A/N: Hello! I see you're liking the premise, so here's chapter two :)

Let me know what you think-this is a little out of my normal wheelhouse I feel like!

Enjoy :)

"I was beginning to wonder if you were going to stand me up," Henry says from the couch, moving to stand to his feet in the lobby and walking over to meet her.

She raises a brow, "I wasn't planning on it," she murmurs, and she's not even sure he heard her while he's pushing the revolving door for her, getting it started for her to walk through.

She nods curtly in appreciation, quietly walking through the door and out onto the sidewalk into the cooler evening. Looking over at him standing beside her now, he's eyeing the streets for a cab, "You look nice, by the way," he says, his voice cracking when he adds that last part just enough for him to have to clear his throat.

She blinks at him twice, clutching onto her purse hanging from her shoulder and feeling her cheeks redden. She looks away just as he's turning to look at her again, since she's been so quiet, "There's one," she says, "Taxi!" She raises her hand up and walks out in a rush toward the curb, and it pulls over.

As she's reaching for the door, he grabs it first, opening it and letting her inside. She swallows thick and scoots across the backseat, telling the driver where they need to go as Henry is shutting the door. She glances over at him once as they drive off, and then she turns away.

The ride is mostly silent, partially because the driver is blasting music through the car, and partially because Elizabeth barely looks at Henry the entire ride. Instead, she has her gaze fixed out her window, wondering why she didn't wear just a little more makeup tonight. But apparently, she "looks nice," so she shouldn't be worrying about it anyway.

When the cabbie tells them they're at their destination, Henry pays the guy before she can even get to her wallet, and they're out of the car right after. "This looks like a nice little place," he says, and she watches him as he looks at the restaurant's door.

Quaint, is what she'd call it. "Isabelle suggested it," she says, "I have no idea how good it is, but apparently she's eaten here before. She should know good French food," she says and laughs dryly, "She was stationed at the embassy there."

He nods with a little sideways grin as she walks past him and gets inside before he can open the door for her this time, and she tells the hostess she has reservations for two.

Immediately, they're sat at a table in the back corner, away from some of the chatter and street noise but somewhat close to the man playing acoustic guitar on a stool on top of a tiny stage. Quietly, she looks over the menu after ordering her drink, and she wonders why he's being so quiet. You're being quiet too, Elizabeth, she realizes to herself and tucks her eyes behind the menu.

The entire time she was getting ready after coming back to her hotel room from the conference, she kept telling herself that this was just a way of finally getting a little closure. After all, she was the one who broke it all off, but he was the one who didn't show up to graduation the next day, didn't say his final goodbyes.

This wasn't a time to rekindle anything—he obviously has a great career with the Marines, and she knows she's getting promoted soon because Conrad told her as much. By the end of the year, she will be assigned to the Middle East desk, and as things are heating up more and more over there, she's excited to be in the middle of all the action once more.

So when she chose her attire for the evening, she didn't have him in mind. She'd worn her comfiest jeans and a button-up shirt, letting it hang loose around her waist and completing it with her tennis shoes that she's had since college. He, on the other hand, has his shirt tucked into his pants that are not denim, and he even smells extra nice. Clean, of course, and like he did the day they met.

She runs her thumb across the menu a few times as she stares at one dish, not even reading the name of it though it's in French. He still wears the same cologne, the thought crosses her mind over and over, zig-zagging and bouncing from every corner of her brain.

"So," Henry breaks her thoughts, laying his menu down and clasping his hands over the table across from her, looking up at her now. She drops her menu down just slightly, still grasping onto it as though it's keeping her from floating away from the table, "What else have you been up to? Other than the CIA work you've been doing."

She swallows hard and looks at the menu briefly before setting it down, tucking her hands into her lap and between her thighs. "Mostly CIA work," she admits, tilting her head, "When I'm not at Langley, I've been doing research in my free time too."

"I've read a lot of your work," he says, and she stares at him with wide eyes as she waits for him to go on, "When I realized that you were doing a lot of work with UVA in their ethics department, I had already gotten the job there teaching part time. If I would've realized, I wouldn't have…" his voice trails off, and she relaxes her eyes just slightly.

"Wouldn't have imposed?" She suggests, pursing her lips.

He nods, shrugging one shoulder, "Something like that," he says, "When I was reading all your articles, I hadn't realized it was done in partnership with them. I'd just been seeing your name pop up in a lot of research, and one of my mentors had been citing your research when we were out at Miramar," he explains.

