helps you solve the puzzle better than typing them in. Something about tactile intelligence; I read it in a magazine."

"You were an English teacher, right?"

Alison demures with a self-effacing smile. "Once upon a time. Before I had the boys. I taught in the Catholic high school. By the time they were in school we didn't need the money, so I volunteered as a librarian at their school. Now I tutor, twice a week. I just like the crossword. Would you like a section?"

Newspapers are essentially useless to Sloan — by the time they're on the doorstep, the news is at least four hours old — and the question just makes her fingers itch for her phone. Still she says, "Sure. Do you have the business section?"

"Of course. Saving it for you," Allison hands it over, examining the crossword as she chews the temple tip of her eyeglasses. "Which city is nicknamed the Gem City? Last letter N. Six letters."

"Uh, Dayton. Ohio," Sloan smiles. "I got sent there a couple years ago to report on the recession."

"Ah. Yes. Thank you," Alison says.

"You have a lovely home," Sloan says, unable to let the silence settle. "Thank you for letting us stay here."

"Thank you. We bought the place when the boys were little, and it was such a good getaway in the summer months. We'd just stay out here and the boys' father would join us on the weekends," she says, and Sloan feels terrible for even mentioning it, since she knows that Alison's husband — Don's dad — was probably staying in Philadelphia to cheat on her, and she knows that Alison probably knows she knows. "We'd leave straight from the field day at school and would have to buy school supplies on the way back into the city; that's how close we would cut it." She takes a tiny bite of her croissant. "So tell me about yourself, Sloan. Something my granddaughter hasn't shared with me." She stares expectantly at Sloan.

Sloan smiles, because Don's niece, Madison, talks more than most journalists Sloan knows. "There's probably not a lot left to tell then."

"Tell me about your family," she says.

Of course. "Three sisters, all younger. One's a principal in LA, one's in med school, one's in law school. My parents live in San Francisco; we were raised there and in Japan."

"Are you close with your family?" It's an incredibly forthright and personal question, but the two of them, despite not knowing each other, already have an incredibly personal relationship.

She lifts a shoulder. "I'm close with my parents," she says carefully. "My dad's an economist, so we're in the same field and can just nerd out with each other, and everyone else can back out of the room slowly. And my mother — she's Japanese, and she fits that stereotype, you know? The whole tiger mother, very opinionated, a little overinvolved, kind of a know-it-all, crazy-high expectations compared to every other mom in my high school — that's her. So we're close, of course."

"That sounds like a lot of pressure," Alison says skeptically.

"Oh! I mean, sure, yes, but a lot of it's just cultural. It's how Japanese parents view child-rearing, and especially since we spent several years in Tokyo … it's par for the course. I mean, yes, I know it's not the way most American parents are, and it's not necessarily something I would emulate with my own children, but it was nice to know how invested she was. Not that I would … Not that I want … I mean I don't know … Children. I don't know if I would, you know ..." she flails.

"And your sisters? Are you close?"

She pauses, and decides honesty is the best policy. "We're very busy, and we're very different people. But they're great, and I love it when we get together."

"Mitch and Don aren't particularly close," Alison muses. "Even growing up, they were just very different. I always wondered if it was different with girls. I guess not."

Maddie, thankfully, ambles into the kitchen then, looking even younger than eight in a Care Bear nightshirt, and squeals when she sees Sloan.

"Sloan! You came! Dad said you were coming with Uncle Don but I didn't believe him since he told Matt Santa was real even though he is not!" she squeaks, then runs in for a hug. "Grandma, did I tell you how Sloan ordered one kind of French toast —"

"And you ordered the other? Yes, Maddie Lou, you did," Alison smiles. "Now, what would you like for breakfast? You're first up, so your pick."

Within minutes, Don's entire family is up — minus Don, of course — is up. Alison utterly transforms, going from inscrutable doer of crosswords into a loving, loud field-marshal of a grandma. She's whipping up pancakes and arguing with Melanie that chocolate chips are absolutely appropriate on vacation and keeping Matt from using the ketchup from his home fries to fingerpaint the white cabinets. Madison is going through her entire tap routine from her dance recital for Sloan, who is getting peppered with questions about what it's like to be on TV from Don's stepdad Michael, when Don finally makes his appearance, his hair sticking up in seventeen different directions. She's almost embarrassed at how relieved she looks when he walks in.

"Hey," he says, striding over to kiss her good morning before saying anything to the rest of them. "Morning, everyone. Sorry I overslept."

"You had a late night," Alison excuses. "We're just happy you made it down safely. Both of you," she adds as an afterthought.

"And we were just getting the 4-1-1 from Sloan on what it's like to be a big TV star," Michael says. He's a twice-divorced cardiologist in his early 60s and has the bronzed, plasticky good looks and alimony payments to prove it.

Sloan smiles awkwardly at his remarks. "I promise you, 90 percent of it is just not sweating under the Klieg lights, and another eight percent is making sure your EP doesn't hate you."

"Quoting you on that," he grins. "Anyways, Ma, you're making pancakes? How do I get in on that action?"

