Neither one had slept very much that night. They both wished it was Saturday instead of Friday because they were both in a fog that felt like a bad hangover. They both left their apartments at around 6:30 AM. Booth driving to the Hoover, Brennan driving to the Jeffersonian. As much as Booth hated dealing with paperwork, he decided it was a good day to attack the pile that had accumulated on his desk, and he hoped it would keep him busy all day. Brennan headed right to bone storage in "Limbo" because it always made her feel better trying to solve the mysteries of the poor souls who ended up there.
At 11 AM, Booth got a call that they had a case. Unfortunately, it wasn't a fresh set of remains that would have been Cam's job. It was a set of bones in a local park that had been dug up by a dog. He picked up his cell phone and stared at it for a moment. "Damn." He hit speed dial 1 as he pulled himself together hoping that his voice would sound normal. "Hey Bones! We have a case!"
Her cell phone had been sitting on the edge of the exam table as she worked on a set of bones. She looked down and saw the name on the caller ID. "Damn." His greeting to her sounded so normal, just like every time he called with the same news - always excited that they had a case to work on. This was not how she wanted to spend her day. In fact, they had both come to the same conclusion on their own. It would be best to completely avoid each other today, take the weekend to decompress, and start fresh on Monday. But fate had intervened. She told him that she would get her things together and meet him in front of the Jeffersonian so he didn't have to park and come inside. He was relieved.
On the short ride to the park, they each tried, but failed miserably to make small talk. When they pulled up to the site, she got out of the car quickly, grabbed her equipment, and headed toward the yellow crime scene tape. Booth remained behind the wheel for a minute trying to figure out how to navigate this whirlpool he had thrown them both into the previous evening. He steeled his spine, got out of the car, and followed her. It was probably not obvious to the regular crew working the scene with them, but if they had been paying close attention, they would have noticed that Brennan, crouched over the remains, never looked up at Booth as she gave her assessments. And Booth, in turn, never even looked at the remains or at Brennan. His eyes were fixed on the card where he jotted the notes as she called out her findings. When it seemed like she had given him everything that could be discerned from the scene, he made his usual call to wrap it all up and send it to the Jeffersonian. He then finally looked at her for the first time. "Hey Bones. I have some leads to follow up on. You okay to go back to the Jeffersonian with the crew and the remains?" She quietly breathed a sigh of relief and assured him that was acceptable. He went right to his car, jumped inside, cranked the engine, and headed out of the park. She stood behind the yellow tape and watched the back of the vehicle until it was out of sight. She looked around at the crew working the site and was relieved that no one seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary with the partners.
But he had no leads. He just needed to be gone. Booth stopped at a coffee shop on the way back to his office. He sat sipping his coffee and stared out the windows at the people passing by. They all seemed to be going about their Friday afternoon, oblivious to the fact that the man in the coffee shop had just had his world turned upside down. He had taken a chance and it blew up in his face. Wasn't life supposed to be all about taking chances? He stood up and threw away the half full cup. 'Just get back to the office, bury yourself in the paperwork still there, and in a few hours it will be time to pick up Parker for the weekend.' He was relieved that this was his weekend with Parker. His son always lifted his mood, and he started thinking about activities that would fill the two days and take his mind off of his troubles.
When Brennan returned to the lab, she and Clark started working on the remains. She was glad that Clark was her intern that week because he didn't see the need to make small talk as they worked. By the end of the day, Angela had gotten enough to make the identification of the victim. As Brennan walked out of Angela's office, she very casually asked Angela to call Booth with the details because she needed to get down to bone storage to clean up the case she had been working on when she received Booth's call. She felt like she had dodged a bullet when Angela smiled. "Sure sweetie. I never pass up an opportunity to call studly!" Brennan was anxious to get out of the lab and squirrel herself away for the weekend in her apartment. Her publisher was expecting a few more chapters of her book and she decided that she would put in a marathon session over the weekend and bank even more chapters. Her publisher would be pleased.
Booth and Brennan were both hoping that a weekend apart would find them back to normal on Monday. But deep down they both knew that "normal" was no longer possible. They were going to have to forge a "new normal". How would it look? Booth would tell her how excited he was for his first date with the woman he met on the running path over the weekend. Brennan would pretend to be excited for him.
Booth blamed Sweets. Brennan blamed Booth's gambling tendencies. They both wished they could just turn the clock back 24 hours.