"Miramar?" She asks, "You were in California?"

He nods, "I trained at the air station there after graduation, and then after I went to Okinawa and to the Middle East on two different tours, I came back to Miramar and was training new guys."

"Air station," she murmurs, nodding and looking down at the menu again, mindlessly reading over another dish, "So you ended up going into flight."

"I did," he says, and she knew that it was what he'd wanted to do, so it shouldn't surprise her.

We both did everything we'd wanted to do, I guess.

"I flew an F/A-18 Hornet," he continues, and it causes her to jerk her head up and look at him as he clears his throat. He's looking down at his menu now, past his hands, or maybe he's looking at his hands. "Fighter pilots are still in high demand, so when I came back stateside, I was able to immediately get to work training other guys while I recovered."

"Recovered?" She blurts out, then blinks from the embarrassment of her word vomit, "What happened to you?" She asks, trying to cover it up.

He shrugs, "Your usual stuff," he says nonchalantly, shaking his head and looking down at his menu again after a brief glance at her. He twists his lips to the side for a moment and looks up at her, staying silent, then taking a sharp breath. "Apparently being 20,000 feet up doesn't deter from the fact that you are still killing people." He admits quietly.

Her shoulders pull back as she drops her gaze down. Looking at him, suddenly, felt like a sin—something she shouldn't be seeing, something she'll feel guilty for later on if she looks at him for too long. So she doesn't, and instead breathes out an involuntary "oh." Her lips linger in that "oh" shape until she clenches her teeth together, biting at the inside of her lip now.

Her eyes dart around on the menu and she finally sees an entrée that she thinks she's going to go with, and she slides her menu to the side a little before letting herself peek at Henry briefly, then back away toward the man playing guitar. She swallows thick and shoves her hands back down between her thighs, feeling a bit of a chill suddenly.

"What about you?" He asks, trying to get the environment to be less cold, clearly. "Has the CIA sent you anywhere?"

She looks back at him before nodding, "Berlin a few times," she starts, shaking her head a little, "They sent me to Bahrain the first time." She says, remembering her task quickly of Saddam Hussein and finding all she could about him, "But I was pulled from a lot of my work on that to finish up Cold War relations," she explains, "So then I was sent to Prague for a year, working with the U.S. Embassy there," she says, shaking her head again and smiling as she thinks back to that terrible year.

"It was cold there," she admits, then smiles sheepishly and tries to hold back a snicker, "And I hated Prague by the time I left. And then when I got back, they had me doing a lot of research, and that's kind of how this all got started in the first place," she says, gesturing around even though she's not at the conference anymore.

He laughs alongside her, nodding, "That's one thing I was happy about when I was sent back to Miramar," he says, "It was warm, and it was almost always sunny."

"I'm jealous," she says playfully, then retreats physically and tenses her shoulders.

But not jealous enough to have followed you there.

She looks down to save herself from the awkwardness, clearing her throat, "I'll be at Langley for a while though." She continues, trying to change the subject back, "They don't plan on sending me overseas until I get my promotion at least, which I know is coming soon, but hopefully I won't have to be going over there," she admits, thinking about her continuing work on Hussein and hoping, praying even, that she doesn't end up getting shipped out to the Middle East to work with any embassies there. She likes being in the middle of the action, yes, but this action was a bit much even for her.

He nods, "That sounds promising," he says, "A promotion?"

She nods, smiling a little, "Our director—Conrad, actually, the one who recruited me," she says, her voice tinged with a bit of hurt. He was who drove a wedge between she and Henry in the first place when he recruited her for the CIA straight from UVA.

Henry hadn't liked the way he would come around and take her to dinners, though she tried explaining that Conrad was engaged and had no interest in her like that. Now, though, that the years have passed and the rumors have continued to swirl at Langley, she understands why it looked the way it did to Henry. "He recently got that position, and he's wanting to move me up as well now that there have been a few people retiring."

Before he can answer, the waiter is coming up to the table and requesting their food orders, and they pause their conversation to give it to him. When the man leaves with their menus, she feels like she has nothing to ground herself to, and she has to sit on her hands to keep from picking at her fingers.