It's a family-filled day — breakfast is followed by everyone heading out to the beach for a couple hours, followed by shopping downtown and lunch at A Ca Mia, followed by a trip to Alison and Michael's country club. She sticks close to Don, smiling widely, telling the appropriate funny, fawn-y stories, laughing when Mitch — whom she quite likes, even though he makes Don want to bang his head against a door repeatedly — give Don shit for things that happened twenty years ago. They break apart at the country club, and she goes golfing with Michael and Mitch while Don and his mom play tennis and Melanie takes the kids to the pool. Michael is a great golfer, unsurprisingly, while she and Mitch duel it out for second and the right to drive the golf cart. The kids wrap towels around themselves for the trip home, then fling themselves into the ocean as the adults light up the grill for dinner.

"Pretty good day, huh?" Don asks, stretching out, as they settle in for the evening. He picks up his copy of The Passage of Power, thumbs to where he'd left off.

"Mmmhmm," she hems as she flips to the first essay in Marilynne Robinson's new collection. Vacation means no economics books, Don was adamant.

"You don't think it was a pretty good day?" Don asks.

"No, it was a good day."

"Ok, because your tone says it was, at best, a fine day."

"No, Don, It was a great day!" she protests.

"And now it's down to mediocre. Come on. What went wrong? Was Michael a jerk when you guys were golfing? He seems like the type to get competitive," he's suddenly nervous and his eyes involuntarily slip into concerned puppy-dog territory.

"You want to talk competitive, Mr. I-Made-My-Boss's-Kid-Cry-at-Scrabble?" Her eyes flick to the door, which Don has thankfully shut, and she repeats, "It was a good day. It was fun. The ice cream was delicious. I'm just … I'm not entirely sure your mom likes me."

He shakes his head, genuinely confused. "What are you talking about? Of course she did."

"I don't expect anyone to love or even like me, based on a first impression — I went to high school, after all — but it was just … she just seemed distant. Which, hey, I can get …"

"She wasn't distant."

"You weren't there, when we were the only two up. I know I'm bad with people —"

"For crying out loud, you're not bad with people. Would you quit saying that as an excuse to say whatever you want?"

"Sorry. I shouldn't've said anything, I'm sure it's just because it's the first time we're meeting and I'm just … I'd like to make a good impression," she admits. "Forget it."

"You and my mom are very different," he says. "She likes you, but you're very different."

"Ok …" she says uncertainly. "But I'd like her to like me. My parents love you."

"Well, I can't help my natural charisma," he jokes.

She shoves him. "Mean!"

"I was kidding. Obviously," he says. "She likes you. Mitch likes you and the kids like you and that's what she cares most about.

"That's not her actually liking me; that's not-hating."

"Look. When you found out your fiance was cheating on you. What did you do?"

She cocks her head. "I left him. You know this, Don."

"Exactly. A week before your 300-person wedding. You quit your job, you started completely over, you told him exactly where and how and when to fuck himself. My mom? She and my dad were never happy. She knew he was cheating on her, but she accepted it, thought it was the bargain she struck. She was a lot of things and she was a great mom, but she's not outspoken like you. She doesn't like to rock the boat. She doesn't like to admit when there's a problem. She just wants things to be outwardly smooth. She was stubborn, but mostly just to will things to be better. You're different."

She could accept that. "Ok. But that has nothing to do with whether or not she'll like me."

He sighed. "She will. She's excited that you're here, I promise. She was the one that invited you down. But you're … you. She just needs time to feel you out."

"What does that mean?" she asks, feeling helpless and idiotic.

"It means you're impressive." She scoffs. "I'm serious. You and your whole family … sometimes you don't realize how insanely intimidating all of you are. And she just needs to … get used to you. It's fine. I promise."

She exhales. "It doesn't help that you're a bit of a momma's boy," she smirks.

"Hey," he protests, tickling her lightly.

"I'm serious. Don't think I didn't notice you and Mitch being served crustless grilled cheeses before dinner."

He starts to nuzzle, then kiss, her neck, still tickling. "Move in with me?" he breathes between kisses.

"Not until you get over your weird aversion to eating sandwiches like an adult. I'm not cutting the crusts off for the rest of my life —"she breaks off what she is saying with a loud laugh, then clamps a hand over her mouth because they're at his mom's after all. He starts laughing then as he kisses his way down her sternum before finally moving her shirt.

She wakes early again the next morning, goes on a run again (in a much looser, longer shirt), but thankfully Maddie and Melanie are up by the time she makes it to the kitchen. They spend the day on the beach, grilling and playing football and volleyball. Don hovers, but manages to make it look halfway romantic: slinging his arm around her stomach, chasing her into the water. Sloan has to admit the whole day is pretty nice.

Monday morning, she wakes up early for another run, but it's windy and damp, so she grabs her laptop and two phones and heads out to the screened-in porch. Twenty minutes later, she's plowing through her email and plotting her her Tuesday show on the phone with her producer, Julia (who is still working despite the holiday), when Alison pops her head out. "Sloan would you like — oh," she says, startled by the site of her working. "I'm sorry."

