A/N: Got some new ideas coming up, so I'm not going to have to skip ahead as much as I thought I would.

"Well as much as I enjoy all your girlish squealing and gossiping about people that are total strangers to me, I gotta go," Adam said, standing up from the couch.

"But you're our manly man!" Lindsay protested, pulling on the hem of his shirt. "Without you, we don't have a boy for our boy/girl party."

"You won't miss me once you start listening to your boy bands and singing into hairbrushes."

"Linds how did he know our plan for the night?" Karen asked, tossing a pillow at her.

"Because I'm a genius. And I know how juvenile my wife gets when she's unsupervised around her friends," he explained, giving Lindsay a pointed look.

"That's was only that one time," she said, holding back a laugh.

"We still can't go to that bodega without getting mean looks."

"Well Austin shoulda paid attention to where she was walking."

"You shoulda paid attention to who you were pushing."

"Well anyway it was before we had kids. We're much better now."

"Oh sure, that's why you guys were racing remote controlled cars the other day."

"You and Danny were the ones that thought it would be a good idea to coat the counters with Crisco and drive the cars over it."

"And every time you look at the dent in the wall, you're gonna laugh."

"We can't forget to fix it before we move out."

"Alright. Is Austin coming over tonight?"

"Yep."

"God bless this house and all who are in it…"

"Adam, go to work."

"I love you."

He leaned over the back of the couch and kissed her, taking a few extra seconds just because he could.

"I love you too. Be safe babe."

He tweaked her nose and left the apartment and she sighed a little while she watched him go.

"You guys are disgusting."

Lindsay looked down at Karen and glared.

"What makes you say that?"

"I dunno, you just are."

"Well thanks, but I put up with you and Doug sucking face daily since the seventh grade, so I am pretty sure you can handle a goodbye kiss."

"You were just jealous."

"Of you and dog breath? Not even."

"I will never understand why you and Doug hate each other so much."

"First grade. He stuck a lollipop in my hair and I missed the Christmas party tryna get it out!"

"I've heard the story. I just don't know why you still hate him for that."

"I don't really hate him, I just like to say I do. He's like another one of my brothers only if I kill him it doesn't increase my percentage of inheritance."

"Then why'd you let me marry him?"

"Because he loves you and you love him and therefore I love him too, no matter how much he can get on my nerves."

"Oh I see."

"Besides, he's proven he cares about me too… I seem to recall many a tongue lashing from him to those jerks that called me Typhoid Mary."

"Man, high school sucked."

"Once we got out though, we seemed to make up for that."

"Road trips to nowhere."

"Dance parties in the parking lot in the wee hours."

"Chasing geese."

"That will never be fun in any other context."

"There was the time that the one goose tripped and made you laugh so hard you fell into a mud puddle."

"I miss college," Lindsay sighed.

"You were the best roommate ever."

"Thanks."

The door opened and Austin stepped in, kicking her Converse off in her version of a greeting.

"I saw your butthead in the hallway. Did you let him cut his own hair again?"

"I apparently don't let him do anything, but I did happen to leave him home with the scissors."

"He looks goofy."

"I told him he missed a spot and I am not going out in public with him until he fixes it."

"Is he really that cheap that he won't spend ten bucks for a haircut?"

"No, he's just male."

"Austin I have to thank you for saying something because I so wanted to," Karen said with a giggle.

"Don't make fun of him," Lindsay half pouted. "He's cute."

"He is a major dork."

"Yeah Linds. He's like one of those guys we would have made fun of in middle school."

"You guys are mean! I love him in case you haven't noticed. Plus he just so happens to be the best husband in the world, so you two can shove it."

"Oh, she's getting mad," Austin said, raising her eyebrows.

"Look, she's making that face."

"You guys are the worst friends ever," she teased reaching down to smack them both with a pillow.

"I love you too Linds."

She stuck out her tongue then sat up on the couch, tossing one of Colton's stuffed animals into the toy basket across the room.

"I don't know about you guys, but I am going to need some ice-cream if I'm going to stay up much longer."

"You always need ice-cream," they said together, looking at each other and grinning.

"Oh my word, I knew getting the two of you together was going to backfire."

"Two scoops please," Austin requested.

"Haven't you had like five gallons of ice-cream in the last week?"

"What's your point?"

"I just think it's funny. Eating for two again and all that."

"You're pregnant?" Karen asked with a smile.

"Just a little."

"You brave woman. How close are they gonna be?"

"Fourteen months apart, give or take some weeks."

"You're going to love it."

"I'm kind of looking forward to the chaos. And if it's a girl… oh man, poor Danny."

"I can't wait," Lindsay said, handing them each a bowl of ice-cream. "We need a newborn around here again."

"You could contribute you know."

"Maybe someday. We'll see."

"You guys plan it and we're like oh hey, again?"

"We didn't plan Colton. Well we did, just he kinda showed up about a year before we were thinking he would."