Henry clears his throat and brings them back to the conversation first, "I recently oversaw a classified mission," he starts, and immediately her ears perk up. He hadn't mentioned previously that he was doing that work, just teaching fighter pilots. Now it's starting to make more sense as to why he's getting a position at UVA and why he's at this conference. She watches as his tongue searches the inside of his jaw, and she realizes he's searching for his next words carefully. "The interrogation research you've done has greatly influenced our practices," he finally says, and it makes her sit up a little straighter, a little more tense.

"Oh," she murmurs, not even sure that her voice actually came out of her mouth. She looks down, thinking about the irony of how their lives are still intertwined, even though they'd been apart for six years. Her hands are throbbing underneath her legs as she feels a sense of pride well up in her chest, yet it's too dampened by the pain of the situation.

The waiter brings her drink and she lets one hand out from under her leg, and she immediately starts nursing on her sauvignon blanc. She sets the glass down with a thud on accident, then looks at him, "I don't know whether that's a good thing or bad," she admits finally.

He shrugs, "Depends on who you ask, I suppose," he replies.

She looks at him, her mouth opening and closing, and finally saying, "I'm asking you."

"Were you?" He asks, "Didn't sound much like a question.

You dog.

"I was," she clarifies, resting her elbow on the table as she pinches the stem on her glass between two fingers and continues her stare down.

He waits a beat before breathing in, tilting his chin down and watching her, "I think that it has its upsides," he mutters, reaching for his own glass of water. She eyes it, wondering when he'd stopped drinking whiskey. She then quickly finds herself wondering why he'd stopped drinking whiskey. "My colleague Jennifer says that it is ridiculous that she has to go through coercion steps instead of just using physical tactics."

"Jennifer," Elizabeth mumbles, the name tasting badly in her mouth as she says it. He watches her as she swallows that bad taste down her throat, "Sounds like she's used to brute force, then." She comments, pinching her glass harder before tilting it up to her mouth.

He smiles crookedly and leans back in his chair, sipping at his water through his straw. His eyes never leave her as he sets his glass back down.

"Elizabeth?" She hears, and her head pops up and looks around Henry's to see Ben standing there, walking by with a woman hanging on his arm. He smiles at her when she sees him, and she forces a smile, "My God, hey." He mutters, "I haven't seen you since—"

"Since you left Langley," she provides quickly, cutting him off and staring at the woman on his arm. "What brings you here?"

"MICS," he says, and then he laughs, "Guessing that's why you're here too."

She nods quietly, noting that Henry's entire demeanor shifted and that his chest is sticking out about three inches more than it was prior to Ben approaching.

"Oh," Ben says, looking at the woman now, "This is my girlfriend, Stacy," he says, and she gives a polite little wave before Elizabeth nods at her, forcing a smile on her face.

"I'm Henry McCord," Henry cuts in, extending his hand to Ben. Elizabeth watches as they shake hands, noticing Henry squeezing the hell out of Ben's hand—enough that Ben rubs his fingers before sticking them into his pants pocket.

"Nice to meet you, man." He says, "Well, we better get going—we are headed out for the night." He shifts back to Elizabeth, "It was really good seeing you, Liz. And nice meeting you, too, Henry." He says, looking at him and nodding once.

Henry presses his lips together and squints his eyes—some may call it a smile, but she recognizes it as his snideness seeping out.

"Good to see you too, Ben," she lies, and then she watches as he walks away. She audibly groans and rolls her eyes when she sees he's walked through the door, and Henry shifts his body back to face her.

"Who was that?"

"Ben," she answers nonchalantly.

He huffs and slouches over just slightly, eyeing her, "I know that," he says, "But how do you know him?"

"What's it to you?" She snaps, then recoils immediately. He's just trying to figure out who he is, Elizabeth. She swallows thick and clears her throat, watching as he holds his breath with his chest still sticking out. "He was my fiancé," she says quietly, not making eye contact with him as she swirls her wine in her glass, a move her aunt would've snapped at her for. "We broke it off last year."

"Oh," Henry says, looking down and moving his head to pop his neck. He taps against the table a few times with his fingers, then he sighs and looks at her again, "What happened between you two?"

She laughs dryly, a little offended that he feels like he's privy to that information at all. She stares at him a moment, wondering if now was a good time to tell him where he can stick it, but then she sees the curiosity in his eyes sparkle at her. Suddenly, she feels a bit dizzy, and she pushes the wine away from her and eyes it.

