A/N: Enjoy!

3. Good for Now

Maggie: My ass hurts!

Maggie: Why couldn't her hobby be somethin fun...

Maggie: Like margaritas by the pool?

Maggie: Or mojitos by the pool?

Maggie: Or beer by the pool?

Michonne: Lol. I tried to warn you!

Maggie: U did

Maggie: It was so worth the sore ass tho!

Maggie: Never seen someone's jaw drop like that

Maggie: And when u called her a thirsty Gymboree ho?

Maggie: LMAO

I snorted as I laughed at Maggie's texts. We'd been talking about the thirsty Gymboree ho situation for the last hour, and I was shamelessly entertained by the entire conversation.

Michonne: What else was I supposed to call her?

Michonne: She is what she is.

Maggie: Can't wait to tell Glenn!

Rick, Daryl and I had only known Glenn and Maggie for a relatively short time, but we'd welcomed them into our circle. Carl was fast approaching his first birthday, and their unwavering support played a huge role in why he was such a healthy and happy baby. Because of how much we'd grown to depend on and trust those two, we were in agreement about them. Glenn and Maggie were family.

Glenn's acceptance was expected, considering he was one-third of the reason Carl's middle name was Glendrick. Maggie was the unforeseen addition.

The day my water broke, the most I knew about Maggie was that she and Glenn were dating. After Rick emerged from his fog of depression, I learned that Glenn and Maggie were actually in the attached at the hip stage of dating. The only things that seemed to keep them apart were work, sleep, and random one-off events like staying by a pregnant lady's side after she goes into labor.

When Glenn and Maggie were together, their magnetism was undeniable. They melted into each other with every touch, every kiss, every look. Daryl, who was thoroughly disgusted by how inseparable they were, started referring to them as Gleggie because of their constant state of oneness. He and I silently rejoiced when Gleggie moved into the balancing oneness with individuality stage of love. But their nickname stuck.

It was hard to believe that pizza cravings were what put us on the path to becoming family. Glenn and I met when I was close to six months pregnant and in dire need of pizza. Mama Mia Pizza-Rhee-a! had fantastic reviews online, and after my first visit I understood why. The pizza was phenomenal, and Glenn's easy-going, high-spirited personality made for a very enjoyable dining experience.

Mama Mia's quickly became a staple in my diet. Since Daryl was rarely able to join me on his lunch breaks and Rick and Lori were eating no- to low-carb because of Lori's anti-carbohydrate stance, I mostly dined there on my own. Glenn always greeted me with a big, warm smile before asking if he could rub my stomach to say hi to the baby. Most everyone received a Rick Grimes-caliber head tilt and eye squint if they asked to rub my stomach, but I made an exception for Glenn. I wasn't sure if Carl was naturally responsive to him or if he was associating Glenn's voice with delicious food, but he always actively moved around when Glenn rubbed my stomach and spoke to him. He and I never had enough time to do more than chit chat during my rushed lunch hours, but the foundation of our friendship was laid from our many brief conversations.

Developing a friendship with Maggie was slightly more difficult. I recognized immediately that she was a genuine person, but I initially kept my guard up with her. My closest friends were boys; I'd never had a girlfriend before.

It took Mama Mia's and a glass of merlot for the two of us to finally connect. Gleggie invited me, Rick and Daryl to the restaurant for a private after-hours dinner. Rick and I accepted their invite. Daryl declined, preferring to spend his free time one-on-one with Carl. When Rick and Glenn were in the kitchen, Maggie sat down next to me, poured two glasses of wine, looked me in the eye and said, "We can be friends now or we can be friends later who regret that we weren't friends now. Your choice."

Maggie: When do u think Rick will say somethin?

A knock on my closed bedroom door interrupted my conversation with Maggie.

"Are you decent?" Rick asked.

"I'm decent!" I shouted. "Come in!"

He opened the door and leaned in the doorway with a serious look on his face. "Can we talk?"

