"We're not friends." Danny regrets the statement before it even finishes echoing off the walls around them. He can feel her tense against him, closing in on herself as she pulls away. His brain is frantically trying to form an apology, but he doesn't know what to say. He's never had a friend who could preoccupy him so entirely. He's never gotten lost thinking about the way a friend's lips taste. Damn it, they aren't friends. There something else, but he doesn't have the words for it. He remains still and waits for a spirited argument, but it doesn't come.

Her reply is soft and resigned as she slips away from him. "You're right. We barely even know each other."

The mattress shifts as she turns into her other side, back facing him like a sheer cliff he just can't conquer. He watches the off balance ceiling fan make a dozen or so revolutions, each go-round punctuated with a faint squeak. There are little dust bunnies clinging tenaciously to the edges of the blades, impervious to the whipping air. Danny's eyes track the movement, some far away place in his head wondering when they'll be swept away. Eventually the incessant squeaking takes on the cadence of a word: idiot.

He sighs and turns toward her. "Maybe I'm wrong. You do know more about me than anyone back in New York..." He trails off, unsure of what to say. The sentence hangs suspended in the air above them.

"But?" She's still not facing him.

"But I don't know much about you."

"You haven't asked much."

He feels like he's being run through one of those old fashion washing machines, and Mindy's cranking the handle as she wrings him out. He's not a talker. "Uh..." What the hell is he supposed to ask? Her favorite color? Food? He scans desperately to think of something he can express genuine interest in, and finally it clicks. "Why did you want to become a doctor?"

This time she turns to face him before speaking. It's dim in the room, but not dark. Alan's curtains are thin against the window pane, and he never bothered to install blinds. Moonlight filters into the room nearly unimpeded.

"Ok, I know it's totally cliche, but I just want to help people, to educate them, help them live better lives."

Danny doesn't comment on the fact that she's using the present tense, but he can't ignore the eagerness in her voice. It makes him feel like he's glowing from the inside out, the ember of his own ambition a mirror image of the ones flaring to life in her eyes. There's no reason she can't still do those things. He knows he would try and leap buildings to make this happen for her, run through the streets chasing the same dream. It scares him a little and he consciously backs away from the feeling. "Yeah that's pretty cliche."

She punches him in the shoulder, laughing as she asks, "What about you?"

Blowing out a long breath, he closes his eyes. His reasons are far from cliche, in fact they border on cynical and he's almost afraid to tell her... almost. "Because... I wanted to prove people wrong. I wanted proof that I didn't need anyone else's help. I wanted the status, the money I never had. Power."

"Gross."

She's smiling at him as she says it, and it's his turn to laugh. "It really is. I think I got lucky though."

"Oh?"

"You find out pretty quickly that those things aren't enough to get you through med school. Those cliche things... they have to be true too." He stops, abruptly, catching the way she glances at him in the moonlight. There's a self satisfied little smile on her face, like she's a kitten that's just lapped up a bowl of cream, drunk on her own wiles. They're talking about him again. "Wait, this is supposed to be about you, remember?"

She looks contrite, as if she's been caught shoplifting candy bars at a gas station (something that's only happened once, or maybe thrice, in the past). "Alright, alright. What else do you want to know?"

"Something embarrassing."

She taps her index finger on her chin as if she's thinking, the round tip of her nail barely denting the smooth skin as she contemplates her next words. "I could always tell you the story of my first period." She's smiling devilishly at him, and he feels something different from desire course through him. It's edges aren't as sharp. It reminds him of the first time he ever drank whisky, a slow warmth settling in his stomach, tingling out through all his limbs. This is a sensation impervious to cold showers and baseball statistics. It's unshakable.

"That's tactic's not gonna work, I'm a gynecologist. These things are fascinating."

"What tactic?" She's the picture of innocence, propped up on her elbow as she looks over at him. A curtain of her hair falls over one shoulder, eyes wide as platters. He remembers the way she looked the first time he saw her, and this time he gives in to the impulse to reach out and thread his fingers through her gently cascading hair.

"Tell me." Gently combing through the silken strands, he marvels at its texture and warmth, forgetting for a moment what they're talking about.

Her chest rises and falls as she takes a shaky breath. "Well, um, I was wearing white, of course."

The pad of Danny's thumb grazes the small patch of skin displayed at the base of her throat, brushing against the hollow before shifting to find her pulse. "That's the worst."

He can feel her swallow before continuing. "And I was, um, on stage… performing."

"Oh?"

When she nods, the bottom of her chin bumps against his hand, and she instinctively jerks it back up. "Yeah, seventh grade..." She trails off as he scoots a little closer, his weight dipping the mattress and pitching her forward just enough to make things seem a little too warm. "... talent show. My one woman dramatic reading of Romeo and Juliet's death scene had a rapt audience."

"Undoubtedly."

Mindy blinks a couple times, a sudden focused determination glinting in her eyes. The faint tremble he feels under his fingertips stills momentarily, and Danny falters, unsure of the effect he's having. A grin spreads across her face and she finishes her story, transforming into a consummate storyteller as she narrates the final scene. "Just as distraught Juliet plunged the cardboard dagger into her broken heart, aka under her left arm, Judah Finkelstein rather dramatically announced 'She's bleeding!' to the entire auditorium."

Danny snorts out an unattractive guffaw and collapses into laughter beside her. "Oh, man... you're kidding."

"For one brief shining moment, I thought it was simply my astounding thespian skills that had created the illusion of blood." Her head rests on the pillow beside his now, lying as they are, shoulder to shoulder. "Sadly, it was all too real..." Trailing off, she stares as the ceiling, her hand finding his cradled in the blankets between them. "Maybe I could stay in L.A., be an actress."

"Do you want to be an actress?" The question is an afterthought, distracted as he is by her soft palm and the slim fingers threaded between his own.

"No." Mindy infuses the single syllable with melancholy, closing her eyes against the moonlight.

"What do you want?"

"I don't know. I wanted to be a doctor for so long, and I threw it away. Sometimes I feel like I threw everything else away along with it."

"Everything else?"

She hesitates, opening and closing her mouth a couple times before she can articulate her deepest desires. The vulnerability in the action fills Danny with the need to hold her close. It's a strange sensation, and at first he doesn't hear her quietly spoken words.

"I wanted to fall in love, to live in Manhattan, to get married and have three stair-step kids named after my favorite book characters. I wanted a closet just for shoes, Louboutins next to my worn out mom sneaks."

Danny can hear her voice getting thicker, and he knows it's his cue to step in and say something reassuring, just like she's done for him so effortlessly in the past two days. He wants to tell her he can give her all of those things, but deep down he doesn't believe it. Her dreams seem so fantastical, even in a perfect world. No one gets to have that kind of life. "It sounds like a movie."

He sounds skeptical, but she merely shimmies closer to him, sighing out her agreement. "Yeah."

Words are failing him, so he does the only thing he can think of, drawing her into a gentle embrace to give her the only comfort he's ever had any practice with. Grasping her chin, he tips her face up toward his own. Her eyes fly open full of questions, darting down to his lips nervously. Long soft eyelashes flutter against his cheek bones when he closes the space between them, capture her lips with his own.