"Linds, once you get to kid number five you're going to find that all the planning you've been doing is a big cosmic joke," Karen said, taking a bite of her ice-cream.

"Nah, I am pretty sure Lindsay can plan the world and the world shall obey."

"I don't do that, I am just really good at convincing people that was my plan all along."

"Can I be you when I grow up?"

"Austin you're never going to grow up."

"Small technicality."

"Oh man, I ate too much," Karen groaned laying black on the floor. "I haven't gorged that much since that week when we decided to try every dish at the Chinese restaurant."

"As full as I am… everything on the Chinese menu sounds so good right now," Austin admitted, spinning a Funyun around her finger.

"Austin we just downed an extra large pizza with everything on it, all that ice-cream and a package of Twizzlers."

"What's your point?"

"Nothing I was just making an observation."

"Oh, okay."

"Mama!" Colton shouted from his room.

"Oh my word why is he up?" Lindsay groaned, struggling off the couch. "It's one in the morning."

"He knew we had food."

"Probably. Now that he's walking he's hungry all the time."

She made her way into the bedroom and found him standing in his crib, a huge grin on his face.

"Hey dude, what's up?"

"Wahna?"

She yawned and took the sippy cup of water off of the dresser and handed it to him. He drank it quickly then tossed it to the floor.

"Go back to sleep."

"No mama."

"Yes."

She laid him down and covered him with his blanket and he grunted and sat up again, ready to play.

"Baby, it's late, you need to go to sleep."

"Pay mama."

"No, we're not going to play. You're going to go to sleep."

She laid him down again and left the room, hearing his cries of protest even as she shut the door.

"No, one of my favorite things is watching Lindsay get hit on," Karen was saying in a tone that seemed like she was divulging a secret. "She gets all flirty and talks about some fictional boyfriend that's a sniper or a wrestler or some crazy thing and these guys would still offer her rides home or to buy her a drink or something. Totally unfazed like they couldn't handle themselves around her. And she would just stand there and let them make fools of themselves."

"Quit flappin' your gums," Lindsay admonished.

"She asked!"

"Yeah, Adam said she's got some good stories."

"Oh great," she muttered, flopping down onto the end of the couch. "Just let me know when it's over."

"Did she ever tell you about the time she broke Jordy's leg?"

"I did not break his leg!" Lindsay clarified. "I just so happened to be the ring leader in the stunt that he was participating in when his leg got broken."

"I must hear this."

"It was back when we worked at the grocery store, and Lindsay had just become a manager. Well one Saturday night we're all pulling a graveyard to put out the shipment for the next week. And there's like five of us in the backroom and it's just piled with all this stuff and we're having a hard time getting around. So Lindsay has the brilliant idea that we should put the ladders away and just climb up on merchandise to get to stuff. All of us being like seventeen years old think that is grand idea. But after awhile, Lindsay gets bored of that because scaling 12 feet of cereal is not that thrilling after all. So she starts jumping off of it to get down. Now most of us had grown up on or around farms and we spend hours upon hours jumping hay bales and hay rolls and all sorts of things and we know how to land so we don't get hurt. But Jordy was a city boy and he had never landed a thing in his life."

"I can see where this is going."

"I think it was about halfway down he started to realize what he was doing and he started windmilling in the air and he hits the concrete floor there was like this second of silence and then he gasps really loud and just kind of slumps over, passed out. So Lindsay's frantic, none of us know what to do and of course one of the guys says "Oh man, I bet his leg jammed up through his body and sliced through his stomach!" which we all know is impossible, but serves to freak us out more anyway."

"So what did you do?" Austin asked with a chuckle.

"Someone suggested calling an ambulance and Lindsay was like "No way, they'll come back here and know what happened and it'll be my fault because I'm supposed to be responsible or something!" So once he wakes up we take him out to her car and she's going to drive him to the hospital, but he's laughing hysterically because he's in shock and she doesn't want to be alone with him because she's afraid of him or something. So she goes back in the store and calls the owner and she's all nervous and stuttering and finally I hear her go "But I didn't tell him to jump, he just did it out of his own stupidity!""

"Well it was the truth. He didn't have to jump."

"Oh poor kid. He was on crutches forever."

"Lindsay you maimed a guy!" Austin laughed. "I am so proud of you!"

"Austin, shut up."

"You haven't even heard the best story yet."

"There is one that tops that?"

"This one customer was being a real nightmare one day and someone had the brilliant idea to let Linds deal with her. So the lady is standing there ranting and cussing and generally disrupting the whole store. And Lindsay is going "Ma'am… ma'am… ma'am," and the lady won't shut up. So finally Lindsay stomps her foot like she's three and goes "Ma'am, you need an attitude adjustment and I am going to give you some options here. You can either adjust it yourself and return to the normal state of being that most people are a part of, or I will adjust your attitude for you and let me just say it ain't no wussy outpatient procedure.""

"Oh my word. What happened?"

"The lady left the store and Lindsay got a promotion."