Uh oh.

"Sure, Rick," I casually responded.

I knew exactly what, or rather who, he wanted to talk about. Jessie Anderson. The married but recently separated stay-at-home mom to 11-month old Ronnie. Carl and Ronnie were enrolled in the same Tuesday and Thursday morning Gymboree classes, and Rick had caught Jessie's eye. In the last week alone, she'd arranged three early evening play dates for Carl and Ronnie at Rick's house.

It was more than clear that she was using Ronnie as an excuse to sniff around Rick. It was even clearer that she really, really liked what she was sniffing. If Rick was aware of her ulterior motives, he didn't let on. I was still living in his house, though, and after three evenings of Jessie's girl next door act, I was ready to shut that shit down.

"Is that Maggie?" Rick asked, nodding at my phone.

"Mmhmm. We were just kicking around ideas for Carl's birthday."

Rick stared at me, determining the legitimacy of my words.

"Uh huh," he finally replied.

I shot Maggie a quick text before I put my phone to the side.

Michonne: About to have the talk...

Maggie: Call me later!

Rick took in my appearance and smirked. "So you're the reason I haven't been able to find my pajama pants."

"I've been borrowing them, yes. But you know I get cold," I insisted.

I'd only "borrowed" two, possibly three, but no more than four pairs of his pajama bottoms over the past few months. They kept me warm and were very comfortable, so I had no intention of giving them back.

"Where's my Nugget?" I asked, changing the topic.

"Finally down for a nap," he said with a tired sigh. "It took forty-five minutes."

I chuckled as he entered the room. "Maybe if you sang something other than 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat' he'd fall asleep faster."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," he mumbled. "Move over," he ordered, lightly kneeing the side of the mattress.

I rolled my eyes and checked his feet for shoes or slippers. "You do know if you added 'would you please' to the beginning of that you'd come across as less of an ass."

"Less of an ass, huh? You do know if you stopped stealin' my pajamas, you'd come across as less of a thief."

I shook my head in disappointment as I made room for him. "Work on your comebacks, Grimes. And I haven't been stealing your pajamas."

Rick rolled his eyes and sat next to me, resting his back against the headboard and stretching out his legs. He looked at me after I bumped his shoulder with mine.

"No one else has that problem but you," I said.

"And what problem is that?"

"Getting Nugget to fall asleep. It's your song choice, Rick. Daryl's go-to is 'Walk this Way.' Glenn's is 'Lose Yourself.' And yesterday I got him to fall asleep to 'Girls Just Want to Have Fun'."

"My poor child," Rick groaned. "He's gonna grow up with some very questionable tastes in music, and please stop with the Cyndi Lauper catalog. I heard you singin' 'True Colors' last week."

I laughed. "Nugget likes Cyndi. Cyndi songs stay."

Rick smiled at me before his face turned serious again. "Michonne, what did you say to Jessie?"

I looked away from him, opting to stare straight ahead. "What would I possibly have to say to Jessie?"

I felt his eyes searching the side of my face. "That's two lies in the last few minutes, Michonne."

"One lie and a sidestep," I corrected.

Rick wasn't amused. "So you and Maggie did take Jessie's spin class yesterday? You did corner her in the locker room?"

Wow.

"Cornered in the locker room? That's a gross exaggeration," I said, crossing my arms. "And what else did she tell you?"

"Nuthin', but she cancelled our plans today."

She better have cancelled their plans after I approached her in the locker room to have a chat, but that twinge of disappointment in Rick's voice didn't sit well with me. I narrowed my eyes and adjusted on the bed to face Rick.

"And what kind of plans did you and Jessie have exactly?"

"A haircut," he quickly answered.

Uh huh.

"A haircut? Is that what you married folks are calling it nowadays?"

"I don't know what you're talkin' about," he claimed.

I didn't miss the touch of pink that colored his cheeks.

"Jessie's practically a licensed hair stylist, and my hair is overdue for a cut."