She swallows thick and tucks her hands into her lap again, squeezing them between her thighs as she thinks about the whirlwind engagement that ended with them agreeing they weren't right for each other, finally. It was amicable, the split was, but the lead-up to that was not.

"Having a pregnancy scare will do that to a relationship," she mutters, not looking up at him. "Especially when, it boils down to…" she stops, gathering her thoughts for a minute before taking a shaky breath, "I told him I didn't want kids." She says more confidently, staring a hole in the table beside her glass of wine. She brings her eyes up to meet Henry's, and he's watching her as though she's grown another head during this conversation. "So when I got pregnant, I told him I was aborting." She says distantly, a time in her life that she doesn't want to revisit at all. "I told him all that, we fought about it, and then two days later I miscarried anyway." She says, taking a steadying breath before looking back down and away from his sympathetic eyes.

"I'm sorry that—"

"Don't," she interrupts, shaking her head and lifting her fingers off the table at him. "It's in the past. It happened," she says, trying to distance herself from the entire situation still.

Though she hadn't wanted to be a mother, it still hurt knowing her body rejected it before she ever could. Something about losing that life inside of her caused her to go into a deep grief, one that was just amplified by the weight of a breakup and the weight of moving to a new apartment in D.C. because she and Ben had already been living together for eight months before all this happened.

Her eyes shift slowly to her ring finger, now bare, and she remembers when a giant rock graced it. She blinks the memory away, letting it fade into the ether. "It was hard," she admits, her voice cracking slightly, "But I picked myself up and made it through," she says, "I poured myself into this work, into this career—into the thing I cared most about." She looks at him slowly, swallowing the lump in her throat, "No one else picked me up. It was all me." She mumbles.

The way he's staring at her makes her want to crawl under the table. Now he sees me as damaged, too, she thinks. She looks away and grabs for her glass of wine, taking a desperate swig before it turns into more of a chug. She sets it down when it has just a sip or two in the bottom, and she looks at him over her glass.

"I'm sorry I asked," he admits, licking his lips and looking away as the waiter comes up with their food.

She swallows the lump in her throat, "It's fine," she replies, though it's not. It's never been fine. Not when Ben left, not when she had to handle everything on her own, and certainly not when Henry left without even saying goodbye to her. But she's not going to get into that one tonight, not now.

The rest of the meal was alright—Henry updated her on his mother, Elaine, and his sister and his new nieces. He told her all about Maureen's twin girls and all about how his nephew handled their arrival—poorly, from the sounds of it—and then he updated her on Shane's situation. When they'd split, Shane had just gotten a girl pregnant. They were getting married at the time—Shane just freshly eighteen—and now his wife divorced him and left with any money Shane had to his name while giving him most of the custody of their daughter.

Elizabeth listens closely, though her mind does admittedly drift off from time to time as she thinks about how they never really dealt with the end of their relationship. Off and on, she wonders if they're even capable of speaking honestly to each other anymore, or if they are only climbing the walls they'd built between themselves.

Mostly, Elizabeth enjoyed listening to him talk, listening to him tell her about the family she once loved so dearly. She misses her talks with Elaine especially, the mother that she didn't have throughout college. Over the two years she and Henry were together, Elaine would call Elizabeth almost as much as she called her own son. After they'd split, though, Elaine stopped calling and Elizabeth didn't want to reach out either. It all felt too raw, too painful.

Soon after, she had the flow of the CIA to get into, and she could ease her mind off the McCord family more effortlessly. When she was sent to Bahrain, she considered contacting Elaine once more to update her, but ultimately decided against it. The last she'd ever spoken to her was the week before graduation when she and Henry's dad, Patrick, came to UVA to help him move his stuff out of the dorms.

The meal had fallen into an awkward silence, and Elizabeth couldn't help but feel like the whole restaurant was watching them as the guitar strummed lightly in the background and she clinked her fork against her plate too loudly a few times. She felt like their eyes were all staring down her neck in particular, waiting for her to figure out what they're doing here, together, after all these years.

Finally, Henry sets his fork down and wipes his mouth with his napkin before setting it back in his lap, "I think we need to address the elephant in the room," he says boldly, and she almost chokes on her noodle.

