"You know you're fucked, right?"

Carol took in a drag of smoke, and sighed as she breathed out. "God, I wish." The joke fell somewhat flat on Abby's ears. It was a little unfair; Abby made seedy jokes like that all the time. "Oh, come on. I expected you to at least pretend it was funny, Abigail."

"I'm being serious here, Care-bear." Carol made a face at the childhood nickname. Abby simply misinterpreted her offhanded glare. "Oh, don't give me that look. The only way you could be deeper in shit is if you ended up fucking her. Wait, wait, I can do one better; if she liked you back."

"I do not like her, Abby. Not… Not like that. She's cute, yeah, but so are half the women in New York. You're cute, but we've both moved past that." Actually, Carol was pretty sure that she was the only one who's moved past it, but for decency's sake, she's never commented on it aloud.

Abby's eyes rolled. "Do you talk about all cute girls as though they're the second coming of Christ? Girl, I know you're trying the whole 'sad depressed ex-missus' shit, but hell, you could have waited a little longer. Y'know, long enough to go gaga-eyed over someone who isn't married? Almost certainly straight?"

"Alright, alright. I get it. God." Carol rubbed her temple with one hand, tapped ashes into her tray with the other. She watched with "I've only known her for half a week, isn't that pathetic?"

"Aren't you kinda pathetic yourself?" Abby's eyes twinkled mischievously. "It's alright, babe. You're just on the tipping edge of the fence right now. With any luck, you'll fall out of the shit pit."

She sighed for what seemed to be the umpteenth time that week. "Do you think if I fell on her side, she'd catch me in her arms?"

"Carol…" Abby shook her head in disbelief and laughed. "I hope you fall flat on your ass."

Despite herself, Carol found a smile inch upon her lips. It would only be Abby who could lift up her moods despite the shittiest of situations. The smile turned wide, and she seemed to study this look for a moment. "You've got a date with her today, right?"

"It's not a date. And her husband's joining us," Carol shrugged. Abby raised a finger as though she were about to raise an excellent point. "Oh, shut your mouth, Abby. As though I was going to pull anything on our second meeting."

There was a logical progression to this kind of thing, a progression that was cut off because Therese was married and because Carol was certainly not interested. Abby's tried to predict Carol's interests and flings for the past ten years, and seldom few have actually proceeded past anything but a distant attraction. Simply because Carol had been married. Even now that she wasn't, she found herself to be content with her situation. No, romance was a nice thing to know and experience, but Carol would never want to do that, repeat any of her mistakes with Harge again.

"Ha, well," Abby clicked her tongue and hoisted herself out of the seat. "You were gettin' ready to leave, right? I'll drive you."

"You're a blessing, Abby." Carol closed her eyes and after a moment, darted up as well.

Along the way, Abby continued to poke and prod at her temperament in the way that only Abby could do. Carol laughed, but she was hyper aware of the fact that her answers were indirect. Was Abby aware of that too? No, she couldn't be. She may have known Carol for more than anyone's ever known her, but she didn't look much further beyond the surface. Before her lamentation could last, Abby was already unlocking the doors.

"Here you are! Go get her, tiger."

"Oh, shut the fuck up."

Carol grinned at Abby's own smiling face, before waving her off. She checked her phone one last time, to make sure she had the right address (a silly thing to do, as though Carol hadn't already memorized the address by heart). With only an indistinct feeling of certainty, she rung the door. A second later, a man opened up. It took a moment for recognition to light up his features, but Richard Semco seemed pleased enough to see her.

"Mrs. Aird!" Richard extended a happy hand Carol's way, to which she took with a smile. "Therese didn't tell me you'd be coming over."

"Did she?"

"That must've been why she's been cleaning the place so vigilantly. She told me about the blast you guys had on Sunday." Richard turned his head to call out into the apartment. "Terry! Your lady friend's here!"

Therese's curious face poked out from behind the wall only a second later, and Carol felt herself smiling. Not without some form of caution—her previous conversation with Abby had yet to sink into the back of her mind. "Carol," she greeted, walking up to them.

Her hair was tied up loosely behind her head, and Carol couldn't help but think that it was a good look on her. There were flecks of paint speckled sparsely on her turtleneck. The mark of careless concentration. "You look like you've been busy."

"Yes. I finished setting up the darkroom, actually! Here, come in." Therese made a light gesture to urge Carol to come closer into her apartment. Richard stepped back accordingly, but there was a hostile look in his eyes. A look that held a distant challenge, one that looked over her and made Carol wonder if her eagerness was just as apparent as Abby claimed it to be.

No, he wouldn't have been able to tell. What would he know anyways?

"Looks homely," Carol commented. The place was a little dingy, more worn than an apartment should look, but an immaculate place wouldn't be Therese. "It's nice."

Therese smiled breezily and she felt her heart lifted by the wind.

Richard trailed behind them. "Terry tells me you make a good model. That's good—her photography has a sad lack of human touch to it." Carol hummed disinterestedly to acknowledge him. "The photos look like they'll turn out pretty well."

"They're also just practice, really," said Therese with a hint of embarrassment to her tone. Richard seemed the type to boast about everything; his talent, his plans for the future, his wife. She wondered for a moment how much he liked to talk about Therese, how much could he ramble about her? And then she realized it hardly mattered.