"Oh man. You're cooler than I thought you were."

"Yeah, whatever," she said, shaking her head. Everyone had always said she was a firecracker and she wondered where in the world that had gone too. She was more of a slow burn now, like one of those Pagoda fireworks that is lit and slowly pops up to full size. Her mouth could probably get her into more trouble now that she sometimes faced the business end of a gun than it could back then when the worst she ever faced was a cranky customer with a huge purse.

"Mommy!"

Lindsay lifted one eyebrow and looked at Austin, who seemed a little confused herself.

"Was that your child in there, because he never says mommy."

"I think it's because he's whining. Mommy sounds weird. That's your name."

"You have a strange child."

"He's is father," she said, standing up once again. "This may take a while."

She made her way back to the bedroom and Karen waited until she was out of earshot to speak.

"Austin can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"Is Adam good enough for her?"

"What do you mean?"

"Just what I said. Is he good enough for her? Does he make her happy? I haven't been around them together as much as you have so I don't really know."

"He's good enough for her. And she's happy. Crazy, insane, drive everyone else nuts kind of happy. And we tease her about being spoiled and living in a fantasy world because not everything can be this perfect all the time, but really, for them it is. They know each other so well that it's almost scary. I mean, Danny and I know each other completely, but we've also spent most of our lives together. Adam and Lindsay on the other hand know each other just as well after only, what four and a half years of knowing each other? I'm sure there's fights they have and things she doesn't tell me about, but she loves him enough to never cast him in a bad light."

"He takes care of her then? She doesn't know that I know much about the depression, but he's okay with it?"

"Yeah. He's really supportive. She doesn't tell me that much about it, but he's said some stuff to me before when he's been worried about her. When it comes down to it, he's kind of tough love on the issue, which is what she needs because she would devour a man that coddled her."

"She'd eat him for breakfast."

"He's figured out a good balance I guess. She told me once that no matter how bad and how dark the day, once she tells him it all sort of fades and it's not so bad anymore. She trusts him with that. And they're still as in love as I have ever seen two people be."

"That's what I've always wanted for her. I was so afraid that she would never let anyone in, and if she did he wouldn't be good enough and he'd tear her down. And she doesn't need that again."

"No, she doesn't. He is completely the opposite of those lowlifes she was with before. I mean you only have to hear him talk about her once to see how much he loves her. He makes these little passing comments sometimes, like the other day he was telling me how she had a million things to do and errands to run and all this. And she was still going to bring him lunch or something, and he just said "My wife is amazing, isn't she?" And it wasn't like he was trying to get anything from saying that, he was just stating a fact that still almost surprised him. And they always talk about who is luckier between the two of them and it's almost sickening how lucky they both really are."

"I was kind of worried that it was too much of a good thing, you know? Too much fairy tale and it wouldn't last."

"It'll last. Believe me. I am just as sure about them as I am about me and Danny. And that is a big kind of sure right there."

Lindsay stood in the hallway and listened to their words, not catching everything, but getting enough that a tear trickled down her cheek and she backtracked into the bedroom and picked up the phone.

"Hello?"

"Hi."

"Hey babe. What's up?"

"Nothing. I just wanted to say hi and I love you."

"Hi and I love you too."

She smiled and twisted a strand of hair around her finger, flashing back just a moment to some of their very first late night phone calls, when everything had been electrifyingly new and adventurous, every touch and I love you had given her chills.

"Are you sure everything is okay?" he asked, breaking through her reverie.

"Yeah. It's perfect."

"You know what I was thinking?" he asked, and she could see him leaning back in his chair, fighting the urge to put his feet on the table.

"What?"

"Once it warms up we should get out of here for a weekend. Take Colton and go camping. Get nothing but fresh air and fish and swimming in a lake somewhere."

"That sounds really good."

"Plan?"

"Plan. And get your feet off the table."

"You know me too well."

"I like it like that. I'll let you go. Sorry if I distracted you."

"You're my favorite distraction and I was just sitting here waiting for results anyway."

"Do you know how irresistible you are?"

"Yeah, and you remind me quite often, but I must say that I'm not the only one."

"When are you coming home?"

"You'd best loose that voice madam, I'm at work."

"I'm going to drive you crazy until the day you die."

"I'm takin' you with me."

"Deal."

"I'd better go. I don't think the city of New York likes to pay its employees to flirt with their spouses on the phone."

"I don't think the city of New York likes to pay its employees."

"Touche' my dear. I'll see you later."

"Don't forget to come home with your eyebrows still intact."

"I love you too babe."

She smiled and hung up the phone, her glance falling to the side table where one of their wedding pictures stood. She could attribute their happiness that day to naïveté or excitement or not really knowing what the world could throw at them. But when she looked at them now, saw how they were impossibly happier than on that crisp fall day, she knew their happiness had never had much to do with their surroundings. What it came down to was what so many people had said so many times. "You two really found each other." It was true though. They really had.