Uh huh.

"Who's lying now?" I quipped.

When he broke eye contact, my eyes traveled to his wild curls. There was no way a "practically licensed hair stylist" was cutting them.

"Remember how you and Daryl were my living mannequin heads when we were kids?" I asked. "And I'd put your mom's pink foam rollers in your hair?"

"Yes, Michonne," Rick deadpanned, clearly not thrilled by the memory.

"I've always loved your curls," I said softly, tempted to twist one around my finger.

Rick sighed and waited for me to make eye contact with him before continuing. "Michonne, what did you—"

"I told her in no uncertain terms that your curls were off limits, Rick. I told her that all of you is off limits. No haircuts."

His face hardened before he spoke. "That's not your call to make."

"I know it's not," I agreed, shrugging, "but it's still the call I made. I don't think you realize it," I said before eyeing him suspiciously, "or maybe you do... but she's basically Lori with a bad dye job."

"That's not true," he grumbled.

"It is true!" I snapped. "They both have that kind of simple, kind of sweet, kind of fragile, kind of drama thing going on. She might as well be Lori 2.0."

Rick started to squint at me.

"Don't you dare squint at me, Rick Grimes," I warned. "She's married. You're married. Since when does that not mean anything to you?"

Rick ran a hand down his face in frustration. "And all this time I didn't think you cared about my marriage," he shot back.

"I care about you and your principles," I told him, trying to control the volume and tone of my voice. "I care about how your actions affect Nugget. I care about not having to deal with Lori and Lori 2.0 drama at the same time! And FYI, Rick, I won't deal with it! You get one Lori-induced crisis, and you already had it."

"If only I'd known. I would've skipped the depression and went straight for adultery," he muttered sarcastically.

He would've...

"You're obviously going through something," I said through gritted teeth as my anger swelled. "You want to make your bad situation worse? Knock yourself out. But find someone else to watch your son while you're screwing your Lori stand-in!"

I had to get out of the bed because I couldn't stand being so close to him. Rick grabbed my wrist and pulled me back down.

"Wait, wait, wait... I'm sorry," he said.

"Let. Me. Go," I warned him.

He quickly released my wrist. "Michonne, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. It was a bad joke."

The sincerity in his eyes kept me from storming out the house.

"That's it?" I asked. "You shouldn't have made a bad joke?"

He rested his head against the headboard and looked up at the ceiling. "Acceptin' Jessie's offer for a haircut was a bad idea," he admitted.

Even though his marriage was in shambles, I found it disturbing that he'd consider violating his vows with Jessie Anderson of all people. That just wasn't who he was.

"What's going on?" I demanded to know.

Rick sighed before quietly confessing, "I heard from Lori."

WHAT?!

"You heard from... When?!" I whisper-shouted as I jumped up.

Rick pulled me back down by hand.

"When, Rick?" I asked again, pulling out of his grasp.

"Two days ago."

"You spoke to her?" I asked in disbelief.

"She left a message."

"Voicemail or text?"

"Voicemail."

"What time?"

"3:16 in the afternoon. I missed the call," he said dejectedly. "I didn't notice the voicemail until after I was at work."

I stared at him expectantly. He may have gotten away with not letting me read the letter she'd written, but he was going to play that voicemail for me.

"I know you didn't erase it, Rick. Where's your phone?"

He sighed again as he reached into his pocket. I grabbed his phone, unlocked it, dialed his voicemail and tapped the speaker button.

"You have two new messages and one saved message," his phone reported.

I skipped through the new messages left by Daryl and Dr. Peletier's office to get to Lori's.

"Please... don't hate me, Rick."

I looked at Rick after the message ended. "That's it? That's all she said?"

Rick nodded.

"Did you call her back?"

"She called from an unknown number," he answered, looking and sounding more devastated by the second. "Her cell phone's still disconnected."

I don't know what it was about Lori Grimes and phones, but she had me wanting to hurl Rick's across the room.