"The darkroom's in here," Therese spoke, opening the door to a room. Carol peered inside for a brief moment before she stepped in. Giving herself a moment for her eyes to adjust revealed a wholly different world. Carol was reminded of a sort of dystopian universe. The room smelt of vinegar and a certain something else that she could hardly name. Therese's face, amber in the light, looked expectant. She looked away in favor of studying the drying photos on the wall.

"These are nice."

She had forgotten Richard's presence up until he piped up from somewhere behind her, "Aren't they? Therese is always so ridiculously modest with her work."

Therese's eyebrows raised only slightly. Despite the light, Carol could make out how her dimples flourished, and there was a sudden urge to run her hands over Therese's cheek. What would she feel? How her muscles twinged with the inklings of a smile, every bump and dip of her skin. "It's not modesty if they suck," Therese joked, and Carol almost laughed with her.

The three went to lunch, somewhere close. A green tarp laced with gold fwipped around in the wind for a fraction of a second, and then it laid still. The interior made the place look a little archaic, not the kind of place that had struck Carol as a place Richard would choose. She supposed that he wanted to impress her, a desire he felt without even thinking about it. If nothing else, it was quiet, even when nearly full. They sat in a booth. Richard tried to make small talk but despite Carol's answers and chatters, her mind was elsewhere.

The waiter had only just set down the appetizers when Richard's phone rang. Therese gave him a look of curious caution. "It's Phil," Richard said, almost pleadingly and stood up to take it.

Carol leaned up against her hand, and carefully picked up a piece of breaded cheese and stuck it into her mouth. "Huh, I wonder if everything's alright," she said, and Therese nodded absently, taking another piece of breaded cheese.

"We'd probably finish this before Richard comes back," Therese commented, and Carol wondered if she could pick up the hints of bitterness in her tone. Perhaps she didn't care at all; the disinterest, the look of ennui, they said volumes in those looks alone. What was she supposed to pick up from all of this?

"Do you mind?"

Therese said nothing, gazing directly into Carol's eyes. And for a moment, Carol grew frustrated. It was unreasonable, she supposed. What part of it is unreasonable, she wondered, to expect that a question asked is answered? "Do you?"

"Hm," Therese paused for a moment. Her mouth formed multiple shapes in the span of a second, before she shrugged. It was less effort than an actual answer. "What am I supposed to feel about it? It's a thing that happens."

Carol's lips pursed and stretched into a thin line. "When you learn that you can refuse things you don't like, then you'll learn that you can change things you don't like as well." The conversation died there, because Therese said nothing else, and she herself didn't feel much of a need to tie dead ends.

Therese stared past Carol's shoulder; the same far-out look she held on Sunday. With a slight jolt, her gaze went to her lap, her chest, and she started picking at the bits of white paint. Perhaps she might have been embarrassed that she didn't change before they left. Richard had been insistent that they leave at once, oddly so, because this place always filled up around this time. Despite the fact that it hadn't.

She had been right about the appetizers. As Richard came back to them, he noticed the empty plate and gave a gasp of mock offense. "You didn't save anything for me!" he complained, sliding back into his original seat. Carol shifted around with a slight feeling of unease.

"Sorry, they really were too good," said Therese, and this struck Richard as unbelievably funny. He laughed, kissed at her cheek and Carol gazed away instinctively. A stray wind was blowing up leaves outside the restaurant.

Richard sighed and apologized as well. Phil had been talking about how his older brother was going to be going out with him, and how he wanted Therese and Richard to go to some party. The kind of thing that Carol, personally, saw as a little silly, but she wasn't in any position to comment. Dannie was a physicist, but he'd been working as an online journalist before he started attending university. Phil spoke about how he might have been able to hook Therese up with some kind of job in photojournalism, assuming the interaction went well. "I can extend the invitation to you, if you'd like," he said, and it took her a moment to realize that he was speaking to her. It didn't take much thought for Carol to shake her head.

"No, it's fine," she said, staring at the cutlery laid out upon the table. "Not my kind of scene."

The explanation seemed to do well enough for the two of them. Time couldn't have passed any faster for Carol's tastes, really. But once she got past the initial discomfort that came from a place she couldn't exactly name, she found that she was enjoying herself. Even Richard's presence had done nothing to put a damper on her mood (and she might have even realized that perhaps it was silly of her to want to exclude him in the first place). Her only regret was that it had ended far too soon.

"You can stop here," Carol said, pointing out in a general direction. Therese was already back at their apartment, because Richard said she wanted a word with her, and that he'd be out shopping for a little bit after he dropped her off anyways. Therese, after a moment of hesitation, agreed that she'd rather be working. Carol was left feeling somewhat confused, but unperturbed.

"Hey, thanks," he spoke. It wasn't exactly what she had been expecting. Then again, she didn't know what she had been thinking in the first place. "I mean… Therese hasn't had any genuine friends in a long time. Not any friends that she's met herself. She's kind of flighty, you know? Even getting her to move up to New York with me was a huge issue. But she seems to like you, and I can really only hope that lasts."

They stared at each other for a moment. Carol was speechless, funded mostly by the fact that there was really nothing she could say. She reached for a contrived answer, the polite answer. "It's not a problem. I like Therese."

"That's good. Anyways, have a good one, Mrs. Aird!"

Carol tried to smile back as she stepped out of the vehicle. "You too, Richard."

And yet, even as she spoke, there was a feeling in her chest. An array of complex emotions, many of which she couldn't even begin to put a name to.