She brings her napkin up and coughs into it, trying to not go into a full-blown coughing spell. When she finishes, she can feel her heart beating in her throat, and she tries to wash the pounding down with a chug of her wine. She sets the glass down and lets her fingers mindlessly trace the rim, feeling the air thicken and wrestle with her lungs.

"Are we really doing this right now, Henry?" She asks, staring down at her glass. "After all this time? We're doing this here, in this restaurant with all these people watching?"

"You've been avoiding it for years," the words that come out of his mouth make her shoot a look at him, her mouth immediately falling open.

"I'm not avoiding anything, Henry," she says pointedly, "You're the one who left before graduation."

He looks around, realizing now that people are staring, and he takes a breath and looks down at his mostly empty plate. "Then what is all this?" He asks his leftover noodles, shaking his head and toying his fingers around on his napkin that's now setting on the table. "Why are we sitting here like two strangers when we both know there's more to it?" His voice is quieter, and she realizes, too, that people are noticing there's tension.

She wonders if they can feel the heaviness in the air, or just her and maybe Henry.

"Don't you ever think about us?" He continues, his voice low enough that she has to look at his lips to hear him, "About what we had?"

The question hangs in the air long enough for a knot to form in her chest, then in her stomach. She looks down at her plate, and she wonders if she's even capable of answering him honestly. Again, she feels like she's about to climb a wall that has been built too strong for it to crumble, exuding energy on what feels like a pointless journey.

But she lets her air out slowly, shaking her head finally, "Every damn day," she admits shakily, and she's not even sure her voice came out at all. She looks up at Henry after a moment of silence, and the way he's staring at her assures her that her voice did indeed come out.

"Then why didn't you ever say anything?" He asks.

She looks at him incredulously, her fingers sliding down the glass to the stem again, "How could I?" She asks, blinking at him and pushing her hair from her face that had fallen down at some point during the stare. "You left right after we fought, Henry, and you didn't even try to give it another chance. You just…you left." She says, the hurt still stinging in her chest, then in the rest of her body slowly.

"You said it was over," he murmurs.

"And it never occurred to you to fight?" She asks, her voice becoming a bit too loud again. She clears her throat and shakes her head, staring at him once more, "You never cared about my career, Henry, you just wanted a picture-perfect wife to follow you around the world—wherever you were being shipped out to, which apparently was California for a time and then overseas…" She shakes her head again, swallowing hard, "You wanted to the wife who stays home, who hosts the dinner parties, who stays behind the scenes and shmoozes the other wives while you did the important work. You never really believed that I could have this, this career." She says, gesturing again as though she were at the conference.

She blinks at him a few times again, waiting for him to say something, but then she takes over before he can reply. "I never asked for that," she says, "And you knew what I wanted—you knew I wanted this career and you knew that I was willing to work at it. And here I am—I worked at it, and I am on my way to the top, Henry." She says, her voice becoming shaky and low as she squeezes the stem so hard her fingertips turn white. "That picture-perfect woman was never going to be me."

Henry doesn't say anything for a moment, but she watches him as his eyes search hers, and she feels like a zoo animal. Nervously, she chugs the last bit of her wine down and sets her glass on the table, pushing it away so that it was out of her easy reach. Soon, she starts feeling the silence seep into her bones, and she starts to push her chair out and escape to the bathroom.

Or anywhere, really.

But he finally speaks: "You're right," he says, his voice quieter than before, almost subdued, even. "I never supported you—this career." He admits, his voice now shaking as he says it.

She cocks her jaw to the side and shakes her head, "It doesn't really matter now," she breathes, leaning back in her chair and crossing her leg to the side of the table. "I don't need your apology, Henry, I just need you to know why I never said anything. I needed you to show up for me to be able to say anything at all."

He's looking down now into his lap, and they're briefly interrupted by the waiter giving Henry back his change. He shoves it into his wallet and that back into his pocket after he leaves some cash on the table. "I thought I was doing it the right way," he finally says, breaking the silence that had been created after the waiter left. "I thought I was just leaving—I thought I was leaving and making it easier on the both of us." He says, avoiding her eyes.

He shakes his head and drags his tongue across his lips, staring in the middle of the table, "I thought that if I could make it work—my career, I mean—that it wouldn't matter. We'd be together and we'd not need your career, too. I thought we could be happy like that." He says, and she feels her heart pounding on the back of her tongue, knocking to come in.