Fucking Lori Grimes.

"Calm down, Michonne," Rick said with concern.

Calm down? Calm down?!

I got out of bed, gripping the phone tightly. Staying calm was no longer an option.

"That selfish bitch!"

"Keep your voice down," Rick cautioned, tilting his head in the direction of Carl's room as he stood.

We stared at each other from opposite sides of my bed.

"She's been gone for ten months. TEN MONTHS! And that's all she has to say?!" I ranted, too riled to care about my volume.

"Michonne, please. Carl is asleep!"

"Why aren't you angry?!" I shouted.

"Michonne, put the phone down," he said, looking at my grip on the phone, knowing I was probably seconds from destroying it.

"Why aren't you angry, Rick?!"

"I'm askin' for my phone, Michonne. You gonna give it to me?"

"We both work with people who can track her down. I work with people who can draft divorce papers. Just give me the green light to reach out to someone."

"You know I can't do that. I won't. She's still my wife. I still love her, Michonne. She's comin' back."

She's...

I stared at Rick, trying to make sense of what he was saying.

"She doesn't love you," I said bluntly. "How could she possibly love you and not be here?"

"You don't understand," he said, shaking his head, "but you have to believe me when I tell you that she loves us."

I was bewildered, and I was livid. Did we not just listen to the same message? Were we not talking about the person who had never seen or held Nugget?

"She didn't even mention Carl!" I angrily pointed out, pacing the length of the room.

"Mich—"

"And you? You throw the word love around as if... But she abandoned her family. You joke about adultery. That's not love, Rick."

"She called, Michonne. That means somethin'."

"It doesn't mean love," I retorted.

"And Jessie? Yeah, that would've been a mistake. I get it," he said. "I just—"

"You just what?" I stopped pacing and stood across from him. "If you know Jessie would've been a mistake, then you should know that Lori gracing your voicemail with five seconds of her time means she's not good for you. She's not good for Nugget."

"She will be, though," he said with conviction.

She…

A part of me empathized with Rick. In so many ways, he was still the fifteen-year-old boy who fell in love with Lori. Part of me pitied him. I'd never seen anyone so blinded by a person like Rick was blinded by Lori.

And a part of me was starting to resent him. I was sick and tired of him not being sick and tired of his deadbeat wife.

Daryl and Gleggie helped with Carl as often as they could, but Rick and I were the two who were affected the most by Lori's behavior. In addition to being the root cause of his depression, Lori's selfishness had robbed him of another love in his life. His job. Once he was cleared to return to work, he gave up his role as a sheriff's deputy for a third shift desk officer position. We didn't live in a particularly high crime or violent town, but he wanted to eliminate as much danger and risk from his job that he could. He was terrified of leaving Carl parentless. A desk job was the safest role that allowed him to remain with the department. He worked the third shift to ensure someone was always at the house with Carl.

While I didn't give up my dream job, Lori's behavior had still cost me something. When I extended my maternity leave to the full three months, I missed out on an opportunity that would've kept me on the fast track to making partner at my firm. I didn't regret spending those first three months with Carl and Rick, but my professional goals took a little bit of hit.

I was also still living in the Grimes' house after initially agreeing to stay for six months—or until Lori returned, whichever happened sooner. It was almost a full year later, and here I was, practically a permanent fixture in the house.

Rick didn't see it, but if Lori ever came back, she was going to do so as a disruptive force. She would either break Rick's heart when she refused to step into her role as wife and mother or she would break his heart when she attempted to step into those roles and failed miserably. I honestly didn't know if I had the energy or the willpower to support Rick through either of the scenarios. For the first time in my life, I didn't know if I could be there for my lifelong friend.

I let out a deep breath and handed Rick his phone.

"Are we good?" he asked quietly.

"Yeah, Rick. We're good," I replied, although we both knew "for now" went unspoken.

A/N: Thank you for reading! Please take the time to leave a review. It's appreciated!