"Sorry, Alison, one sec, I'm sorry; Julia, that sounds great, just type it up I'll look it back over on our drive back home," she hangs up quickly. "Sorry, just trying to get some work done when everyone's asleep."

"No, completely understood," Alison smiles thinly. "Would you like coffee? We still have some almond milk left and it's not going to get drunk otherwise."

"Uh, sure. Yes. That would be great. Would you … like to join me? Out here? The view is great." If you could get past the moody percolating weather. She shuts her computer, just to make her point. "Please. Sit. I'll get the coffee."

Alison gives her a strange look, but nods and sits. Sloan grabs the coffee and milk and sugar from the kitchen brings it back out on a tray. Alison prepares her drink precisely before linking her hands together. "So, Sloan, did you enjoy your visit?"

"Yes! I did. It was very nice to come down and meet everyone," Sloan smiles. "Thank you for having me."

"It was very nice to meet you. I get the feeling we may be seeing you down here a lot more."

She reddens. "I hope so, yes."

Alison purses her lips contemplatively. "What has Don told you about his father?"

Sloan's surprised. "A bit, yes. I, um, … I met Lily, last month, when she was up in New York with Mitch's family."

She nods. "Don will only have told you the terrible things about his father — and that list was long, let me be clear — but the two of them are outwardly a lot alike. They're loud, they're sharp, they're good at what they do. Both of them like to yell sometimes, but you'll never meet a harder worker or someone who feels more strongly that everything will fall apart the second they stop caring. Don's father was hard for a lot of reasons, but that was the hardest reason."

Sloan's pretty sure her probably-future-mother-in-law is telling her that her not-actually-fiance will cheat on her and have a second family in the next ten years. "Ok …," she finally says.

"But at heart, Don's more like me, and he's not … He's programmed not to trust. And to worry; to want to make things better. No matter what he does, he doesn't think it's good enough. It's made him very successful — fear can be a powerful motivator, don't you think? But it's made him vulnerable. He's so brash and so loud that sometimes he tricks you into missing the fact that he's vulnerable."

Sloan gets it, suddenly. "Don turned me down the first three times I asked him out."

Alison cocks her head. "Oh? I don't follow."

"Don and I … have known each other for three years. Or four. I honestly, I lose track. But the point is, I started at ACN right after having broken an engagement because I found out my fiance was cheating on me. The day we met, we ended up at drinks together, and the whole thing came out. I don't know if he remembers — I hold my liquor a lot better than he does, quite frankly — but I asked him out that night, after telling the whole story and taking his coat sleeve and using it as a tissue. He said no — he said he thought I needed time. Then he excused himself to go vomit." She wonders if this is actually Mom-appropriate, but Alison seems intrigued so she continues. "So we became friends. And he was a great friend. He listened; he told me not to call him; he pointed out when the guys I was dating were jerks. He had to do that a lot. He'd sit with me, on the floor of someone's office, and listen to me bitch, and moan, and make a poor choice, lather-rinse-repeat. And I wing-womaned him. We were better as friends, I thought. We … knew a lot about each other, by that point, and I thought we'd crossed into that zone, where, you know, you've become so close that the thought of dating is just repulsive. And then he started dating a woman we work with. Maggie. And they … were not good for each. For a lot of reasons, and neither of them are to blame, but it was very on-again, off-again, and they would both lead each other on and … It was not healthy. It was actually kind of terrible. And it kept going south, and he kept trying to fix it. Because he's Don and that's what he does, he fixes things. So he asked me what I thought about her moving in with him and I said it was terrible and, you know, told him why. And we were talking, and he asked why I was single. And I told him — not at first, and in my defense I thought I was about to take a job on Wall Street and we would become those former friends that you sometimes see in the grocery store and say you'll get drinks with but don't. So I told him that it was because he never asked me out. It was true; I told him I was interested way back when we first met, and he never made the move."

"He never mentioned this Maggie."

"She's nice, I promise, we're … weirdly, we're kind of friends with her. But after that, I decided to stay at ACN, and he decided to stay with Maggie, but it was on the rocks and it fell apart pretty quickly. I don't think either of them could do it any more. And then a few months later we were out, with friends at this bar we all go to after work, and … anyways, I asked him out again. And he said no, but we got to talking, about why and what and who we thought we deserved. And who would get to decide and what that would mean for our friendship. And then he finally asked me out, and now gets to claim that he started the relationship. Which is totally fair. But my point, with that incredibly long and potentially inappropriate story, is that I promise I know your son well enough to love him. And I know he doesn't think he gets to have nice things, a lot of the time. And that sometimes I have kind of the inverse problems, where I sometimes … I think I sometimes think I deserve whatever happens to me. The fiance … That took a lot out of me. And I think I'm lucky that it happened when it did, before the wedding, when we could both just walk away and never have to see each other again. But my point — again, sorry — is that I recognize that in Don. I promise, I do. And I hope that he keeps letting me in, keeps letting me see when he's … vulnerable, or worried, for a long time. I hope … maybe it's naive, but he makes me braver. And I hope I make him stronger."

Alison looks at her, hard, really looks at her and finally — she smiles.