"You never asked what I wanted," she breathes, "And you never listened when I'd say it. It was always about you, your career and what you wanted for us. And I—" She pauses, her hands fumbling in her lap as her words briefly escape her. "I'm not some trophy wife, Henry. I never will be."

He scoots his chair out slightly and leans forward a little, shaking his head in an agitated manner, "I never saw you that way," he murmurs.

She scoots her chair out, too, and she stands up, "It was good seeing you," she mumbles, even drier than when she had been talking to Ben. She brushes past him, her hip bumping into his leg, and she starts heading toward the door.

"Elizabeth," he says, and she can hear his chair scooting from the table and his footsteps rushing up behind her.

When she pushes through the door, he's right behind her, and he takes her wrist. She pulls her hand away from him quickly and stops walking immediately, staring a hole through him, "Don't," she breathes, her fist balling up around her purse strap.

For a moment, they stand there on that New York City sidewalk, and she thinks she can read his thoughts. She feels like she should be able to at least, yet nothing is coming to her—she can't understand them at all. She searches his eyes for any clues, any hints as to what he's thinking, but he's letting his eyes dart between her eyes and her lips, and she looks away.

Finally, she brings herself to look at him and she takes a deep breath, standing firmly there, "Why are you following me?" She asks, her voice a bit shakier than she'd meant for it to be—she wanted to sound defiant, confident, and sure. She was nothing of those.

"I don't know," he whispers, shaking his head and looking at her intensely. "I can't keep pretending that I don't care how it ended, Elizabeth," he breathes, "Or that I don't care about you, or any of this." He says, gesturing now, too, at what she assumes is them and their relationship that has been ended for long enough now.

He takes a step toward her, and she stands her ground, tilting her chin up at him and gritting her teeth. When he reaches out, she notices his hand and where it was headed, but instead of moving away, she lets him touch her on the back, and she stands her ground again.

"Please don't go," he whispers, "I—"

She shakes her head, "You made your choice all those years ago, Henry," she breathes, forcing herself to keep eye contact with him. "You didn't fight. You never even tried." She says, her voice firm. "I couldn't be your afterthought."

"You never were," he answers immediately, narrowing his eyes at her.

She feels the gap closing between them, and she still continues to stand there with her feet frozen in that sidewalk. She wants to step back, she wants to keep that wall firmly in its place that had been being built for the past six years. But she doesn't.

"I can't just walk away from this now," he breathes, shaking his head, "Not from you again."

Her chest tightens to the point where she feels like she has to gasp for air, and soon, she finds herself doing just that. She wants to follow it up with a scream, right in his face, preferably. Something about how he was terrible to never fight for her and terrible to make her feel like a trophy wife in the first place. She wants to say all the things she's thought of since that night before graduation, but she can't. Instead, she just wants to feel him, and she hates herself for that thought.

"I don't need your apologies," she says again, shaking her head at him though he never has actually apologized, "I don't need pity or anything else, Henry. I just need you to be honest with me."

He swallows thick, stepping an inch closer, ultimately closing the gap. "You want honesty?" He asks, his hand becoming more firm on her back, "I never stopped thinking about you. I never stopped wanting you, not even once." He breathes, the words tumbling from his mouth at a speed she almost can't keep up with.

"I can't do this again," she breathes out, her words matching his speed. She shakes her head and swallows hard, "I can't do this to myself again."

"Do what?" He asks.

"Take forever to get over you," she whispers, ashamed, almost, of her words. Her eyes look away and down, and she takes a shaky breath. Her heart is pounding in her throat still, and her body feels like it's betraying her as it won't just run away from him, from his touch.

Instead, it betrays her further, and she steps closer to him almost against her will, and she looks up at him now, taking a shaky breath again. "One dinner," she whispers, "I gave myself one dinner with you to maybe seal up the past," she says, shaking her head, "And now…" she trails off after her voice tightens, and she blinks, trying to compose herself again. "I need one night. For us." She whispers, "One night to close…to close all of this," she says.

She's close enough to his body to feel his breath hitch, and his hand moves across her back and upward, then back down to the small of her back. She's waiting for him to answer, then a thought crosses her mind: you're no trophy wife, Elizabeth. Kiss him first.

So she does, and she slams her lips into his so hard that their bodies stumble—his backwards, hers forward. She pulls away with an abruption just as sudden as how it all started, and she turns and hails a cab quickly.

She knows what she wants. Even if it's just for tonight.